The Lewis Show

I have been very good. I have not posted pictures on my blog of the new kittens, nor have I made any overly sappy videos of them aimlessly crawling around looking for their Mother. However, I get home today, and there are kittens everywhere. So here we go. This first one is Lucifer. He may not look evil, but when he was first born, he was just plain mean. First kitten I had ever seen that hissed and growled. I haven't really named this one yet, but she is all about comfort and relaxation. I can respect that. A lot. This one's also figured out that rolling around on her back equals belly rubs. I don't know who is spoiling these cats... This one isn't named yet either, but she is the vocal one of the group. This one was hiding under the coffee table when I got home and it took a minute to locate the source of a lot of noise. This one's going to look a lot like Topaz. Which means she may end up being the evil one after all. Lastly there's the black one. This one h...

I have to make a plug for the guys at Animoto . This was a cool, quick way to take some pictures and make a quick video. I'll be using these guys again a lot. Here's a quick show of our beach visit this spring.

When Janine got home yesterday, she quietly placed this box on my desk. I walked right past it once before noticing it. I knew what it was right away. I now have an iPod Touch! My iPod Touch!! 8GB is all I need. It's so pretty. Apple is really good at packaging, it was an experience just to open and frantically yank out my new toy. Even the instructions are pretty! I am so grateful and overwhelmed to have such good people in my life. Being humble is an understatement.

While writing my earlier post, I realized that I need to start sharing some new tech ways to help me remember stuff. I claim to be a senile person and I have proven that I am over and over again. I can't think of any particular circumstances off the top of my head, because I've already forgotten them. Remember the Milk is an ideal service for people who, like me, are no longer capable to make mental notes and keep them. The best part of RTM, of course, is the ability to integrate technology in ways that post it notes can only dream. This site works like any other site on the surface like any basic calendar. I figured, I already have and use Google Calendar, why would I want to add this service. RTM's service page syncs with the Google Calendar. Not only that, it syncs with other calendars, email, has mobile options (which is the key), it works with Google gears (so it works offline), and best of all, I can have it Twitter to my cell reminders by sending it direct messages...

This week I'm not going to plug something entertaining, but something a little more necessary. A lot of us just don't have any memory any more, and I'm not referring to the kind of memory that involves remembering to bring home a gallon of milk, I'm talking about computer memory. Crucial has always been my site of choice for purchasing memory mostly because it's the easiest to use website that I think exists. From the home page, crucial can scan my computer to verify the model, amount of memory that I have, and can tell me manufacturer specs to make sure I buy the best memory. I also have a quick wizard to plug in information for my laptop because I am shopping for memory for the Dell, it's just too slow with 128mb of memory! Crucial is also great for purchasing Mac memory at a huge savings, it also gives the best prices for PC memory, flash cards, USB drives, and solid state hardware. So my pick of the week is a little bit of memory and a whole lot of upgradi...

More canal walk pics! I've gotten a lot of comment and emails and even some mentions on a Twitter friend's podcast. Always a good thing! Janine and I will have to go back soon to take more pictures. There's a lot of places around town that need to be photographed. The pumps at one of the bridges at the canal. The crazy city complementing the quiet park. Another shot of the canal This was taken at the end of the canal at sunset. We had an interesting observer. This heron (I think it's a heron) kept a very close eye on us. I think she had a nest closeby.

I think our plans changed a few times over the weekend. Originally, I figured we were going to see my brother and visit DC. We later decided to visit my parents on Sunday. We later decided to spend the weekend at home and relax. So we did. We did go to the gym and we ate really good all weekend so mission accomplished. Janine then suggested we go to the Canal Walk. Since I had never really been, I figured we could use the walking so I grabbed the camera and away we went. Janine and I snapped a bunch of pictures and I'm going to post a sampling below. The rest I'm linking to our Flickr page, in case anyone wants to see more. You should be able to notice Janine's pictures, her's were so much better than mine! You can read a brief history of the Canal here . One of the bridges that takes people over the canal. There's something about parks wrapped in urban areas that really appeal to me. Great picture, yeah Janine took it. The lighting is awesome! I did take one good ...

I amaze even myself sometimes. I got two old laptops from work a few months ago. One of them does not have a working monitor and the other one had a DMV like problem. Let me explain a DMV problem. A DMV problem is similar to the time that I was trying to get my driver's license back. I needed documentation of my new address to make the change and insurance but because I didn't have a driver's license I was unable to get the documentation needed to get the information needed to get a license. You get the idea. I could not connect to the internet with the laptop that had the working monitor. I know that XP was going to be too big, and it came with Windows 2000. The problem with 2000 was I didn't have an advanced enough browser to install the drivers that I needed to run the Linksys wireless card. XP has the sufficient browser and the ability to install drivers on the fly but I didn't have enough computer to run XP. So I was stuck in a loop. I think tried 3 versions o...

Janine called me earlier to let me know she's off all weekend. That's good news! It's rare she's off all weekend, so this means that we get to travel. The question is where are we going? Do we: Visit my parents? Visit some friends? Visit my brother, his wife, and meet my new nephews? Drive to Atlantic City in search for Elvis? I'm not really sure what we are going to do yet, but it would be wise if we went to visit my brother, spend a day there, head down to DC, and spend a day touring the town. Janine really liked seeing the government buildings and I haven't seen them since high school. So we shall see. I'm hoping the weather holds out. DC is always a lot of fun in the springtime!

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I'm going to do this every once in a while, it's another Lewis Show experiment. Let's see how it works. As most of you know, I grew up in the country. I mean country country. The town I lived in had a population of 800. I graduated with 29 other students from High School in 1992. Certain dates really stand out for me from my childhood. This is one of those days. On April 17, 1987, 21 years ago today, my science fair project hatched. I put six eggs in an incubator, rotated them twice a day, and sure enough, 22 days later (April 17) I had fuzzy, adorable chicks! I don't know why, but I remember the first batch's names: Tackleberry, after the character on Police Academy, because he was a huge, huge, baby. Red, because she was bright orange of course. Itty Bitty because he was..well really, really small. Hot Rod, because she was really skinny, but she was lightning fast..I never caught her. Last there was Clara, I don't know why....but it fit her. Tweety was unique ...

May is fixing to be very busy. Here's the short list of things that are going on so far: Trip to PA with the other case managers and office manager to carrier for 2 days of meetings on the 6th and 7th. Back to MD starting on the 9th with Janine to visit, in no uncertain order, to visit my brother and his wife, meet the twins, attend a wedding, celebrate our anniversary, and be back in time to go back to work on Monday. Can't forget Mother's Day which is the 11th. Jessi's birthday is the 16th. Memorial Day Weekend the end of the month, possibly taking a mini vacation. Busy times ahead. Basically one of the companies we do bu siness with is having a conference and the case managers will be attending. That weekend, Janine and I will be going to her friend Stephen's marriage. Also that weekend we'll also try to visit my brother and hang out with all his children. So that week alone is going to be madness. It'll be fun though.

A big downfall for Janine and me is when we decide not to cook and go out for the evening to dinner, etc. We had traditionally let go completely and get the yummiest items on the menu. Most of the time that involves something that's been fried, breaded, you get the idea. Last night, I thought we would try an experiment. Here's the results and the lessons that were learned: We went to Red Lobster because I was craving seafood, specifically shrimp, scallops, and fish. After watching Hell's Kitchen I had seen enough scallops and wanted to eat some myself. Normally I get the hugemongus Captain's Platter which has a little bit of everything in it, fries, and soda. My first goal, then, was to try something smaller. I got a broiled platter instead. I also avoided anything remotely fried and got a baked potato. I washed everything down with unsweetened tea. Janine did really good, she had the broiled tilapia with vegetables. Funny moment, I reached out to her plate and grabbe...

I got my first real big break in the Midwest when I got a job with American Trans Air . I worked for their reservations department and then their in house travel agency before moving back to Virginia in 1998. The company was very well run and I simply loved working there. We were cutting edge and competing with all the big carriers despite the airline having a single vision. ATA mostly was a vacation airline to it's customers and a charter airline with contacts with the military, etc. On April 2nd, the airline filed for bankruptcy. That makes me so sad. I feel horrible for the low cost airlines that aren't able to sustain themselves during this slowdown. We're just going to be left with the big carriers and they'll go back to their insane price gouging again soon enough. I'm kinda glad I got out of the travel industry when I did!

RETIREMENT PLANNING FOR 2008: If you had purchased $1,000.00 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00. With Enron, you would have had $16.50 left of the original $1,000.00. With WorldCom, you would have had less than $5.00 left. If you had purchased $1,000 of Delta Air Lines stock you would have $49.00 left. But, if you had purchased $1,000.00 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling REFUND, you would have $214.00.Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle. It's called the 401-Keg.

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Normally on Sundays, Janine is off and we get to sleep in. This morning, we were up around 8AM to do some charity work through her employer. It's actually a lot of fun. I'm either cleaning glasses or I'm helping Janine figure out the prescription and bagging them so they're distributed to people that really need them. Once that good deed of the day was done, we had some breakfast, went to the local Goodwill and headed home. She had to work tonight mostly to have a sign put up. She's leaving from there now so I figured I'd drop in for a minute and share my thoughts on the week. Life has not been easy these past few months. It definitely seems the dollar I make doesn't go near as far as it used to. I'm sure everyone's feeling the pinch in some way or another. Some worse than others. I'm thankful though that I'm getting a nice tax return to keep us on our feet and not in a position to fall behind like so many families are now. We're very for...

What a lazy day! It's been raining outside here in the Old Dominion for most of the afternoon and I've spent most of the day lounging around and casually cleaning the house. I have to admit things are looking much nicer lately. We do have this moldy smell that springs up when it rains though. I guess that means it's time to do some serious spring cleaning around the house soon. I've been putting off a big project all day and that's food planning for the household. We both have hit our threshold for eating out and it's the right time to eat smart and eat at home. My first goal is to write down a list of fruits that I can/will eat. There's no need for me to write down grapefruit when I think grapefruit is nasty. I like apples, but I have to really be in the mood, so that gets scratched from the list too. I do like grapes and bananas so that gets on the list. I don't want to exclude meat from our diet, but most of the meat that we do eat at home is red, so ...

We all remember the days of mix tapes. At least I'd like to think there aren't people walking this earth that never had a stack of cassette tapes that were made by mixing songs from other tapes or even the radio.... Now that I feel old, maybe I should make my plug for pick of the week. Muxtape is a simple service that allows users to upload twelve songs of their choice. You're able to order the songs as you like and remove the ones that you no longer want. Once that's completed, your Muxtape URL works just like a virtual mixtape, by streaming the audio back to the people you share the mixtape with. I had fun setting mine up, the only problem I've had is a weird inability to use this with Firefox. This does work great with Internet Explorer and Safari. I'm sure they'll get that fixed soon. No user in their right mind would use anything other than Firefox! Here is my Muxtape playlist . Check it out. I'm so proud of it! I want to know yours too, so leave m...

TMNT (Thanks, Sam) Thor!

Last year was the first in a while that I didn't attend the legendary Ozzfest. I was mostly too scared the element attending a free show would not be a good one. I heard it went off OK overall, but this year's announcement isn't even finalized when I hear about Mayhem Fest . This is a pretty complete lineup, they're actually playing two dates in Virginia, one of them being a Sunday, which is great, and well I'm just excited. Here's the line up. This looks like a LOT of fun! Slipknot Disturbed Dragonforce Mastodon Machinehead Airbourne Five Finger Death Punch Walls of Jericho The Red Chord Underoath Black Tide Suicide Silence 36 Crazyfists

I preformed a small experiment today on my micro services, if you will, (Twitter and Pownce). I posted a message on Twitter asking for suggestions for a blog post. I then realized I should ask everyone on Pownce as well. I figured someone would have a suggestion for me, and I would see which was more responsive. As I predicted, I am yet to get a single response on Twitter. Now let me give some background: I pretty much exclusively signed up for Twitter to use as a sidebar micro blogging service to supplement my main blog. The purpose was to fill in some blanks, especially when trying to do a weekly recap when I can only remember 12 hours of my recent past. I started adding people, specifically from my podcast subscriptions . So 99% of my Twitter friends are part of the geek elite and have thousands of followers and have no clue who I am, much less what to ask me to write about. To follow me on Twitter is to really, really care about what I eat, what I watch on TV, and my daily plans. I...