Chad and Christine

2.27.04 During our honeymoon Christine and I visited Discovery Cove, a sea world park in Orlando, Florida. There are a few places in Orlando that will allow you to swim with dolphins but Discovery Cove has got to be the best. For one, Discovery Cove limits the park admission to 1000 people meaning the park’s never gonna be overcrowded. They also have artificial reefs where you can swim with rays or other saltwater fish. They have lazy river, exotic bird sanctuaries, and of course the dolphins swim. The dolphin swim packages start at $400.00 so if you have the means and you’re in Orlando then I highly recommend you swinging by. If you’re curious as to what the dolphin experience includes, you can find a copy of our dolphin experience video in the media section of this website.

2.22.05

Seems like this is gadget week at the Hubbard plantation.
Today we finally joined the 21st century and got TiVo, erhttp://www.drabbuh.com/chadsspace DVR through Time Warner. I’ve only had it for a few hours and I already can’t live without it. Now I’m sure not to miss the last installments of Enterprise. Oh, and I can catch up on all those missed episodes of CARNIVALE®.

Just how am I expected to study when I have 3 hours of Trek waiting on me everyday when I get home from work?

2.21.05

It’s been a while since I added anything to this section. There has been some interesting things happening at the Hubbard homestead. First off, we thought we had a opossum gnawing underneath our house so we called an exterminator. He brought out this cage.

We set the cage but we didn’t catch a opossum, we caught a giant rat! I didn’t take a pic of the rat because unfortunately it died in captivity. It thought it particularly bad taste to post a pic of a dead rat on this site. I guess my hypocrisy has some bounds. The exterminator will be returnign tomorrow to rid us his buddies.

Saturday we took our dogs to the vet for a check up. Jessie, our boxer passed with a clean bill of health. Unfortunately, Bandit our Lab/Dalmatian mix tested positive for heart worms. Luckily a treatment for K9 heartworms has been developed. It’s an expensive procedure ($700) but it has a 95% success rate. Christine and I will be happy (and very relieved) when Bandit is parasite free. His treatment starts the 21st of March. Afterwards he will need to stay in Christine’s home office for the next six weeks while he recovers.

Bandit and Jessie at the vet

Lastly, I got a camera phone today (same phone number) which is great for me being the shutterbug that I am. My coworker Philip also picked one up over the weekend which should make for some interesting camera phone correspondence. My plan allows for me to send 300 pictures a month and I intend on maxing it out. Christine should be picking her camera phone up in the next few days.

Here’s a pic shot with the Audiovox CDM-8910Medium quality setting

Let the crazy camera phone photos commence!

2.14.05

This became obsolete 2.20.05

as of the 14th

It works! It really works!
Napster has returned to its roots of free music. Not intentionally of course, but Napster is home again to wonderful, glorious, FREE music. Well, almost free. The first 14 days are free then its 14 bucks a month for all the music you want. The music is protected, meaning you can’t burn it and when you end your Napster subscription you lose all your music….OR DO YOU? Directly from boingboing are instructions on removing all the protection from your Napster music. Ah, the wonderful exchange of information that is the internet. I tested it and it works great! This “hack” converts your music to .WAV files, then you can use your favorite music renaming program to assign the ID3 tags from the file name, (I use Taggin’ MP3 1.4). Then you can use iTunes to convert the WAV file to MP3s or AACs.

Yes, it’s a B-A-U-Teeful day!

Happy Valentines Day music downloading world.
Thanks Napster, you made it a lot easier to download a ton of music for really cheap.

This tip came from Philip B, who is the most plugged in guy in the world.
From Boing Boing:

Burning through Napster’s collection, free

Practical how to:
(credit goes to warlock1711 of club.cdfreaks.com for discovering this loophole)

0. Download and install Napster, sign up for 14 day free trial.

1. Download and install Winamp

2. Download and install the Winamp Plug-in Output Stacker

3. Open Winamp Options->Plug-ins->Output->Dietmar’s Output Stacker->Configure
a. Add out_ds.dll from Winamp/Plug-ins folder
b. Add out_disk.dll from Winamp/Plug-ins folder
c. Select out_disk.dll in the Output Stacker->Configure
d. Set the output directory and output file mode to Force WAV file
e. Exit preferences

4. Load downloaded Napster protected WMAs into your Winamp playlist

5. Press play and each file will be converted to WAV as it plays

6. Burn WAVs to CD with your favorite burning program

Theoretical fun:

Three computers, one fast networked drive, and a few dedicated people: Turning Napster’s 14 day free trial into 252 full 80 minute CDs of free music.