Zack Rippy

It’s awesome to wake up and find your checking account tens of thousands of dollars in the negative.

Thanks to an error at a processing facility, debits against accounts at RBC Centura were multiplied by a factor of 256! So, if you bought a $10 lunch, your account was charged $2,560.

Needless to say, I was shocked when I woke up this morning.

Apparently, other banks were affected as well. Some people are reporting the problem has been resolved, but others are still way in the red (including ours).

Friday the 13th, indeed!

Taylor started attending “school” this week with a friend from church. She’s a teacher who has a room in her home setup just like a classroom, with a chalkboard, school supplies, wall decorations, etc. She is teaching Taylor and her grandson to get them prepared for kindergarten in the fall.

When Taylor arrived for class yesterday, there were numerous words on the chalkboard. She informed them that they would be reading those words today.

Taylor raised his hand and said, “I have a problem.” “What’s that?” she asked. “I can’t read.”

I love it. It’s still hard to believe that he’ll be in kindergarten in the fall. Seems like only yesterday that he took our lives by storm!

Charlotte is a little lady at the moment, with all the personality and spunk you can imagine. She is talking non-stop now and loves to pose for the camera.

This was a nice surprise. I’ve collected Superman stuff since I was a kid. I recently went and got all my old boxes from my parents’ house. I came back from work a few days later to find this in our newly finished bonus room upstairs:

Marie had taken some of my old stuff and set it out on display. It looks better than I ever would have imagined. She rocks.

Finally, here’s a couple quick shots:

Life is good.

We decided to start putting the kids to bed a little earlier starting tonight – mostly due to the fact that Taylor will be going to school two days a week starting tomorrow with a teacher friend of ours. This is to get him ready for kindergarten in the fall.

So, it’s 8:27 and both the kids are sound asleep! Has this ever happened before?

Let me give you a hint…

No.

Watch this until the very end or you’ll miss the best part.

Awesome.

As of noon today, I am officially “Mr. Mom” until Sunday. Marie is out of town helping a friend, so it’s Daddy and the kids. Well, not exactly. My mom will be keeping the kids during the day tomorrow and Friday while I am at work and hanging out.

I’ll be watching this tonight:

It’s a classic that I haven’t seen in years. Check it out if you want some awesome vintage 80’s humor from Michael Keaton. Great stuff!

Hopefully, we’ll have fun and we won’t burn down the house!

I have been the owner of the Blackberry Storm for a week now. My impressions? I love it.

I must admit though that for all my love of gadgetry, this is my first “smart” phone, so much of my adoration might be due to that. Regardless, here are some thoughts.

Having instant access to email is wonderful. I host my email via Google Apps. IMAP + Gmail (Google Apples) = Amazing. It’s fantastic. I also have Google’s mobile Gmail client as well. It gives more of a true Gmail interface with Searching / Starring, etc but it is slower to update. The Blackberry client updates continuously, while the Google client polls every fifteen minutes. I’ve heard they will make this configurable in the next version, but I can’t find any concrete documentation saying so. If they do, it will literally be perfect.

The web browser works surprisingly well. On the Verizon network, I can browse the internet quite nicely.

I also enjoy the click screen very much. I was unconvinced of this feature when I first read about it, but it is actually implemented quite intuitively, and it works well for me.

The Blackberry Messenger is great for instant communication with other Blackberry users. I am also using the Google Talk client.

I have been pleasantly surprised by the quality from the camera – both for still pictures and video. The touch/drag zoom works very well.

Copying and pasting comes in quite handy, too.

I’ve also loaded a few applications:

The aforementioned Gmail Mobile Client – I already described it, but it functions as you’d expect – very well.

Google Talk – Instant access to other Google Talk users.

Google Sync – Flawlessly synchronizes with my Google Calendars and Contacts.

Opera Mini – This is a terrific little mobile browser. It is not optimized / fully compatible with the Storm yet, so there are a couple quirks, but it is more than useable.

Twitterberry – I’m not a hardcore “Twitterer,” but it is fun and Twitterberry is an excellent client that doesn’t rely on SMS messages.

Weatherbug – Don’t know why – maybe I am a weather nerd. I enjoy having the world’s weather forecast in my pocket.

YouVersion – YouVersion is a terrific Bible application from the LifeChurch team. It is not quite ready for primetime on the Storm though. It is useable for reading and searching though, which is what I guess is the main point. Unfortunately, it cannot download translations to my Storm right now, which would be very nice for the odd occasion when I don’t have a reliable signal. I’m sure it will be though. I’ve played with it on my dad’s iPhone and it works perfectly.

Youtube Mobile Client – It’s just what it sounds like. It let’s you kill countless hours on Youtube.

Flycast – Oh yeah, THIS is nice. In an office where radios aren’t allowed and streaming audio is blocked, this is a wonderful addition to my workday. Flycast allows you to stream radio via the Storm.

To sum up, I love my Storm and in less than a week, have become completely dependant on / addicted to it. I’ll never go back to a “normal” cell phone again!

Apple announced yesterday that they are making the majority of their vast music library available DRM-free via the iTunes Store. What this means is that you will be able to play files you download on other non-Apple (iPod) players and software. The tracks will cost a bit more – $1.29 versus $0.99 – and they are not M3P3 files, but instead, Apple’s preferred AAC format. The AAC files, while unencrypted – will still contain your personal information, so beware of that. You can also upgrade your already-purchased tracks for $0.30 per song. The other benefit is that the unencrypted files are encoded at twice the bitrate (256kbps vs. 128), for noticeably higher audio quality. They are als going to a mult-tiered pricing model, with tracks available for $0.69, $0.99 and $1.29. The prices will be determined by the record labels, which is a huge change of course for Apple.

It’s more personal preference, but I will stick with Amazon’s MP3 Store for now. MP3’s are ubiquitous; everything plays them. I also prefer not to have my name and email address embedded within my audio files. I have bought only two items from iTunes in the past year – a Ray LaMontagne exclusive live EP and a Dave Matthews Band 2008 Live Sampler (which was actually free with concert tickets). I’ll gladly pay a couple dollars to upgrade those – the audio on the encrypted files really is noticeably degraded and it will be nice to get higher-quality versions of them.

This has to be seen as a shot back at Amazon, whose MP3 store seems to be gaining popularity, though it is still a distant second to the iTunes Store. I’m thrilled by yesterday’s annoucenment. The current DRM model needs to be kicked to the curb and I will welcome any step in that direction.