The Jeff R Project

So Chris and I are big fans of the CBS comedy The Big Bang Theory with Johnny Galecki and Jim Parsons. I haven’t mentioned it before for some reason, but it’s true. We have seen every episode, we have Seasons one and two on our phones etc. I love being able to say we have 2 seasons of a TV show on our PHONE! 2010 rocks tech geek hard.

I’ve downloaded the theme song from The Big Bang Theory partly because it’s fun, but also because it’s by Barenaked Ladies! There’s way more than the first 30 seconds we hear on the show each week.

The cast is a great ensemble with the aforementioned Parsons and Galecki, joined by Kaley Cuoco (8 Simple Rules), Simon Helberg (Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip) and Kunal Nayyar (um, he’s new). They’ve done some great stunt casting ranging from Summer Glau through Wil Wheaton to Stan Lee.

Stan Lee was the guest star last night making a special appearance at the boy’s favorite comic store. Must be nice to be in L.A.

My favorite part of the show was the beginning when Raj was wearing his Personal Soundtrack Shirt. It was pretty geek-cool and it’s real!

Basically it’s a t-shirt with a speaker in the middle, and a remote control. it comes pre-loaded with a variety of music and sounds, but it also has an SD slot to let you load it with just about any sound or song you can think of!

You really can have your own personal soundtrack to life. Raj plays everything from Darth Vader’s theme to the Jeopardy theme. He also punctuates with a buzzer and the “duh duh” sound from Law & Order! It’s awesome.

If I don’t get one of these for my birthday I’ll just have to find a way to go on with out it.

However, if you want one for yourself, or someone you like, simply click here to buy one from ThinkGeek.com

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Anybody who knows me even a bit knows I’ve got a Starbucks addiction, but I’m trying to kick it.

In Downtown Vancouver, there is a Starbucks location within a few (read 2) blocks of just about everywhere. In the last 3 places I/We have lived, there’s been one within a block. And there is one within a block of my office.

Seriously, I didn’t plan it, but I think Starbucks did.

A few years ago I went to Yuma, Arizona for Christmas to visit my dad and step-mother and was tired most of the time I was there. I came up with my Starbucks Conspiracy Theory. Basically, the reason I was tired wasn’t that I wasn’t drinking coffee but rather, in Vancouver the air is so saturated with caffeine from one coffee shop or another (Starbucks, Blendz, Cafe D’Artigiano, etc) that you live in an artificially caffeinated state whether you like it or not.

So, this past weekend Starbucks finally released a store locator app for the iPhone into the Canadian iTunes store!

For me, it’s not about locating a store in Vancouver, it’s about remembering which stores are good (clean bathrooms, friendly staff) among the 100s there seem to be downtown.

And of course it will come in handy when we’re out of our comfort zone and I need a fix.

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So, this was the second weekend of the Olympics in Vancouver and things have certainly kicked up a notch or two!

Holy cow it’s so busy everywhere. We spent hours standing in line to see some of the Olympic pavillions or “houses” as they’re called.

By and large, they have NOT been worth the time spent in line. Here’s the ones that we saw and a rating…

• Royal Canadian Mint – 25 minutes for the non-medal line up. Time inside 10 minutes. Rating: 5/10
  We saw the $1,000,000 gold coin, and lifted the gold ingot. Whee!
• Maison Du Quebec – 25 minutes for the lineup before they opened. Time inside 2 minutes. Rating: -50 / 10
  Inside was another line to buy food/drink ($10 for a beer) and an empty stage with the promise of “entertainment” coming up soon. Uh – pass.
• Sotchi House – 2 hour lineup before it opened. We left.
• Ontario House – 2 hour lineup. We’ve been to Ontario, nothing they can do to tart it up will make us stand in line.
• Saskatchewan House – 15 minute line up. We could see it from the minute we got there and we saw it behind us as we left.
  Yes, that’s my take on the “My dog ran away 2 days ago and I could still see him” joke.
• Costco House – not an official house. 5 minutes in line, 2 minute wait for fried “pub” food. Failure to see what the fuss is about. Rating: 7/10, because were were hungry.
• Turner-Rose House – No line-up, good company, cheap food, comfortable surroundings and no crowds. We strongly advise you visit this one. Rating: 10/10

  We also recommend our Welcoming Emissary! He’ll make you feel welcome!

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For the non-techies out there, this website or blog runs on the WordPress platform. WordPress is a tool that makes blogging easier by simplifying a lot of the “tech” bits.

That said, I like my “tech” bits, so I dig a little deeper.

I run several (over 10) WordPress blogs, and even started looking at WordPress MU to build communities.

I also started developing plugins, or add-ons, to give it even more functionality. My first attempt was a good idea, poorly implemented, that I haven’t been back to revisit.

Recently, I’ve been working with a commercial or premium plugin with my friend Alex called Standout Comments and it’s nearly ready. We’ve designed it to be an all-in-one comment plugin with lots of great features for your average site owner, but also for Internet Marketers who want “everything”. It’s not perfect, but it’s “good enough” for a beta release.

Alex has lined up Vancouver blogger and big-man-on-campus, John Chow to help us (awesome) and given a couple of people a private beta copy. I’ve installed it on all of my main blogs (including this one) but am looking for more testers.

You can test Standout Comments in one of 2 ways.

1. Leave comments here and/or tweet about posts using the Tweetback URL provided – this is the function I’ve tested least. Tweetbacks should be tracked and show up in comments automatically.
2. Request a beta copy by leaving a comment below. I’ll take a look at your site and make a decision. Ideally you get a bunch of visitors and comments daily to put the plugin through it’s paces.

Beta testers will get free access to the software when it’s launched.

Today is the 5th day of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games. The title alone is a mouthful.

Vancouver is alive with people. It’s pretty crazy how busy things are. Even tiny hole-in-the-wall places that locals avoid are busy with tourists. And of course the popular places are even busier.

Sunday, Chris and I took advantage of the gorgeous weather (Yep, sunny and warm in February) and took in some of the Olympic sites. We’d been out Saturday but other than Robson Square didn’t “do” anything Olympic.

We went down to the jail cauldron to see what all the fuss was about. Wow, did someone screw that up. “Too keep people safe” they erected an 8 foot security fence over 100 feet away from it, completely obscuring the view. People were climbing on concrete crash barriers to get a 1/2 decent photo that didn’t look like it came from Guantanamo Bay.

We tried to visit the Royal Canadian Mint display, but it was closed for a private function, so we hopped on the Canada Line Skytrain and went to Olympic Village with the intention of taking the Olympic Line train to Granville Island. 45 minute line up. No thanks, so we walked the seawall – a much better choice.

Granville Island is known as “Place de Francophonie” or “The fake French area” during the Olympics. Honestly, I wasn’t feeling it. The eastern end of the island is blocked off and there’s a large area devoted to French culture and displays, but they were pretty uninteresting. I hear Quebec House is worse. That’s for next weekend.

We then did get on the Olympic Line train (courtesy of Bombardier) since there was no lineup to get BACK to the Skytrain. Cool. It was a nice ride, but not all that exciting. The Canada Line Skytrain back to downtown was lined up out of Olympic Village station! What!

So we walked over the Cambie Bridge and Chris got some great photos of the athletes village and Sochi House on False Creek.

We actually forgot we couldn’t get home our usual way from the Cambie Bridge and detoured up Beatty Street past BC Place, Alberta House and the Bell Ice Cube (huh?) and a huge crowd of people gathering around that area.

On the way home, we encountered a fleet of Mini’s that we had seen before. Canon has outfitted a fleet of 12+ Mini’s with camera lenses on top, and for some reason they really intrigue Chris and I.

After 4 hours on our feet and moving constantly, we finally got home and crashed. The dog was happy to have us back.

This week, we’re going to try to get out in the evening and enjoy some of the excitement and crazy during the evening. This will be “tricky” with having the dog at work, and the fact that Chris is working at 6:00am during the Olympics.

On the weekend, we’re hoping to make it to even more venues. Canada House, Northern House and a bunch of province ones too. I’d like to visit Sochi House as it’s supposed to be impressive, but Chris is disinterested. Considering the Russians tried to kill him last time he encountered them, I don’t blame him, so I may have to go with someone else. We’ll see.