Donuts and Police Officers: Not What You'd Expect

I was thrilled this morning to have a two hour delay. Having a busy evening planned I was concerned that I would not have time to get to the gym today. Thankfully, mother nature was looking out for me this morning and provided me with the gift of two hours to spend at the gym. I calculated the time at the gym, showering, and traveling to CRES and left my home at 7:30 A.M.

Now I pretty much just hit autopilot when I get in my truck and set off for the gym. My mind was mulling over what I would do at the gym, what I ate last night, and how many calories were in it. A quick look in my rearview mirror revealed a dark blue SUV behind me. Another quick look told me that it was a Police SUV. A third look and his blue lights were flashing. I pulled over thinking to myself, "Hmm, I wonder what I was doing wrong?"

The police officer approaches me and says,"Now I could let go that you were going 50 in a 35 and even that you were going 40 in a 25, but when you also rolled through the stop sign too, I had to pull you over. License and registration please."

As I take out my identification from the glove compartment, he asks me if I am on my way to work. I replied that I was going to the gym and then going to work because I have a two hour delay. He asked me when the last time was that I had a ticket and where I worked. I told him I worked at CRES and that I honestly couldn't remember when I had last received a ticket (Thinking back now, about five years). He proceeded to call in my name and birthdate to find out more about my driving record. As he is waiting for the response from the police station he starts asking me questions like it is the Spanish Inquisition.

"What do you do at CRES? Where is CRES? What grades are the kids in? How many students are there? How many teachers are there?" I answer all of his questions and am finally saved by the police station dispatcher calling him back saying something to the effect that there are no points off of my license.

So the officer turns to me and says, I am going to give you four choices here...
1) I wont give you the ticket for going 50 in a 35, or for going 40 in a 25, but I will give you the ticket for rolling through the stop sign and yell at you for being an idiot.
2) I wont give you the ticket for going 50 in a 35, or for rolling through the stop sign, but I will give you the ticket for going 40 in a 25 and yell at you for being an idiot.
3) I wont give you the ticket for going 40 in a 25 , or for rolling through the stop sign, but I will give you the ticket for going 50 in a 35 and yell at you for being an idiot.

At this point I started to chuckle because I am thinking to myself, "He should yell at me for being an idiot."
He says, "I'm not done yet. Choice number four is that you need to stop and buy the teachers at the school donuts and muffins today. So which choice do you want?"
I eagerly told him that I would gladly go with choice #4. He asked if someone for CRES would need to call him to prove that I had really bought the muffins and donuts. I told him I would have someone do that if he really wanted. He told me that I looked like an honest enough guy and to just be sure to slow down and come to a complete stop at all stop signs. As I drove off towards the gym I realized what a bargain he just gave me. He could have easily given me a pretty hefty ticket which would go in the Windham coffers, but instead he decided that he would indirectly do something nice for the teachers here at CRES. So, everyone, enjoy the goodies on me.

Pepsi & iTunes

As I said in the last post, I spent some time at the iTunes Music Store over the past Christmas break searching for songs for my son's new iPod Nano. Luckily, he also received for Christmas, a gift card for the online store. As I entered in his card # to redeem the $15 on it, I was take back to 2004 when Apple and Pepsi teamed together to give away one million songs at the iTunes Music Store after the Super Bowl. During this promotion, codes for one free song were printed at the under the bottle caps of one in three Pepsi bottles. I thought back to how after entering in each code, your credit to your account would increase by one song, or $1.00. I wondered whether they were gearing up to do the same promotion by any chance since the Super Bowl is coming up relatively soon.

I did another little Google search (makes me wonder what I ever did without Google) and discovered that Pepsi has dropped Apple in favor of Amazon MP3. Now I had no idea whatsoever that Amazon was in the .MP3 business, but apparently they are. So, I did a little more research and playing around. I created an Amazon MP3 account for myself, downloaded and installed the Downloader software, and tried downloading a song for the first time.

There were a few cool things about doing this: One, the song was completely compatible with iTunes, so as soon as it downloaded, it played in iTunes. It even downloads the album artwork! Two, just like the iTunes Music Store you can preview the song prior to purchasing it. Three, it seems that the prices for these songs (especially if you a buying entire albums) are cheaper than iTunes.

Now it seems that I have yet another reason to look forward to the Super Bowl. (If the New England Patriots being in it wasn't enough of a reason.)

Trying Out Some New Things / Ringtones

I have been spending some time trying out some new technology related things lately. I hope to share some of them in the next several posts. Some of these new tools are items I found in issues of Macworld (subscription~priceless) and others I just sort of looked into because a need or curiosity arose. I will start with the latter.

During this past Christmas break I found myself spending a lot of time waiting around in my truck, usually for one or both of my boys to get out of or return from some sort of sporting or social event. I took this as an opportunity to spend some quality time with my cell phone. I downloaded an application so that I could find, preview, and download different ring-tones. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my cell phone (which I picked up at a yard sale for $5) would play ring-tones that were pieces of actual music, not just the MIDI variety. I soon discovered that these cool ring-tone would run about $3 each to download. That just seemed like too high a price to pay, so I kind of let the topic slip to backburner of my mind.

Another way that I spent some of my precious Christmas vacation time was downloading songs and videos to my oldest son's new 3G iPod Nano which he purchased using Christmas $. While at the iTunes Music Store searching for songs, I noticed that some of them had little bell icons next to them. My son told me that they were songs that could also be used as ring-tones. "Ahh Haa!" I thought. "Maybe I could use one of these as my ringtone?" I wondered. A little research into this idea came up fruitless for two reasons, one, it costs $2 for the ring-tone from the iTunes Store ($1 for the Song and $1 for the ability to edit it into a ring-tone) and two, they only work on iPhones. So, that option was out.

I finally decided to search for an easy, yet free, way to get actual music ring-tones on to my cell phone. A quick Google Search lead me to Mobile17. Once you register you are able to create ring-tones using .mp3 files you have on your computer. It will ask you to browse for the file. Next, it will ask how many seconds/minutes into the song you want to start the ring-tone. Then, it asks how long you want the ringtone to last. Finally, after hit SEND, it sends the ringtone (in my case as a PICT) to your cell phone. You open the PICT message, save it, and then select it to be your ring-tone. I tried this out twice for myself and it WORKS! I love finding ways to do things for FREE.

In my next posting I will share another cool thing that I found just from need or curiosity.