Don’t Get Sunburned When Traveling

Posted on June 21, 2010 | Leave a comment

via Flickr user @jpaphotography

This post is definitely a bit long in coming, but trust me, it’s not an experience I’m going to forget anytime soon.

So, it was my wife’s birthday in mid-May, and I was trying to come up with a plan, because you know you need a plan for your wife’s birthday ;) . I was trying to do something special, different and slightly spontaneous. It’s not that I was being last minute, it’s just that day-to-day, the overall desire changes, you know? There are days when all I want to do is curl up and lock myself away, and others when even I could imagine myself on the beach, getting that ever-so-elusive tan.

So in planning this trip and using all the online resources, like a good tech boy, I discovered a few good-to-know things in my overall experience, as well as a few tips for any readers and Googlers out there. Read on, and tell me what you think!

Yelp is your friend.

I’m behind the times, I know, but I really love Yelp. If I had more time, and honestly found myself out and about more, I would be all over the review scene, but for now I’m all over the reviews given by others. Yelp really seems to be an incredible network of hyper-foodies and people very plugged-in to their community. You’ve gotta love that!

Yelp turned me on to a few good places out and about in Virginia Beach. Our best discovery of the entire journey was the restaurant we found for a romantic dinner. It was sensational! The place was called the Terrapin Restaurant, and it came highly recommended by Yelpers throughout. Though I won’t dare to compete with a Yelp-style review of the joint, I will say it was remarkable in:

  • Service (our server was personable, not overly invasive, and very honest about his preferences)
  • Accomodating (we called about three hours before showing up)
  • Considerate (they had a sweet half portion package for their ala carte menu. Four courses, half price, was totally more than we needed and completely decadent)
  • Quiet (read on, but the weekend was filled with cacophony. The understated atmosphere had perfect tonal music for what we were expecting, and there were probably less than two dozen tables)

We essentially arrived at the tail end of the dining hour, but the staff was very respectful and considerate without rushing us. It’s probably safe to say that we were the youngest people in the place too, but I would absolutely recommend this place in a heartbeat.

Tip: As a backup to Yelp’s recommendation, I also looked the place up on TripAdvisor, another great travel resource.

But sometime’s Yelp! is not your friend.

So in searching for the perfect hotel, the Westin at Virginia beach came highly recommended on Yelp, and it definitely did not disappoint. Plush bed, cool shower, sweet TV, dog friendly, it was pretty awesome. Of course, if I had dove a little deeper into the details, I would’ve discovered a few key facts…

Google is your other friend.

Google would’ve helped me in a few key ways if I had just zoomed out of the whole planning to consider some overall gamebreakers for the weekend. I’m thinking mostly about helping me realize that:

The sweet, posh VA beach hotel was about ten miles from the actual beach, and though still quite nice, had us driving on the highway back about ten miles. Whoops.

There was a gigantic wine festival in town that same weekend that pretty much brought spring break, flashbacks of a Carnival cruise nightclub, and Carnivale to the entire town. These people were insane and this wine must’ve been good. Seemed…different, but unexpected for sure, and what we had planned as a quiet happy hour turned a bit sour after about the fifth 70+ dude that checked my wife out.

Another key point, is that it totally would’ve helped me realize that there was a senior prom happening in the hotel that very night. Not that I, and my barky dog don’t love teenagers running through the hall at night…

Call.

Hey, we all love the web and it’s an incredible resource. Unfortunately, all the info’s not there. For example, the super sweet bayside restaurant with the sunset view? Somehow they must not have a great webmaster to update the site to indicate that the place had been pretty much blown away in a Noreaster in November of 2009. Though it was kind of funny getting a happy holidays message.

Contemplate your pet.

I’m a pretty new pet owner still, though she’s totally my dog and no one else’s ;) . So I definitely thought it was really cool that the hotel was pet friendly, we thought it would be super great that we could bring her along.

It wasn’t.

Really, it wasn’t.

monster...

Brownie is a great pup, and she did definitely enjoy the ocean. However, her overall still-young attitude and dependence on dog-dad and dog-mom made us totally regret our decision to take her. Oye. Although I did think it was pretty cool on the way there to submit a question to KGB about dogs being on the beach, I suppose I got caught up in all of it, and how could resist that face?

Next time, she’s staying somewhere else. The crying and whining and the not-wanting-to-get-kicked-out-of-the-Westin feeling meant that she went everywhere with us that weekend, among the wine-toting glitterati and other craziness.

Overall, it’s not to say that it was a bad trip by any means at all. We had a nice time overall, and we definitely learned a lot about our travel styles at the same time. Considering we’ll be hitting up a trip trip to Peru next year, I’m definitely putting these things into practice!

What would you do? What travel resources do you depend on? Are you the research-on-the-scene type, or the total planner?

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Ding ding

Posted on April 24, 2010 | 1 Comment

Bike tireOld people with bikesSo I finally brought my bike back from my parents’ house in Philly. I’m temporarily storing it in my garage (read: disassembled, and in my trunk). Though this weekend’s weather is not exactly ideal, I’m excited to saddle up and get back riding.

There’s a big contingent of bike riders at my office, but I can’t really envision doing the Bethesda to Crystal City trek on a regular basis, though considering the amount of time I sit in traffic, it might even out. It’s safe to say at this point that I’m really just starting out as a biker in the DC area. Though I’ve logged probably a few thousand miles as a pretty hardcore biker in high school and college, my exercise routine has definitely waned over the past few years.

So I’m getting back into it, and I’ll try and post a few photos from my innaugural ride. As I’m getting prepared, I thought that I’d share a few links and resources for biking in the DC area, especially around my way.

The two main trails of interest for me are the Capital Crescent Trail, which covers a wide area from the upper northeast of the District, and cresting around the city through Maryland. I’ve walked on some of the trail, which is paved and unpaved in different areas and cuts through downtown Bethesda.

The historic C&O Canal trail is something that I drive along each day on my way to work. I’ll have to explore the upper parts of the 185 mile trail, along with the related National Park at some point, but the lower areas lead directly into Georgetown, paralleling the Potomac river on the Maryland side.

Also, Google’s added some beta directions for getting to places on bike. The map of trail in Rock Creek Park still look mighty confusing, but it’s still estimating about an hour and a half for me to bike to work. I’ll have to work on my speed and get myself in better shape to improve that estimate.

http://maps.google.com/

For now, I’m excited to get back on the trail, and my goal is to bike to work at least once while the weather’s getting nice. Stay tuned.

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Does Your Online Presence Have Bite?

Posted on March 30, 2010 | 1 Comment

via Flickr user @kali-maLast week’s landmark signing of the new healthcare bill left millions of Americans wondering exactly how the new legislation would impact them and their families. The still-raging debate leading up to the vote was influenced by the unique medical story behind every individual, and I’m personally glad it was not up to me to decide the policies that shape their lives.

Here are  a few key resources that help explain some of the changes:

I think the debate rages on because of the extreme personal nature of really any medical encounter. Though shows like Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, House and a million others dramatize and highlight some of the more special conditions, procedures and complicated personal lives of doctors, it’s the routine doctor’s visits and follow ups that are the greatest source of personal fear and anxiety.

For me, it’s my teeth.

I’ve been fortunate enough to be blessed with good health. Though I’m sure I could definitely make changes to my diet and exercise, the one are that my body is totally working against me is with my teeth.

What’s a tech boy to do? When I cracked a crown at work a few months ago, I knew I had to get it checked out. I’ve spent enough time in the dentist chair to know its best to not ignore these things. What did I do? I Googled.

It’s no secret that Google can probably solve 90% of your problems and at least get you more information on what your looking for 100% of the time. A quick search of “Bethesda dentist” brought up thousands of results with a map to show their proximity to my apartment.

While frantically clutching my jaw and Googling one-handed, I forgot about some of Google’s fairly recently launched capabilities through their built-in profile and reviewing systems. There are a lot of different sites and apps out there framed in the context of user reviews: Yelp, Metromix, AroundMe, local newspaper sites like the Post’s Going Out Guide, etc.

For me, it was partially the fact that I forgot about the Google profile and the integration, but it just made the connection so much easier for me. This was all aided by the fact that the dentist’s office I ended up calling and coming to had an at least 21st century site. I’m able to view videos of procedures, see some user-generated content and reviews throughout, request a callback/consultation through the site, and sign up for email alerts and confirmation for my next (probably 5,000) appointments. Pretty cool, right?

For someone coming from a dentist experience that usually had me going to a reconfigured house or regular office, I wouldn’t even imagine that the practice even had a site, let alone one with some really basic features. For someone like me, it added enough credibility to bring the practice business.

This is all a way of saying that you’re out there. As a business, organization or even an individual, services like Google are finding you and bringing your online presence to users, whether they are conscious of it or not. As they make the connection to you, whether on-purpose, or through random links brought up by Bing, Yahoo!, or Google, what will they see as they clutch their jaw?

Disclaimer: Though I do wish, this post is in no way an attempt to shamelessly endorse my dentist for my own personal gain. The estimate to fix my mouth currently stands at roughly the cost of a Toyota Yaris. I will gladly take donations.

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As Tech Makes Progress, Who Gets Left Behind?

Posted on March 20, 2010 | Leave a comment
Old Woman in Phone Booth

via Flickr user @about30

So, I’m just going to assume they’re not running the latest version of Chrome…

There was an interesting article on CNN the other day that summarized the new initiative being championed by the Recovery Act and the new administration aimed at improving broadband access nationwide: the National Broadband Plan.

According to recent research by the Pew Internet & American Life project, only 63% of American households are actively using broadband connection to access the internet. While there were still some substantial increases among segments of the surveyed group, there is still a staggering number of users that prefer to use or only have access to dial-up networks.

The administration’s new initiative is very focused on the benefits of having access to a network that is met with real-life benefits such as improved medical history, seamless database tracking for law enforcement, smart energy grid management, and collaborative classrooms.

It seems a bit grandiose, but this statement rang very true for me: “The economic benefits of broadband go hand-in-hand with social benefits and the potential for vast improvements in the quality of life for all Americans.”

Wow, when you put it that way, it makes you feel powerful! There are so many new developments happening every day on the web; but are we at the forefront of innovation, or leaving people behind?

The U.S. government is presented with a very difficult challenge of universal access to information for Americans, which remains the bane for many web designers and developers to create sites and systems that operate the same way for all users.

Though new devices, languages and capabilities will leave us in a completely different world by 2020, when the National Broadband Plan has set a deadline, what’s the priority for today’s web professionals? Are we just trying to bring the other 37% of users out from the stone age, or creating a web for the top 5% of web’s power users?

As we make progress and discover new innovations through technology, is the message to users to shape up and get with the program, or should we also be helping them understand?

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Not Following Rules

Posted on March 8, 2010 | Leave a comment
Shattered iPhone

via Flick User: self-explanatory

I remember when I was interning at a fabulous company in college. At the time, I was a public communication major studying a number of tactics within the PR profession, including media audits and pitching some seriously offbeat ideas to the nation’s reporters.

As chief/only intern during my designated schedule, I remember taking on a variety of tasks tossed carelessly/happily from my fellow employees. One of them came 1) before I even took my first computer design course and 2) when I had nothing else really all that exciting happening.

The project: Updating HTML

As I was given the brief from our resident designer, one phrase has really stuck with me: “Basically, computers do what you tell them to.”

Seriously, that phrase is all-encompassing, regardless of environment. I get the web thing, I understand the software thing, but it’s true. I can code a bunch of stuff, but I maintain, when I tell a computer/browser/phone to do something, I expect it to follow suit.

As I sit here typing on a seven year old laptop, I really begin to doubt it. This thing is slow as hell. The Apple spinning wheel of death is pretty much the main wallpaper that I’ve got going on, and there’s no way that I can run as many programs at once that I was able to when I first got this heap.

What messes up technology this way? The combination of software and hardware is designed to do what you tell it to. Sure, there’s updates in hardware and new thinking, but what really causes the bloat, slowdown and assumed obselesence  within modern technology?

I seriously have no idea, but if you could explain, feel free to do so in the comments. Is it things that aren’t thought of? Or is it just bad best practices? I’m really earning myself a serious talking to from hardcore coders, but hell. I’m just curious.

To speak more specifically to the shamelessly-authored title here, this question came into harsh perspective when my wife’s phone completely tanked and would fail to update, sync or even turn on.

I’ll spare the readers my overall rant about only offering the iPhone in a needless 16gB and other useless information, but I will pose the question. It is/was a great phone, what happened? If all coding authored by an incredibly intelligent community is at the end of the day designed to fail and make users give up and purchase new hardware, is that really success?

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On Home Ownership

Posted on March 2, 2010 | Leave a comment

via Flickr User: @wooohooo

There’s this feature on Facebook that I’ll bet everyone pays closer attention to than anything else. Sure there’s new crops to be harvested on Farmville, shameless photos to untag, and organizations to fan, but I’d be lying if I said the item of most curiosity didn’t lie within the Relationship Status Change.

  • X is in a relationship with Y, and it’s Complicated.
  • Y is no longer in a relationship with X.
  • X and Y ended their relationship.

Enquiring minds want to know! That little heart icon catches my eye every time, but that’s where the life-changing flags end. Aside from the mandatory follow up to most of these posts, it seems that other crazy changes in an individual’s life go unnoticed by Facebook.

As a recently married man, there seems to be a rush to get a jump on combining several life-changing events into the span of just a few months. More than a few of my friends are:

  • Having kids
  • Changing jobs
  • Buying cars
  • Buying homes

As a renter, the prospect of home buying is met with as much curiosity as it is apprehension. Here are a few great resources I’ve been using to dip a toe in the water of home buying:

Online financial tools like the popular Mint site, and the lesser-known Thrive application. These sites link up to your financial accounts and provide recommendations. Though I sometimes loathe the online statements that show up in my inbox, it’s a great way to keep track of your finances. If you’re big on using your debit or credit card, they provide different ways to tag, track and filter your spending types. This means you can see instantly how much you’re contributing to any investments, how much your credit card’s interest rate means you’re really paying, and even how much you spend at  your favorite stores.

The design and development worlds have, to me, always skewed toward Google Maps, but HotPads, a Microsoft Virtual Earth mashup, is an incredibly cool app that allows you to view properties both to own and to rent, with some really great mapping features. The site allows you to do an advanced search and preview listings, approximate monthly payments etc. Pretty slick. Also worth a look is Trulia, which has similar features and a larger network.

Home automation applications like the Schlage-compatible hardware, the iTunes Airport Express and the Sonos sound systems are my ultimate want on the home front. With the freedom of homeownership comes the 21st century version of the DIY project in the form of hopefully installing some pretty sweet speakers along with dimmable lights and sprinklers that I could potentially manage from my phone.

Then again, there’s the decorating battle between my wife and I. Our seemingly endless fascination with House Hunters and Design on a Dime will definitely help, but I still look to great design resources like Design Milk and Dwell for inspiration. Not to mention the sweet Dream Home competition (sorry y’all, I wasn’t going to share this link and ruin my chances ;-) ).

What about you? There’s countless headaches involved with home buying, life changes, moving, and planning what have you used to help steer the journey?

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I’m Just Doing It Already

Posted on February 13, 2010 | Leave a comment

A good friend of mine deemed me “tech boy” as a joke after explaining how to reset his phone for the fourth time.

As a true child of the digital age, I’ve been fascinated in learning more about the technology around us and how it can work alongside our lifestyles.

Along the way, I’ve become a resource for family, friends, and more recently colleagues for helping them make sense of the new capabilities offered through technology.

“What’s the difference between rgb and cmyk?”

“How can Mom’s huge honking desktop get the internet without a wall jack?”

“They said it was a software as a services or something…”

And my personal favorite…

“I want to set up a website…”

This is my favorite question to tackle. What’s the site going to be about? What ate you going to talk about? Have you thought about who would visit it? Why would they visit it anyway?

These questions are tough to answer, and I’ll be candid in acknowledging that a number of friends have stopped in their tracks with the phrase “I haven’t thought about that…”

You know what? I want to set up a website too. I haven’t mapped out the users, the IA, the content strategy, the design, or even bought the exact domain; but I’m taking the first step by creating this post.

I’m hoping this site will become a place to share thoughts and ideas, solicit feedback and discussion, play with design and coding, and mostly create an outlet for me personally.

Most importantly, I hope this site will evolve and change along the way. I’m looking forward to writing posts mainly about technology, web design, business, and personal tales.

Stay tuned, feel free to chime in, and enjoy!

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Hello world!

Posted on February 18, 2009 | 1 Comment

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

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