To Me from Me

I decided to get myself a present for Christmas. After much mental flirtation with replacing our existing family PC with a Dell, to save a couple bucks, I ultimately decided to go with the 20" 2.4 GHz iMac. I submitted my order through the Apple online store just moments ago, no buyer's remorse yet.

Ultimately, it needed to be done. The ol' PowerBook G4 has been showing its age under the hood. New apps were slow, other apps not supported on a G4 PPC chipset, the screen was small (12 inches). So this just felt good.

My wife and two kids use the family computer a lot, so they're set in their ways. Switching over to a Dell might have gotten me killed. The schools use OS X for computer studies at the boys' elementary school, so the transition to home-use is seamless.

It's also nice to just use the thing and not worry about drivers, DLL's, security, viruses, all the stuff that we worry about at work. So its a good choice for the family. No regrets.

Wow, come to think of it, 2007 has been a total technology year:
- the HD PVR cable terminal
- the LCD HDTV
- the iMac
- iPod Touch
- a new DV camcorder
- a new digital camera
- XBox 360

Sheesh! What's going to be the theme for 2008?

Disney Hangover

Well, so much for that trip. Two weeks away and we're back, we now have the ol' vacation hangover.

The second week of our trip was all Disney. We stayed at the Beach Club resort, which was mere steps away from Epcot. It was totally bizarre to just step out your door and be at the park. Last year, we packed up the van, packed a few backpacks, drove to DisneyWorld, parked, took the transport to the park entrance, etc, etc.... This was totally the way to do it.

The little varmints had a really good time at Disney. The older boy hit the roller coasters that he didn't want to go on last year: Expedition Everest, Rockin' Roller Coaster. And the little feller went on some rides too.


Before we left, we watched the Toy Story movies. He got totally into Buzz Lightyear. As luck would have it, he got to meet him and shoot some targets at Buzz Lightyear's Spin Zone. You basically go in and try to shoot these targets.


All the parks were all done up for Christmas (sorry, "Holiday Season"). Something very weird about sweltering 27 degree humid heat with Christmas music in the background. All the parades were Christmas themed, and they even did a cool effect on Cinderella's Castle:


Through some selective lighting, they added some "icicles" to the Castle. This also added a cool effect to the fireworks show. Right now our heads are spinning, we did so much. This is the hangover part. After awhile, we'll be able to look back and recall what we did.

But now I'm going to work on the backyard rink. But its got to get a lot colder than this!

Universal Studios .... check!

We had to go back to do Universal Studios, and once again it was clear of crowds. There were very few people around. When we were at Islands of Adventure, we weren't sure if it was a fluke, the fact that there was hardly anyone there. No fluke.

Where is everybody?

So, seeing as how there were few people there, the most we waited at any one line was under 10 minutes. We pretty much had the park done by 4:00, we got there at 10:00. Some of the highlights were Shrek 4-D, Return of the Mummy, and Men in Black, those were fun. There were more rides, but they weren't as fun.

The kids section was a pleasant surprise once again. The little guy had a "Picnic in the Park with Barney". That pretty much made the day for him.


Once you've been to the Universal Studio Parks, you pretty much feel like you've "done it", there's no need to return in the near future. But, they do have big plans for 2008/09, so let's see if its enough to make us want to come back.

Honestly, we wanted to treat Universal as a taster for Disney, which starts tomorrow for us. Tomorrow morning we're going to check out of our condo here and move over to our next condo at Disney Beach Club.

The day before yesterday, we checked out "Downtown Disney". The highlight for us had to have been Legoland.
Legoland had quite a few massive statues, all constructed with Lego. We thought this was kind of cool. We ended up buying a big slurpee cup full of Lego to take home. Lego by the scoopfull, what a concept!

The little feller also got to meet his favourite Disney character at Downtown Disney:

The weather cooled off for us on this day, somewhere in the low 20's. But, its going to get right back up there into the high 20's for the rest of the week, so there'll have to be lots of pool time.

We also tried an outlet mall today, pretty massive. But no real screaming deals. I remember a day when a U.S. outlet mall caused me to drool and froth at the mouth. But the prices just don't rattle my chain anymore. Maybe the on-par dollar.

In the meantime, our attention shifts full time to Disney.....

Visitors From Virginia

As alluded to earlier, Air Canada did start our trip out on a sour note. The flight to Calgary was fine, we had the on-demand video thing going on. Great for the kids. But the Toronto Airport hotel was small, and Pearson airport is all about business. Not really a place to frolic and kill time like Calgary International.

Once we got to our Condo, things were great! We're feeling the love from our condo. I snapped off some pics...

Our condo complex turned out to be really really cool. When we approached the check in area, our two boys were intercepted by a couple of Kids Coordinators. They promptly whipped them up some balloon animals, they played Nintendo, and they were invited to a kid's pool party. We were blown away. Everyone's so friendly.

So we settled in. Monday was Universal Studios Islands of Adventure day....

There was a huge chunk of the park dedicated to Jurassic Park. We went on the River Ride, some dinosaurs roared at us. It was a good time in the Jurassic Park area.
A pleasant surprise was the Dr Seuss area. The four year-old got all the rides he could handle. So the rest of us tagged along and really enjoyed it too. We thought that this area would be a couple of rides, and that was it. But noooooooo. She's a serious part of the park. A really cool thing is that it was set up with Christmas decorations. Nice touch.
So, one thing that surprised us was the crowds, or lack thereof. Above is a picture of Islands of Adventure's most prominent eatery. No one was there. The time was 11:45am. Pretty much lunch time. Very quiet. The park was pretty empty, so we had our run of the place. We walked on to the Hulk roller coaster, the Dueling Dragons roller coaster, Spiderman, and all the rest of the rides. No waits!!

There was one casualty. On the van-ride home, the one fallen little soldier....

We need to go back to Universal Studios to go to the movie studios part. That's next. But we may have to hang out at the pool tomorrow for a break. You have to pace yourself, right?

Plus, the heat's a killer. 27 degrees with monster humidity today.

Our rental minivan has Virginia plates for some reason. So, I guess we're Virginians for a week. Its a useful way to identify our white minivan in a sea of white minivans in the parking lots around here.