We've arrived!

After a 10 hour flight to Amsterdam, a quick connection, then a 90 minute flight into a very windy Vienna, we have arrived! We were able to catch some sleep on the plane, so it almost feels like we're on local time. The hotel is beautiful, it feels like we're staying in a palace. Our room has high ceilings, a beautiful chandelier, and two balconies that overlook the Kärntner Straße pedestrian mall. Serendipitously, it is also less than half a block from the school that Carrie studied at when she was here in college. More posts and pictures to come later...

And we're off!

It's an overcast day at SFO, but at least the torrential rains have
ceased for the day for us to get an on time departure. The picture is
of out baby blue KLM Boeing 777 that will whisk us away to Amsterdam,
final destination: Vienna.

European Babymoon

Tomorrow we jump on a plane to fly to Europe, where we'll be spending two weeks in Austria and the Czech Republic. Carrie had spent a semester studying abroad in Vienna and has always wanted to go back, so John surprised her with a babymoon for her 30th birthday! This is our itinerary:

- Saturday 01/26/08: Travel from San Francisco to Vienna, via Amsterdam on KLM
- Sunday 01/27/08: Arrive in Vienna, stay at the Ambassador Hotel
- Friday 02/01/08: Travel to Prague, stay at the Hotel Josef
- Monday 02/04/08: Travel to Salzburg, stay at the Hotel Wolf-Dietrich
- Thursday 02/07/08: Travel to Vienna, stay at the Hotel Sacher Wien
- Saturday 02/09/08: Travel from Vienna to San Francisco, via Amsterdam on KLM

We're very excited about the trip and will be blogging our way through Europe as internet access allows.

Forster and Kate come visit

Our good friends Brian and Kate came out to California to visit last week, flying on a promotional airfare from Virgin America. John didn't get MLK day off, but it worked out for Brian and Kate because they were able to use the holiday as a travel day and spend some time away from the NYC cold weather. Was great to see our friends, we spent a day wine tasting (picture here at Testarossa), went to see the Wings/Sharks game, and spent some time sightseeing up in San Francisco.

Amanda and Dan get married in Austin

We just got back from a fun filled weekend down in Austin, Texas, to see our friend Amanda get married. A good sized crew from the Bay Area travelled down for the event. The wedding was beautiful, the reception was an awesome party...we would expect nothing less from Amanda. We also got a chance to have some fun in and around the Austin area. 6th street, the UT campus, Jimmy John's, the Oasis at Lake Travis... Good times! Pictures from the weekend are posted up at Picasa.

It's a Girl!

Today was Carrie's four-month ultrasound, and thankfully the baby cooperated with the machine. Check out the video for a clip from the ultrasound, the pink or blue check is at 1:30. We are very excited for baby "Cortana". We hear the four nieces are thinking about what they're going to pass down. John is starting to shop for shotguns. Ultrasound pictures are posted up at Picasa.

Fischer Kehua Backcountry Freestyle Powder Skis

Details: 177cm, radii 20.0, sidecut 127/92/115mm, cut inlay base, sandwich construction, twin twip
Average retail price: $750
Conditions: Heavenly (Lake Tahoe), 20-30F, sunny, 20 inches of fresh powder in 24 hours.
Terrain: Expert out of bounds deep powder stash, groomed intermediate trails, advanced moguls with moderate powder coverage and ice interspersed, uneven chop on intermediate transitional merges
Review: As with many of the freestyle skis, this one's graphics were clean, but kind of boring. Obviously inspired by Pacific island culture, the tattoo art feels a little out of place on a ski, but whatever. I found it especially curious that it's such a *white* ski, which makes it very difficult to find in powder if you ever lose it. Performance-wise, these skis are a ton of fun, and were surprisingly much more versatile than I expected. They did a very good job at floating on top of the powder, but were also extremely stable at speed on conduroy, responsive and quick in the mogul fields, and calmly predictable through uneven chop. The only place they may have slightly faltered was in the really deep, heavy powder, where they produce a "bounce" effect. As the skis float you over the snow, they kind of bounce you out, forcing you into a turn, or a weird seasick feeling if you want to straightline. This is probably a good thing when carving long lines of s-turns, but is pretty brutal on the quads if you don't to turn as much, or want to try and stop for a break. Overall powder performance not quite as good as the Volkl Gotomas.
Score (scale of 1-3): 3 - Loved them, really versatile, would probably prefer to buy the Gotomas instead though.

Skiing in Tahoe

Is it coincidence, or an indicator of great power? Both last season and this season, the first time that John went up to Tahoe, he was met with an epic snowstorm. The entire Wei family congregated in Tahoe this holiday season for a few days of skiing which happened to coincide with over 20" of fresh powder...the first major snowstorm this season. We all had a great time either skiing Heavenly and carving first tracks, or cruising through Heavenly Village and checking out the great shopping.

A bun in the oven

Somebody mentioned the other day that John had a twinkle in his eye. lol. Our big announcement for the year is that Carrie's pregnant! The bundle of joy is due on June 18, 2008. That's a Gemini, year of the Rat, for those who are counting. Twins do run in the family, but the ultrasound is only showing one for now. :) We find out pink or blue next month, and we'll keep everybody posted on progress here.

Sloane playing soccer

As many people close to us know, sometimes this blog is just a forum for John to show off us sick photography skillz. Occasionally, this also intersects with an actual event or purpose for the pictures. A couple weeks back, our niece Sloane had a playoff game for her soccer team, and we were there to watch the game, cheer her on, and get some great pictures. Sloane is the goalie and had a bunch of really great stops. The full photo album is here: Sloane Playoff Soccer

Happy Halloween!

Halloween is John's favorite holiday of the year, and this year we had a little party at the house, decorated, and gave out lots of candy. We are slowly establishing ourselves as the "cool" house to trick-or-treat at. This is the third year that we've given out full size candy (not the "fun size")...peanut M&Ms, Fun Dip, Starburst and Nerds. We also setup the projector to display out the front window, which brought a lot of visitors to figure out how it was working. As per tradition for our holiday party, we had "scary spaghetti" and then some awesome chocolate fondue for dessert. Carrie's dressed as a bunny, John (if it's not obvious) is dressed as a guy riding on Frankenstein's shoulders.

Scuba Diving in Cozumel

Still catching up on blog posts. Back in October, we had a chance to getaway to Cozumel, Mexico, to do some relaxing and scuba diving. Cozumel is perhaps North America's most famous dive spot, home to the world's second largest reef system (next to the Great Barrier Reef). They have some unique wildlife, but are most known for their coral formations, many of which are like tunnels that you can swim through. Our good friends Julie and Pete met us there for the week, and all had a great time diving and soaking up the pleasures at the fancy all-inclusive resort. Check out the entire photo album here: Cozumel Pics

John's First Published Photograph

If you're at Border's or Barnes and Noble this month, look in the Lifestyle section of the magazine rack for a copy of eldr magazine. John has a photo of his friend, Peter Chang, published on the contributors page (page 8). This marks John first photograph ever published and credited, in a major (relatively) publication nevertheless! The magazine itself is a little bizarre (Celebrate Aging!), but the honor is nonetheless exciting. Peter and John were both on the last trip to China, and the picture is one that John took of Peter at an old fort along the Great Wall. Peter is a professional photographer, whose work is featured in this month's issue of eldr, and asked John for the original image to use as his profile picture.

John's Birthday Tailgate

We have season tickets for the 49ers, so we spend many of our fall Sundays at Candlestick Park. John's birthday fell on a home game this year, so Carrie threw a huge birthday tailgate to celebrate. Was great to hang out with a bunch of our friends, and there was a ridiculous amount of delicious food. The game kind of fell flat, but at least the 49ers stayed close for the entire game!

Kyle and Tina's Wedding

Our friends Kyle and Tina got married at the end of September and John got to be in the wedding party. We had a very relaxing and enjoyable weekend down in SoCal. Managed to not play horribly at the pre-wedding golf outing. The wedding was beautiful, and Kyle and Tina planned some fun things for the reception that were a little different. Good times.

Danny's Baptism

Our very good friends, Julie and Dave, had their son Danny baptised back in September. Was a very nice day, Danny was a good boy the whole time and really enjoyed getting dunked. Carrie is the godmother and Julie's brother Michael is the godfather. I mainly just wanted to show off my mad photography skillz.

Catching up...Labor Day

We've been away from the blog for quite a while, mainly because we haven't had that many grand adventures. We have been having fun though... Over Labor Day, the Polhemus clan came down for a barbeque. The nieces always have fun playing with each other. The rest of the pictures are posted to Picasa.

Campbell Farmer's Market

We go to the Campbell Farmer's Market almost every Sunday, as it's one of the best farmer's markets in the area, and it runs year round. There's a Russian guy with a crepe stand who makes the most amazing crepes...light batter, spinach, feta, cheddar, tomatoes, onion, sauteed mushrooms, lemon juice, yum! At any rate, this little girl was standing in front of me in line waiting to get a crepe yesterday. The technology elite just get younger and younger... (No, that's not my iPhone...)

Polysomnography Sleep Staging

As anybody who has ever shared a room (or a cabin for that matter) with me, you know that I've got some snoring issues. So after years of sounding like "trucks downshifting on the freeway", my doc decided that it might be a good idea to get tested for sleep apnea, a sleep condition that could potentially be fatal in rare cases. Everybody cautioned me about the sleep study and gave very precise descriptions of how much stuff would be hooked up...mental note: when people overly caution and repeatedly ask, "do you know what to expect?" you may want to be somewhat more tentative. It wouldn't have changed much I guess, I just didn't totally realize how ridiculously I'd be wired up. Needless to say, I didn't sleep much. But hopefully they got some good data...

Shiny new iPhone

John is the proud owner of a shiny new iPhone. And not just because of the "hype." Anybody who knows my cell phone usage will attest to the fact that I've always chosen practical phones that delivered the best solution and value, and that I've always kept my phones until they fell apart. I passed on the RAZR because it didn't add any new functionality (just smaller form factor), and passed on the Treo and Blackberry smartphones because I have not had a pressing need for slow and flaky internet access when Google SMS has served all my mobile information needs just fine. However, since AT&T and Cingular merged about 2 years ago, I've been shopping for a new phone because all 4 phones on our family cell phone plan are using old SIM cards on the legacy network. We can't get many AT&T/Cingular features until we upgrade to new SIM cards on the new network, so I've been waiting 2 years for a good time to upgrade.

The iPhone, is the phone I've been waiting 10 years for. All other phones on the market suffer from, in my opinion, an engineering atrocity...they all have keypads. Keypads, in general, are useless. Phones are primarily used for making and receiving phone calls, and with the advent of cell phones and built-in address books, almost nobody actually dials phone numbers anymore. How many of your friends and families' phone numbers do you remember by heart? Probably only a handful, because you call everybody from the address book. Therefore the keypad is just wasted space when it could be a soft-keyboard only when you need to call a number not already stored. Wasted keypad space means all other phones on the market are either twice as thick, twice as long, twice as heavy, or have a screen half as big as it could be, depending on what your priorities are. The iPhone is the first phone in the US market that does an acceptable job at eliminating the wasted keypad. And contrary to reports that the soft keypad is wonky, it actually works pretty well, and gets easier as you use it more. I certainly don't find it any harder than Carrie's Blackberry, the keys are actually bigger. If they're too small, you can flip the screen, and the keys get twice as big (almost full size)! Thanks to no keypad, it's very compact. It's as long as my old Motorola V551, as thin as Carrie's Motorola RAZR, and less wide than a Blackberry. There's been plenty published about people's thoughts. Here's some of my own thoughts from a real-life tech person that you all know:

- Multi-touch, multi-orientation screen: Revolutionary interface makes navigation a pleasure. "Flicking" is very intuitive for scrolling, and squeezing and stretching to zoom makes a much larger effective screen area that's easy to move around. Combined with the screen that automatically switches between portrait and landscape when you flip it, makes the photo browsing application the best I've ever seen or used (and I've used them all).
- Cell phone: Best cell phone I've ever had. Super complete and easy to navigate addressbook (includes all details from Outlook Contacts, including notes and birthdays). Visual voicemail is revolutionary (pick and listen to voicemails like you read your email). SMS texting interface is revolutionary (displays like an IM chat window, so you can follow the whole thread). Touch screen interface makes it trivial to conference call, swap calls, un-conference, check menus, use speakerphone, all in-call. A counterpoint, however, is that AT&T still has its head up its butt. It took me a full week to get my phone (despite promises of 1-2 business days). And it took over 3 hours and 5 agents over the span of 3 days to get the phone activated, working correctly, and the rate plan set up properly.
- iPod: Eliminates the need to carry my iPod-mini. Apple is right that it's the best iPod they've ever made. Works iPod functionality like any other iPod, except that you can now scroll through your albums by album art like in iTunes, very pretty. Perfectly integrated with the phone...songs fade out when a call comes in, the included headphones even have a built-in mike to answer the call...music comes back on when you hang up. It uses the same iPod interface as all the other ones, so the docking station, car chargers, USB cables I have now are all still useful.
- Portable video: Eliminates the need to carry my Creative Zen Vision M (a video iPod like hard-drive based video player). With 8GB of storage space, I have enough room to carry a dozen full-length DVDs with me to watch on the airplane. The beautiful 3.5" 16:9 320x480 screen is more than big enough to enjoy movies on the go, and "airplane mode" allows you to turn off the radio devices to watch on the plane. Battery life is up to 7 hours when watching a movie, so plenty of time to be entertained.
- PDA: Eliminates the need to carry my Palm Pilot. With auto sync'ing to Outlook Contacts and Calendar, I have all my business information available at all times. The Contacts sync'ing is impeccable, though I do wish I had some more control over the sync. It currently pulls all your contacts from Outlook, I'd like to filter it by Category (personal, business, etc.) Also, to be fair, I haven't gotten the calendar sync to work correctly yet. iTunes (the way you sync everything) currently does not handle recurring meetings nicely and bombs. [UPDATED 07/26/07] iTunes now syncs the calendar correctly. In response to numerous support calls, Apple posted several troubleshooting steps, a re-install of iTunes fixed it for me. One hopes a fix for this is coming. iTunes has been smart enough to realize that I only want Contacts and Calendar from my work laptop, and that I only want music, photos and video from my personal desktop.
- Web device: It's the only smartphone with a full-featured web browser, so you can read webpages as they are designed, not just the watered-down mobile sites. And it has POP3, IMAP and Exchange access to hook into mail systems. I use gmail, so it hooks up to that decently, albeit slightly wonky, because gmail isn't a traditional mail service. I don't need my work email, so I haven't tried that yet. Web browsing over the cellular EDGE network is adequate, though painfully slow. But the iPhone hooks into Wi-Fi networks as well (unlike most smartphones), which speeds it up exponentially. There isn't a chat application though, which frankly, sucks. It's a big gap in the device functionality to not hook into AIM, Yahoo IM, or MSN messenger. Not a deal breaker since the SMS interface is so good (and 200 messages/month are free), but not real super. The SMS interface displays text messages like an IM window, which makes it much easier to track a conversation. Currently though, the iPhone does not support MMS. Which means no sending and receiving picture messages, oddly enough. You can email them back and forth, but the POP3 interface is a bit wonky, and means you can only communicate with email accounts (not most cell phones).
- Customization: There's some interesting glaring omissions in the iPhone's functionality which may be fixed moving forward. Though you can use any photo for contacts and wall paper, the same is not true for ringtones. So far you can only use the built-in ring tones (which all kind of suck), even though you have a whole library of mp3's loaded on the device. Also, there are no 3rd party applications available yet, though Apple has said they plan to open it up. [UPDATED 07/25/07] An application has just been released that converts mp3's to ringtones and lets you push it straight to your iPhone. Trick. It actually works! Also, 3rd party applications are starting to appear...most are enabled via Safari, but at least one legitimate iPhone binary has been published and works. +1 for the iPhone.
- Wow factor: This is, without question, the coolest device on the market. It's cool to look at it, cool to play with, cool to use, and cool to show off. It's public awareness is so pervasive that nobody is ambivalent about it. Every single person is aware of what it is, and either loves it or hates it. Which makes it very exciting to be a part of.
- Price: The iPhone service is just another $20/month for the unlimited data plan (and include 200 SMS messages), which is actually less than most carriers' Blackberry plans for smartphones. The voice service will work with any existing AT&T voiceplan (which I've been a customer of for 8 years). For $599, the hardware price is a little steep for a cell phone. But it integrates a cell phone, an iPod, a Zen, a Palm Pilot, and a web browser all into one. It's really more of an ultra-mobile laptop than a cell phone. And seeing as I haven't bought a new computer in 13 years, this seems like a long overdue purchase.
- Summary: Overall, I'd rate the current iPhone a 8.5/10.0 (UPDATED 07/25/07). It has the potential to reach 9.0/10.0 if it fixes a few things: Outlook Calendaring, IM client, ringtones, 3rd party apps.