I love movies.  Netflix has always been our go to service when we want to catch up on new releases.  Netflix has been worth every penny since I started my subscription almost a decade ago.  From bachelor life, to married life in Germany, to a family life here in North Carolina, Netflix has been there for us.  Today, I use it more than ever with the streaming options, but there’s a new player that has gained popularity in recent years. Redbox.

Couldn’t hurt to try, right?

Genius for the iPhone recommended the Redbox app because I downloaded Phone Flicks, a Netflix browsing app.  For kicks, I downloaded it, found the nearest Redbox, and browsed its selection.  The app is SLOW, but nifty because you can reserve movies straight from your phone.

The next time we were at the grocery store, we decided to rent something from it just to say we tried it out.

We rented Made of Honor. Cool premise, poorly written. It’s getting two stars on Netflix.

The next day I try to return it to the same kiosk but unfortunately, it was under some sort of “Inventory Maintenance,” whatever that meant.

How does it make sense to put their machine in maintenance mode RIGHT BEFORE THE MOVIES ARE DUE?!  If the machine is full or broken, then say so (and why you’re at it, pass that information to the iPhone app too!); if your not full, but getting a software update, TAKE MY MOVIE ANYWAY!

If at first you don’t succeed, try a Walmart.

The movie is late by now.  There is another location down the road at the local WalMart.  All I want to do is return the movie and get out.  I get there and a woman is chatting on her phone staring at the screen.  I think she notices me and starts paging though the catalog.  A couple walks up and gets behind me.  The woman is still on her phone but she looks over to notice a line.  “Oh. I’m sorry ya’ll,” she says and continues her conversation on the phone as she finalizes her choice.  At that point I realize why it’s only a dollar – well, two dollars now.

I quietly turn in my movie and head back home.

I’ll stick with the original red: Netflix.

Once I get home, I get on my computer and send RedBox an angry email. This was almost a week ago and I have yet to receive even an acknowledgment mail.  (As I edited this, Thunderbird alerts me to a new email from, you guessed it, Redbox customer care.  More on that in a bit.)  I also run a quick search for “Red Box sucks” and find that the problems I ran into is fairly common.

Long lines, a crappy app, and kiosks that work sporadically? No thanks.

The email I received contained an apology and two free movie rentals.  Even though I really don’t want them, we’ll end up using the codes just because Redbox can be convenient. I explained how crappy their service/application/kiosk was and told them what I ‘m telling you now: Netflix is still my number one.  Once those two codes are used, though, I don’t think we’ll ever go back.

Made this with the iMotion app for the iPhone (currently Free until the 10th!!). I wonder what other shenanigans I can get into with this app… hrm… (Link in case it’s not moving above.) It’s pretty neat, it takes a set number of photos over a set amount of time then stitches them together as an animated GIF. Resolution is obviously lower than the camera’s native resolution, but I
don’t think the file size would be very transportable if it was animated at full resolution. I can also email it to friends as an attachment from within the app. Get it for free while you still can.

I’ve started up my personal journal again.  (Yes, I am writing a diary…)  Only this time, I thought I’d try a virtual journal in the hopes that I would continue writing in it longer than a few months.  I enjoy writing and chronicling my thoughts, but writing in a book never worked out for me.  I would jot down my thoughts and ideas more often if I could write from anywhere and anytime.  What better way to write on the go than with my iPhone?

The first thought I had was to search for some sort of iPhone app that was password protected.  I found a few, some free and some at a small premium.  Writing from the iPhone is convenient when there isn’t a full size keyboard around, but I would rather use a computer when it is available.  So if I was going to buy an app, it would need to sync with some online service or at least sync with my PC.  I couldn’t find any apps that had this functionality so I thought of just using a webapp instead.

Immediately, I found this cool service called Penzu.  It’s a very well thought out service and really simple to use.  It’s completely private and, unlike a public blog, the individual entries don’t have a URL for robots to scan.  Let’s say someone figured out your password, each entrycan be individually locked and would therefore require a second password to view.

It’s also well designed.  When you visit the site you can start writing right away by clicking on the “try it out” link. After you’re done writing, just log in and it will save the entry automatically.  As you’re writing, the text appears on what looks like a sheet of lined paper.  Like I said, really cool site.

Unfortunately, writing on it in Safari on the iPhone is really cumbersome.  I was typing pretty fast and after a while, I had to stop so it would catch up with me.  The site is really good, and adding an iPhone app would make it the best private journaling application I could find.  I ended up not using it because of how the iPhone interacted with it.

This search turned out to be a little more drawn out then I thought it would be.  I thought of  using Evernote or the Notes app, but I thought I would look at Blogger and WordPress first to see if there was a “private” setting.  I created a blog at WordPress.com first and set it to private.  Using the WordPress iPhone app, I was able to log-in to the blog and start writing.  I checked to make sure I couldn’t access the site if I wasn’t logged in and that the RSS feed was not displaying either.  So far, this seems like a pretty good solution.

Evernote could work as well since I have the desktop application and the iPhone application.  It wouldn’t be as  efficient since it’s designed for quick note taking, plus I’m a huge WordPress fan so using the WordPress.com blogs is ideal for me.  Blogger allows for private settings too, but I couldn’t find an iPhone app for it.

I honestly hope that Penzu releases an iPhone app to go with their web application – I’ll switch over if they do. Penzu is designed to be private unlike WordPress which is designed to be public.  Either way, WordPress is a good solution for now and hopefully I’ll keep up with this journal-keeping quest for once.

So I was lucky enough to review Krylon’s new spray-on wood stain for their Save Our Saturdays promo.  The package arrived a couple of weeks ago, but with all the rain it was a wee bit difficult to head outside and use the product like I wanted to. I finally started to paint some boards of wood that will eventually make a bed frame for our guest bed.  Last week, the rain stopped long enough for me to stain the veggy garden that Ciri’s Dad built us.

I was dreading the task of staining the garden because of how awkward it would be to apply the stain. It had been a couple of months since we started using it and the wire fencing would make it difficult to cover all of the wood.  Enter Krylon’s Spray on stain

Armed with a few cans of Rustic Brown stain, my camera, and the baby monitor (Ciri was at a doctor’s appointment), I headed to the yard during Izzy’s afternoon nap.

The can has a rotating nozzle which made it REALLY easy to apply in a vertical or horizontal motion. I started spraying the posts and frames and about twenty minutes later (it would have been less if I didn’t take pictures ), I headed back inside. That’s it. Done.  Awe. Some.

Three hours later Ciri came home and she went to check it out.  Ciri found some wet spots even though the can claims to be “dry to the touch” in fifteen minutes.  It wasn’t dry to the touch, but it was good enough. I should mention that I gave it a heavy coat instead of the light coat that the can says to give.  The spray on stain sounds like it is the perfect solution for projects that should be quick but actually take up a whole weekend.  Considering how long it would have taken to wipe on the stain, drying overnight is no big deal.

The can also says it will cover 25 square feet and I thought one can, maybe two, would be enough.  I ended up using two and a half cans.  After doing my math on the surfaces that I covered, two and a half cans was an accurate number – even with the heavy coat!  It’s a good thing I didn’t use the rest on the bed frame project!

The stain seems durable and strong, but I wouldn’t say it’s the prettiest stain I’ve seen.  I’m under the impression that the best looking stains are wipe-on, and I kind of agree.  On the other hand, for convienience and durability, I’ll stick with Krylon’s spray on stain.  I won’t use it on projects like Ciri’s Coin Display, but it does have it’s place as the quick and easy solution.

Here are some before pictures of the garden:

Fully charged and ready to roll.

How many people, when they first receive their iPhones, completely drain the first charge in mere hours?   *Raises hand*   Ok, so I didn’t drain it completely, but it got pretty close.   Probably because I left the bluetooth on all day.   I’m sure configuring the settings, adding my contacts, playing with all the apps, and listening to an entire podcast didn’t really help either.

Yea, the dang thing finally got delivered today.   I really think FedEx is messed up, though.   A truck came by early in the morning and I thought my phone was on it.   The truck didn’t stop here – it just kept going.   About an hour later, another truck delivered the phone.   Crazy right?   It’s like musical chairs but with FedEx trucks.   I’m still confused why it sat in Raleigh for almost three days, though.   Eh.   All’s well that ends well.

I am really loving this thing.   It’s an amazing little device and it’s so much fun to use.   I downloaded a ton of apps for it while it was charging and updating.   My must haves, so far, are the AllRecipes.com app and the Google app.   There were a few apps that sounded really promising, but ended up being a waste of time.   I found one app that would allow the iPhone to send and receive MMS messages, but you have to pay a monthly fee.   I thought it added the functionality, but it turned out it was an actual service.

Speaking of MMS.   I heard the iPhone didn’t have MMS capabilities and I thought that was a real dumb option to leave out.   I figured Apple would include it on some future software update.   No such luck.   If my friends want to send me pictures or video, they need to send it to my email address.   This can be real annoying, but it’s not that big a deal to me, since I don’t get many MMS’s anyway.

The lack of a video recording option, on the other hand, is pretty darn annoying. I downloaded an app that turns my iPhone into a damn lightsaber, but I can’t record video?!   Double ewe tee eff.   The camera takes some real nice photos, but Apple decided it doesn’t want to support the video feature for now.   Fail.

I tried to connect the iPhone to my old Nokia so I can transfer my contacts.   I found out that the iPhone will not tether to other phones.   This is also slightly annoying, but, again, it doesn’t affect me as much, since I only needed to do it once.

I understand that most, if not all, of my issues can be addressed by jailbreaking the phone.   I initially didn’t want to do that because it sounded like more trouble than it was worth.   I now realize how many issues are fixed by jailbreaking the phone so I think I may do it after all.   An added bonus for jailbreaking the phone is I will have access to the NES emulator app.   How cool is that?!

Jailbroken or not, I love my new phone.   I need to go buy a skin for it so I don’t scratch up the cover.   I already bought some screen protectors, but I have to cut them to size.

As much as I still love my Zune, it’s been demoted from “the Precious” status and has been replaced by my new iPhone.   Doesn’t mean the iPhone is replacing my Zune as my media player, it’s just a little more special at the moment.

So that’s the end of the saga.   It was a long weekend.   Stay tuned for a write up on the surprise gift that Ciri is getting from me for her going away party.   She doesn’t know she is getting anything and I don’t think she’ll have time to read this before Thursday.   >:)