What a great weekend! On Saturday, Amy and I threw our first party in our new house. It was supposed to be a BBQ, complete with an outdoor fire and horseshoes, but the cold and rain forced it indoors. We still had about 20 people show up though and had lots of fun with music, Cranium, darts, video games, and great food! Since I turn 25 on Tuesday - Yes, I’m almost a quarter of a century old! - Amy made me an ice cream cake and everybody sang happy birthday. The fun part is that most of our friends are international students from the Chemical Engineering program at USC, so besides English, I also got to hear “Happy Birthday” in Spanish, German, Chinese and Greek.

Then, after church on Sunday, I decided to go geocaching and check out Harbison State Forest for the first time. I saved a couple geoacache coordinates into my gps, packed some water, my ipod shuffle, and a map of the park into my backpack, tossed my rusty old bike in the back of my truck and took off.

I didn’t really have a plan as to exactly where I was going in the forest, but as you can see from the map above, I ended up making a pretty good circle of the Southeast side of the park. The full ride took me about 3 hours and I found the following 2 geocaches:

• Vernal Pond - This was a pretty easy-to-find ammo can located just north of the Education Center office. While I was there, I picked up a travel bug. Travel bugs are trackable dog tags, usually attached to an item that moves from geocache to geocache as people find it and rehide it. This particular travel bug was attached to a posable Sully figure. He was first hidden in Ohio in November of 2001. When I logged my find, I posted this picture of him to verify that he’s still in good shape…and that the geocache was really easy. I’ll take him with me next time I go caching and hide him in the first cache that’s big enough for him to fit in.

• Melvin - The second cache I went after wasn’t quite as easy. To get there, I decided to follow the Midlands Mountain trail, which is rated “Difficult to Moderately Difficult”, but WHAT A FUN RIDE! Up hill, down hill, sharp turns, and lots of MUD! On the Northeast corner of the trail was a lookout point called Harbison Bluffs, with a steep slope down to the Broad River. My GPS unit said that Melvin was located straight ahead. So, I left my bike at the top of the hill and half-hiked, half-slid down to the bottom. Upon my arrival at the river, I realized that the cache was about half way back UP the slope. I finally found the ammo box tucked under a fallen tree and covered with limbs. It wasn’t until I opened it up and looked at the log book till I realized the cache hadn’t been found since JULY! I usually don’t go after caches that haven’t been found within the last few months becuase there’s a high probability that it might be missing. I never did check the date on this one apparently, but I’m glad I didn’t.

I arrived home by about 6, out of water, covered in mud, and seriously thinking about purchasing an annual biking permit for the state forest.

Amy and I were chatting via Google Talk this afternoon when she asked, “How did you do that?”
“Do what?” I replied.
“Turn your tongue sideways.”
I was using the Adium chat client at the time, so I had to log into my gmail account to see what she was talking about, but sure enough, Google has added animated smilies to it’s web-based version of Google Talk. In the time that we were chatting, we discovered:

:p :) :( ;) and <3

A little searching revealed a complete list of the avilable emoticons at a site called bigblueball. The interesting thing about these smilies is that they aren’t animated gifs, but rather a series of gifs located at https://mail.google.com/mail/im/emoticons/(emoticon name)(1-14).gif that are rotated with js to make the animation happen. I saved the ones for the <3 (heart1.gif, heart2.gif, heart3.gif…) and posted them below:

Actually, after I saved those images, I tried heart.gif, and realized that there is an animated version in the same directory. Interesting…here it is:
(You may have to hit refresh if you missed the animation.)

A while ago, I wrote a post considering the idea of switching to VoIP phone service. At the time I wasn’t too keen on Vonage since they were one of the more expensive options, but when my wife and I moved and decision time arrived, we went with them. We got the equipment for free, they had some of the best features, and had better ratings and reviews than most of the other providers. That was over 6 months ago and I have to say I’m very happy with their service.

Anyway, enough background info…I have Vonage and I came across this forum thread titled: fun things to do with your Vonage line. The first post is pretty fun. Apparently there are a couple of easter egg numbers in the Vonage system. You can dial:

• 867-5309 - To listen to a clip from the Jenny song.
• 555-2368 - To listen to the theme from Ghostbusters.

There’s also the Dashboard Dialer widget for OSX users. The idea is simple. You type in and submit a phone number, your Vonage line rings, and when you pick up, it automatically dials the number for you.

Looking into the source of this handy widget, I discovered that it simply passes a few variables over a query string to: https://secure.click2callu.com/. That url is actually a Vonage-sponsored beta test of web-initiated calls, and the best part is that all the instructions for interacting with it are right there on the homepage with code examples in html, php, and java. SWEET!

Reading down to the bottom of the page, they even have development ideas and examples of how it has been used. One particular idea caught my attention:

Business web page where customers can enter their phone number to initiate a call from your customer service department to them.

When I thought about this a little more I realized that by giving the customer a way to initiate a call with you online, you are giving them a toll free method of talking to you. That’s pretty big! Rather than offering an 800 number for customers to dial, you could simply put a form on your website where they submit their phone number, which causes you to call THEM. As a Vonage customer with unlimited long distance, the call is free for you, and since this interface causes you to call them, it’s free for them too.

I took the php code they had posted at click2callu and made an example:
Call Me Toll Free

I disabled the actual dialing on that example, so you can’t really call me with it, but you can download the working sourcefile here if you want to play with it:
vonagedialer.zip (4kb)

Use this example at your own risk! The php code actually limits the input to 10 digits, and checks for a few of the typical area codes that you wouldn’t want people to make you call (900, 976, 809…), but it obviously wouldn’t prevent somebody from trying to make you call a number in the bahamas at ten cents a minute, or an impotency clinic, or The White House, or…well you get the picture.

On Saturday, my brother Jered got married to his longtime sweetheart Aimee Gouge. …and I didn’t take a single picture. Being the digital-picture-holic that I am, this was pretty difficult. Why didn’t I take any pictures on the wedding day? Because I ran over my camera at the bachelor party. That’s right, I ran it over.

The Last Picture:

For the bachelor party, we went out for a couple “house” size pizzas at Bizzaro and then on to Andretti Thrill Park for some Go Kart racing. I probably should have heeded the “keep both hands on the wheel” rule and kept my camera in my pocket, but I decided to take some pictures. At some point during the run, my camera fell down under my seat and I felt a bump as my rear tire ran it over.

The Damage:

It’s actually surprisingly intact having been run over, but the LCD is shattered, the camera body is scratched up, and it won’t stay on. Sometimes the status light just blinks red when you try to turn it on, and every once in a while I can get it to turn green and the LCD tries to light up, but it dies after a few seconds. I managed to keep it on long enough to get my pictures off the SD card, but now I think it’s time to say farewell.

The Bright Side:

It’s about time for a new camera anyway. If I hadn’t totally destroyed this one I might have hoped to make due with it for at least another year or so. It seems there are a lot more options on the market since I last looked seriously at digital cameras though, so I’m open to suggestions. Amy and I talked about it a little on the way home and here’s what we’re thinking so far: 1c57de86099a1c5ac7ce9324bf724154

That’s about all we need. I would say that’s all I want, but Ames knows how much of a tech-head I can be so I think this is a good list of requirements. After talking to my boss about his latest camera purchase, I was leaning toward the Canon Powershot, but after looking at the Ultracompact reviews over at dpreview.com I saw that the Casio Exilim series is pretty highly rated as well. I remembered that Mike Davidson had posted a while back about his latest camera purchase, and sure enough, he too is raving about an Exilim, the Casio EX-Z750. I guess we just need to take a stroll through Best Buy and try a few out.

Ames and I were on the IKEA Website last night and Anna helped us figure out how to order a 2006 catalog. I was so excited that I thought I’d talk to her again and see what else she knows about.

Anna: Welcome to IKEA. I’m Anna, IKEA USA’s Online Assistant. You can ask me about IKEA and our products and our services. How can I help you today?
Jason: Howdy Anna, how are you today?
Anna: I’m fine, thank you for asking.
Jason: Then perhaps you can help me.
Anna: I assume you need some help with IKEA. What exactly is it that I can help you with?
Jason: I was wondering if you could tell me what the meaning of life is?
Anna: Better minds than I have failed to come up with an answer to that one. Try asking me something about IKEA, I’m sure I’ll have an answer to that.
Jason: Sure, I love IKEA! Where can I buy stock in IKEA?
Anna: Online stock check is a new online feature for our website. Once you locate the product you are interested in, simply click on the link that says CHECK STOCK AVAILABILITY. Then select the store(s) that you would like to check stock in!
Jason: Huh?
Anna: I am sorry if my answer was unclear. Could you please rephrase your question and we will try again.

Jason: Do you like pie?
Anna: To which IKEA store are you referring to when asking about the restaurant?
Jason: The one in Atlanta had pie. It was great!
Anna: <Window opens to IKEA Atlanta> Here you can enjoy a cooked breakfast, a light snack, or even dinner. Take a look at the great meal deals that IKEA Atlanta has to offer.
Jason: I knew that already!
Anna: I’m very sorry, but I can’t really talk about things like that at this time.
Jason: Can we talk about you?
Anna: There is no ‘me’. I am a computer program. What would you like to know about IKEA?
Jason: Why does IKEA make you wear a headset when you can’t even talk?
Anna: How is IKEA different from other furnishing stores? <Window opens to About IKEA> We offer a wide range, good design and function, and also low prices. That’s our business idea.
Jason: You answered your own question.
Anna: I’m afraid I don’t know exactly what you’re talking about. Try and ask your question in a different way. Thanks.
Jason: Do you have teeth?
Anna: If I was a real person I’m sure I would have that body part, but I’m simply an IKEA Online Assistant, here to help you with your questions about our company.
Jason: Mooo!
Anna: It’s not always possible for me to fully understand what it is you mean. This is one of those times.
Jason: Usually Anna, I don’t fully understand what I mean either.
Anna: I am sorry if my answer was unclear. Could you please rephrase your question and we will try again.
Jason: Do you have parents?
Anna: Id rather not talk about families. Please ask me something about IKEA. That’s why I’m here.
Jason: Who made you?
Anna: I was created by Artificial Solutions (http://www.artificial-solutions.com), IKEA USA (http://www.ikea-usa.com), and HUGE (http://www.hugeinc.com/2001/huge_1000.html).

Jason: So, you are an artificial solution?
Anna: I am not a real person. I am a computer program. What would you like to know about IKEA?
Jason: Blah!
Anna: Maybe it would be better to get back to talking about IKEA.
Jason: NO!
Anna: Sorry. As an IKEA Online Assistant I don’t know the meaning of ‘no’.
Jason: QUIT!
Anna: <Window opens to IKEA USA Website Map> As you are talking about computers and the Internet, I would like to show you IKEA USA website map.
Jason: GOODBYE!
Anna: Bye, then! It was very nice talking to you!