Tag Archives: Benspark.com

What Cheer, Netop?

What Cheer, Netop?
Photo-A-Day #1555

Today was the second annual Roger Williams Paddle. I went out with members of the Ten Mile River Watershed Council, The AMC, and the Rhode Island Blueways Alliance. My friend (Netop) Keith Gonsalves is one of the driving forces for this paddle and he invited me to go last year. I had such a good time, and he must have liked my video last time, that I decided to go again. The paddling was fantastic and the weather couldn’t have been better. I have a ton of photos and video from today that I want to get put together to show you and I will do so very soon. But for now I have to sleep. You can check out all my updates from the day via Twitter and Zannel. Also you can see some of my past adventures with Keith in my Wired Kayaker videos. You can find them on the sidebar. I’ll have the rest of the photos and video up asap. Here is one more that I took using my Xshot. I loved having the Xshot with me on this trip, I used it as often as I possibly could.

Using the Xshot on a break

BTW: What Cheer, Netop? is probably the equivalent of What’s Up, Friend? What cheer is short for “What cheerie news do you bring?” Netop is the Narragansett word for friend. This was the greeting that Roger Williams hollered to a group of Narragansett over by what is Gano street today. When I got out of my car and saw Keith I hollered over to him, “What Cheer, Netop?” He got a kick out of it.

Perils of Late Night Snacking

Perils of Late Night Snacking
Photo-A-Day #1432

I try not to have snacks too late but the call of the Cheez-It is sometimes too strong. They are my absolute favorite snack cracker. I love ’em by the box. I find it very hard to curb my hunger for them. They call to me, they entice me with other flavors. I reject them all except for Pepper Jack because the flavor is baked in to them not a powdery topping like the others.

Okay so I didn’t go an take a decent photo today, so I took a macro shot of my snack as I tried to work on a website that I’ve been building for a friend. I haven’t said anything much about it because I wasn’t finished with it and it wasn’t public. However the site is now public and live. I’ve been creating a website called Duke Burial Vaults. Duke Burial Vaults is the northeast supplier of Eonian and Endurance Burial Vaults. From the Website:

Duke Burial Vault’s mission is to provide families of lost love ones with a more aesthetically pleasing, stronger, lighter weight, eco-friendly burial vault by distributing and installing the Eonian and Endurance rotationally molded polyethylene burial vaults. Duke Burial Vaults is committed to insuring that the burial vault service of the funeral is done in a peaceful and respectful manner through a professional and well trained staff.

I’ve learned more about Burial Vaults in the past few months and I ever through possible. These products are amazing too. The vaults can be lifted by two men rather than by heavy equipment. The vaults are also incredibly stable and strong. They are stronger than concrete. The concrete burial vault companies tried a stress test on the vaults but did not do it properly. They were trying to keep plastic burial vaults out of the marketplace. Isn’t that always the way when something lighter, faster and stronger comes along.

The most amazing thing about these vaults is that they are completely waterproof and weather proof, a tight seal is placed around the top and bottom of the vault that with time and pressure continues to cure to form a seal that cannot be broken without the use of industrial machinery. That means that is say a flood occurs and all the concrete vaults crack and break and everyone’s loved ones are floating down river where they’re caskets could be broken open, your dear sweet Grannie’s burial vault will remain safe. Sure the burial vault will be floating too but you have the peace of mind that her remains are undisturbed by the elements and also undisturbed by anyone taking advantage of pillaging open caskets.

Wow, off on a tangent. Everything outside the quotes is my own thoughts on this, I don’t think the marketing should be anything akin to my statements.

So today I decided to try out something on my Canon SD 800is. I finally turned to LifeHacker to make my point and shoot a super camera. I downloaded The Canon Hacker’s Development Kit. There are some things that I want to hack this camera to do and I will explore them very soon. I’ll tell you more about this as I try them out.

I ran into a snag on the Custom hats for BenSpark.com. My friend with the super sewing machine wasn’t able to replicate the logo. I then attempted to find a place int he mall that had one of those sew your logo on things kiosks. No dice. I did go into lids to find out that if I wanted anything sewn onto the hat it was $9.00 and they couldn’t do the logo, just text and if I wanted the blog url on the back of the hat that was also $9.00. Total Rip Off! I’m going to do some searching, the place I ordered from had embroidery services however it was something you had to call about and couldn’t order online. I went the quick route and am kicking myself now.