Just got back from the Smoky Mountains

Wendy and I had our third anniversary on Wednesday 7th, followed by my 27th birthday (man am I getting old!) on the 8th. By the way, if anyone is thinking about getting me anything - I'm saving money together to get the Canon Powershot A620, which I think now will actually be released very soon instead of in October! Of course I'm not asking anyone to get me this, just any Amazon GC in any amount will do. :)

We went out to Carrabba's for dinner on our Anniversary because Wendy's father Mike had given us a gift card to go out to eat. Thanks Mike!

On Thursday we made the drive to Gatlinburg, TN. Part of the reason that we moved to North Carolina was so that we'd be closer to our favorite vacation area. Well, the trip is approximately 5.5-6 hours now, which I guess is closer, but not as much closer as we thought it would be. Still, always a good time. We listened to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on the way there and back. (well, about 9 hours of it total out of 20). Guess we'll finish it on another trip.

We didn't do anything too out of the ordinary, but we decided to finally hit Clingman's dome, which is either the highest or second highest point in the Smoky Mountains, depending on what you are reading. We talked about doing it before but it was always too Smoky - big surprise.




This is Clingman's Dome

Isn't the view from on top awesome? I'd suggesting clicking on the picture to really see the mountains in the distance. It is about a .5 mile hike but the incline is kind of difficult. Keep in mind at that altitude the air is a bit thinner.

The next day we ventured to the Andrew Bald Trail because in a book it was listed as one of the top ten trails in the US to go on and was classified as "EASY". I may be out of shape but I don't think it should have ever been classified as easy. This trail starts basically at the bottom of the paved trail up to Clingman's dome, some 20 miles of road up the mountains.

A bald is an area in the mountains where trees do not grow. I wouldn't say there were NO trees, but definitely much less.

I'd show you some pictures of the actual trail itself but lets just say we both look pretty crabby from it. It was quite rocky for most of it and the there were tons of flies on the way down. If you decide to take the trail make sure to bring plenty of water and don't be afraid of all of the flies and gnats. Wendy said she felt like Frodo carrying the one ring up to Mount Doom.

Needless to say, we were pretty tuckered out after that one.

I also fell in the Little Pidgeon River, but thats something I am not going to expand on. :) Come to your own conclusions.

Picked up the Window Motor...

And I'll be putting it in tomorrow morning. At Rich's suggestion I'll take some pictures of the process. They'll probably even help me put Humpty Dumpty back together again (aka my door panel).

Everyone cross your fingers that I don't have a garbage bag over my drivers side window when i'm done. :)

Cars are Dumb and my first talks on Podcasting.

Ok, first of all - I'm sure everyone is up in arms about gas prices right now. I know a lot of it has to do with Katrina and there are a lot of tragic things going on with it, but i'm going to focus on the gas prices and then to my car breaking.

First of all - I just paid $3.29/gallon for gas since premium was all that was available. I had about 1/8 of a tank left so I just had to buy gas. Last night, Wendy had her low fuel light on so she had to get guess. At 9:45pm there is a line to get guess that costs over $3 and people are going nuts. Heres what I don't get - there are rumors of a shortage because of pipelines being down so everyone goes out and gets a ton of gas - not everyone could have possibly needed that fuel that day and were just topping it off. I heard of someone that bought like 8 5 gallon gas cans just to be sure that he didn't run out. 40 gallons of gas? I guess that would last me a couple of weeks. ($40 x $3.29) = $131.60 just for perspective. Is it possible a gallon of gas is going to keep costing more than a gallon of milk? :)

Ok, my real beef. I'm actually not terribly upset about the gas really - my window motor in my car died for the driver's side window. I get unreasonably mad about my car and i'm afraid I took it out on my wife a little bit. So to add insult to injury as it is over 90 degrees reguarly - I have no air conditioning and now I can't roll down my drivers side window. I've opened up my driver's side door panel and i'm almost 100% its the motor, which is going to be appox $75 to replace, if I do it myself.

GREAT. :)

Ok, on to podcasting. If I had something to really talk about I'd be able to fill up this blog on a daily basis. I could never do postcasting - at least not regularly - I don't speak clearly enough and way too quickly. My shows would be like 5 minutes long but back in 20 minutes of material. I guess that would save on downloads.

For those you who don't know what podcasting is, simply put it is people recording whatever they want in an audio format and then posting it on the web in a form that is easily downloadable. Usually this is in the form of an RSS feed going to an mp3, etc. The easiest way to listen to the most popular is to get iTunes and after installing it subscribe to some of the top 100 podcasts. If you have an ipod it can automatically update the podcasts you want to listen to.
And i'm sure there is other software that works well at doing this.

Now basically most of these are radio shows. I'd recommend some of the better put together ones to listen to and honestly in my mind stay away from the really commercial ones done by bigger companies (like fox and whatever or cnn or nbc). Adam Curry , whom I remember very clearly from his MTV VJ days in the 80s and early 90s is one of the major founders of podcasting in general and his Daily Souce Code is very entertaining and talks in a lot of detail about podcasting in general. He also hosts a show on Sirius I think once a week that goes over the best podcasts.

The Dawn and Drew Show is my favorite podcast so far and is one of those guilty pleasures. Basically a very entertaining married couple that podcasts out of their farmhouse in Wisconsin. It doesn't sound like it would be great but they such and interesting dynamic. If you are offended by language or somewhat graphic talk this probably isn't the one for you but worth giving a chance anyhow - it's very addictive. And just in the last couple of days Drew just quit his job so that can make podcasting their full time jobs. Isn't that crazy?

Podcast Alley is also a great place to check out other podcasts.

This Week in Tech or "TWIT" is a good all around technical podcast and is pretty lengthy every week. Stays quite current.

There's even a MuggleCast for you Harry Potter fanatics.

Don't have an mp3 player? Doesn't matter. Just download the mp3s directly from the sites and listen to them on your computer or burn a cd if you want to listen to it elsewhere.

There's plenty of good topics to listen to. Even Ebert and Roeper do their weekly reviews and I think I saw a Catholic Insider podcast. Just check out iTunes and Podcast Alley and I'm sure you'll find something you like.