DerekReynoldsDotCom

Michelle and I just got back from our 3rd wedding anniversary cruise aboard the Liberty Of The Seas. Although we had already been to all of the ports of call in the past, this cruise was more about the ship itself. This being our first time on a RCL Freedom class ship we really were impressed. Definitively the best cruise yet. RCL has our dime for the next one.

The ports we visited on this cruise were: Miami, Florida; Philipsburg, St. Maarten; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Labadee, Haiti.

We opted to stay in the Hyatt Regency downtown Miami this time instead of our traditional favorite Intercontinental. Although not as close to the port or Bayside, it was a great hotel overall.

I’ve uploaded our vacation photos to our photobucket share here.

Michelle and I just got back from our Mexican Rivera Cruise aboard the magnificent Golden Princess cruise ship!

Heading out of the Los Angeles San Pedro Port heading south we made stops in Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan and Cabo San Lucas. This was our first cruise on the Pacific coast and certainly won’t be our last. Such different scenery contrasting it to the caribbean cruises we’ve been on.

Prior to our cruise we spent the night on a Los Angeles Bus Tour By Night which took us to see the Graumann’s Chinese Theatre, The Walk of Fame, Rodeo Dr, Sunset and a few really exclusive stars house including the PlayBoy Manson.

Michelle was very star struct as we caught glimpse of Heidi & Spencer from The Hills as well as pop-blog diva Perez Hilton hosting the fashion show launch of Heidi’s new clothing line HeidiWood

All of our pics have been uploaded to our new favorite picture hosting site PhotoBucket available here.

With my web hosting file size quota almost exceeded I felt it was time to start using some of the free photo gallery’s available out there instead of hosting my own. I’ve uploaded our Christmas 2008 cruise pictures aboard the NCL Dawn and Microsoft SharePoint 2008 conference pictures to photobucket.

For easier access I’ve added a link to the right side navigation under pages linking directly to the PhotoBucket gallery.

Introducing Mr. And Mrs Derek Reynolds!

Michelle and I finally tied the knot April 14th, 2006 in the Venetian Hotel, Las Vegas, NV. We just got back from our Eastern Carribean honeymoon cruise aboard the Royal Carribean Explorer Of The Seas. After these last couple of busy and exciting weeks, I think we need another week just to recover!

We have posted some pics of our wedding day and the honeymoon to our gallery. More to come as they become available.

With the new ATI R520 cards coming out next week, I thought I’d try and take advantage of the older ATI card sell offs. Unfortunately I haven’t been so lucky trying to find an X850 XT at a sub $300 price lately. That is, until tonight when I received a Fatwallet topic alert about the X800 GTO2 which if you’re not familiar, is basically an X850 XT PE in disguise. The card is being sold at NewEgg and ChiefValue (NewEggs subsidiary company) for $199 with $4.99 shipping.

W1zzard over at TechPowerUp discovered that the Sapphire X800GTO2 actually has a 480 core (the same one that the X850/XT/PE uses). He also noticed that it comes with 16 pipelines, 4 of which can easily be unlocked with a simple bios upgrade.

With the 100% proven success rate of the mod and with the price being so cheap I had to jump on it.

If you’re interested you can find more details below:

Fatwallet link to deal
W1zzard’s explanation of mod at TechPowerUp
TechPowerUp forum thread with users sucess stories

Welp, last week it was the Canon SD400, this week its a new amplifier for the car, and today after having my cell phone broken since April I finally broke down and bought a Treo 650 SmartPhone. A buddy at work Charlie Smith has this phone and after seeing what he was doing with it I was sold. I was convinced I wasn’t going to pay $599 so I wheeled a deal with the sprint folks and got it for $299 having signed a 2 year SprintPCS agreement. Not bad but still more then I really wanted to pay for a cell phone :(.

Back in January when I visited Vegas for CES2005 I eyed Canon’s new 5MP elph camera named the “SD400“. Well today I finally broke down and bought it! I received a topic alert email from Fatwallet about a super deal on the SD400. It basically boiled down to this:

1.) Click here to be taken to the office depot SD400 link. Add it to your cart

2.) Goto checkout and use coupon 17591880 ($30 off of $150)

3.) Before you submit the order sign up for Office Depot Advantage to receive an additional $20 off.

To summarize: $279.99 - $30 off coupon - $20 (advantage card) = $229 + tax.. There was also free shipping. Regular price is $449.

Review

David Breyer and I have been for awhile talking about consolidating our daily tech postings to our personal blogs to create a better tech centric website. So today we bring you www.yellinglizard.com.

This blog (www.derekreynolds.com) will continue to serve just my personal blogging.

Pat Collins today sent me an email talking about an open source Lotus SameTime project called Meanwhile.

The heart of the Meanwhile Project is the Meanwhile library, providing the basic Lotus Sametime session functionality along with the core services; Presence Awareness, Instant Messaging, Multi-user Conferencing, Preferences Storage, Identity Resolution, and File Transfer. This extensible client interface allows additional services to be added to a session at runtime, allowing for simple integration of future service handlers such as the user directory and whiteboard and screen-sharing.

This morning Pat Collins sent me a URL: http://www.flickr.com/groups/74918957@N00/ which took me to a Flickr photo album displaying London Bomb blast coverage. I see better coverage here then I do on CNN…