Rob Bauer

Olessia has three weeks of vacation.  Me, on the other hand, has been switching jobs so much I am lucky to get a week here and there.  I made the switch to Progressive at the beginning of January and the trip to Russia had been on hold due to the situation at National City Bank.  It was looking pretty good I would have enough comp. time and vacation time at National City Bank that I could take three weeks off.  But the bank was in trouble and then bought out and my job security wasn’t looking all that great.  At Progressive, you accrue vacation time on an hourly basis.  The Russia trip looked like it was in jeapordy.

With some checking with my boss, I am able to take three weeks!  Granted, one is unpaid, but that’s ok!

Olessia has some paperwork to take care of back in Moscow.  That’s the number one priority.  I’m having fun looking into number two: touristy things to do.  So far, I think the following (in and around Moscow) might be fun:

• KGB Museum
• Polytechnical Museum (science museum)
• Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics
• Moscow House of Photography
• Kremlin
• Dubna: Swimming pool Olessia went to
• Moscow University (Not sure if that is the right name. The uni Olessia went to school)
• MAKC (2009 Moscow air show)

Notice, there’s no McDs on this list like in 2007.  As I come up with more ideas, I’ll post them here.  If you have ideas, feel free to leave a comment.

I tried to transfer my calculus 2 class from Tri-C to the University of Akron.  No luck.  In fact, because I took it outside of U. Akron, I’m no longer a student.  Nice.  So now I have to transfer back in as a new student.  Doing so will require an additional 3 or so more classes I will have to take, so I’m going to wait and take them at Tri-C, then transfer everything over.

It took a year to do it. But i did it. I passed calc 2. I scored an A in the class. No more calc classes for me! Now I need to transfer the credit to U. Akron and I am done with this flavor of math.  I still have a stats class to deal with.

Olessia's 2009 Honda Fit Sport

Olessia just purchased this 2009 Honda Fit Sport.  She ordered it a couple weeks ago and word was it would be 8 to 10 weeks for it to come in (6 weeks just to ship!).  The dealer pulled some strings and got one a bit sooner.  So Friday the dealer called and told Olessia the car was in.  She ran over to the dealer and did some paperwork while they spent the day preping the car.  She picked it up at 5pm and it was just about good to go (it was missing floor mats since they thought they were standard but were not).

She got a great price on it.  It is a manual transmission (5-speed) and has a navigation unit.  She also added on the cargo tray and cargo shelf.

I drove it on Saturday and it is a FUN car.  It has some nice get-up-and-go.  The seats are very comfy.  The interior has a really nice finish to it.  And geez does this thing have gadgets!  It has a USB adapter for MP3s and iPods, an audio jack, a port for plugging memory sticks in, and plays MP3 CDs and audio DVDs!  The car has voice recognition for controlling the navigation unit and audio.  And to top it all, Olessia is getting about 37mpg!

Now Olessia has a properly working defroster, heating, and AC (and probably her first car with WORKING air conditioning!).

Click the photo to see more pictures…

Awesome.  My cable company doubled the Internet bandwidth at the cable modem.  They sent a mailer, which I have an instinctive response to throw the mailer out.  This time I looked it over and they weren’t selling anything.  I read it again and they provided instructions on how to reset the cable modem to get the faster bandwidth.

I had to put in a tech support call since the bandwidth testing I did didn’t show any change.  A big “doh!” on my part, the connection worked fine when plugged into the cable modem.  For a moment, I thought my router would have to be replaced because it wasn’t downloading anything over 4000kbps.  Then I realized this isn’t just a normal router.  I had QoS enabled and it was still set on the previous bandwidth settings (4000kbps was the max, previously, and it was doing a GREAT job limitting the bandwidth to just that).  I disabled it and bam!  11500kbps down.  Awesome.

Here's the speed results from speakeasy.net

And for comparison, here’s the bandwidth results from my DD-WRT enabled Linksys router:

Linksys Router Bandwidth

I’m going to tackle all of these, although not necessarily in order…

View of Cleveland From the East Side

Nothing too new with photography.  I did attend the Cleveland Photographic Society club meeting and it was quite interesting.  I plan to attend more meetings when I’m feeling better (I missed the last meeting due to sinuses).  Olessia and I headed over to Lake View Cemetery to check out the James Garfield monument.  The balcony has a nice view of Cleveland and we grabbed some shots.  I wasn’t feeling too good so I didn’t shoot much.

Calculus 2 is chugging along.  So far, it appears I am minus 12 points from 100% for 2 quizes and one exam.  I’m hoping and working hard to hold onto this lead.  Just three exams (second one will be tomorrow), two quizzes, and a final left to go.

Something new, I wrote a C# app to change my desktop wallpaper randomly across multiple monitors.  Its open source and can be found here: WallpaperChanger.

Like a print of any of the pictures in the portfolio?  Order prints online!  Here’s how:

First visit my portfolio and pick a picture you like.  Click on that picture.  At the bottom, there will be a drop down box.  From the drop down box, select “Print on Digibug.com” (you could also print at Shutterfly, although you have less options and it is a bit more expensive).

I tested this out with Digibug and it is a really nice service.  They had the prints in the mail the next day!  I had them print poster sized pictures, which were 30″x40″ in size!  Next time, I’m going to go a bit smaller with 24″x36″ so I can buy a frame off the shelf instead of building one.

If you order a photo, let me know!  Or better yet, send me a picture of the photo you printed in action, on the wall, or anywhere else.

There’s plans in the air for returning back to Moscow in 2009.  It looks like the current plan is to try to catch the 2009 MAKC airshow and at the same time, try to not miss any school classes.

The trip specifics are a bit unknown at the moment.  Olessia has some paperwork she needs to catch up on while back in Dubna.  We are thinking to aim for taking 3 weeks this time, if my work will let me swing it.  If so, we might try stopping in Western Europe, such as Paris.

I’m looking forward to returning and taking more photos.  This time I will be armed with a DSLR which will offer a lot more control in the picture taking process.

Road Trip!

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