Author Archives: The500footBuddha

Chicago: Sears Tower

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The next thing I wanted to talk about is the Sears Tower. Yes, I am aware that it is actually called Willis Tower, but I will not be using that name. I do not believe many people will be using that name. I do not know if that name is ever going to catch on, but I feel like it is a shame that the city of Chicago could not have passed some sort of legislation to force the name to stay the same. It is obviously an American icon. Jo and I decided to walk down from the Jackson stop off the red line to visit the tower on Saturday, because that was our free day to roam around the city and do all the tourist stuff that people typically do when they visit Chicago.

The Sears tower is huge. You have to start by waiting in line just to get in line to go down an elevator to, you guessed it, wait in another line. I can not emphasize enough that if you plan on visiting the tower it might not be a good idea to do so on a weekend when obviously there are more people visiting the city.

I do not know if we really saved a whole lot of time, but they informed us that the wait was going to be over an hour and a half, unless we bought the special tickets that allow you to skip the lines and go to the top. We opted for these special tickets, because although they are double the price we had many more plans for that day that did not involve waiting in that line.

I always pictured that when you got to go to the top of the Sears Tower you were literally going to be on the top. I was slightly disappointed to find out this is not the case. You are actually on the 103rd floor, which is fully enclosed and there is a ceiling and everything. I do not know if people used to be allowed, or possible they still have some sort of tour that goes higher than where we were, but that is where we ended up. The whole “throwing pennies off the building thing” seems right now to be more of an urban legend or something from American history.

Once you are on that floor you can look out the windows and take in all the surrounding sights of Chicago. It is very interesting. You can put coins in those machine that allow you to look out through a telescope basically, but I did not really feel like doing that. I just wanted to take a bunch of pictures and look at everything around me.

There is a gift shop at the top, but I did not get anything. Instead I just focused on taking pictures and standing in one of the glass floors they have that hang over the side of the building so that you can look straight down. They have three of these enclosures and some people take pictures from one where they can see the people in the next one over, because they want the picture to look like they are “falling”, since they are sort of “outside the building”. I have to warn you though that if like me you start to feel a bit sick it is because, as I was informed, the building sways in the wind so many inches in either direction, and that is what will make you feel a little queezy. This is of course nothing to say of looking straight down at the street from so high up.

Was it worth it? Would I do it again? Yes, it was one of those experiences that you have to do at least once. I will probably never have a feeling that I have to do it again though. I think that this is one of those things you only have to do once in a lifetime. It is sort of a shame that some people went before they installed those glass boxes, because they almost want to go again just to check that part out, and honestly I feel bad for them. Either you pay that fee for the express ticket or you wait in that horrendous line. I suppose if you can make it out on a weekday you might find the whole experience a little more enjoyable. I know that is the general rule with amusement parks as well – go on a Wednesday.

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Chicago: Food

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I will probably be doing about six posts about Chicago, because honestly there are many pictures and a whole lot of words that I want to share about my trip. I have sort of come up with some catagories and the thing that I wanted to start with is the food in Chicago, because that is supposedly one of those famous things that you have to do when you go to Chicago. What it comes down to is three things. You have to try the Chicago deep dish pizza, which I am sure a great many people have heard about. I certainly was aware of that before I left. The other two I was less familiar with. There is a Chicago hotdog and an Italian beef sandwich.

This pizza is probably some of the best stuff I have ever eaten. It is just so good. We got this with sausage and pepperoni. As you can see there is an ungodly amount of cheese in there and it is topped with marinara sauce. You can not pick this thing up and eat it like normal pizza you have to eat it with a fork and a knife.

Next on my list is the Chicago hotdog. There are many places that serve this thing, but Jo and I were downtown, so I figured that was as good a time as any to find a place to get one. Seemed like good food while we were walking around. I actually ended up asking a man that was standing on the corner selling or giving away something for direction to find a place that served the item and was given very good directions.

For better or for worse we ended up having two of the dogs and they were fantastic. As you can see they come with some sort of hot peppers, tomato, mustard, onion, on a poppy seed bun. The whole package is complete with the addition of a beef hotdog that they cut in this peculiar way. I did not bother asking if there was an actual reason for that cut or if it was strictly for the sake of presentation.

I do not have a picture of the Italian beef sandwich, but to paraphrase the great late comedian Mitch Hedburg it was “like a cow between two crackers”. They piled so much beef on to this sandwich that I was quite content for the rest of that evening. Instead I have a picture of something else that while you can find anywhere Chicago is apparently one of, if not the largest, consumers of Mexican Coke. It is a very sweet drink with no high fructose corn sururp. Instead, they have sugar, and lots of it. We had to take the train downtown and then the pink line up to a special part of town to procure this beverage.

I do not even like Coke and I would probably drink this stuff. If you have never had it I can describe it as being so sweet that it actually reminded me of Pepsi. The glass bottle that you see in the picture has a date on it and that is when the bottle was actually made. I guess from what I was told the bottles are reused and there is tale of bottles from the 1980’s being discovered. It is something neat to get while you are there for sure. The grocery store we purchased them at was selling them for 99 cents each so it was hardly a huge cost.

Killing Time

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I think the whole video game thing is getting a bit out of hand. I know I should probably stop buying them, but I have been playing games every day in the absence of having class or anything else to do. I should be focusing on calling the University of Akron to see if it is weird that I have no received a reply back from the teacher that I am supposed to be student teaching with in less than a month. I should also be cancelling XM radio (it is Sirius now or something right?), since I do not feel like paying for the three stations I actually enjoy. I should also give these people a call about a refinance, since the person I was dealing with stopped returning calls last month. Many of these things are the reason I am playing so many games.

Things You See Around Akron

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I was posting pretty regularly about how I was riding my bike to class as well as other places and sharing the trip data here. The problem is that every time I want to do that I have to go to two different sites, upload the data, and that way I would have all my information on the sites that I want to have it on. I know I explained all of this in an earlier post. Since Garmin has not actually taken the steps to make those trips exportable to WordPress, or any other format that I would be able to post here, I have not really felt as though it was worth the effort to keep doing that.

I did continue to ride my bike for the duration of summer classes. I decided to go around Akron and take some pictures of the sites that I have seen. The kids came along as well. I do not have class for several more weeks and I wanted to take a picture of some of these places before I forgot. Summer classes being over and is a huge relief and it is time to maybe laugh at some of the things I have seen. On a side note I had originally promised myself that I would continue to at least go to the yoga class at the recreation center, but I have failed miserably at getting motivated to attend that class twice a week.

This business is actually still in operation. Maybe that is not a good reason to take a picture of it, but I thought it was just really interesting. This business almost embodies how I feel about Akron. I have passed it several times and have personally witnessed employees doing… something. I do not know what this business does and the name of the business is something of a puzzle.

This is the stadium that while I will probably never actually attend a game in this stadium for the 2009 football season I am sure that it will make finding parking a living nightmare. The University of Akron intends on adding more parking and they have certainly started construction that would achieve that goal, but I doubt that I will personally benefit from any of it.

I probably should not have even taken a picture of this one. This is right off a main street near downtown and you can clearly see that someone wrote an explicative on the billboard. Yes, that is an arrow going to the corner of Hannity’s mouth. No, I do not know why they did this, and honestly I want to know how they got up there. The funny part is it was probably the work of drunk college kids. I should just be glad nobody died climbing up there for such a dumb joke.

I really saved the best picture for last. This picture really needs no explanation, because while the joke might be sort of dumb it is completely worth it.

Patty’s Birthday

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It was Patty’s birthday today! She turned 12. I did not feel like having her friends and whoever else over, maybe that will happen next birthday, but this one was for family. In attendance was Eddy, Patty, Michelle, Mom, Grandma, and myself. We decided to start the festivities around 6.

I decided to have a cookout, because there were so many people here. Eddy helped me clean off the tables and the chairs. It was a nice day to do so, because it did not rain. It felt as though it might, but we just had a cool breeze and some dark clouds. If it would have rained that would have ruined everything. I made hamburgers and cheese burgers. I made sure to have the lettuce, tomato, and onion. The kids usually refer to them as “Krabby Patties”, but I did not hear them say that today. I think they are getting ab it older. We had potato salad and chips as well. Everything was awesome and we all got our fill.

We went inside to have the birthday party, after we had cleaned everything up outside. While it had not rained on us yet I was not going to test fate by staying outside for it to rain. Cleaning up is always the hardest part after a cookout, because you have to carry everything back inside where it came from. All the kids helped though, so it was not really all that bad.

You can see the pictures of the birthday party on the pictures page, which I should really do something with, because otherwise I am probably going to start dividing that page up into years, so expect a line and “2008” and “2009” to appear. The pictures are all fantastic. Kristy and I took all of the pictures while everything was going on. I think they all came out pretty awesome.

Some Changes

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I ordered and received two Motorola Razr phones. I got a blue one for my Grandmother, because her phone no longer works due to some water damage. The responsible party for that being my daughter, Patty. I also ordered an orange one for myself, because with all the commotion that has been going on over Grandma not having a phone I realized that it could just as easily be me in that situation. I figured that I would be a lot better off having a backup. I ordered them both from two different sellers on eBay. I am not really a big fan of ordering things from eBay, because I have a general mistrust of people on the internet, and those fears were not allayed as the blue phone showed up and worked just fine, but the orange one had a bum battery and actually had to be glued together at the bottom of the phone, because one of the snaps that holds it together was broken.

I did contact the seller right away, then waited over 24 hours for a response. I do not believe that makes me impatient, but I could be wrong. The seller said that they would send a new battery right away, and then after a week I finally received a “new” battery. I do not even know if this is an official battery or a Chinese knock-off, because it sort of looks like the original, which someone told me that the original batteries were discontinued in 2006. On the bright side the glue is holding and the battery seems to be holding a charge.

I have spent the last day importing contacts from Outlook via bluetooth to the phone, because I do not store contacts on the SIM card. I tried to install the Motorola software – but that did not go so well. I am not sure it is even compatible with Windows Vista. I also got ahold of wallpapers and some ringtones that I’m trying out with this phone from a website that I am very glad I found. It is sort of a good thing that this is not a smart phone or a windows mobile phone, because I might very well have started my search looking for themes and such for that type of phone. Knowing that Motorola Razr’s were (still?) very popular I searched for that. It seems I spend more time playing around and customizing the look of my phones than I do actually talking and using the phone for its intended purpose.

Speaking of playing around and customizing things I went ahead and installed Windows 7 Ultimate RC2 on my laptop. I even went with the 64bit version, which is a little more work, because I had to find 64bit drivers, and it seems that Dell stopped providing links to these drivers, since they never sold the Inspiron 1520 with a 64bit operating system. I have to believe that this policy is going to chance when Windows 7 actually goes retail and people can purchase that for their laptop. I haven’t had much use for the laptop this summer, since I do not feel like carrying it to class and I do not spend enough time away from home to really need to have the convenience of having a laptop there with me all day, so when I ran into a Vista specific bug with the wireless I went ahead and installed the new operating system.

The bug in question was that the laptop did not show it was connected to the wireless network when it was. I spent hours looking for an answer. The problem with wireless is that first you start with your operating system (Windows Vista Ultimate), then you move on to the hardware. The hardware in question is the Intel 4965AGN, which I ended up at one point downloading and installing both the drivers and software from the Dell site and the Intel site. Then I was searching the Netgear site and the DD-WRT site, since that is the 3rd party firmware I use on my router. As you can see it is a complicated process, especially when there is no remedy for the problem – short of reformatting the system. Yes, the final word is that it is a bug that was introduced in SP1 and Microsoft still has not fixed it apparently.

The issue arose when I was installing the Intel 4965AGN wireless card, and since this is a really new setup for me I went the extra mile searching for a solution, rather than just blaming the OS. I decided I needed to go ahead and try an N network in my house, because I found this Netgear router on sale at newegg.com for $20. I was only allowed to get one, so I had a friend of mine order another one, since I had ever intention on putting DD-WRT on both and using one as a router and the other as a network bridge. I have a friend that already offered to buy my old router, and all I have to do is go over there and set it up for him, so this whole thing is working out pretty good for me.

Long story short my new setup has been working marvelously. I even have internet to my Samsung television now. Which means that I am able to take advantage of widgets on my television. I can check the weather forecast, news, and even twitter from my television now. There is no new firmware for the television, but there was a software update that I was able to get, so I will have to see when they release a new firmware if you can download that or if you have to put it on a USB key or something. The reason I am still really hoping for a firmware update is that I am still having the problem with the contrast, especially white letters appearing grey, then white, then grey again while watching cable. I do not even honestly know if that is an issue with the television at all and not a problem with the cable box. I should probably contact Samsung support and get that cleared up.

I am certainly glad that I moved my computer downstairs into the basement. This summer has been very warm and it is definitely much cooler down here than it would be upstairs. I think that it might even be a little cooler upstairs now that my computer is not there to add even more heat to the equation. This is of course to say nothing of the increase in privacy I have. Not that I necessarily have been watching inappropriate things, but I do enjoy watching youtube videos and other things without having people looking over my shoulder.

I had to buy a rug and a dehumidifier in order to move the computer down here, because the basement does have some water in it whenever it rains. I did not feel it would be safe to put the computer desk on the floor. Ever since I’ve been running the dehumidifier and my computer downstairs it has gotten noticeably warmer down here. It also smells better and everything feels drier.

Adventures in Asian Food

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I got something from the Asian Market from Krhainos, because that is what he does, because he knows I love Asian food. It is sort of ridiculous how much I love this stuff.

This is what he brought me. I mean he brought other things, but this was the most interesting I think. There is also these little shots that are supposed to be all the vitamins and stuff as a whole cup of yogurt, but that is not very exciting. It is a microwave meal. Apparently made for one. I decided to take it apart and enjoy the contents.

First thing I have to say is that it was the hotest thing I have eaten in a while. It wasn’t “Asian hot” which is typically how people describe something being hot with no real flavor – just a great deal of hot. It was more “Mexican hot” and I am sure that this can be attributed to the fact that I mixed a sauce with chili peppers into this meal.

It was pretty good. I wish I had access to a microwave at the University, because I would probably eat one of these things between classes.

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Independence Day

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I just found out that the phone on my camera was set to take pictures as a pretty small size, so all the pictures I have from the 4th of July fireworks in downtown Akron are 320×240, which is hardly good enough even to show on the site, but I am going to do it anyway. I don’t really have a choice since these are all the pictures I have. I probably would have made another entry on my pictures page if I had taken my camera.

The fireworks were actually pretty awesome. I took Tim with us, since he was coming over anyway to play Xbox 360 and watch a movie. We got ice cream at a convenience store downtown and some sandwiches from Burger King, since I didn’t have time to get the kids dinner at home.

The fireworks were not the only show to be had. There was another disturbance which led to a whole crowd of people running down the street, thankfully not trampling us underneath them, as the police chased some guys who obviously did something stupid. The guy tried to hurdle a curb, but tripped. Guess he should have pulled his pants up.

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Emergency Trips

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Patty had to be taken to the ER last night around midnight to get a cut on her forehead looked at by a trained medical professional after Eddy and her had a disagreement about her being in his room, him really not wanting her there, her climbing on to the top bunk of his bed and making some sort of screaming sound to annoy, and him taking the absolute wrong action to try and emphasize his point. The action he took was striking her with a broom that he had in his room to clean. I have already instituted what I feel is an appropriate punishment and I can tell after having discussed with him why it was wrong that he does in fact feel bad, and not all just because his Nintendo DS got taken away and he is grounded to his room.

After waiting over an hour and getting some sour dough pretzels and some root beer out of the vending machines in the waiting area we got in the back to see a doctor. I am aware that my daughters injury doesn’t constitute an actual emergency and that other people certainly needed to be seen before her, but when I tell you what they did it did seem like an awful long time. They talked about stitches, then they mentioned a staple, then finally they decided to use this Dermabond stuff. This stuff is simply medical super glue. That’s it. The doctor came over, took this stuff out of the package, squeezed the container for a few seconds, applied it to the cut, held the cut together, and after 2 minutes he was done. That’s it. The only really bad thing is that this stuff is so weak. You can not use soap around the area, you can not go swimming, you are not supposed to put any kind of antibacterial on the cut, and you are not supposed to put a band-aid on it either. This is all supposed to last for at least three to five days before we can break any of these rules.

Local Bands

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My friend Leonard apparently started a record label, Digital Xtreme Media, with a friend of his in Columbus. I went to pick them up at the Kent airport to see a show in Kent.

Since I was the driver for the night I got treated to dinner at Rockne’s, which is fantastic. We drove to the place in Kent where the show was being held and stragetically parked, because even though it was doubtful that I would end up getting towed you just never know with Kent. They can be real jerks about it.

We went to the show and it was pretty good. My opinion on the bands does not really matter, but I sort of dug the band that they were here to see. Got to see some local bands and none of them were terrible.