Ryan, Debi, and Toren Cragun's Blog

I posted before about our new phones – HTC Droid Incredibles.  Perhaps I’m just trying to justify the purchase to myself, but I’ve figured out a few new tricks with the phone that are worth mentioning.

Perhaps the coolest feature I’ve found recently, which really makes this a smart phone, is what it does when you connect it via the USB cable to a computer.  By default, the phone just starts charging.  But it also includes in the message bar a note saying that you can change the mode.  What does that mean, you ask?  Well, it gives you several optional things you can do.  One, of course, is just to charge the phone via USB.  Another is to sync your contacts and calendar (I’m guessing that is probably Windows only, but I don’t know – I use the Gmail contacts and Google Calendar, which are always synced, so I didn’t bother).

Another option is to have your phone appear as an external hard drive to your computer.  That’s the option I went with as I wanted to drag some music onto my phone.  I was thinking it was going to be a pain in the butt to get the music on – nope.  Once I clicked that option, Ubuntu (my Linux operating system), instantly recognized two external hard drives – the built in 8gb of memory for the phone and the 16gb of additional memory I have since added.  I then created a folder on the SD card called “Music” and drug about 4gb of music into the folder.  When I finished, I opened up the “Music” app and it started scanning my memory for music.  It took a bit of time, but it eventually indexed all 4gb of music I added (without me having to tell it where to find it), and organized it all by Artist/Genre/Album/Song, etc.  Slick!

Another option that is available when you plug the phone into your computer is to tether your computer to your phone.  For those not in the know, what that means is that you can have your computer use your 3G wireless internet access through your phone.  So, say, you’re in the airport and you want to do some surfing but you’re not in a cool airport like TPA (Tampa’s airport rocks – free wi-fi) and you don’t want to shell out $XX.XX for 10 minutes of internet browsing.  No problem.  Plug your phone into your computer via the USB cable, select the tether option, and surf away.  I haven’t tried it, but my guess is that it would work just fine.  How fracking cool is that!?!  Eat that iPhone users!

Other stuff I’ve tried on the phone lately…  I’ve taken a few pictures.  The picture quality is okay, not great, but uploading and sharing the photos is a snap.  Click on any photo and say “share” and it gives you a list of options, including emailing it to yourself.  The same goes for videos.  The last few videos I’ve posted have all been taken on my HTC Droid Incredible as it was the closest video camera when I saw Toren doing something cool.  The best part about sharing the videos and pictures: you can choose multiple videos/pics and share them at the same time.  I did have some hiccups trying to upload multiple videos to youtube – it stopped after each video and needed me to re-prompt it.  But they all still uploaded fine.

I’m also not sure if I’ve raved enough about the Google Navigation feature and its tie-in to Google Maps.  Search for something in Google Maps, find it, click on it and then you have every option you could want: contact information, directions, navigation, web pages, etc.  And the transition from maps to navigation is seamless.

Finally, the multi-tasking feature is really impressive.  I can listen to podcasts while letting Google Navigation give me directions.  The only problem: Once the Google Navigation voice kicks in to give me directions, it doesn’t pause the music/podcast, it just mutes the other and takes precedent.  That it takes precedent is great, but adding a quick pause so I don’t miss anything in my other audio program would be a nice feature.

Okay, enough raving about my new phone…  I’ll probably have more to say on this, but that’s plenty for now.

Toren can walk!  I mentioned a few posts back that he was walking between Debi and I.  Now, he’s just simply walking:

The video above shows a bunch of his moves. He walks, sits, stands, crawls, cruises, bends over to pick stuff up, etc. He’s getting mobile!!!

Apparently he walks quite a bit at daycare by himself, which makes sense since no one there will hold his hand while he walks, which we’ve been doing for months. One day this past week Debi and I were in the kitchen preparing breakfast while Toren played with the door of the dishwasher. I stepped out of the kitchen for just a second, and when I came back, he had walked over to the refrigerator to play with his alphabet magnets. As I walked back into the kitchen and saw him at the refrigerator instead of where I left him, by the dishwasher, he looked up at me and smiled.

So, he’s still in the “Are you proud of me for walking?” stage, but he’s now walking pretty well. He still stumbles and falls on occasion, but he can pick himself right back up and try again. He still, occasionally, wants to hold one of our hands, but he’s doing that less and less.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been talking with Leonora LaPeter Anton at the St. Petersburg Times about the pill mill/pain management center that was behind my house.  Her story hit the paper today: Pill mill’s demise brings relief to neighbors.  Here’s the picture from that story:

me in the St. Petersburg Times

Apparently my picture is in the print edition as well.

Oh, and Channel 8 here locally interviewed me for a brief story as well that aired on the 24th.

I’ve had several people jokingly tell me I’m famous from all the attention this has been getting.  I blew it off as I highly doubted anyone would really think of me as famous.  Friday kind of drove home how widespread the attention has been.  I was walking Toren over to a nearby Chinese restaurant to pick up some take out food for dinner.  As I was leaving the restaurant, a car pulled up to a stop sign as we were crossing the street.  The driver was probably in his late 60s.  He rolled down his window and said, “Hey, are you the guy from TV?”  Stunned, I sputtered out, “Yeah, I guess.”  He then said, “That is so awesome!  I’m so happy you did what you did.  I live around here and hated that place.  I’m so glad to see they’re gone.  Thank you!  Oh, and your son is really adorable.”  He then drove off.

I’ve had a number of people from work mention they saw the news coverage and even had a nurse at the ENT place where I get my allergy shots thank me for standing up to this place.  Apparently people do watch the news!

Despite the attention, I’m reminded of a line from one of my favorite documentaries, The UP Series, which is a multi-part documentary that tracks the lives of 10 or so British kids, starting when they were 7 in 1964, all the way through today.  In that series, one of the people who is tracked becomes a college professor.  And in one of the later episodes, he says, “My goal in life is to be more famous for my research than for being in this film.”  That’s exactly how I feel about this pain management clinic.  Yes, I’m glad it was shut down, but I never wanted that to be my claim to fame.  Hopefully my research will eventually get more press than this.

We’re cheap.  Ergo, Debi cuts my hair.  She does a good job cutting it, but it’s also because she doesn’t charge me anything. ;)

Now enter Toren…  I needed a haircut.  Toren needed a nap, but didn’t want to take one.  So, we decided that Debi would cut my hair and Toren could sit near by playing with toys.  Um, yeah…

Toren vs. the hair

Note to self: Toren will play with hair and that hair will get everywhere!

We stopped by Wal-Mart to pick up a prescription for Debi.  While we waited for them to fill the prescription, we did a little shopping.  I’ve been digging popsicles lately (it’s 90 degrees here and they are relatively low calorie), so I picked some up.  While we waited for Debi to pay for her prescription, Toren was getting antsy.  That’s when I had a brilliant idea:

We were waiting near the exit door, so everyone leaving could see Toren eating his popsicle. Most people thought it was funny. A few gave me dirty looks. Toren… Well, he loved it!  He ate the whole thing!

Oh, and I shot this on my new Droid Incredible.  It’s not hi-def, but the video quality is pretty good.