A Speed Record I Have No Interest in Breaking

I like riding my mountain bike well enough, but going 130.7mph down hill on a mountian bike is absolutely crazy. (on snow/ice no less)

MP3 Player Choices: Interesting Developments

In my post on MP3 players a few weeks ago, I noted that I'm leaning toward the new Creative Zen instead of the new iPod Nano or Touch models. The good news is that Creative has started shipping the 8GB model that I was strongly considering, but they've lowered the pre-release price of the 16GB model to $249. This is highly intriguing - and if it were shipping, I would already own one.

My employer has provided a Blackberry 8703 for me to use for some time now. While the Blacberry serves as stellar and indispensible email device, it offers no multimedia features (no MP3 or video capabilities) to speak of. (and thus my desire to get the Creative Zen player) But there's a new wrinkle of reports from

But this week, the Blackberry got a VERY positive boost. Sling Media is developing their mobile player to run on the Blackberry OS. Those that aren't familiar with Sling Media or their Sling Box, here's the quick rundown: Sling Box is a small server that connects to your home network. This box is set up next to your TV, and accepts the output from your cable TV, satellite, or Tivo-type devices. The Sling Box is connected to the internet via your home network, so you can access your own TV content anywhere you have an internet connection. That means I can access any of the previously recorded content already on my Tivo, or even change the channel and watch live TV at my leisure whenever I please. The great thing about Sling Box is that there are no service fees to use the device, other than the $100-150 for most of their Boxes. As I see it, the only real issue is that the service wouldn't work well on an airplane since there's no signal up there...

I'll still probably get the Creative Zen player, but I'll definitely watch for the Sling Box once they release the Blackberry compatible version.

It's Coming Back! Knight Rider

If I knew the time it came on, I'd be setting our Tivo to record this... but Knight Rider is coming back to TV. I could care less who plays Michael Knight; I'm most curious as to which car will be picked to play the role of K.I.T.T.

This was one of my favorite shows growing up - and I'm hoping it doesn't bomb like most of NBC's shows nowadays...

Source and photo: E! Online

Places Work Takes Me: Kansas City

I've also never taken pictures of downtown Kansas City either. I know I was ready to take some before, but fog and rain pre-empted those attempts before.

I rarely go downtown Kansas City either. In fact, I think I drove through once, but I've never actually DONE anything downtown. There's a lot to do downtown KC. The sporting events currently take place in the Eastern suburbs at the sports complex along I-70. Downtown does the the "old" Kemper arena and the new Sprint Center arena - but neither has a permanent tenant that calls either place home.

I usually stay in the Overland Park area when I'm in town. This is the Southwestern part of the KC metro area. The reason I usually stay in OP is that it's centrally located where most of my clients for work are.

The "hot spot" in KC is "The Plaza" an upscale area about 2 miles south of downtown. This is where all the great restaurants, high-end retail shopping, and luxury condos and large homes are located. It's beautiful and classy - but I rarely get there either...

There is some great BBQ around here. The best place I've had so far is Gates BBQ - which has several locations around KC. There's a really good Chinese restaurants called Chinese Palace in Overland Park, KS.

Places Work Takes Me: St. Louis

I've been covering St. Louis for 15 months now. In that time, I've never been downtown. I've never even been CLOSE to downtown.

"Why?" you ask?

Frankly, I have no idea. The most logical reason is that St. Louis has the highest violent crime rate over any city in the country. (Detroit seconds the list). Yet, downtown doesn't seem to have the problems. When one crosses the Mississippi River and goes to EAST St. Louis (which is in Illinois), then the crime rate shoots up dramatically. But since I don't cross the Mississippi River, I should still be relatively safe going downtown.

So the best answers I have is that I've never had a reason to go downtown, and it's too far out of the way for me to go down there (since I usually stay in the Western suburbs about as far away from downtown as you can get.)

The ironic thing is that I didn't go to the Arch - which necessitates at least another trip downtown at somepoint in the future.

My reason for going downtown was for a Rams-Chiefs preseason NFL football game. Mat and I were running late due to traffic, so I only had time to snap a few pics while driving.

I'll write more about the Western suburbs another time...

Places Work Takes Me: Des Moines

I just realized that I took these pics back in June, but never posted them. The good people of Des Moines have every right to be upset over my negligence.

Des Moines is probably one of the biggest "small" cities around. It has a big city feel to it, but it's actually much smaller than one would think (around 500k people). The city is pretty easy to navigate and get around. There's not much nightlife downtown to speak of, but then I'm not a big nightlife guy anyways. Scenery wise, Des Moines has an attractive skyline and scenery along the Des Moines river that runs through it.

We had an event at Principal Park which is downtown along the river.

My favorite place to eat is a place called Mojo's in Johnston, a northwestern suburb. They have some amazing Almond crusted chicken fingers that are the best chicken tenders one could ever possibly eat. The entre's change regulary, but it's hard to go wrong with anything you order here.

Places Work Takes Me: Alexandria, MN

OK, normally I don't get to Alexandria, MN for work. Actually, I've NEVER been to Alexandria, MN for work before. Sure, I've been past there, but never actually stopped there.

It's a pretty nice place. I was there covering a trade show, and needed to spend the night since it was over 2 days. The show was held at the Arrowwood Resort. This resort offers reasonable prices and includes amenities like wifi, pool, basketball court (which I actually used), etc.

It would have been nice to have Nikki and the kids along at this place...but I was there over Karsten's first couple days of school - so we just couldn't get it to work easily.

Somehow, I forgot to take picutures of the trade show - but I honestly DID work while there...

Labor Day at MN State Fair

We made our annual trek to the MN State Fair. (When I say "we," I really mean just "me" since Nikki and the kids usually go a couple other days as well.)

For those who don't know the MN State Fair, it usually averages ~2 million fairgoers over 10 days each year and concludes on Labor Day. Crazy stuff. Usually, the fair is an excuse to spend 10x more on food than you would at any fast food restaurant, but that food has 10x the normal (high) fat content. Perhaps the extra cost is mostly due to the expense and labor of putting the food on a stick. Ironically, there are no pictures of us eating any food at the fair this year. Perhaps - that's a good thing...

What makes the state fair such a draw? Frankly I don't know. It costs our family over $20 just to get in. We spend $30-60 a day on unhealthy food (usually bringing our own drinks to cut down on costs). We walk around aimlessly looking a farm implements, wandering through smelly livestock barns, and trying not to navigate around animal dropping, massive strollers, or people who are paying more attention to the food they are eating food on a stick while wandering the fair than walking itself. Yet, the time goes by quickly and you never feel like you've seen enough and want to go back again to catch what was missed.

So without further adieu', I give you a brief tour of our day at the fair


This is one of the few things NOT on a stick at the fair. The intersting thing about this cow is that the owner lives 2 doors from Nikki's parent's house. This cow is literally parked on the street as I type (I think). With tetes like that, I'm sure it's a great milk producer.

These two pictures above are of a modern Paul Bunyan. This guy cuts up logs into sculptures. I'm really not sure what this one was supposed to be, but my best guess is a fox or raccoon (most likely). This guy was promoting Stihl tools - evidence that just about everything has a sponsor nowadays - even at the fair.


Here's a couple pictures of us on the Kidway. (that's the Kid's version of the Midway at the MN State Fair for those who don't know).



Pictures of the kids in the poultry barn.


We took a break in a shaded area for a little while. This was one of those guys that's acts like a statue until you walk buy. He was walking to the dressing room after his shift was over - freaked the kids out...


This is our new stroller that we took to the fair. It works great. Strollers are a VERY big thing at the MN state fair. Strollers are as essential to take to the fair as taking a ball glove to the ball park when you have seats in the outfield. Many people like to "pimp" their cars and trucks to show off to everyone else. At the MN State Fair, people like to show off their strollers and how big strollers can be. I think I saw a stroller that could sleep a family of 4. Pretty huge.

Our stroller is relatively modest in size. Nikki got a good deal on it via ebay (I think - I just know she got a could deal on it), and apparently this is mega-pimped out as far as stollers go. For starters, there's the pink color - which is apparently very customized - much like an airbrush paintjob on a hot rod. It grabs attention. Then there's the optional/detachable seat in front that allows you to push TWO children in a stroller that would normally seat only one child. Finish the stroller off with dual beverage holders and zippered pouch on the handlebars - you've got one tricked out ride.

With the extra seat on the front, this stroller is still relatively easy to push UNLESS you need to turn or go up a curb. To help Nikki out, I offered to push the stroller most of the day. Yep - the man was pushing a pink stroller around hundreds of thousands of people - in PUBLIC. And you know what??? I was treated like a demi-GOD. I kid you not. I had mothers coming up to me asking where we had got it, what brand it was (I still have no idea), and wondering how we liked it. Our stroller was so popular I had to turn away photo opps and autographs from envious mothers and fathers just so we could see everything else we wanted to see.

Yep - it was a great (and typical) day that could only happen at the MN State Fair.

For Uber-Nerds Only

Do you have a fetish over the Star Wars series?

Do you fantasize over the latest gadgets and consumer technology?

If you answer in the affirmative to both questions, welcome to your nirvana...

Some super-dorks have built a home theater room designed to look like the bridge of the Death Star. Upon reviewing the list of A/V components, they've easily spent a couple hundred grand on on this.

I must admist that the execution is flawless, and I briefly considered scrapping my current plans for the basement remodel to include a similar design...but I prefer to sleep in the same room (or house) as my wife - so common sense prevailed.

Source: Gizmodo

Friendly Neighborhood Spidey

Not only has Karsten lost a few teeth, he seems to have developed some new super-hero capabilities.

Toothless Wonder

Karsten got in a fight again...

At least that's what I like to tell people for fun. Both of his front teeth fell out about 2 weeks of each other - so he's looking pretty tough.

Dilemma: Which MP3 player?

Since I travel a lot, an MP3 player is pretty indispensible. I've had a 20GB 4G iPod for 2.5+ years that has a crashed hard drive since April. I've been waiting for something new to come along, and knowing Apple was supposed to be making major announcements this past week (Sept. 5) had me excited.


Since my old iPod had a crashed hard drive, I definitely want to get a player with flash memory since there are no moving parts, and these are more compact in size as well. (The trade-off to not getting a hard-drive based player is smaller flash memory and higher price.) I also wanted to get a player that did videos (especially for watching episodes of the office, and maybe a couple movies and sports clips.


Apple only got it half right. Ideally, I wanted 16GB of flash memory, so the new iPod Touch is the ideal candidate. There's so much to like: built-in WiFi, a gorgeous 3.5" widescreen, and Apple's flawless integration and operating system. However, the $399 price tag is freaking me out.





The other Apple candidate is the new Nano. Unlike previous versions, this popular player now does videos and manages to do so in a dimunitive size that's about half the size of a credit card (and about as thick as 1-2 credit cards as well). I stopped by the Apple store to check these out, and they are a true wonder. The price is a more modest $199 for the 8GB model.

However, I can't bring myself to get the Nano. I love iTunes and getting podcasts, but I don't want to play Apple's game of limiting features and forcing to upgrade a year or two down the road. Here are some of the featuress that I wish the new iPods had

• a 16GB Nano would be passible
• built-in FM tuner to listen to radio (especially at the health club)
• expandable memory card slot
• larger screen on the iPod Nano

So I think I'm going to get the Creative Zen when it ships. While a 16GB version for $299 will be shipping soon, I'm planning to get the 8GB version for $199 (the same price as the Nano). But the Zen delivers an SD memory slot to increase memory capacity or to view and transfer pictures from my digital camera (a big plus). There's also a larger screen that considerably larger (2.5"). Lastly, the Zen uses a standard min-USB interface, so that means one less cable that I'll need to have for transfers and charging the battery.

While the Zen is larger than the Nano, it's still a tiny player that packs a potent punch and will serve my needs well. If only there were any places that had it in stock so I could pick one up...