Absoblogginlutely! – IRL

For those of you who are not on facebook, you may not have realised that I had the awesome experience of jumping out of a plane last week. I was on vacation in the Outer Banks and was originally going to see if I could get a flight lesson above the Outer Banks to get some good aeriel photos and some more flying time booked. Unfortunately there did not seem to be any companies doing lessons so my search expanded and I found a site doing helicopter rides – something else I always wanted to do. However they also had a link to their sister site – skydiveobx.com and I was interested! Looking through the photos and videos I knew this is what I wanted to do. So I booked a jump session for the Thursday morning and had to wait 2 days. Early Thursday morning I got up far too early for a vacation and drove to Manteo and after watching a video, some brief training and I was in the air. The flight up to 9000′ was really cool as I got to see a fair amount of the Outer Banks as we flew up – unfortunately I couldn’t take any photos but you do see some views in the video below. Enjoy the film and if you get a chance – go skydiving.

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Goodreads just announced an update to their app for the Android which now allows you to very easily add multiple books to your Goodreads account very quickly. There is a batch mode to auto shelve all of the books at once (for example own, read, fantasy) as they are uploaded in. It didn’t take me long to go through a sample of my books and quickly add several to my own,read shelves. The hardest bit for me will be remembering just how far through the Wheels Of Time series I got. I have most of the books but can’t remember the last book in the series I read.

Well worth the download – especially as it’s free. Add me to your friends list if you have an account. I can be found here on Goodreads

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For the first time ever, I’ve needed to change my windshield (or windscreen) wipers. Today it was snowing like crazy and my wipers decided to completely come off of the arm. Annoyingly I had to go back out in the snow to go get some wipers (which I had stupidly put off doing). After getting the wipers, I read the (useless) instructions on the back of the wipers and pushed the little tab down.  Nothing happened and there was no way these wipers were coming off.

One quick little youtube search and 53 seconds into this video I knew the secret. The tip was to rotate the blade and then pull down towards the windscreen.

Funny thing is that I wanted to support my local hardware shop, called up and asked  – “Do you sell car windshield wiper blades?”  I even made sure to specify windshield rather than windscreen blades.  They hadn’t a clue what I was on about, passed me to the electrical department who said they didn’t have any – I’d be very surprised if an electrical department stocked wiper blades.

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It’s been a long time since I posted anything on this website due to a variety of reasons. However, I’ve worked tons of overtime this week so I decided to take the day off, enjoy the gorgeous weather and relax at the zoo. I picked up the camera and spent about 4 hours at the zoo. I was pleased with the shots I did manage to take, although a lot of them had to be through glass. Some of the animals were not cooperating today, but as I got a zoo membership I’ll now be back taking more photos in the future. I’ve not been to the zoo for about two years, so today I got to see the “baby” elephant who is now 19 months old, the polar bear exhibit and a very cute baby bonobo.  Didn’t see any moose though!

I’ve also uploaded the photos to my Columbus Zoo 2010 skydrive account hosted on Microsoft (instead of flickr) as my flickr account is no longer pro. Let me know what you think of the Microsoft slideshow capabilities.

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Terry Pratchett’s new book is out (in London) on the 1st September. I’m not sure how long it will be before it arrives in the US but the good news is that there are only 11 people in front of me in the queue for the book from the Columbus Metropolitan Library which means it shouldn’t take long to get it. With the average Pratchett fan reading the book nonstop until they’ve finished – I expect to get it on the 3rd September
Waterstones in London is having a book signing special event (http://tinyurl.com/384hxs) for 300 lucky people.

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I think Bucky said it perfectly.

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I’m (at last) no longer using Vonage at home. There didn’t seem to be any point in paying $25.92 per month for their $17.99 plan – especially as we made no calls and only received about 5 calls a month – mostly from telemarketers or customer service calls.
We’re going to use cell phones from now on (and Google Voice in my case). Drop a comment if you need the new phone numbers.

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It wasn’t until Wednesday when someone asked me where I was from and how long I had been here (within about 3 seconds of me speaking on the phone) that I realised that Tuesday was our 5 year anniversary of moving over to the States. Time has flown by really quickly (as opposed to flying by slowly) . Ton’s of things have changed over the past few years but three things remain constant – death, (more) taxes and Winston sitting on my lap.

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This morning is about the only time I’ve been relieved we have the Spring Forward version of Daylight Savings Time. I woke up at about half past three this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I eventually got up – the great thing about DST is that it was really half past four so it wasn’t such a bad time to get up (keep thinking positive)…

Due to the lack of sleep, I found it especially funny when Frankie decides to join me in the shower – the crazy thing is that I’m sure he’d have stayed in there if I hadn’t shouted at him to get out. He also protested a little bit too much when I went to towel him down and get him dry, but after a couple of attempts at chasing him around the kitchen he eventually settled down and purred like crazy whilst I petted him with the towel. Unfortunately I don’t think Basil would be as keen to get in the shower which is a shame as of all the cats, he is the one who needs a shower the most. However, he’s also the least likely to be able to jump out of a slippery bath tub.

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