I have been thinking of my next redesign and I think I might try something like this… a timeline that pulls in all of my social media feeds. Placing my twitter updates, BrightKite locations, last.fm tracks, flickr photos, delicious links into a timeline format could be a cool little site.
I have been waiting for this beer to arrive since the brewery, Bell’s Brewery, announced that they would be brewing their first ever Christmas Ale. The first taste was surprisingly mellow and not as spiced as a typical Christmas Ale. That lead me to believe it was not high in ABV, but after trying two, I think it is a big beer. It is amber in color, easy to drink and has a dry, semi-sour finish. The malt is smooth which allows the hops to shine through.
Good flavor, good price, great beer, Happy Holidays! Available at Warehouse Beverage for $9.99/six.
Saturday was yet another installment of the Ohio State v. Michigan game. With the game scheduled for noon, Erika decide to run in the Hermes Cleveland Blind Pig Pigskin Classic 5k. It is an annual race run the morning of the game where the participants wear their scarlet and gray or their maize and blue (or any other gear that they can find) and run in a 5k before pregaming at the bars along West 6th Street in downtown Cleveland.
I have to say this years outdoor tailgate party was non-existent. As Erika, Jen and Ian ran in the race, I played the role of the after-run bag holder and seat-saver inside of the Blind Pig. I have no problem with that role as it was cold outside and College Football Gameday was on about 50 TV’s. There were also a lot of beverages and free schwag from the Budweiser Girls and the Jim Beam Girls including free beers, beer cozy’s and flasks. Anyone need a Jim Beam flask?
It was a good environment which was mostly filled with OSU fans. The Buckeyes won again (5 in a row) so I was happy. The most amazing part about it to me is that since Kade has been born, OSU has never lost to Michigan (5 in a row) and the Steelers have never been beat by the Browns (10 in a row). He leads a charmed life.
Rock-n-tot was a blast as usual. MOCA provided a great venue for the different attractions of the event. Dancing, hula-hoops, maracas, tattoos in one gallery; yoga, reading, massages in another; and printmaking and cookie decorating in another area. It was hard to pull the kids off of the dancefloor but once they decorated and ate their cookies, they also were game to try the print making.
I have to say that Naomi and her staff do a great job of organizing these events. There are a lot of people (mostly of the toddler stage) and everyone appears to be having a great time, adults and children.
We look forward to many more events.
After seeing one of my friends wearing a cool t-shirt and loving it, he told me that he got it from a company that his friend works for down in Columbus. The company is called Skreened and they sell t-shirts online. They make it easy to get started, set up a store and sell shirts. I have been wanting to get a shirt printed for some time now, so I decided to give it a try.
Last Monday, I set up my store, uploaded a design and purchased one of my own shirts. It arrived today and I could not be happier with the quality. The graphic printed great and the American Apparel shirt gives it even more quality.
I know it is a little late as far as the election goes for this shirt, but I was doing this more as research to start designing t-shirts for clients and selling them online. Stay tuned there will be more t-shirts showcased.
Next Sunday, November 23, is another installment of Rock-n-Tot. This one will be held at MOCA, mixing in Arts and Culture. The kids are excited to go back. We attended one of the events last Spring and had a great time.
At a Rock-n-Tot event, you will find a dance floor, kid-friendly music, art exhibits and coordinating educational activities, crafts, products that encourage learning and safety. We also provide spa services for parents/adults (because caregivers need to know that they are appreciated) as well as storytelling, facepainting, and more.
Naomi was very generous and provided a discount for Kade’s Preschool. Hopefully we can pack the house and the kids can rock it out with all of their friends.
I think the difficult part about throwing a Rock-n-tot event would be finding kid-friendly adult music. You know, good dance beats, clean lyrics. One parents’s clean lyrics are another parents devil music. I tried to offer up some suggestions for some tracks:
Mike Doughty - I Just Want The Girl In The Blue Dress To Keep On Dancing
Mike Doughty - 27 Jennifers
Black Kids - I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You
MGMT - Electric Feel
Paolo Nutini - New Shoes
Peter Bjorn and John - Young Folks
Port O’Brien - I woke up today
The Ting Tings - Great DJ.
I also thought some kids songs that are parent friendly could be good.
Peter Himmelman - My Green Kite
anything from They Might Be Giants
JJ Grey and Mofro - Orange Blossoms
I am personally pretty excited about next weekend’s event and the kids are already practicing their moves. Hopefully they don’t get stage fright and can show their moves to all of their friends. See you at the show! Get your tickets online!
Last night was another Rock & Roll Wine Project at Bar Cento and the first one that I was actually able to go to. This installment featured drunken karaoke. With all of the 2oz pours that you get with the R&R flight, it is easy to see how it could turn out to be “drunken” karaoke.
I met up with a re-re-relocated friend, Chris Holmok. We met at Ripple Effects in Pittsburgh, he is originally from Strongsville and after stints in Seattle at Microsoft and LA at MySpace, he is back in Northeast Ohio leading the development team at Knotice in Akron.
Chris had never been to Bar Cento, so we had to order some of the frittes w/Belgian mayo and a couple of the pizzas. Duck/Pumpkin and Potato/Pancetta were the choices of the day. We both got the R&R Flights brilliantly presented by Sommelier Bill Barefoot of 55 Degrees.
The flight included: A Mystery Beer (which I can’t remember the name of); Dogfish Head Midas Touch; Left Hand Brewery Barley Wine; Ohio Cider Cocktail; Siduri Pinot Noir; Ojai Grenache; Renard Tres Ninos; Velvet Sledgehammer. The Velvet Sledgehammer was great. I had to purchase a bottle to take back home to Erika. That and some of the leftover pizza made her happy.
I was still feeling under the weather, as I am yet again today, so we did not stay too long to witness the drunken debauchery of the karaoke. I did see some of the Cleveland Bloggers after their get together in the Red Room of Bar Cento broke up. Of course I saw Chef’s Widow and said hello to Cleveland Foodie, Sensory Overload and spoke with a new client, Heidi, of Life in Recipes. Between friends, clients and blogging acquaintances, it was a big mixing of my worlds on W25th last night.
We recently made the switch from the Dish Network to AT&T’s newest offer, U-Verse. I have noticed new utility boxes for the service popping up all over the area, mostly on street corners. They are the beige boxes with orange stickers with black numbers on them. After the boxes went up, representatives went door-to-door trying to get people switched over to the new service. One of our neighbors had made the switch already and were very happy with it. When the reps came to our door they gave us a ’special’ signup offer that sounded good. Faster Internet, no dish, more channels, better price. We scheduled the install and the U-200 service plan and the basic internet package. We are going to boost up to the Elite internet plan to enhance the speed.
The install went pretty good. Erika was home while the cable guy hooked us up. He was here about 4 hours, but other than that, the process from signup to hooked up went pretty easy.
There are a lot of benefits to the service.
DVR 4 shows at once
Rarely do we need this feature, but it is nice to have the option to DVR up to 4 shows at a time.
Channel that displays your Flickr photos
There is a channel that connects to your Flickr account and displays your photosets. Pretty cool, but it is faster just to pop open the laptop to look at my Flickr photos.
Free Flickr Pro account as long as you have the service
When I went to setup my Flickr account to sync it with my U-Verse account, I had to switch my Flickr login email address. It could have been a huge pain, but luckily I found a link to sync them.
Ability to schedule DVR events by internet/phone
This might be the best new feature. I can get into my AT&T U-Verse account online and check what items I have scheduled to DVR, change the schedule and add individual events. This especially comes in handy when you are out of town, or maybe stuck at work longer than expected and did not set a DVR schedule for something you thought you would see live.
Almost 1,000 On Demand Movies
The movie selections are pretty good and range in price from $2 - $6 and include the option for HD versions of select movies. (We still need the HD TV)
Picture-in-Picture Guide
While previewing what is on other channels, you see a small picture of the channel that you are previewing while the channel that you are on plays in the remainder of the screen. Very nice while watching to channels at once to know when to flip back over to the other channel. Not so good when your children see Sponge Bob pop up as you try to cruise past the kids channels.
Wireless Modem included
The modem that comes with the service is wireless.
Some of the drawbacks that I have noticed so far are as follows:
1 DVR
We have two televisions and one DVR. The main TV has the DVR attached to it and allows for all of the rewinding real-time shows and setting DVR events. The second TV in our bedroom just has the receiver box. No replay, no DVR events. UPDATE - To clarify, You can playback already recorded events, but cannot create schedules.
Have to learn new channels
Now we have even more channels, most of which are different than what we had previously.
Favorite channel list with guide a little lacking
With Dish Network I could create a few different favorites lists. I had one for the adults, one for the kids, one for music and one for sports. It made it easy to find what I was looking for. The U-Verse favorites does not function the same. You only have one favorites list and when you click on ‘guide’ all channels is the default. You have to press ‘menu’ and scroll to ‘favorites’ every time you want to preview your favorites. That gets annoying.
After a couple days of the service, I am pretty happy. We still need to unmount the Dish from our roof and send back our old DVR. I think there will be a lot of new features coming with the service including iPhone apps to control your scheduled content and possibly watching your content on mobile devices. i.TV already hints at these items. Maybe version 2.0 will come out soon.
Tonight was the annual carving of the pumpkins at the Roth house. Kade picked out a white pumpkin to go with his Jack Skellington themed jack-o-lantern. “The Nightmare Before Christmas” is one of his favorite movies so this was an easy decision for him. Princess Liv went with a traditional orange gourd and chose to have a butterfly carved into it. If we had found a pink pumpkin, I am sure she would have picked it.
While we were at the Fall Fest at Beachwood Place this past weekend, they passed out these little Jack Skellington templates to the kids. It was perfect as Kade had already picked it as his pumpkin design. Liv’s was just a freehanded design. The kids were happy so I guess it was a successful carving.
Tomorrow night we are taking the kids to trick-or-treat down the street at John Carroll University. The children go dorm room to dorm room and the JCU students pass out candy to them. Sounds like a good time.
We had a fun time at Beachwood Place on Sunday during their Fall Fest which included trick-or-treating from store to store. Nana, Papa and Marcie came up for the day and we met Lewis, Emmy, Audrey and Layla there as well. We were supposed to meet up at the Legacy Village event, but with the threat of bad weather we decided to take it indoors. It was sort of the kickoff Halloween event for a week filled with them.
The kids had a good time and got lots of candy. Kade got tired of holding his treat basket because it was getting too heavy. Either that or it was messing up his Vampire acting that he was trying to pull off. I think he liked seeing other kids in costume more than the candy.
Liv was her usual social butterfly self. She would rather hold hands with Lewis or Emmy than me or Erika as we walked the mall. She was a beautiful princess as was Layla. Audrey wore her geisha costume which was pretty amazing as well.
By the end of the day, the kids finally came down from their sugar high and listened as Nana read them stories. It was a pretty good day. More pics.
