Weekend, Part Two

Posted on by Jordan

Sunday, I did sound at church, so everyone opted for second service. My parents, Bethany,  Andrew, and Heather all came to Church. After church, Heather and mom had a chance to talk some about what plans we had for the wedding and decorating the building. We then headed to lunch. We had lunch at Le Peep, a breakfast / brunch / lunch place, where Andrew faced the dilemma of biscuits and gravy vs his restaurant standard cheeseburger. In the end he wound up with the burger, and seemed pretty happy with it.

After lunch we said our goodbyes and everyone headed home. Everyone except Heather and I…. we said “hey Target is right here, lets just register and be done with it.” So our next stop was Target.

Registering at Target: Let me start off by saying the system they have at Target is roughly 100000.5 times better than Bed Bath and Beyond’s. To start off nobody sits you down and tries to tell you how bad you need to have $100+ a place sitting china on your list. Second, and this won’t be as big of a deal for everyone but we just typed in our own information, and I prefer typing to having to fill out forms with little blanks and bad labels. Finally, the scanner they gave us had a real user interface.

The BB&B scanner was a 8 line LCD screen, a keypad, and a scanner. If you want to remove something from your list, scan the bar-code on this piece of paper! If you want to put two of an item on your list, it’s easy! Just remember to press ‘M’ then “enter” then the number of items you want. No the on-screen text wont really help you, and if you press the wrong key… well you wont have any idea if the item you scanned is even still on the list, the screen will just display some dire warning about incorrect UPC codes. Whats that? you wanted to see whats on your list? Go home and check on our website! We here at the store can’t even tell, but wait a day or so for the website because we have to type up that form you filled out a minute ago. Need to remove the item you scanned 2 items ago? Have we mentioned you can edit your list on the website? Because we don’t really have any access here… oh and isn’t this china shiny? Why are you scanning that item again, you clearly already scanned it… oh because  you wanted two of them and though our interface was “clunky” well sorry, you will have to go through the user interface.

The Target scanner was basically a PDA with a pistol grip, but it had a very well done user interface. The scanner felt better in your hand, the scan beam was brighter, making it easier to aim and it seemed to pick up UPC codes with less waggling. The display was large, color, and a touch-screen, with nice options so you could add multiple items, browse your list, remove items at will, or just marvel at the pleasure of holding a device designed for the end-user. Also, scanning something twice? Adds two of them to your list!

I know I didn’t say much about the scanner when I mentioned getting registered at BB&B, but that was because at the time I just assumed the scanner was suppose to suck. In the end I guess maybe the scanner didn’t change the fact that there wasn’t a ton of stuff we felt we could use at Target, so BB&B may have the last laugh in the registry department.

Some people say doing all that is “fun”… to me its still shopping… I get to do it with Heather so its not so bad, but I am glad we are done with it. As of right now we have a grand total of 200 items across all our registries, and from what the lady at BB&B said, that number is much too low, and we will have guests complaining. I think at this point I would tell them to please come to the wedding without a gift, or write us a nice card that we can look at when we aren’t so overwhelmed. Just the card would be fine, I really don’t know what I would do with a gift-card at this point, assuming most of the list was already taken I literally don’t need ANYTHING more from those stores. Include cash if you insist on giving us something, we can speed up paying off one of our cars.

-Jordan

Essential Resource

Posted on by Jordan

Well ok this might not be *essential* but it seems handy all the same 🙂

Bring home some of America’s greatest bacon The expert tasters of Cook’s Illustrated sampled eight leading brands

and just in case the article isn’t around by the time your saying to yourself “where can I find the best bacon online,” the winner:

Tasters raved that this bacon — which scored a distinct few notches higher than the rest of the lineup — has it all: “Nice balance of sweetness to salt, great deep complex ham flavor, very meaty,” with a “faint fruity taste, sweet and salty.” Extra-big slices and “genuine” smoke flavor were big hits with our tasters. ($13.95 for 12 ounces, plus shipping, www.gratefulpalate.com)

-Jordan

Weekend Decompression

Posted on by Jordan

Quite a bit happened over the weekend, so I am going to probably spread that over a few days worth of posts rather than do one huge post.

The primary thing that happened is that my parents and brother came to town! Everyone (Mom, Dad, Bethany, Andrew, and Heather) met up at my apartment around nine Saturday morning. We decided to visit the Omaha botanical gardens as our first action of the day.

I was a little concerned about what there would be to see in the fall, but it turns out that it wasn’t an issue. the majority of the “areas” in the gardens looked amazing. We spent quite a bit of time looking at the truly awesome model train network they have built into a hill midway through our walk. I might have a few pictures of that, but haven’t had a chance to check my camera to see if anything is really worth showing.

I have been to the gardens in Omaha three times now, and every time came away thinking it was really pretty cool. Heather and I are thinking about getting a membership, because we have really enjoyed the trips we have taken together.

We then went to the other side of town for lunch at the Upstream where the rehearsal dinner will be held. It was nice to be able to show my parents the room we have reserved there, and we got to try the food! ( I have eaten there a few times before, but it was a first for a few in our group)

after lunch, Bethany headed back to Lincoln for pre-game festivities, my parents headed back to their hotel for a nap, and Heather, Andrew and myself grabbed my Wii from my apartment and headed over to Heather’s apartment. Heather she needed a nap too, so Andrew and I got some Wii bowling in while everyone slept.

After the naps, my parents came over to Heather’s apartment, and we just hung out for an hour or two, before heading out again to play some mini-golf. Mini-golf with Andrew is always fun! Ironically this was also the first golf related outing Heather and I have been on. I guess all we can say is that the summer has gotten away from us… and fall is slipping fast. I won’t inflict you with a play-by-play of the golf game, sufficient to say nobody did all that well, everyone had fun, and it used up the remaining day.

( other things, like a football game might have happened, but that will remain forever a repressed memory 😉 )

-Jordan

Mid week website update!

Posted on by Jordan

Managed to find some time last night to make some quick edits to the website.

  • Every reference to the reception now says “Johnny Cascone’s Italian Restaurant in Overland Park, Kansas” instead of just “Cascone’s in Kansas City”
  • Filled out the lodging page, that should be done now.
  • changed the RSVP page to request number of guests, and hopefully be clearer
  • changed the PHP script that sends the RSVP info so the message is easier to understand.

My proofreader and picture captioning expert was way too sleepy to do much by the time that was all done, so the pictures still lack captions.

At this point I am just happy that my enthusiasm hasn’t dropped off… I was afraid it would be painful to keep tweaking things at this point, but I still enjoy getting things going.

-Jordan

Well if I *have* to play

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This program is a ways from being implemented I suppose, but I find the prospect fairly amusing.

Could playing computer games enhance mental agility enough to turn people over 50 into better drivers? Allstate Corp. wants to find out, and if the answer is yes, it might offer insurance discounts to people who play the games.

I have told Heather in the past that our generation will be playing video games in retirement, this may or may not play a role in that future 🙂

-Jordan

Registered!

Posted on by Jordan

Well we aren’t done setting up registries yet, but Heather and I did get started on that project last night.

Our plan was to start at Bed Bath and Beyond, register there, and then head to Target and be done registering in one night.

The lady who set us up at Bed Bath and Beyond had other ideas. I will admit some of the things she told us were really quite helpful, such as the list of things you might want, or her advice about how many things to have on our list vs. number of invited guests. I am pretty sure we did not need 10 minutes of explanation of how awesome the china was. After we finally got the scanner and got turned loose it quickly became clear that even without the fine-china pitch, we were never going to make it to Target. The sheer number of choices we had to make was painful. Even if it was only a few seconds for each item we walked past, it still required thinking “do we have one already, if so is the one we have a candidate for replacing” or “would we conceivably use that if somebody gave it to us” It just got harder if there were options within a class of item (how do you pick between 3 kinds of muffin tins?).

Two hours later, I think we have Bed Bath and Beyond completely covered.

Its kind of hard to know what to put on the list, Heather and I aren’t moving into a house, and storage is somewhat limited in the apartment we will be staying in. Cooking is at least something we have enjoyed doing together, and will definitely work well in an apartment.  In the end I think we have a pretty good list of things that would be useful to have, and if I can stop feeling bad asking for half of it everything will be grand 🙂

-Jordan

Accommodations!

Posted on by Jordan

I probably wont get the website updated until Thursday, but we have a hotel holding a block of rooms for the wedding.

Heather talked to them, and they got us a block of rooms at a discount, so I think its going to work out pretty well.

looking at reviews, trying to answer my moms question on the phone last night, it looks like:

  1. they have a “kid oriented” pool
  2. they do not offer free breakfast, but do offer a discount at the attached Perkins

its one more thing checked off the list for the wedding, and another section of the website I can count as done (as soon as I *do* it).  I find it fairly satisfying, even if it was a simple thing 🙂

-Jordan

Monday!

Posted on by Jordan

To make Monday even better, I went to the dentist today!

Nothing to report from the dentist, other than the fact that it remains soundly in the “no fun” category.

On the way out, they asked me if I wanted to schedule my 6 month from new appointment. I tried to explain to them that my job is changing dental plans, and I am getting married. I don’t think the idea that I would change dentists due to a dental plan crossed their minds as they blankly smiled at me.

to be honest I kind of want to change dentists so that I can go to one closer to work, given that the one I am going to now moved to the other side of town. Hopefully they wont be too offended if I never call them again… ever

pretty awesome Monday huh? 🙂

-Jordan

The website, and eight pounds of chicken.

Posted on by Jordan

First off, lets see how I did on that list yesterday:

  1. Update the groomsmen pictures.
  2. Try defaulting the directions page “from” box to null.
  3. Fix the formatting problem on the directions page.
  4. Split the directions page into 2 pages so we have directions to the reception in KC.
  5. Add text to the front page talking about the KC reception.
  6. Add a “home” link to the gallery.
  7. Fix the width of the text boxes on the RSVP page for FireFox.
  8. Add a “special thanks” page?
  9. Replace the default 404 page.
  10. Setup the accommodations page, assuming that information is available.
  11. Captions instead of file names showing in the gallery.
  12. Look at adding extra text to the black space in the gallery.

Gallery is kind of a maze to figure out how its building pages, I think I have found where it constructs the main page you see when you click the “gallery” link from the front page, I just have to find a way to inject a link back to the main page from there. I am not optimistic about adding text in the unused space, but maybe I will change my mind once I understand its page creation code a little better.

the other things on that list I simply ran out of time for, perhaps because I was being lazy and didn’t get started right away 🙂

I also tackled the frozen chicken I had piling up, for over a month now I had been buying a bag or so each time the store had a sale on frozen chicken breasts. Ever since Heather and I started our workout plan I have been using the approach Heather used, where you cook a bunch of chicken, and freeze it in proper meal sized portions. Buying lots of it raw, and then procrastinating before cooking it meant I had four bags, or eight pounds of chicken to deal with. I normally use a vinegar and pepper marinade, but I didn’t have a big enough container to soak that much chicken, and I wasn’t sure I wanted that much in the same style. So after trimming it all, I settled on four different kinds:

starting at the top, and going left-to-right, we have: BBQ, lemon pepper, plain, vinegar-pepper. I was pretty happy with the results. the BBQ didn’t come out as well as it has in the past, but I think I did something differently then, I just cant remember what. After cubing and bagging all of that I ended up with 22 bags of chicken, enough to keep me in quick lunches for quite a while 🙂

Hopefully today I can knock out the rest of the website stuff, and maybe even get my room cleaned a little bit before I completely loose this productive streak I am on 🙂

-Jordan