Fourth Anniversary Cruise

Vacation

Laura and I just got back from some needed vacation to celebrate our fourth anniversary. I haven’t had any official time off since early December, and it was definitely time to get away. We had looked at renting a beach house down on the Texas Gulf, but after the price of a house, rental car, food, and money spent on touristy things, we realized it’d be cheaper and easier to simply book a five day cruise instead.

That’s what we did, and the all inclusive nature of things, with plenty of entertainment already put together for us by Carnival, the vacation was a blast with a minimal amount of planning. Laura and I love cruises for that very reason: just plug in your credit card number and out pops preplanned, all inclusive fun. Even with the oil spill from DeepWater Horizon, we saw no oil, tar balls, or anything of the like. The bigger problem came not from oil, but from Alex, a tropical storm turned hurricane. The crew of our ship, Carnival Ecstasy, did a nice job navigating around the storm, and Carnival even changed our itinerary to stop in Cozumel first and the Yucatan second, instead of the other way around, to stay behind the storm instead of right in the thick of it. I was impressed that Carnival was nimble enough to do that, and sure enough, both stops had great weather.
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Apple: Price vs. Value

Computing

Have you balked at the idea of a new Mac because of price? Do you hate the idea of an “Apple Tax” or inflated price? If that’s you, I encourage you to read this post by Other World Computer here.

There really isn’t an apple tax, Apple is just a smaller company vs. giants like Toshiba, Sony, Dell, and the like. Because of this, they don’t offer 10 versions of the same computer, priced from stripped down crazy cheap to maxed out super expensive like the big boys do. Can you find a $400 Toshiba? Sure, but it won’t match the specs of an Apple. If you compare Apples to Apples (pardon the pun) Mac’s are often right on par with everyone else. Or are they? If you read the above article, you’ll realize that Mac’s are often more affordable than the competition when you factor in things like security, down time, virus protection and problems, and so forth.
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Fun iPad Apps and a warning

Computing

My aunt gave her sister (my mom) an iPad as a gift and while Laura and I are visiting my parents, “the pad” has turned into quite a hit for all of us. Some of the games that can be had for free or just a few bucks have kept my simple-minded brain occupied for hours. If you have or are getting an iPad soon, take note of some apps I’ve come to love, and heed one warning I’ve come to find.

Flight Control HD. The game is one of the best selling ever for the iPhone, and it’s even better on the iPad. At five bucks, it’s worth every penny as you play air traffic controller to guide planes safely to the runway. Don’t let the planes collide! As the game progresses, more and more planes enter the screen and it’s as addictive as caffeine. Choose several different airfields to work and even play with multiple players.
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Persistent Patience Pays

Faith, Vacation

God was quite a blessing today to both Laura and me as we started day one of our vacation celebrating our fourth anniversary and Independence day with my family in Texas. Believe it or not, we’re not made of money, and thanks to the Total Money Makeover, most all the money we do have is allocated to things of a much higher priority than vacations and travel. Through my work, we can buy standby tickets for about 40 dollars each way to Texas, but with today’s airlines packing each flight as full as possible, there aren’t many empty seats left for us to take. We also hate to pay full fare for flights to Texas when American has five daily flights from Columbus, so if we don’t make one, we can usually make the next one. It’s just hard to rationalize (Dave Ramsey style) paying for full fare tickets when we get very affordable standby tickets.

That is, until today. Continue reading Persistent Patience Pays →

More Apple updates

Computing

Apple has just updated both their MacMini and Safari to the latest additions this week. The new MacMini looks sleek while Safari 5 provides us with some great new features to help surf and ingest the web.

First, the MacMini is a great way to start with the switch to Mac, because it’s the whole Mac experience in just a little box. Most people already have a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, so all they have to add is the MacMini to open themselves to the Mac World. With options up to 8 Gig of ram, it can be quite the performer too. The best way to upgrade or buy and Mac is to buy it stripped down with the smallest hard drive and least amount of Ram from Apple, and then head over to MacSales.com and buy a new, larger hard drive and more ram, for much less than what Apple will sell it. It’s usually simple to pop out the old stuff and pop in the new stuff. Speaking of that, the new MacMini makes changing out the memory a snap. A large rubberized pad that it sits on can be easily removed to expose the insides of the computer to change out things like the memory. What a great idea!
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A new sheriff in town

Computing, Internet

Apple just unveiled their latest phone: iPhone 4.

The best features, in my opinion, are the forward facing camera for video chats, two microphones to help cancel out unwanted background noise, and the new high resolution screen. Check out all the amazing features of the new Standard for phones here, or click on the iPhone above. Laura and I may just have to spring for this puppy because it looks awesome. The phone I currently have doesn’t even have a camera, and I’ve always had the cheapest of the cheap when it comes to mobile phones. I think it’s time I step up. You should too.

Available June 24th (my anniversary) and pre-orders are taken starting June 15th. Enjoy!

TobyLaura.com