Bluetooth headset number seven, action!

Lately I’ve been going through Bluetooth headsets like popcorn. My motorola flip one wore out, the replacement for that got run over by a car, the next one got eaten by my house I think, and now there’s this one. I like it a lot for its voice features and I think this is the way that future headsets are going to go as well. It reports its status by speaking to you, “call terminated” for example, and it also lets you give it voice commands such as “check battery”. As much as I like it I need more time to get used to it. Either it has trouble understanding me in noisy environments or I can’t remember what the correct phrasing of the voice commands are. When I say something it doesn’t understand it just chooses a random command and does that. I keep having to cancel calls as it tries to dial people. Everyone I’ve talked to so far says the sound quality is great and the wireless quality is essential for my Palm Pre. Since the Pre eats battery so fast I often keep it plugged in and charging. Trying to move around the house with wired headphones and having the thing plugged into a power source just was not working for me at all. It also works well with the PS3. I sure do hope this one lasts a while, I’m going broke buying these things! 

Bok Tower Gardens

Today Mom and I celebrated a bit more mother’s day with a trip to Bok Tower Gardens. I really like the place because of its many varied flowers, shady paths, interesting wildlife, and peaceful atmosphere. We walked about a mile and a half but there were quite a few trails we left untraveled. There is also an estate on the property that I am told is very nice, but we had neither the time or money to spend on it. I noticed upon my return that most of my flower pictures were from only one angle and many were overexposed in one spectrum or another. On my next flower photographing excursion I’m going to try to be more creative and monitor the camera’s technical readouts more carefully. Still, the photos did come out pretty nice. The one on the left is one of my favorite flowers because it looks so alien, but nobody has been able to tell me what kind it is.

Kayaking Weedon Island Preserve

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Greg had been wanting to go kayaking at Weedon Island and he was kind enough to invite me to go along. The first leg of the trip was getting from the boat launch to the actual course. That was about half a mile of paddling. Once we found the course we navigated it backwards. We arrived at the park as the tide was rising so we needed to let a bit more time go by so we could get through a shallow area by marker 12. Navigating the course was a bit tricky at the beginning (actually the end) as the signs weren’t always visible from the previous marker. We passed several docks that looked almost identical. If I didn’t have the GPSr I would’ve suspected that we were coming up on the same dock. The best part of the trip was the mosquito trenches through the mangroves. In some places it was too narrow even to use the full length paddles so we just pulled ourselves along. We also saw a baby raccoon among the mangroves. He was really cute. The roots of the trees were covered with little black crabs. They made good projectiles for a certain person who kept running his kayak into mine. They had the desired effect but they bounced off the hull of the boat. Next time I’ll try to find some armor-piercing crabs. The paddle back from the course to the boat return was upwind all the way. It was tough going. Afterwards we went to Wendy's for lunch. Great trip.