What's That Smell...?

It's my dishwasher! My White-Westinghouse dishwasher has washed it's last dish, sadly. I had a repairman out and he assessed the situation to be that the motor was broken. A repair would cost about 80% of just buying a new one. I have no reason to doubt him as his company does not sell dishwashers, only service.

I have no idea how old my dishwasher is. It came with the house which I bought in 1999.

The encouraging thing is that he said they really make good dishwashers now - built like tanks and very efficient. He recommended to stay with the big four manufacturers: Westinghouse, GE, Whirlpool and Maytag. Truth be told, I really don't use it that much, but it does come in handy during party cleanup and I know that my housekeeper appreciates it. I suspect I'll buy one of the cheaper ones among the good brands.

If anyone has any recommendations, please send them to me here. I'll probably hit the stores tomorrow.

Enough Already!

It just keeps raining and thunderstorming here in North Texas. In the 20 years that I have lived here I have never seen anything like it. The graphic to the right shows us closing in on a record June but it's been raining consistently here since March. It's almost as if I went to sleep and woke up in different city - one that has a rainy season.

I looked up some other statistics as well:

• Rainfall for the year so far: 31.83". Normal: 18.67". 70% more.
  
• May: 13 days w/ thunderstorms; 9 days w/ heavy rain; 21 days w/ light rain; rainfall 62% above normal; 22 cloudy days
  
• April: 4 days w/ thunderstorms; 2 days w/ heavy rain; 8 days w/ light rain; rainfall 12% below normal; 11 cloudy days
  
• March: 5 days w/ thunderstorms; 4 days w/ heavy rain; 14 days w/ light rain; rainfall 25% above normal; 14 cloudy days
  

I couldn't find the number of sunshine days for the year but I'm sure that it is dramatically smaller this year. So what's going on? I have the suntan lotion at the ready and figured out where the local public pool is but there are no opportunities.

I guess that means I must do more much-procrastinated paperwork. Yuck!

The Sony Book Reader

I bought the Sony PRS-500 book reader pictured above last week. I had been researching it for a couple of weeks. This reader reads Sony e-book formatted books, Word documents, PDF files, TXT files, etc.. It also plays music and displays pictures. The product came out at the end of last year (2006) and retails for $300. With your purchase, you get $50 worth of books from the Sony bookstore and 50 free "classics" of your choice. (though classics prior to 1923 can be found for free at manybooks.net).

Mostly, I very much like this book reader. The only dissatisfactions that I have have to do with software features that are not very mature but could be incorporated very easily into the existing product. Here is a summary:

The GOOD

• e-ink technology makes for amazing book-like reading
  
• size: 9 oz., 1/2 inch thin, 6" display - perfect combination of portability and readability
  
• battery life - amazing - 7500 page turns estimated. The device uses no battery while reading - just during page changes
  
• love having multiple books, articles and blogs 'carted' with me at one time
  
• relatively easy to put online articles into reader
  
• can change the text size dynamically
  
• expandable memory for even more books though I can't imagine needing to (stock - it can hold 80 normal sized books)
  
• access to classics published prior to 1923 for free (expired copyrights) at manybooks.net
  
• very simple software
  
• good bookstore
  
• most books are cheaper than buying through Amazon (example: Walter Isaacson: Einstein: His Life and Universe - Amazon price: $19.20, Sony price: $13.59)
  

The BAD

• Sony store doesn't have all titles - needs more
  
• comes with a very limited RSS capability. Only offers a handful of popular RSS feeds (blogs) and the format is too small. Plus I have noticed that it is not updated very frequently. This is EASY to fix - just bolt on a general third-party RSS reader (they are almost generic these days) and make sure the format is of appropriate size. This is (for me) a killer ap for these things. I cut-and-paste from my RSS reader (bloglines) into a Word document and then import into the Reader. Easy steps but easily avoided with minimal software work by Sony.
  
• Bad PDF support. Basically a PDF document gets shrunken to the Sony screen size so you can't read it. Again - this woud just take an easy software update and access to Adobe's API to fix.
  
• Unlike the iPod, the you can't make the Sony automatically synch up with the PC library through their software - you have to manually move articles over. That's fine and easy but I'd like an option for the automatic synch.
  
• no wifi capability. While I didn't buy it for that it would be nice in future products.
  
• dependent on Sony formatted books and it's bookstore.
  

As I said, the software updates would be easy to solve for Sony even with the existing reader and I actually expect them to happen. Though part of the equation will be how popular these things become. If Sony can sell more units by offering better RSS and PDF suppor they will certainly add these.

Not only do I like reading books on this, but I enjoy downloading internet articles and reading them later in an easier-to-read format than online on the PC. For example, I get a daily summary of all of Salon's articles (for a $30/year fee) in one file which is very easy to transport into the book reader.

This is an essential product if you travel a lot and are sick of bringing oodles of books and papers with you. It's a useful product if you like to read online content but hate reading articles of any length directly on the PC. It's also a useful product if you enjoy having access to books for cheaper prices.

The Sony PRS-500 is one of the very few e-ink technology products on the market and should be the product that starts making this technology more wide-spread although a few improvements would make it even more killer. I do sort of hate depending on Sony though... (but Apple doesn't have one right now!!!).

June Crepe Myrtles

Yes it's time for my annual June pictures of the crepe myrtles in the front of my house. Click the above picture for a larger size. Loyal readers of this blog (thanks Mom!) will no doubt remember the daily bloom progress I shared with you in 2005, as well as the early bloom picture from last year. The above picture was taken on June 23rd and seemed to represent the peak.

It IS interesting to have this documented and see the date difference each year!

Zipping Through The Trees

Yesterday I went down to Austin to do a Canopy Tour with the Cypress Valley Canopy Tour company. The tour was arranged through a DFW Adventure Group I belong to.

I drove down with four other people (thanks for driving Monica!!) from Dallas. The drive to Austin is a little over 3 hours and Cypress Valley is about an additional half hour northwest of Austin. This took us right through the most beautiful part of the Texas Hill Country. All in all our group consisted of about 20 people.

The Canopy Tour is modeled after similar tours that started in Central America - most notably Costa Rica. The idea is that a separate eco-system exists above or near the tree line in jungles that humans rarely get to see. IN a way this is a similar concept to scuba diving that allows one to experience an entirely different ecosystem underneath the sea.

The tour consisted of zip lines (see pictures) where you zip through the trees between platforms built around some of the larger trees and walking on bridges between platforms. We were about 40 feet in the air most of the time and some of the larger cypress trees were as tall as 150 foot. The zip lines were FUN and very non-dangerous feeling - i.e. I would recommend them to anyone. I just wish that we could have taken the longest and fastest one (we were going up to 30 mph) over and over again.

The guides were very good keeping us clipped in all the time and guiding us through all of the platform changes. We really didn't have to do ANYTHING with our equipment - they did it all. They were also knowledgeable about the trees and wildlife and pointed many things out to us. Though when on the zip lines, I was more inclined to enjoy the ride rather than try to observe nature! lol

Great fun! And all of the people in the group were really good company! BTW - credit to Todd and Monica for all the great pictures!

More pictures below. You can click on all of them (including the one above) to view the larger size.

Dallas Farmers Market Idea

So, I was reading the latest article in D Magazine about the Farmer's Market and about how important eating locally is (on a number of levels). I was so inspired! Dallas has one large farmer's market located downtown. While the focus of the article was multi-faceted, what caught me was the underlying assumption that if the current Farmer's Market was expanded, more people would come. I'm not so sure.

This got me thinking...

I think that the Dallas Farmer's Market may not be the best and only solution for a city the size of Dallas. I mean - it's great that it's open every day, it's great that it's so big, etc... but no matter how much better we make the parking situation and access by throwing more money towards it, I think that the inconvenience factor will always be there for most of us. At the end of the day, it's just too hard to most residents to go downtown to grab a bit of local produce and a fresh loaf of bread. This is a big city! And we have traffic, etc...

A better solution is a more European one (or big-city American as well) - bring the market to the citizens. The idea would be to supplement the current central farmers market with several smaller neighborhood markets. Perhaps these could be open once a week (for example, the Lower Greenville neighborhood on Saturday mornings, Oaklawn - Thursday night, Oak Cliff - Wednesday evening, etc..).

Unfortunately, the city of Dallas is putting more money into the Farmers Market in the next couple of years if I remember the article correctly. I'd like to see the money go towards helping establish these smaller markets.

Yes - each of these markets would be smaller but I think it would just be GREAT for all citizens in the city of Dallas. Can you imagine - having one night or morning a week where all your neighbors get together and shop for the freshest of local stuff! I'm sure that the local businesses would love it as the markets would drive traffic to their stores as well (especially if the various markets could potentially be setup during low-peak times for the businesses - talk about win-win!

A friend of mine mentioned after writing a draft of this that we could also look into using some under-utilized public parks for this - GREAT idea!

I understand there may be volume issues (can we make sure that the farmers are incentivized) and probably some zoning issues (noise, street - closings, etc..) but I'll bet with smart people looking for solutions - we would have a real opportunity to not only make our neighborhoods better and more friendly but also we would be doing a LOT (in my opinion) in driving demand for our local farmers.

I believe that by bringing the market to the citizens (instead of the other way around) we can provide a real quality low-cost service to Dallas residents, we could increase demand for local produce which would benefit our local farmers (and our taste buds!) and help provide for a bit more neighborhood/community feel in our city. Another benefit: Maybe we will all eat just a LITTLE bit better!

I sent a version of the above to my city councilwoman and she replied back that she thought it was, indeed, a good idea and suggested that I engage with the farmers market or other produce carriers to see if there is interest. I actually don't know if the Farmer's Market itself would be interested (competition?) but I would suspect that the farmers would be as I think it would increase demand for their products.

Not sure what the next step is, but I would be interested in opinions!

Monday Morning Haiku

"Falstaff" amused me
Funnel cake at Dallas Arts
Soprano's - What The...

Waikiki Observations

This week I went to Honolulu to explore a potential business opportunity. I stayed in the Waikiki area. While I had been to Waikiki a few times before, I had never really spent too much time there altogether. Early in my career I did a lot of consulting for Qantas in Australia and would stop at Waikiki for a on the way home for quick mini-vacations. Following are some quick snapshots of observations that I had...

• Their version of 7-11 is called "ABC". In Waikiki, these stores appeared on about every two blocks.
  
• ABC sold everything from gifts to tourists, aloha shirts, typical 7-11 type stuff and a lot of Japanese oriented treats (ex: bento boxes)
  
• Every other business is named Aloha something or other. Ok, I exaggerate - but only slightly...
  
• Honolulu is very much of a purely mixed Japanese and American culture. I as impressed how integrated and seamless to both cultures it appeared. For example, I went to a Japanese noodle house for lunch one day. In Japan, this can be slightly intimidating as nobody speaks English and the ordering process can be tricky to a newcomer. In Waikiki, though I was the only American there, the waitresses spoke English and ordering was just like in America even though I was seated next to the typical Japanese businessmen I had been used to seeing in Japan. The saba (salted Mackerel) I had was amazing! Like I remembered it was in Tokyo.
  
• Everybody wears Aloha / Hawaiian shirts. Tourists and businessmen alike. All that was missing were the lei's.
  
• I bought an Aloha shirt (from ABC store, of course!)
  
• Waikiki is very touristy (obviously) but I was also surprised at how many locals lived and worked there.
  
• Apartments are listed as either "furnished" or "partly furnished". Partly furnished means they come with appliances like a refrigerator and stove. Many apartments are furnished because many mainlanders maintain vacation apartments there.
  
• I found the service people very friendly and willing to talk about their experiences living in Honolulu.
  
• Roy's was excellent!