After a week of being tied for first place in an adult hockey league, my team is now solely sitting back atop the leader board. Actually we were technically in second place as another team had scored more goals than us, but that didn’t matter when we beat that same team last night. It was probably the hardest our team has skated this season.

For myself the game started off great. I was playing defense yet again, but that didn’t stop me from breaking the puck up the ice a few times. The first time I rushed up I actually scored a goal, my second of the season. I had a sweet give-and-go with another player on our team. From there my team put it another goal toward the end of the first period. The second period was our opponents’ period, as they evened the score at two.

In the third period they were quick to score another goal and take the lead. However my team fought hard and finally tied the game at three, where it stood until the end of regulation. From there we moved on to an overtime shootout. I was asked to take one of our three shots, but declined after taking a hard shot to the shin with just seconds left in the game. The puck hit me just above my bad ankle, and I wasn’t certain of my status. Fortunately our team is awesome in shootouts, with both of our first two players making their shots and our goalie making equally great saves on the other team’s first two. We didn’t even need our third shooter to claim the victory. And I’m happy to say that the shot I took had no effect on my ankle!

Saturday night I headed to the Impulse Theater with my wife and a couple of friends. Our friend Amy was in town visiting and chose this activity for us since she can’t see improvised comedy anywhere in Cincinnati. I had often seen the theater entrance, as it’s in the basement of the Wynkoop Brewery, but had never been inside. My knowledge of improv extended only as far as what I’d seen on the TV show Whose Line Is It Anyway. Fortunately, many of the acts at the Impulse were very similar to the games on the TV show, only they don’t keep score and there is no winner.

Actually there is a winner, everyone in the audience! The comedic wit and quick thinking of the four actors we saw was amazing. We were treated to seats in the very front row, but I think everyone in the room had a great view. The hour and a half long show was the perfect amount of time, and it went by so quickly while I was cracking up in my chair. I would highly recommend this show to anyone, well anyone over twenty-one since that is the age requirement. Even then the show is not really crude, which was hard to pull of with a group of women celebrating a bachelorette party in the crowd. I thoroughly enjoyed the Impulse and hope to be back soon.

After a few days of iPhone use, I can honestly say that I am even happier with it than I could have imagined. The first thing I had to do was figure out how to get all of my contacts off of my old phone and onto the iPhone. Previously I had service with Verizon and took advantage of their Backup Assistant to store all of my numbers for me. I did a quick google search and couldn’t find a good solution for performing the transfer from the Backup Assistant to my iPhone contact list. I was able to login to the Backup Assistant website but unfortunately I could not export the data. However, I was able to print the data, though that really wouldn’t help. So I came up with the following method to manually copy all of the data and get it in to the iPhone.

1. Select Print Address Book from Backup Assistant website (popup window).
2. Copy all rows.
3. Open Excel and paste.
4. Format in Excel:
   1. Copy and paste the data into another sheet, this should remove the pesky check marks in each row.
   2. Move phone numbers around into separate columns specified by type.
   3. Use find and replace to replace all instances of “Mobile”, “Work”, “Home”, etc. with blank text, leaving only numbers in each cell.
5. Save the worksheet as a csv file.
6. Open outlook and create a new sub directory under Contacts.
7. Under File menu select Import and Export…
8. Import from another program of file.
9. Comma Separated Values (Windows).
10. Browse to the file saved earlier.
11. Select the sub directory created earlier.
12. Click Map Custom Fields…
13. Map Name to Name, Mobile to Mobile Phone, Home to Home Phone, etc.
14. You can use the Next > button to see how your data will map.
15. Click Finish.

From there you should be able to use the Outlook Contact syncing in iTunes to send your phone numbers to your iPhone. I think that was all of the steps. I didn’t think to write it all down until after I had successfully performed the sync. But then I realized that my work might actually help someone out. Leave any questions or comments below.

Our good friend Amy was in town this past weekend. On Saturday we took her and our friend Ken up to Rocky Mountain National Park for a hike. Amy had requested a hike to waterfalls, and I found a nice three mile route that would take us along the St. Vrain Creek and [...]

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The day has arrived! My iPhone was dropped onto my porch this morning and I’ve been keeping busy with it thus far. I ordered it last Thursday and it was delivered just over a week later, so not too bad. I finally got it activated, though I haven’t made or received any calls yet so I’m not sure if it’s really fully activated or not. So far I’ve been working to setup gmail on it, along with downloading a couple of apps (facebook and pandora so far). I haven’t bought a case or screen protection yet, but that should come sometime this weekend. Alright enough with the blogging, back to the iPhone addiction. Send any suggestions my way.

Our entire team showed up last night for our weekly hockey game. That means three full lines up front and five guys playing defense. Unfortunately we didn’t use the large bench to our advantage, and we ended up skating down at the level of the team we were playing. According to last weeks standings our opponents were in second to last place, and I can see why. There were only a small number of skaters on their team that could play well. However, they probably thought the same thing about my team after watching us play last night.

We jumped out to a great 3-0 lead by the end of the first. But, as typically happens, our second period play was terrible. We allowed them to put in goal after goal and by the middle of the third they had a 5-3 lead on us. Eventually we managed to put in another goal, and despite some great attempts near the end, the final score was 5-4. This was our second loss of the season, but we should remain at least tied for first place.

Personally I had an assist on the first goal. I was playing defense and managed to keep the puck in our offensive zone. I took a quick shot, which the goalie deflected right to another one of our players. He immediately buried it in the back of the net. I don’t think I had any other points throughout the game. Currently I’m tied for third with most assists, but I’m hoping this gets me back into second place.

I participated in my second Bike to Work Day this morning. I left the house just after six and started on my preplanned route, which was different than my route last year. I decided on a new route with less turns and more off street riding, though it was slightly longer than last year. My goal was to make the nearly twenty mile ride in under three hours and hopefully closer to two.

I had the first part of the ride completely memorized and stuck completely to the plan until I got to the part of my ride where I was supposed to leave the Cherry Creek Trail and turn south down Yosemite Street. Somehow I missed this turn, and I realized it once I saw the Cherry Creek Reservoir dam in the distance. I turned south and followed signs to Hampden Heights Park, and after asking a walker for directions, I eventually found my way west to Yosemite.

From there I remembered that I needed to ride south to Belleview, take a left there, and ride about a mile over to Havana. At Havana I turned south once again all the way to Peakview Avenue. I took a left at Peakview and a quick right onto Lima Street, which I followed south on a much safer road than Havana becomes. Thus far I had only made one bad turn, but that quickly changed when Lima turned into Inverness Drive. At that point every street I passed was Inverness something: Parkway, Way, Lane, Court, etc. I couldn’t exactly remember which of the Inverness roads I was supposed to take, and I didn’t want to take my map out, so I just followed along what appeared to be the safest roads all the way until I eventually found the South Valley Highway.

Once on the South Valley Highway, which turns into Jamaica Street, I was close enough to the office that I knew which roads to take. It really just consisted of a right turn onto Meridian Boulevard, with one last big climb up to the office. Once in the parking lot I glanced at the watch and realized that I had done it all in just under two hours. After a couple changes to the preplanned route, I soon realized that instead of just under twenty miles I had done just barely over twenty miles. All in all it was a great ride, I just wish the whole thing wasn’t all uphill. Below is the route.

Since moving out of my parents house many years ago, I’ve nearly always had a Jimmy John’s within walking distance of home. Currently that is not true, but that should be changing by the end of the month when the franchise’s 17th Colorado location opens just up the street at 331 East Alameda Avenue. I’ve always been a big fan of their no frill sandwiches, especially after a late night of partying. Unfortunately, I don’t think any of the local shops are open nearly as late as the one on the campus of the University of Cincinnati. But this will definitely be nice when the Einstein Brother’s across the street closes after their lunch shift, though it may be hard to pass up the neighboring Chipotle. I’m sure I’ll make a stop within a week of opening.

A year ago I took my first whitewater rafting trip with a group called Class Five Chaos, and this weekend joined the same group for another trip down the Arkansas River. Once again there were about 150 people camping for the weekend, with well over 100 of those joining in on the rafting adventure [...]

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Well I did it. I ordered a new iPhone 3G S last night. Verizon eventually did announce the BlackBerry Tour a couple of days ago, but that wasn’t enough for me. Plus I was tired of waiting and didn’t want to wait even longer for the Tour to be released in the middle of July. At this point I couldn’t be happier. Well I guess I could be if I already had my iPhone in my hands, but that probably won’t happen for a week or two.

I ordered it online through AT&T so that I could take advantage of my company’s 20% service discount. I wasn’t able to get any money off of the phone itself, but I’ll definitely appreciate the $14 savings each month on my bill. Now I just need to decide what case I want to get and place that order so I’ll have it in time for delivery of my phone. Any suggestions for that? I’ve already heard good reviews for a number of products, but it can’t hurt to have even more.