Scott McLaughlin

I was gonna write up a review on my new kick ass Yamaha super quiet generator, but I haven’t used it enough to really decide what to write up. So I’m still working on that one. I used it a bunch on our last camping trip which was fun, but I haven’t “really” dug into it or used it to run my HAM radio battery setup. I did jump start the car with it on the camping trip, was great how well that worked.

I did however get a new audio deck for the Explorer ordered, its suppose to show up today. Maybe I’ll get some good pictures of the installation I hope to do this weekend. Although its suppose to be hot as hell saturday/sunday so I might be inside in the AC. This rig is cool, it has a DVD player in it as well as a microSD card reader. Since it supports DiVX and XViD formats I can stuff a bunch of kids movies on to the microSD so when we are stopped/stranded somewhere for long periods they can watch a movie on it. It does support multiple displays but since my kids puke when they watch movies in the car, that ain’t happening anytime soon. I also ordered the HD Radio add-on (why not) and it came with the iPod adapters. So i’ll probably pick up a big ass NANO and just leave it in the car after filling it to the top with music. Anyway, I’ll do a write up on all that when I get it installed and more about my choice.

Getting ready to head to Idaho Falls later this month for a week. Kids are excited, it will be Keira’s first time flying so that should be an adventure. Ethan has gone the last couple years and they are both excited to go back to Bear World, LOL. How can feeding real bears donuts not just be the highlight of a little kids day!

I think this year I’m taking the good camera and lenses with me, its more work but hopefully I’ll have more time to take a lot more pictures. Guess it depends on what i end up trying to carry on to the plane…hrrmmmm

With our recent purchase of the new BMW 530i, I immediatley missed the ability to use my iPod like I could in the 328i that had the after market Alpine head unit in it.

Upon recommendation from my friend Alan Grainger I ordered up a iPod control system from DICE Electronics. These devices allow you to control your Ipod via the CD changer connections on your built in BMW audio system. Other vehicles as well, but I can only speak for the BMW system. Its relatively in expensive and quite easy to install (at least if you just want to dump it in the trunk).

Initially I just plugged the Dice and the Ipod into the trunk CD changer location and left it all there. Since the 2002 BMW doesn’t have a NAV unit it doesn’t really have a big nice display on the dashboard. While the Ipod is controllable via the changer controlls already built in to the audio system its a bit clunky. Awesome that it works at all though! So for a month or so I’ve just left the Ipod in the trunk and use it that way.

However, this weekend I decided i wanted the IPod up with me in the front of the car for faster navigation and control. This requires some work to re-route the Dice wiring up to the center console

I highly recommend the Dice, it works really well and plugs straight into the existing car wiring systems. This is a great way to get Ipod capabilities into cars that were built before the IPod, hell even before the iMac! The ability of the dice to use older existing cd changer control systems to control the Ipod is pretty ingenious.

So anyway I took lots of pictures and documented all the steps, so those of you who chose to do the same thing, will have a little bit of a resource and can see what I did. Obviously your mileage will vary with your year and model of BMW, but I’ve found in general most Beemers are the same at some basic level.

Here’s all the photos with descriptions of the steps taken.

Around August 5th we decided it was time we dumped the kids and went somewhere exciting and fun on our own. I posted this message that day, it was exciting. A few random posts between then and Novemeber when we left and then nothing for a long time. Unfortunately life has been hectic the past 9 months and because of that I never did follow up with how the vacation went and pictures and all that fun.

So here I am 8 months later posting about it…sorry to all of you who have been bugging me for so long for some pictures and data

… welcome to the Caribbean love … so the story goes

The plan was to find a relatively private island get away somewhere warm and tropical, but not including the usual worries of tainted water, mosquitos and general un-fun potential mayhem. Petit St. Vincent Resort in the Grenadines proved to be the ideal spot for what we wanted.

If you’ve never been and are looking for a nice quite get away with no phones, TV’s or electronics in general, this is definitely the place for all inclusive without the crowds. I’d be happy to sit down with you and go over details if you really want to go there.

We spent a couple days in LA on the way down hanging out with my best friend Zac Fink and his family which was a wonderful time. We had to break the travel up in order to time it correctly. The logistics took me awhile to get down before booking. Here’s how it had to work timing wise:

• Portland to LA (Alaska Air 2.5hrs)
• LA to Miami (America Air 6hrs)
• Miami to Barbados (America Air, limited flight times 6hrs)
• Barbados to Union Island (Mini local airline w/ limited flight times 1hr)
• Union Island to Petit St. Vincent (Boat ride happens once a day 25min)

One thing I did learn is that I will never fly American Airlines again. Those are some of the most uncomfortable plans I’ve ever been in. They bought the cheapest boeing packing in the most seats possible…especially for two 6+ hour flights.

While I was there I wrote notes every evening as if I was blogging but with no internet connectivity I could never upload them. I’ve gone back through these notes and loaded them back into my blog dated on their original dates in November 2009 as if if they were posted live. You can read those on the links below.

All in all the trip was a wonderful time, the staff there is amazing and the weather was perfect. We were there during the “off-season” so the cooler weather (and by cooler i mean 80′s instead of 90′s) was perfect for us and since its the “off-season” it wasn’t overly busy or expensive. I’d be happy to share expenses/costs with you if you are interested.

Some things to note from my daily blog entries now that we are well past that time frame:

1. My kindle never did show up from amazon
2. I’m still editing together all my video

Links about this trip:

• Photo Gallery
• Video Gallery (still editing)
• Daily Blog Entries (read from bottom to top, then to page 1 bottom to top)
• Petit St. Vincent Resort
• Google Map

In summary, this was a wonderful time all around and I highly recommend this resort. Would I go again? Yes, if I had no where else I wanted to go. There’s too many other wonderful places to try that unless we lived near the island I probably won’t venture back, but on to new places. If we lived within a few hours of this place via airplane, I would go once a year!

Over the last couple years I’ve really started looking at what type of conveniences newer technology has started bringing to the modern home and how they rate on a couple of things, in order they are:

1. Make my life and my familys life better
2. Coolness factor
3. Save me money on a recurring basis (its all about the LRO)

Cool stuff has been around for 10+ years, however most of it was ludicrously expensive, hard to obtain and install. Over the last year or two lots of things are becoming more affordable to me and the coolness factor is sky-rocketing.

Previously I wrote up the ever so cool addition to my house of a Tankless Water heater. Ya it still rocks, and I still highly recommend one. The trouble with being on the bleeding edge of this type of technology I often pay the price of “having it first, but later models are better”. The current Tankless heaters are probably 10-15% more efficient and are much bigger gph wise. Mine has certainly never been an issue, but I had it early on and first so the coolness factor is high but you often tend to not get the best features.

Whilst there has been several things like this I’m all over, the one for today is the newest edition to my primary residence which is a in-house power monitoring system. I previously had a little $130 unit (Efergy E2 monitor) that connected to the “mains” in the breaker panel and gave you entire house usage and tracked your power bill to some extent. It was a wireless unit that went to a remote box you could carry around and see how much your wattage changed as you turned things on and off. It would also dock to a PC via USB and download data for graphing and tracking…it was nifty…but it just wasn’t enough.

For years I’ve looked for systems that would monitor all circuits in the house and use a web based interface. I hate all applications that lock me to a single computer, i want access via the web to my data anywhere I am. A few people had home brewed them, which I debated doing but I just wasn’t gung ho enough, eventhough #2 coolness factor was through the roof on those.

Finally a company released a device that meets most of my requirements. Again being the early adopter I’m sure in another 12 months there will be 3 or 4 of these companies with even cooler units…but hey i’ve met #1,#2 and #3 and the coolness factor is obviously high.

So with that said here is a link to the review I did of the eMonitor Energy Monitor Service that I recently installed in my primary home. It will include links to photos of installation and web interface screen shots.