i just got back from a wonderful family vacation to milwaukee, wisconsin for a big party for my uncle nate taffel's 80th birthday.

click image to enlarge

that's jon, ruthie and i with lake michigan in the background.

there were over 100 people at the party and it was great seeing many family members and friends i have not seen since last year when ruthie and i went for nate's wife's (my aunt mur) 75th birthday. it was sorta de javu in that it was in the same place and a lot of the same people were there.

a couple of observations from the trip...

the airline portion, on american airlines, was pretty much a pain in the you-know-where. between the security deal, taking off my shoes, dealing with my laptop (more on that in a sec) and trying to avoid checking luggage (because of time, not the surcharge, we booked before the surcharge applied) the whole deal was yucky.

it was one of those tiny jets for like 80 people where they squish you in like sardines into 3 seats across (1 and 2). very small space for a 2 hour flight.

on the way back i got up to go to the lavatory and 2 rows from it, this older lady gets up and goes in, making me stand there like a moron while she went in and out 4 times (she could not figure out how to close the door to get the light to go on).

the other yucky part was the baggage. they take your bag at the end of the jetway (whoever thought up that term?), put a red tag on it and give it back to you after the flight lands.

fine. but, the plane lands in dallas and 50 people are standing in the jetway waiting for the bags and the door is open and it is 102 degrees outside. it was like an oven waiting for those bags. shame on you american airlines.

ok, went to another meetup at another cafe brazil. guess what? no wifi again.

this time it was a wordpress meetup, so the whole meeting was crippled due to the lack of the wifi connection and the ability of people to open up their laptop, say "hey, take a look at this" and have someone help them figure a problem out.

they had no explanation, just no wifi!

so, anyone in the dallas area needing wifi connections while out and about - avoid cafe brazil in dallas like the plague.

i went to a meetup.com meeting last for a group i am a member of called "joomla user group - dallas / ft. worth".

if you have not checked out meetup.com, it's a very good way to meet people with similar interests.

we met at a local restaurant called cafe brazil.

picture this...12-15 internet joomla users sitting at a group of bunched up tables with laptops (80% of us brought them) and NO wireless connection!

this is the 3rd time i have attended a meetup at this restaurant and each time they claim the free wifi is fixed and nobody can connect!

it is the plano location at 190 and coit rd. the service is also horrible there too. avoid it at all costs.

i will say that i have never had a bad experience at the other locations of this restaurant, but this location is just unnerving and yucky to go to. no wifi (after they tell you "it's working" and you try and connect and no signal) and the wait staff if so inattentive it's really bad. one night there i had to scream to find an employee to take my money to pay. there were no employees in the front at all for over 10 minutes.

gotta find a new place to meet. that's it.

on tuesday night i installed mac os x leopard on my powerbook g4 laptop.

i wish i could say it went 100% without casualties, but nope, not true.

the installation went just fine from the upgrade dvd that came with mom's new mac mini.

a few minor shareware apps stopped working, but the main casualties i have are fireworks mx and flash mx. i don't do a lot of work in flash, but i work daily in fireworks.

i have other programs with feature sets similar to fireworks, but nothing that will open the already created .png graphics files i have with the original layers intact.

this is a problem since i have tons of those, for work and personal use.

i'm currently trying the 30-day trial of the fireworks cs3 program and may have to break down and buy the program! oy.

oh, we all love to hate the cable company.

yup, time warner strikes again. a few weeks ago it rained and our internet service went "bye bye" until it had dried up again. came back. rained and "bye bye" again.

i spent 30 minutes on the phone (most of it waiting to get someone) with time warner. the only diagnostics they could do on the phone was "turn the modem and the router off, wait 2 minutes and plug everything back in". this is diagnostics?

needless to say, this solved nothing. so we scheduled for a guy (yes, the cable guy) to come out to see what is wrong.

he came, made us switch out a custom box my electrician had hooked up (cost us over $100 to get this box and have him install it) for some cheap time warner splitter. now, there is now way my box was causing any of this.

well, today it rained again and sure enough, time warner cable internet flaked out again. interestingly enough, this time, it came back after the rain stopped (without waiting for the yard to dry). an hour later it rained again and the time warner cable went out again during the rain. the tv works, but the cable internet does not.

infuriating!

seems like they need to check the outside lines, not the lines inside the house. idiots.