For 4 years I’ve been getting these stupid advertisements from PennySaver and ShopWise every week. I’ve never looked at them. They simply create work for me, fishing them out of the mail, sorting through them, and finally recycling them. Today I finally decided to get rid of them.

To kill PennySaver: call 1 (800) 422-4116 and leave a message to be removed
To kill ShopWise: Fill out the form

While I was at it, I decided to get rid of the stupid prospectus stuff I get from Charles Schwab. They have a nice form to get rid of that mail.

Hey, I also get at least 2 credit card offers a week. There’s even a number you can call to remove yourself from those lists for 5 years: 1-888-567-8688.

I could go without those Sharper Image Catalogs too. I removed myself.

If only getting less email spam was this easy.

Most cameras sold today have some sort of movie mode. They take decent movies with sound, but what about if you had the camera turned on its side while you took the movie?

None of the programs I’ve see that handle photos will rotate movies like they rotate photos. I was trying to show my parents how to do this with their movies recently and it’s way too complicated. Here’s the steps, assuming you have an AVI file somewhere on your hard drive you need to rotate.

1. Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > Windows Movie Maker
2. Import Video
3. Drag movie clip to first slot in timeline at the bottom
4. Menu: Tools – Video Effects
5. Scroll down to Rotate 90 or Rotate 180 or Rotate 180
6. Drag the Effect onto the movie in the timeline
7. Menu: File – Save Move File
8. Select My Computer
9. Save to wherever you want
10. Use the default for a small-size video. Select Other settings: DV-AVI for a big, high quality movie
11. Hit Next, wait for the movie to finish saving
12. Close Windows Movie Maker. Don’t save the project.
13. Run Adobe Photoshop Album (or whatever photo management program you use)
14. Menu: File – Get Photos – From Files and Folders
15. Find and Open the movie you created

Besides this being incredibly cumbersome, it doesn’t preserve the original format or quality of the original AVI file. There must be a better way. Anyone know of one?

Last weekend we were lazy, settling back in after vacation. Our goal was to do something more active this weekend.

After getting up a little late, we looked for a place to hike that we haven’t been to before. Our answer: Mt. Diablo. When you drive around the Bay Area on a clear day you can see Mt. Diablo rising above the East Bay. Usually it’s frickin’ hot over there, but today it was going to be a relatively mild 81 degrees. I looked for a trail with a bunch of caches on it and we got our stuff together to go.

We had to make a quick stop at the Sunnyvale dump to drop off some empty propane tanks we used for camping. One of them was so old that it’s moved with us at least twice. Apparently propane tanks are considered “hazardous waste” and this was the one weekend of the month they would accept them. This place was scary. First we went through this checkpoint where they asked us what we were bringing and where we lived. Then we drove around the corner to find all these people in hazmat suits moving stuff around. We handed them our two small propane tanks and got out of there.

Mt. Diablo is about 30 miles away, so it took us a little while to get there. About halfway there I realized I had left the nice map I had made with all the caches on it safely in my printer. Nice.

Our plan was to drive the summit and do a loop from there down and back up again. We drove up and up, trying to encourage the people too focused on the scenery to speed up, the people taking wide turns around corners coming down to slow down, and the cyclists from taking up the whole road. At the junction inside the park, there was a sign. The road was closed to the summit, apparently due to a rockslide or something. Well, there goes those plans.

We drove further into the park and found another spot that looked interesting with at least a few caches. That was a half-mile from the road though, so we took the trail in that looked the most reasonable. It was a bit roundabout and ended up taking us down the “Sunset Trail” which was barely a trail in places.

We found two caches and then decided to head up the other side of the valley for two more. It was steep. When we got near the top, I forged up the side of a grassy hill while Anne took the more sane route following the trail. There was quite a nice view of Castle Rock below.

We continued on and came to a trail that forked up a hill to the right and down to the left. I wasn’t sure which way to go but I didn’t want to go up the hill if we didn’t need to so we went left. Wrong decision. As we got closer, I realized we needed to be right at the top of the hill. Boy that map would have been handy about now. Instead of making the long back then up the trail, I decided to walk straight up the hill with all its tall dry grass. It was steep and parts and uneven underneath from cow grazing. We slowly headed up the hill and Anne told me about all the things I now owned her because of this poor decision. At the top we found another obstacle – a barbed wire fence. The wire was in good shape so it would have been tough to go through it. Instead we went over a part that had a wooden beam and managed to do so without gashing ourselves.

Soon we started heading down again and we found ourselves next to a large stable. We continued in to Castle Rock Park. Buses were whizzing by us on the road, to what we did not know. The PA system was blaring Heart’s Greatest Hits. As we walked through and onto a deck we saw a soda fountain calling us. Unfortunately somebody else was calling us – some guy in a blue shirt behind us asked “if he could help us”. What he actually meant “get out of here and away from my soda fountain, the park is closed for a corporate event”. Alrighty. We did use the restroom though.

We found ourselves on the western end of the road we had followed earlier, before we went up that steep hill. What we really need to do was to go due North to the road and to our car, but there wasn’t a way to do that without going East for a ways, back to the Sunset trail. Never liking to go back the way we came, we opted for a different route – bouldering over Castle Rock.

Castle Rock is one of those rock formations with vertical slabs of rock sticking straight up. It’s popular with climbers. We weren’t actually sure if the trails that led up to the climibing faces would get us up and over, but I guessed it would. There were some moderate scrambles up rock slabs, but nothing too bad. The views were great. The tiny trails that meandered through prickly brush that scraped your legs were not so great.

Eventually we did make it out to something that resembled a trail. It went right and left. Left seemed more right to me so left we went. Right. It brought us more West than we wanted and eventually hit a barbed wire fence. At this point it was less of a trail and more of a trampling of tall grass that followed along the fence. Soon it started heading more directly down and towards the trail we actually wanted to be on.

The “directly down” became more of problem. This was all tall grass that was laid down and on steeper slopes it becomes quite slippery. I stumbed a few times, walked sideways for a bit, then decided to try a different technique. I sat down and just slid right down the grass. It was surprisingly fast and I had to steer myself off the trail so I didn’t break my neck. Anne followed and laughed as she slid down the grass, trying to grab on the sides to slow down. I’ve decided to call this new sport grASS sliding and I’m sure it will be included as in the 2012 Olympic Games.

Finishing our slides we walked through more tall grass and finally on the real trail. By this time our shoes and socks were full of burrs and dead grass, but dammit, we had fun. Amazingly we were pretty close to the car too. We made it back in one piece though we only found 4 caches during our 4 hour, 10-mile hike.

Any day that includes a sudden change in plans, tromping through tall grass, going up steep hills, getting kicked out of parks, climbing barbed wire fences, bouldering and grASS sliding deserves to end well and us that means a big Slurpee. We punched up the nearest 7-Eleven on the GPS and headed over. We picked up a 40oz Passion Fruit flavor and it was good.

After all that, I guess I’m starting to understand why no one wants go hiking with us. I wonder what we’ll do tomorrow.

Last week I was on vacation this week at my parents’ lake house in New Hampshire.

Since I was a kid, a favorite evening pastime has been to catch turtles. Around dinner time, scores of cute little painted turtles (about 6″ long) would pass by, poking their heads up out of the water ever so often. When they are close enough, we’d go after them with a net, flippers and goggles. Sometimes we’d forgo all that and just grab them with our bare hands. I remember one night where we caught 18 of them. We’d collect them and let them free all at once, betting which one would reach the water first.

One night last week we were cooling off in the early evening in the lake when a turtle popped up about a foot from me. I was almost able to justreach over and catch him, but he took off. I dove down and pinced his shell carefully in my hand, said hello for a minute and let him go.

The next night I saw a few turtles just swimming along and almost grabbed two of them without any equipment. I couldn’t see them clearly and didn’t want to get bit, so I backed off and got some goggles at least.

I waited in the water for a while for some to come close enough for me to pounce. None popped up nearby. I was about to give up when I looked down and saw a turtle in the water right next to me. He was a foot away on my right, near the bottom of the chest-high water. For a second I considered going to grab him – then I realized this was no painted turtle. This a was a 2 foot long snapper. You don’t want to mess with these guys – they’ll take a finger right off. Instead, I yelled and ran as fast as I could through water to the shore. He apparently was sending me a message to stop harassing his folk.

Therefore today’s lesson is: don’t pick on animals, even little cute ones, lest their bigger brothers come over and scare the bejeesus out of you.

“If you are what you eat, my cat is made entirely of cat food.”

“What’s another word for 4 product managers?” “An engineer.” (I kid, really 🙂 )

Not that I ever had an old favorite airline, but I had a fairly good experience on Continental during our vacation to Hilton Head Island, SC.

We booked our flight from San Jose to Savannah using accumulated Northwest miles. Free flights are always good. We were surprised on first flight from San Jose to Houston to be fed actual real hot food! None of these snack boxes, it was a cheeseburger and a pretty good one. There was some salad on the side. Like we were in grade school, Anne and I traded and I got 2 cheeseburgers so she could get more salad. I wouldn’t give up my Skittles though. The second flight was uneventful and on-time. Stopping in Houston is a nice way to break up the flights. Four and five hour flights cross country suck when you have a connection.

On the return trip, things got better. The express jet flight from Savannah to Houston was quick. We had some extra room to strech out in the exit row. In Houston they overbooked the flight and started asking for volunteers on the San Jose flight. They would put us on a flight to San Francisco just an hour and a half later and give us both $300 vouchers. Sign us up! Just when the plane was scheduled to leave, they called us over and said they wouldn’t need us after all. Bummer. They did give us drink vouchers just for being on the list though.

We got on the plane and negotiated with some guy to get seats together for Anne and me. Just as we were getting settled, they called our names over the plane’s intercom. We got up and back up the ramp. They needed us after all because apparently they miscounted the number of people getting on the plane. So much for airport security.

They booked us on the San Francisco flight, gave us about $800 in vouchers – $600 for a future flight, $20 for a meal in the airport and an unlimited voucher for getting from San Francisco to San Jose since our bags were still going there. This is why I always carry things I absolutely need no matter what in my carry on bag.

Before the flight we walked down to the food court to spend our free money. They apparently don’t give change for vouchers so we had to spend it all in one place. When a salad, rice bowl and lemonade wasn’t enough, I grabbed a bag of chips and an apple turnover to leave us only 26 cents under $20.

The flight to San Francisco was late (apparently a “minor” problem occured where neither engine would start up!), but the plane wasn’t full. We got to stretch out with an empty seat between us. While we had just eaten, it didn’t seem right to skip a free meal during the flight. It was a tasty pizza with a side salad and M&Ms. Anne asked if she could have my M&Ms and I just gave her an evil eye.

The exit once we got on the ground was quick since we had no bags to pick up. We had trouble finding a cab that would accept our voucher though. Finally a nice cabbie said he would take it and called dispatch to make sure. He noted that because he was a San Francisco cab, he would charge 50% extra if he was not taking us to San Francisco. I had never heard of that before, but hey, unlimited voucher, what do I care?

He drove us all the way down to San Jose Airport and Anne ran out to grab the bags while I waited with the cab. Soon I saw her running down the hall from baggage claim to the ticket counters. That couldn’t have been good. Apparently our bags were there, but they were locked in the baggage office. They told us that the office would be open until 11. It was 10:30 and they were closed.

So, we took the cab home. Total fare with 50% extra and tip: $190! I hope they really meant unlimited. I called the Continental the next day, hoping they would just deliver our bags to us. They said they couldn’t do that because they weren’t filed as misrouted or something. If we had filed a claim immediately when we got off in San Francisco, they would have. Crap. We picked them up that night.

I look forward to flying Continental again, that is if they can afford to stay in business. Free meals and tossing out $800 in vouchers probably means they’ll file for Chapter 11 (for a 3rd time, suprisingly not after 2001 though) soon. I hear JetBlue is nice.

At 2 pm today I sat down to watch two sporting events – The final match of the World Cup on TV and the Boston Red Sox vs. the Chicago White Sox on MLB.TV.

My baseball game is tied and they just keep on playing. Six hours later we’re in the 19th inning and still going. The teams are out of pitchers, but they keep playing.

The World Cup game ended after 3 hours of tie game with a penalty kick. Lame! Because one guy kicked a ball into the goal with basically nothing there to stop it another didn’t, that makes one team a the World champions??

Imagine if they did this in baseball – if a game ran more than 11 innings, they’d have a home run derby to determine who wins. That’s just stupid. Tough it up and keep playing.

It seems to me that if soccer has such a problem with games ending up in a stalemate, they should change the game to make it easier to score, not just end the game with some arbitrary kicks. Perhaps after every 10 minutes of overtime, each team has to take another player off the field. Eventually it’ll be just two guys dueling it out with nobody in the goals. Now that would be exciting, unlike the 100 minutes of pointless dribbling I watched today.

Between dribbling, the players practiced their drama skills by wailing on the grass, trying to convince the referee that they were tripped. You don’t have to act like you’re hurt when a baseball hits you in the head at 95 mph. It hurts.

Soccer is for wimps.