VogelCam

Open 24 Hours… but not completely.

Last night I drove by the new gym (again) to see if they were finally open. They looked kinda open, but there was still nobody actually working out that I could see. Finally, I saw a dry erase board with the message, “Open at 6am tomorrow for workouts.” So this morning (again) at 6am, I jogged up to the gym and in fact they were open, only 72 hours after their originally scheduled grand opening. A sign on the door did mention, however, that they were still under construction.

I went inside to check it out.  On the first floor there were about 50 cardio machines, an indoor basketball court, a swimming pool, an aerobics room, and exactly one person running on a treadmill.

I went up the stairs to the free weight room, and there was not a soul up there. I was standing in a brand new 24 Hour Fitness Sport and there was only one other person in the whole place and she was downstairs. I was definitely going to savor this moment. I went over to the bench press. It was perfect. No scratches in the paint or tears in the bench covering. Brand new. All the plates were perfectly new as well and stacked neatly in order. I did not see another person the entire workout.

I was the first person at the new gym and it was all that I hoped it would be. I got to break in brand new equipment and be the first to person to sweat on stuff. I pretended that I lived in a castle with it’s own private gymnasium. And best of all, “New gym smell” which, by the way, smells a bit like fresh paint, new rubber, and just a hint of chain oil.

Open 24 Hours… but not in a row.

Last night, I drove by the new 24 Hour Fitness that was supposed to open today, but it didn’t look quite ready to me. I was most curious about their hours since 24 Hour Fitness is notorious for opening gyms that are only open about 17 hours, but there were no hours posted yet either. I sought out the enrollment tent I had seen in the parking lot earlier for some clarification. The dude selling memberships under the EZ-Up said they would be opening tomorrow (that’s today) at 6am and would not close again (effectively saying they’d be 24 hours.) He also argued that only 2 of their gyms weren’t open 24 Hours, although I severely I doubt this claim. (If anyone out there knows exactly how many of the roughly 360 clubs are not open 24 hours, please post a comment!)

Fast forward to this morning at 5:58am when I jogged up to the door of the gym. I had to see what kind of lunatics would show up at the 6am grand opening of a 24 Hour Fitness. When I got close, I noticed it looked worse than it did the night before. Big boxes were blocking the doorway, plastic wrap was still on treadmills, and there were still no posted hours. I also noticed that the only other people showing up were construction workers working on the adjacent parking garage that is still being built. Naturally, I assumed they had not made their 6am opening deadline, and when I finally saw someone who worked there he told me that someone had given out wrong information, and the projection was more like 6 PM instead. I said, “Oh, so you meant you are open in 24 hours?” He wasn’t amused.

So It turns out the only lunatic who’d show up to a 6am grand opening of 24 Hour Fitness is yours truly. I’m sure people who know me would not be surprised, and in fact, might actually have seen this coming. Too bad, I was really looking forward to that “new gym smell” (whatever that smells like,) and being the very first person to sweat on something. Oh well, I guess there’s always tomorrow morning.

Welcome to the Neighborhood!

They recently opened a Best Buy near our house, and we went over to check it out on the day of the Grand Opening. It pretty much looks like a Best Buy from the outside, and there wasn’t a whole lot fanfare or activity.

You would think being brand new that it’d be state-of-the-art inside, but it just looked like the inside of a crappy old CompUSA. Also, it has the weird check-out queue where you line up and pay in a little room separated from the rest of the store kinda like in a Fry’s. I’ve only seen one other Best Buy like this.

The store was pretty empty except for approximately 300 blue-shirted pinheads wishing you good morning at every turn. There was one guy who was wearing a baby sling with his dog in it. For some reason, this doesn’t seem appropriate (or legal!)

All in all, it was pretty uneventful, but I did find some interesting “deals.” I don’t know if this was just for the opening or not, but each game system* had a title or two for only $1.99. I figured for 2 bucks, I’d try a couple. For the PS2 I bought 187 Ride or Die and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon (they also had Sponge Bob Square Pants.) Ride or Die pretty much sucks and is not worth one dollar, (I shoulda bought Sponge Bob!) but Ghost Recon is pretty decent.

Anyway, we got a Best Buy real close now. If only they’ll open the Chili’s and the BevMo, we’ll be set!

*with the exception of the Wii.

Product Review: Monster iFreePlay

I’ve been waiting for this product to come out since before I knew it was coming out. Don’t you love your iPod Shuffle? Don’t you hate messing with the headphone wires when you’re trying run, work out, or just walk down the street with a backpack? I do! And I’ve always thought, “These iPods are getting so small, they should just build them into the headphones.” Well, turns out I was right. Except Monster took my great idea one step further with the iFreePlay, and built a Shuffle dock right into the headphones. So of course, when I first saw these on Gizmodo, I ran out and bought some. Here’s my revew.

The Package
The packaging is fairly modest. There’s an eco-friendly cardboard box that beats those human-proof plastic blisters that most audio equipment come in these days. There’s also a plastic form that holds the headphones themselves, and brief paper instruction book that I didn’t even look at. I was a little disappointed to not find extra ear foams, but it was kinda nice to not see excessive packaging, stickers and plastic films.

The Product
Despite it’s heavy metal appearance, the product is surprisingly light and plastic-y. My initial reaction was that it felt kinda cheaply made, but upon further inspection, it appears fairly well made and the lighter weight turns out to be a bonus. The sound quality is what you would expect from Monster — really good — and with no batteries required, I was able to crank it to an inappropriate level with only the slightest distortion.

The Design
These only come in silver, so if you have a silver Shuffle great, but they go with all the other colors. I have orange and I think it kinda shows off the iPod which is cool, besides the Shuffle sticking out, they look and feel just like a regular pair of headphones. Because the dock is a headphone jack, the Shuffle sits inverted. So to do volume up, you press down (and vice-versa) which takes a minute to get used to. (There’s tiny bump to help you keep the orientation straight.) Track forward is the direction you’re running and track back is behind you which is surprisingly intuitive. Play/pause, of course, is in the middle.

Running
I’m already accustomed the over-the-ear headband form factor, so these felt pretty natural to me. If you are used to the ear buds, these might be a little distracting to run with at first, but you will soon get over it. Once you remember how distracting it was messing with wires or having your circulation cut off by that arm band, you will feel truly liberated. As an added bonus, the large foam pads keep your ears warm on cold mornings.

Working Out
The iFreePlay truly shines at the gym. No more wires getting tangled in the machines or iPods falling from your pocket. Plus the behind the head part does not get in the way when laying on a bench. They hang conveniently around the neck when not in use, or fold up neatly to fit in a gym bag.

Overall, I give these a 4.5 out of 5 stars. I knocked some off because, for the price of $49.95, I would have expected a pair of extra ear foams, but I love the form factor, the sound quality and convenience. Available at the Apple Store.

Cuts like a knife

I just learned that the circular saw was invented by a woman. This just reinforces the notion that women were put here for our pleasure.

What happens when a Prius runs out of gas?

Good question. And I’ll tell you the answer since I know from first-hand experience.

As you may know, a Prius is a hybrid car. This means that instead of one big engine, it has two small engines—one gas, one electric—that are connected to the drive train by a fancy computer-controlled clutchy thing. (Very technical, I know.) When you are scooting around town in mall parking lots, you mainly use the electric motor, and when you need more umph to get on the freeway, the gas motor kicks in and helps. And when you stop, both motors turn off. There’s even a little display that shows you what’s going on under the hood. The battery stays charged through a combination of coasting/braking and the gas motor, so there is no plugging in. Neat, huh?

I’ve often wondered what would happen if it ran out of gas, and I found out yesterday. I was cruising down 210 in the carpool lane with the wife and kid on our way back from Glendale. I had noticed we were low on gas when we set off toward Glendale, but the Prius is deceptively fuel-efficient and the blinking “add fuel” light tends to cause little alarm. I was blissfully ignorant.

So here’s what happened. Suddenly, the car made a loud beep, and no less than 4 red lights came on. None, of these lights, btw, indicate you are out of fuel. It just looks as if something has gone horribly wrong with the engine. At this same time it felt as though the car had lost all power, but I was still coasting along pretty good. I quickly made my way over to the right lane, but there was a fairly steep grade looming before the exit ramp. I was afraid I would soon be pushing this car. So I hit the button on the steering wheel that shows the fancy motor display, and just as you might expect hope, the electric motor was still operating and I made it off the freeway and to a gas station with very little trouble at all. In fact coasting/braking was still charging the battery.

After I had some fuel in the car, I powered it up. The red lights went away, and it was brand new again. Man, what an awesome little car! I admit, I had my doubts when we bought it, but every time I drive it, I love it a bit more.

Let’s Do a Line!

My next-door neighbor has always been my up-to-the minute info source for web games that appeal to 11-yr-olds, (we won’t get into that week where I played RuneScape — and how I thought it was called “Run Escape” because that’s all I ever did,) and today he gave me the skinny on this little number. It’s called Line Rider, and unbeknownst to me, it has become a huge sensation. There are already about 18,000 (surprisingly well-edited-for-an-11-year-old) videos of it posted on YouTube that will give you a good idea of it’s draw. (No pun un-intended!)

Some Else’s Drawers

I totally forgot to blog about this, so this is probably old news to my close friends and co-workers. I recently moved into a new cubicle at work. Incidentally, the previous occupant of my new cube had died (not *in* the cube I don’t think), and it was completely empty when I moved in.

As I was getting my stuff in there, I noticed there was one cabinet that was locked, so I made a mental note to get it opened when I had a couple minutes. Well, about three days later I finally got around to picking the lock with a couple of straightened paperclips, and I was very surprised to find that it was completely filled with someone else’s personal affects.

The top drawer contained a lot of personal items, like a lint brush, shoehorn, hand lotion, and a nail grooming kit. Additionally there was a mult-tool, some Advil, and a Sony Clie PDA with a wireless LAN card. I was going to fire it up, but it was dead and there was no charging dock or cable to be found.

The middle drawer had nothing � totally empty except for some paper napkins.

The bottom drawer… well the bottom drawer had the following items:

• 2 cases of data tapes
• 5 pairs of women’s shoes
• 1 Zip-Loc baggy containing what appears to be women’s undies!

Needless to say this was a tad disturbing. Especially considering that the previous occupant was a rather large man. Now, I never actually met the guy, and I don’t mean to imply they were his or anything. I’m pretty sure they were there from an even earlier tenant, and he just didn’t have the same lock-picking skills as I.

My co-workers and I spent the next 2 days pondering these items and wondering what on earth I should do with them. On the third day, I woke up and I had decided what action I would take. The choice I made was to simply lock the cabinet again, and forget all about it. besides, I have plenty of other cabinets, and let’s face it, I really don’t want to touch the mystery panties.

And for the future archaeologists who come into my office after I have gone, please let the record show that the contents of this cabinet are not my belongings.

Stoniest Anti-Drug Commercial EVAR!

Harmony 880 addendum

Ok, so i realized i was really nice to the Harmony Universal Remote in my previous post saying it can do everything all the while the screenshot has me rating it only at 4 stars. to be fair, here’s the things i *don’t* like about the remote…

1. download to the remote is slow, but you only do it a lot at first. Updates could fix this in the future.

2. you have to hold the remote in the line of sight of all your (sometimes finicky) components for about 3 seconds and if you forget, not everything turns on. there is a rather verbose, but very helpful on-board help system for this, but i usual resort to something else.

3. i use a single SD component and multiple HD components on the same TV input, so i must change aspect ratios on the TV. so far, there is no intuitive way for the remote to know from which (or to which) aspect it must go. i have to select it manually.

other than that, (and probably not even that because i wouldn’t read the manual even if it did come with one,) it does everything it promises and exceedingly well, too.

p.s. good luck to paul, i hope it works out. don’t drop it.