this weekend taka and i carved halloween pumpkins and bought a tiny one for jas just to be cute.

i love my flash : )

there’s a lot more open space out here in dallas than there was back in los angeles. the only fixed wing aircraft that i ever flew back in california were slope gliders off of the redondo avenue bluffs in long beach. now that i have endless fields within walking distance to my place i decided to put together a park flyer.

the gws slow stick comes in an arf kit form that includes the 400 motor power system. it took a few hours for final assembly and i was off flying. i have a spektrum dx6i radio system for my helicopters so i just bought an ar6100e receiver to use in the plane. with the gws 20amp esc and a 1250mah 3-cell lipo i get more than 15 minutes of continuous flying time and the system never gets more than warm. with my setup the plane is light enough that it can fly very slow, or at wot can climb and loop with ease.

a few notes about assembly: the pushrods that came with the kit are terrible. they’re too wide in diameter to fit in the servo horns and don’t include the proper hardware to mate with the rudder/elevator linkage. i instead used a mini pushrod set that i bought from my local hobby shop for about $7 that included all of the proper hardware. for the plastic spars that run along the leading and tail edges of the wing, i glued them using the supplied foam-safe glue instead of taping them since the tape would come off and flap mid-flight. i also used a motor heat sink from an old helicopter that i had for the motor, more for balance than for heat dissipation.

last weekend i went to chicago to see my junior high/ high school/ texas buddy roumany get married to his long time girlfriend and fiance wendy. i hadn’t seen roumany in like 8 or 9 years since his job had transferred him to texas. now we live less than an hour away from each other, however in the months that i’ve been here he’s been busy with the wedding planning, and seeing him chicago was the first time we’d hung out in a really long time.

it was a bit of high school reunion weekend since eva lives in chicago, pavnit was in indiana and dan flew out from california. i didn’t really do much other than drink and party all weekend, the only site seeing experience was the adler planetarium which i hadn’t seen the last time taka and i were in chicago a couple of years ago. i was also going to try to go to the sears tower to try those glass boxes that you can walk out on but never made it.

it’s weird how lately different cities and states don’t seem that different anymore. being in dallas or la or chicago all kinda feel the same, especially when you’re hanging out with friends and family. it’s also sorta strange how much dallas feels like home now, particularly after a weekend away from it.

i really did want the 3gs as soon as it came out and did my best to convince myself that i didn’t have any need for any of the new features. since i had bought my 3g only 6 months prior i wasn’t eligible for an upgrade, and there was no way i could justify $600 for a phone that wasn’t *that* much different than the one i currently had.

then last week, my wife’s mio gps stopped working and living here in an entirely new area, a gps is pretty much a requirement, especially for her. i realized that she hadn’t upgraded her phone in a while (she took my 2g when i got my 3g), so i upgraded to the 3gs on her number and just swapped sim cards, so now she’s rockin’ the 3g and i got my 3gs for $200. an unlocked/jailbroken iphone 2g is going for almost $200 on ebay so it’ll end up being a wash.

the speed of the iphone 3gs is much improved over the 3g. the internet is faster and every app (especially when compared side-by-side with a 3g) opens almost twice as fast. the new screen coating really does help with smudges, and prevents that “sticky” feeling that my old phone would get. i haven’t really had a chance to use the still or video camera, but i was impressed with ben’s a couple of months ago, and with a kid having a good camera always at the ready is key.

while the upgrade seems to be more worthwhile than i expected, i still couldn’t've done it for $600, but for the $200 contract-subsidized price, it’s completely worth it.

in all fairness, lack of time has been playing just as big of a role, but the two kind of go hand-in-hand. anything interesting really can be said in 140 characters or less and that’s where our attention deficit disorder is taking us. i really don’t have time to spend more than 140 characters talking about what i’m doing, and that’s about as long as you can hold someone’s attention for these days. it’s a win-win situation for communication, but a slow death for this and all my other blogs. they actually are still making the same amount of money, but if i don’t dedicate some time to them they won’t be for long.

there are also so many different microblogging and social networking sites to keep friends and family up-to-date with. i post most of my pictures to flickr, my videos to youtube, general information on facebook, and my day-to-day life on twitter. once taka and the baby join me down here in dallas, i’m sure there’ll be more family stuff to talk about and neat experiences and places we find here that will be blog worthy. i’m definitely going to have to consolidate or reduce all my other blogs though, because there’s no way i’ll be able to keep up like i used to.

unlike some traders, i’ve had love for my iPhone ever since i got one. i admit i was a hater until i was an owner, but since then, we’ve been like peas and carrots. the phone obviously had some serious short comings, but love is blind and we worked through our differences. finally now though with the latest 3.0 firmware, the iPhone is everything i ever wanted it to be.

of course the simple, obvious things like cut-and-paste, and the ability to search throughout the phone and through my imap email server should have been there from the start, and while i’m happy to have those capabilities now, i still resent a bit that i had to wait for them. and while the other features also could’ve been ready a while ago, i’m not quite as bitter, probably because i’m enjoying them so much. the full stereo a2dp support (and my growing gut) has got me back to the gym. i used to hate that stupid wire between my ipod and the headphones. they’d always stick to my head, or get pulled out when i got on a machine. it also meant i usually had to have the phone within 2 feet or so. now i can set it in the corner of a gym, rock out with no wires and control the ipod from the headphones themselves. i’m living in a better future (although i’m living in texas, so maybe it’s a wash). i also like that i can actually chat on my phone now while doing other things. ironically, i’m too busy to be chatting from work though, so i hope in time to use that feature more. finally, i’ve found xGPS, a free app available through cydia (the jailbroken version of the app store) that makes my phone a full-fledged turn-by-turn navigation device. the best thing? it uses google maps, so everything is very current and accurate. it also also has text to speech, so it tries to say the names of the streets instead of the general “turn in 100ft” like most lower end models. the speech is pretty robotic and could use some work, and the auto-rerouting feature doesn’t work very well, but it’s better than my tomtom 100, and if this is the beginning, i can only imagine where it will go.

this weekend i finally feel like things are settled in here. on saturday i had my new washer and dryer delivered and installed which was just in time as i was almost out of clean undies. i also got the cable and the internet up and running and other than having to do some dmv stuff and buying another car (that is buying a second car, so far i’m keeping the s), things aren’t as frantic as they were when i showed up a week ago.

taka and jasmine and are doing well, and thanks to everyone who’s been going over and visiting them. taka sends me two pics a day, and i think i’ll have to make a page in the baby book of “my first 30 days in an iPhone” or something. i’m going to be back in la next weekend (and probably the next several weekends) so if anyone wants to get together to grab a beer or something let me know.

the job is going great. i’m mostly just in training for the next few weeks so it’s a really easy transition. but most all of the people are really friendly and very smart and while i’m sure the excitement will wear off, i actually kinda look forward to going into work in the morning (not that i have anything else to do around here). i have found my supermarkets and post offices and some really great restaurants. i just can’t wait until the wife gets here so i can share these places with someone.

i’ve had a lot of time on my hands this last week or so, but haven’t really wanted to do anything since i need to stay close to home and can’t really drink. on saturday for the first time in a while i went out to the movies with ben to see terminator:salvation. i enjoyed it more than most reviewers and it was just nice to get out of the house and not just be waiting for babies.

on sunday again with all the time but limited on what i can do, decided to build a mini picnic table for the little one. taka and i spent about 6 hours on it and it came out really nice. it’ll probably be a couple of years before our daughter can use it, but it looks nice in my mom’s yard until then.