Goin' underground, Zune facelift, and it's my birthday!

Last week I drove up to Hutch with a friend and went on the tour for the Kansas Underground Salt Museum. We had bought gift certificates about a year ago before they ever opened, and finally got around to using them up. There is about a 10 minute video presentation (mostly safety related) and then we loaded in the elevator and descended 650 feet below ground. Once we hit the bottom there was a ~20 min tram ride where they explained the details of the salt mine, as they drove through the corridors. After the ride your able to walk around at your own pace and look at the museum exhibits which was pretty interesting. The last part of the museum is actually more of a promotional brochure for the underground storage facility that is part of the area, sure there were some movie industry related items to see (costumes, and such), but it felt like I was watching a commercial.

Overall a worthwhile experience but now that I've been on the tour I don't know that I'd ever go again.

Evidently some of you may not have noticed, but the original 30GB Zune got a update about 2 weeks ago. After the new flash based models hit the scene the Zune software, and the firmware got a facelift. The 30GB system menu now mirrors the new devices with a larger font, and the addition of a podcast subsystem. There have been a bunch of changes on the PC software front end also, and a Zune Social webpage set up.

I'm really liking the podcast support as I was able to ditch another program I was using (you remember Doppler?) and its all automatic in the Zune front end so I don't have to manually transfer them to/from my Zune plus they show up in a completely separate area instead of my music menu. The social aspect was nifty when I logged in and got my Zune card my 'friends' list was already populated (from the 360 friends list) and was surprised to see that a couple people on my list also had Zunes. The software now allows you to do a wireless sync now too which albeit slow does work well. Now all I need is my car to be sync'd and I'd be set.

Oh yeah, Happy Birthday to me! It's always cool when it lands on Thanksgiving (every 5 or 6 years depending on leap years) I requested a 'turkey' shaped cake we'll see what happens with that. :) Hmmm, maybe I should submit it to Ace of Cakes sometime.