So I was trying to get better today, I slept in until 10:30 or so... Well, I did get up when my wife got out of bed, she turned on the lights, I groaned, and she turned them back off... I meant to get up with her, have breakfast with her, etc but passed out before I ever got up... :( I felt bad. I had a hard night sleeping, when I came to bed she was sprawled out (as she usually is) but (unlike normal) when I nudged or tickled her she didn't move. So, I slept as much on the bed as I could even though it meant an elbow in the shoulder and a knee in the thigh. Apparently I tickled her enough to get her arm to move though as she elbowed me in the nose before moving. lol, for all the nights she's had a hard time sleeping because of my snoring I think it's only fair, but it was kind of funny as she was lying there so peaceful when i got the elbow. The knee didn't move before I passed out, but I wasn't sore any today so it must have moved while I was asleep.
I got more applications out, the jobs seem to be thinning in my field. There are only three postings for photographers that i could find in canada (two with a cruise ship....yay :( and one with some other random company) but nothing paying more than 25k. I can make more than double that doing sheet metal (don't want to, but I know places hiring for it paying that much for 2 years experience like I have). Then I had an interview. It was in p-town (not pond town). They had me take a pre-asvab (asfab?) test, the average score in utah is 27, the minimum they require is 30, I got an 82. I felt pretty decent about it, and I finished it in half the time it suggested it would take. I'm awfully tempted to take the job, it's photojournalism (something that's been really interesting me lately), and it would pay 40-50k within the first 6 months. So, I'm considering it, there are some really enticing incentives with the job too, so we'll see.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
a little better
I applied for some more jobs today, about 8 to be exact... 3 of them were strictly photo-journalism jobs. I really think professionally that's the direction I want to head with my career, I don't so much like the idea of shooting studio portraits all day, newborns, weddings, products, over and over and over. I like the idea of being out and about and recording what is going on. I like the adventure of being on a new assignment, even though I know those assignments will include the mundane probably more often than not, at least it won't be always the same thing like if I tried getting a job with mattel...(makes barbie, bratz, etc...)
Unfortunately I already heard back from one of the places, they filled the position already. It's ok, it's the one I didn't want to want me (they were in iowa and were offering like 20-25k, which is what entry level pays in utah, whereas places like the east coast start any where from 35-65k)... But there are other fish-a-bitin. I guess technically I'm the fish, but hopefully someone soon pulls back on the hook and reels me in. =) Oh, btw, I added adsense to my blog, so now it'll start putting ads between blogs, so if you see something that interests you click away, if not I hope it's not too bothersome having it in there.
Unfortunately I already heard back from one of the places, they filled the position already. It's ok, it's the one I didn't want to want me (they were in iowa and were offering like 20-25k, which is what entry level pays in utah, whereas places like the east coast start any where from 35-65k)... But there are other fish-a-bitin. I guess technically I'm the fish, but hopefully someone soon pulls back on the hook and reels me in. =) Oh, btw, I added adsense to my blog, so now it'll start putting ads between blogs, so if you see something that interests you click away, if not I hope it's not too bothersome having it in there.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
fotoneurotic.com
I finally got my first site up and running. Well, it's at least crawling, I only got the first page done, 4 left, then there's the 5 pages to do on fotoneurotic.info I'm getting there, slowly but surely. I think I'll do a profile on one of the pages on the .com, the .info I want to be mostly informative, unbiased (difficult for me as anyone who knows me remotely well could tell you) etc.
It's frustrating though, when you get the prompting that you need to do something, you begin work on it and things don't seem to be pulling together (as though they should have the second you began working on it). No, I'm not referencing the website, though were it something so minimal as that I would be fine. Any way, I'm still looking for a photography job, hoping not to apply to the navy though they have over 300 openings for photographers across the country, and it is very tempting as 4 or 6 years experience with them and I could work with any hiring news company in the country. No to mention the up to $20,000 bonus for signing up...even half of that would almost eliminate our debt right now. Oh well, still searching.
It's frustrating though, when you get the prompting that you need to do something, you begin work on it and things don't seem to be pulling together (as though they should have the second you began working on it). No, I'm not referencing the website, though were it something so minimal as that I would be fine. Any way, I'm still looking for a photography job, hoping not to apply to the navy though they have over 300 openings for photographers across the country, and it is very tempting as 4 or 6 years experience with them and I could work with any hiring news company in the country. No to mention the up to $20,000 bonus for signing up...even half of that would almost eliminate our debt right now. Oh well, still searching.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Feelings and Promptings
I'm feeling more like a professional lately. I'm doing things in my education that is making my instructors look at me and say "really? I've not done things with that aspect of this program, how did you do that? How would you apply that into a project? How would I do that?". It's a good feeling, creates a sense of importance and probably makes my head get bigger than it should ever have become. Either way, it's nice to be appreciated in your field, especially when there are times when you feel "sub par" compared to your classmates and/or instructors. It's a good feeling when the people you work with compliment the work you do, choose you first for important jobs, and when the secretary says "you're the only dependable one here, we can always count on you to be here at the call time on the board regardless of when everyone else might come in."
It started as frustrations with the program. It continued to build and hit a point in escalation when I was ready to walk away. I talked with some people, accepted their advice and stuck with it. I thought about it. And again. And again. And again. Over and over and over. It's never left my mind. Things like that tend to have a reason for sticking around. Not sure that I'm supposed to continue sticking with it... Wasn't sure of that when I decided to.
I was shooting the "State of the University" address this week. Interim President Liz Hitch was speaking, addressing faculty, staff, and a few students who actually chose to show up, about how the University was/is doing. She went on and on about UVU being the "most engaged university in the universe" and how great things are there and how despite a 15% cut-back in funding we're still doing good and not entirely in a hiring freeze.
She opened the forum up for Q&A. After some faculty asked some questions she fielded a question from the UVU Review (the UVU newspaper). The question was if the school was going to continue it's membership with a clubhouse as a perk for certain of it's higher-up faculty. The response was essentially that the Clubhouse is a one time investment and that it's a negligible factor financially wise. She then mentioned how we needed to cut back how much food we provided for events, how 4% of our budget each year through the various departments gets eaten up, literally. She went on to say how important it was for blah blah blah blah. She kept skirting around issues of employment, money, department needs, etc. If you don't believe me, I know where you can get the footage of the whole thing. I was one of the three camera ops recording the whole thing.
I can't recall all that she said, I just remember how livid I was (standing no more than 15 feet from her the whole time it was hard for me to keep my professionalism where I was so close I could have said things easily without anyone else hearing what was said........but I like my job and ultimately she could fire me, so I canned my thoughts) after what she said during the Q/A. I sent a annonymous e-mail to her later that day. I received a response from one of her assistants. It didn't say much.
I was thinking today, I had said to them I'd rather pay as much as $1000 more a term if it meant having better faculty and more than one full time faculty in my department and classes that didn't have to be taken three times in order to get enough credits to graduate. I was thinking today about how "engaged" UVU is in my education. Perhaps UVU is the most engaged university for general education, perhaps in some other ways, but it's also deluded. To think the administration thinks everything in the school is just fine ("the state of the University is Great!" ~Liz Hitch) is like saying the crime rate in New York 15 years ago was acceptable. We have less than 200 students in a stadium made for 8000 when we have basketball games, when we play against teams from instate they have close to 10 times the amount of fans in our stadium than we have, and even out of state teams have more fans in the stands than we do.
Is the AVC (Art & Visual Communications) dept. actively engaged in my education? yes. It's a hands on department, other departments should be taking lessons from AVC classes, as they have some of the best applied forms of education that I can think of. If you want to learn how to write, write, don't read about writing, write more. If you want to learn how to interact with people with social, hormonal, mental imbalances, etc, work with them, work around them, observe them, reading about them only does so much. The principle is simple. Is the UVU AVC dept. more engaged in my life as a student (or any of the AVC students) than any other art school? No. The Academy of Art University in SanFrancisco would throw it's arms up in the air if they heard Liz Hitch yapping. So would the Brooks Institute of Photography. I'm assuming NYU would also, and they're a diversified university much like UVU but their faculty is so developed they're competing against schools like the Brooks Institute of Photography (who at one point had been THE place to go to, I'm not sure if they still are as I've heard conflicting reports about them in recent years). So, is UVU AVC the most engaged in the Universe? No.
The UVU school photographer is a UVSC dropout. He felt like he was learning more from reading up and practicing styles from Adams, Weston, Eggleston, Bresson and others, and he dropped out. He's now the school's photographer. Beat out a UVU(UVSC?) graduate. When he was new at it he went to the only full-time faculty the Photo Dept. has. He asked Simon for advice with a shoot he had coming up, Simon asked "what's your budget?" "$80,000"......"I've never shot anything with a budget that large, I don't know what to tell you". I learned more about lighting in a technical sense from sitting in on a shoot with the school photographer than I ever gained from Simon in a lighting class that lasted a term long. Is UVU engaged in my needs? Is it the best place for me? Is it going to give me the education to compete against recent graduates and professionals alike? No. I don't feel like it is.
It's a hard place to be in. Knowing that if you stick with a place you're in that you'll end up shooting weddings the rest of your life because you can't compete with anyone else in the business. The quickest thing to do would finish the education at the place, regardless of the issues inherant with staying there. So what do you do? Apply to monster.com and have three job offers in 3 different states to teach photography? Look at jobs with newspapers and other places that are paying 150%-200% the going rate of the local jobs? Find and pray about a place that is right and see if there's not a school there that has a better education to be given? Yeah, probably. It would seem like the logical thing to do, logically speaking. There's a job in Jersey that I more than qualify for, I'm experienced and good at it, and feel like I could do well at it. It would be kind of an editor position from the sounds of it too, which would be skipping a step or two on the ladder. Am I considering it? Yeah. I would be close enough I could do classes at NYU, one or two a term while working full-time. I would love to go to NYU. I could get my BFA and MFA there and build a resume and real-life experience at the same time. Sure I wouldn't have my MFA for like 8-10 years from now if I started in the fall and was going to school minimally. To live near NYC, without living in it, to live in a safe place with a low cost of living (comparable or lower to that of Utah) where the pay is better..... It's very tempting.
But how do you tell the family?
Blog about it... lol
I would be making more than the camel. Did some pricing, found that we could easily afford a house in a good neighborhood. I guess I have to reply to the job listing and see if they're interested in me before I can really get an answer from above to see if it's right...
Either way, I never thought I'd be considering things like this without having my BFA already, but out of 60 Photography postings on Monster.com I haven't seen more than 3 that require a degree. One requires 7 years experience, another requires a Bachelors, the rest don't require anything more than experience, or proof that you can do the kind of work they're looking for. Portfolio.
I need to shoot more.
Again.
It started as frustrations with the program. It continued to build and hit a point in escalation when I was ready to walk away. I talked with some people, accepted their advice and stuck with it. I thought about it. And again. And again. And again. Over and over and over. It's never left my mind. Things like that tend to have a reason for sticking around. Not sure that I'm supposed to continue sticking with it... Wasn't sure of that when I decided to.
I was shooting the "State of the University" address this week. Interim President Liz Hitch was speaking, addressing faculty, staff, and a few students who actually chose to show up, about how the University was/is doing. She went on and on about UVU being the "most engaged university in the universe" and how great things are there and how despite a 15% cut-back in funding we're still doing good and not entirely in a hiring freeze.
She opened the forum up for Q&A. After some faculty asked some questions she fielded a question from the UVU Review (the UVU newspaper). The question was if the school was going to continue it's membership with a clubhouse as a perk for certain of it's higher-up faculty. The response was essentially that the Clubhouse is a one time investment and that it's a negligible factor financially wise. She then mentioned how we needed to cut back how much food we provided for events, how 4% of our budget each year through the various departments gets eaten up, literally. She went on to say how important it was for blah blah blah blah. She kept skirting around issues of employment, money, department needs, etc. If you don't believe me, I know where you can get the footage of the whole thing. I was one of the three camera ops recording the whole thing.
I can't recall all that she said, I just remember how livid I was (standing no more than 15 feet from her the whole time it was hard for me to keep my professionalism where I was so close I could have said things easily without anyone else hearing what was said........but I like my job and ultimately she could fire me, so I canned my thoughts) after what she said during the Q/A. I sent a annonymous e-mail to her later that day. I received a response from one of her assistants. It didn't say much.
I was thinking today, I had said to them I'd rather pay as much as $1000 more a term if it meant having better faculty and more than one full time faculty in my department and classes that didn't have to be taken three times in order to get enough credits to graduate. I was thinking today about how "engaged" UVU is in my education. Perhaps UVU is the most engaged university for general education, perhaps in some other ways, but it's also deluded. To think the administration thinks everything in the school is just fine ("the state of the University is Great!" ~Liz Hitch) is like saying the crime rate in New York 15 years ago was acceptable. We have less than 200 students in a stadium made for 8000 when we have basketball games, when we play against teams from instate they have close to 10 times the amount of fans in our stadium than we have, and even out of state teams have more fans in the stands than we do.
Is the AVC (Art & Visual Communications) dept. actively engaged in my education? yes. It's a hands on department, other departments should be taking lessons from AVC classes, as they have some of the best applied forms of education that I can think of. If you want to learn how to write, write, don't read about writing, write more. If you want to learn how to interact with people with social, hormonal, mental imbalances, etc, work with them, work around them, observe them, reading about them only does so much. The principle is simple. Is the UVU AVC dept. more engaged in my life as a student (or any of the AVC students) than any other art school? No. The Academy of Art University in SanFrancisco would throw it's arms up in the air if they heard Liz Hitch yapping. So would the Brooks Institute of Photography. I'm assuming NYU would also, and they're a diversified university much like UVU but their faculty is so developed they're competing against schools like the Brooks Institute of Photography (who at one point had been THE place to go to, I'm not sure if they still are as I've heard conflicting reports about them in recent years). So, is UVU AVC the most engaged in the Universe? No.
The UVU school photographer is a UVSC dropout. He felt like he was learning more from reading up and practicing styles from Adams, Weston, Eggleston, Bresson and others, and he dropped out. He's now the school's photographer. Beat out a UVU(UVSC?) graduate. When he was new at it he went to the only full-time faculty the Photo Dept. has. He asked Simon for advice with a shoot he had coming up, Simon asked "what's your budget?" "$80,000"......"I've never shot anything with a budget that large, I don't know what to tell you". I learned more about lighting in a technical sense from sitting in on a shoot with the school photographer than I ever gained from Simon in a lighting class that lasted a term long. Is UVU engaged in my needs? Is it the best place for me? Is it going to give me the education to compete against recent graduates and professionals alike? No. I don't feel like it is.
It's a hard place to be in. Knowing that if you stick with a place you're in that you'll end up shooting weddings the rest of your life because you can't compete with anyone else in the business. The quickest thing to do would finish the education at the place, regardless of the issues inherant with staying there. So what do you do? Apply to monster.com and have three job offers in 3 different states to teach photography? Look at jobs with newspapers and other places that are paying 150%-200% the going rate of the local jobs? Find and pray about a place that is right and see if there's not a school there that has a better education to be given? Yeah, probably. It would seem like the logical thing to do, logically speaking. There's a job in Jersey that I more than qualify for, I'm experienced and good at it, and feel like I could do well at it. It would be kind of an editor position from the sounds of it too, which would be skipping a step or two on the ladder. Am I considering it? Yeah. I would be close enough I could do classes at NYU, one or two a term while working full-time. I would love to go to NYU. I could get my BFA and MFA there and build a resume and real-life experience at the same time. Sure I wouldn't have my MFA for like 8-10 years from now if I started in the fall and was going to school minimally. To live near NYC, without living in it, to live in a safe place with a low cost of living (comparable or lower to that of Utah) where the pay is better..... It's very tempting.
But how do you tell the family?
Blog about it... lol
I would be making more than the camel. Did some pricing, found that we could easily afford a house in a good neighborhood. I guess I have to reply to the job listing and see if they're interested in me before I can really get an answer from above to see if it's right...
Either way, I never thought I'd be considering things like this without having my BFA already, but out of 60 Photography postings on Monster.com I haven't seen more than 3 that require a degree. One requires 7 years experience, another requires a Bachelors, the rest don't require anything more than experience, or proof that you can do the kind of work they're looking for. Portfolio.
I need to shoot more.
Again.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
I was naughty, but now I can change what colors my LED's glow......
So as a photographer I've run into complications as of late. I purchased a laptop (with it's 20" monitor people think I'm a bit nutty, but at the time it was a desktop replacement and where it has a duo-core 2.0 ghz processor I wasn't worried about the 256 mb video card {GPU} that it had, and I was naive enough to not realize to never ever ever buy ATI let alone ATI Mobility {which are really half of what you think they are, they steal half of their "power" from your ram} but I figured the 4 gigs of ram that I had would make up for the weak video card...again...naive). Wow, that was a bit long. I purchased it at the beginning of last year.
So, in August I was able to get money together and purchase CS3, it had a funny piece of paper taped to it saying that I was eligible for an upgrade. Oh well, whatever, I had the software I wanted right? About a month later I heard about CS4 coming out and got excited, I checked on the upgrade information and it turned out I was going to be getting a free suite upgrade (some guy in the bookstore said I'd probably be getting a flash upgrade or something because there was a new release ove the summer that he didn't think was in the DVD). He was wrong. Very wrong, I got the new toy!
Well, I got the software in October or so, was showing it off at school, even the art department didn't get their copies until a week or two before the end of school, (that little time but they're teaching on it this term, lol) so I was a bit proud of myself. The only issue I had was getting CS4 to actually run, I've mentioned most all of this before but CS4 runs off of the GPU as opposed to it's predecessors which all rans of the CPU(s), so at this point the video card (ram excluded) became very crucial. I wasn't able to utilize it's abilities on my laptop. Right now I have Photoshop open, and it's merging some 84 images into a 3D panoramic.
I cheated.
I was naughty.
The GPU in the laptop/notebook/beast of a machine, is irreplaceable, I can't pull it out and put in something else, and neither can Dell. It's that way with most notebooks, and as such the same with most all all-in-one computers.
I'm not doing this on my notebook/beast of a machine/laptop.
I was naughty.
I did comparison builds, I could make a machine from Mac that would run me around 8 grand, and it would be something I would hate the rest of my life. I could build an awesome nearly 6 grand machine from Dell that matched the specs from the Mac that I'd built. I also did a custom build through newegg.com From them the same machine (exactly the same as the Dell but with better components) would have run me just under 4 grand.
Some time passed by.
The need for it increased.
I tried some more builds.
We sold our microwave.
Turns out the guy we sold it to is a photographer, and we started talking, he told me about slickdeals.net I checked it out, there are some cool things there, but I didn't find anything I really was interested in, though it did take me to the Dell Outlet.
I started looking on the Dell outlet, figuring what I could get by without having, and what types of systems would still be customizable enough that I could get away with buying it now and upgrading it myself later.
Time passed (8 hours?)
I placed an order.
Time passed.
I did a comparison build through a student pricing available with Dell, and checked what the cost would be to make the same system at student pricing. $800 more than I was going to be paying.
Got the desktop today. Got a monitor today, the other one is coming early next week.
Found some toys on my system that I didn't know about.
As I looked under it's skirt I noticed it looked like there were two GPU's, but the system only says there's one. CS4 was saying something funny about a Graphics Accelerator. Turns out that Dell didn't mention, but the system came with a bonus item, a Graphics Accelerator. Now I have an 84 image compilation that made my laptop cry for hours, and I started it less than half an hour ago. Looks like the file is around 2gb in size and nothing has crashed, and nothing has slowed.
Another cool feature. Nvidia has software installed on my system that allows me to overclock my Ram, CPU, GPU, and motherboard. I can also control my fan's speeds manually, and there's 4 sections of LED lights that I can control their color...
I was naughty.
But I can finally utilize features of Photoshop that I wasn't able to use, and I did it all for under $2,500.
So, in August I was able to get money together and purchase CS3, it had a funny piece of paper taped to it saying that I was eligible for an upgrade. Oh well, whatever, I had the software I wanted right? About a month later I heard about CS4 coming out and got excited, I checked on the upgrade information and it turned out I was going to be getting a free suite upgrade (some guy in the bookstore said I'd probably be getting a flash upgrade or something because there was a new release ove the summer that he didn't think was in the DVD). He was wrong. Very wrong, I got the new toy!
Well, I got the software in October or so, was showing it off at school, even the art department didn't get their copies until a week or two before the end of school, (that little time but they're teaching on it this term, lol) so I was a bit proud of myself. The only issue I had was getting CS4 to actually run, I've mentioned most all of this before but CS4 runs off of the GPU as opposed to it's predecessors which all rans of the CPU(s), so at this point the video card (ram excluded) became very crucial. I wasn't able to utilize it's abilities on my laptop. Right now I have Photoshop open, and it's merging some 84 images into a 3D panoramic.
I cheated.
I was naughty.
The GPU in the laptop/notebook/beast of a machine, is irreplaceable, I can't pull it out and put in something else, and neither can Dell. It's that way with most notebooks, and as such the same with most all all-in-one computers.
I'm not doing this on my notebook/beast of a machine/laptop.
I was naughty.
I did comparison builds, I could make a machine from Mac that would run me around 8 grand, and it would be something I would hate the rest of my life. I could build an awesome nearly 6 grand machine from Dell that matched the specs from the Mac that I'd built. I also did a custom build through newegg.com From them the same machine (exactly the same as the Dell but with better components) would have run me just under 4 grand.
Some time passed by.
The need for it increased.
I tried some more builds.
We sold our microwave.
Turns out the guy we sold it to is a photographer, and we started talking, he told me about slickdeals.net I checked it out, there are some cool things there, but I didn't find anything I really was interested in, though it did take me to the Dell Outlet.
I started looking on the Dell outlet, figuring what I could get by without having, and what types of systems would still be customizable enough that I could get away with buying it now and upgrading it myself later.
Time passed (8 hours?)
I placed an order.
Time passed.
I did a comparison build through a student pricing available with Dell, and checked what the cost would be to make the same system at student pricing. $800 more than I was going to be paying.
Got the desktop today. Got a monitor today, the other one is coming early next week.
Found some toys on my system that I didn't know about.
As I looked under it's skirt I noticed it looked like there were two GPU's, but the system only says there's one. CS4 was saying something funny about a Graphics Accelerator. Turns out that Dell didn't mention, but the system came with a bonus item, a Graphics Accelerator. Now I have an 84 image compilation that made my laptop cry for hours, and I started it less than half an hour ago. Looks like the file is around 2gb in size and nothing has crashed, and nothing has slowed.
Another cool feature. Nvidia has software installed on my system that allows me to overclock my Ram, CPU, GPU, and motherboard. I can also control my fan's speeds manually, and there's 4 sections of LED lights that I can control their color...
I was naughty.
But I can finally utilize features of Photoshop that I wasn't able to use, and I did it all for under $2,500.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Viper not biting anymore?
"The legendary Viper is basically a street-legal race car, with nearly no amenities or creature comforts to speak of, but all the speed one could ever imagine. On the world's most demanding test track -- the Nürburgring, a 12.9-mile circuit in the mountains outside Nürburg, Germany -- the lap record is held by a 2009 Viper ACR, which bests even cars that cost five times as much."
this was an excerpt from this report on 6 car lines that are looking at getting axed (most of them I can't wait to see gone) The link is below
http://autos.yahoo.com/articles/autos_content_landing_pages/844/6-cars-on-death-row/
It's sad to me that the Viper might be going, I don't want it to be gone, there are few cars as beautiful as it. Of course, when it comes to the Hummer H3 (Humvv wanna-b), the Saturn Sky (dirt-cheap roadster from a dirt-cheap company) and most strongly the PT Cruiser (wanna be SUV mixed with a dodge neon engine, dodge stratus frame, old-school {Al Capone era} gangster style body and the kind of engine-power that is only attainable by burning stolen methane gas from mice). It'll be sad to see the Viper go, if/when it goes.
this was an excerpt from this report on 6 car lines that are looking at getting axed (most of them I can't wait to see gone) The link is below
http://autos.yahoo.com/articles/autos_content_landing_pages/844/6-cars-on-death-row/
It's sad to me that the Viper might be going, I don't want it to be gone, there are few cars as beautiful as it. Of course, when it comes to the Hummer H3 (Humvv wanna-b), the Saturn Sky (dirt-cheap roadster from a dirt-cheap company) and most strongly the PT Cruiser (wanna be SUV mixed with a dodge neon engine, dodge stratus frame, old-school {Al Capone era} gangster style body and the kind of engine-power that is only attainable by burning stolen methane gas from mice). It'll be sad to see the Viper go, if/when it goes.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Insanity trying to fix what isn't really broken
This is an excerpt from this web-posting, I found it on yahoo, it was one of their 4 news-spots on their main page (constantly changing so that's why I included the link)...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090113/ap_on_re_au_an/as_australia_rabbit_infestation
BANGKOK, Thailand – It seemed like a good idea at the time: Remove all the feral cats from a famous Australian island to save the native seabirds.
But the decision to eradicate the felines from Macquarie island allowed the rabbit population to explode and, in turn, destroy much of its fragile vegetation that birds depend on for cover, researchers said Tuesday.
Removing the cats from Macquarie "caused environmental devastation" that will cost authorities 24 million Australian dollars ($16.2 million) to remedy, Dana Bergstrom of the Australian Antarctic Division and her colleagues wrote in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology.
"Our study shows that between 2000 and 2007, there has been widespread ecosystem devastation and decades of conservation effort compromised," Bergstrom said in a statement.
The unintended consequences of the cat-removal project show the dangers of meddling with an ecosystem — even with the best of intentions — without thinking long and hard, the study said.
Ok, so that's from the top of the news. Basically, it seems like a great over-sight on the part of those who removed the feral cats, but what's insanely idiodic is that to fix the problem they're looking at expensive ways to fix it, rather than introducing 2 very cheap options. Hunters, thereby removing the rabbits, adding a little influx of rabbit fur and rabbit meat into the market, or cheap option 2, re-introducing the feral cats, taking them from animal shelters where they might otherwise be put to sleep.
It could be so much cheaper. But no, the economy is weak, so lets waste 16 million (US) dollars.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090113/ap_on_re_au_an/as_australia_rabbit_infestation
BANGKOK, Thailand – It seemed like a good idea at the time: Remove all the feral cats from a famous Australian island to save the native seabirds.
But the decision to eradicate the felines from Macquarie island allowed the rabbit population to explode and, in turn, destroy much of its fragile vegetation that birds depend on for cover, researchers said Tuesday.
Removing the cats from Macquarie "caused environmental devastation" that will cost authorities 24 million Australian dollars ($16.2 million) to remedy, Dana Bergstrom of the Australian Antarctic Division and her colleagues wrote in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology.
"Our study shows that between 2000 and 2007, there has been widespread ecosystem devastation and decades of conservation effort compromised," Bergstrom said in a statement.
The unintended consequences of the cat-removal project show the dangers of meddling with an ecosystem — even with the best of intentions — without thinking long and hard, the study said.
Ok, so that's from the top of the news. Basically, it seems like a great over-sight on the part of those who removed the feral cats, but what's insanely idiodic is that to fix the problem they're looking at expensive ways to fix it, rather than introducing 2 very cheap options. Hunters, thereby removing the rabbits, adding a little influx of rabbit fur and rabbit meat into the market, or cheap option 2, re-introducing the feral cats, taking them from animal shelters where they might otherwise be put to sleep.
It could be so much cheaper. But no, the economy is weak, so lets waste 16 million (US) dollars.
Friday, January 9, 2009
hahahaha you can't read this and not smile, and nod that some of these have, or currently do, apply directly to, You!
Rules of the Universe
1. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.
2. Don't worry about what people think; they don't do it very often.
3. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian anymore than standing in a garage makes you a car.
4. Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
5. Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.
6. A person, who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person. (This is very important.. Pay attention! It never fails.)
7. For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.
8. If you look like your passport picture, you probably need the trip..
9. Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.
10. A conscience is what hurts when all of your other parts feel so good..
11. Eat well, stay fit, die anyway.
12. Men are from earth. Women are from earth. Deal with it. Embrace your differences. Love each other.
13. No man has ever been shot while doing the dishes.
14. A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand.
15. Middle age is when broadness of the mind and narrowness of the waist change places.
16. Opportunities always look bigger after they have passed.
17. Junk is something you've kept for years and throw away three weeks before you need it.
18. There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.
19. Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
20. By the time you can make ends meet, they move the ends.
21. Thou shalt not weigh more than thy refrigerator.
22. Someone who thinks logically provides a nice contrast to the real world.
23. It ain't the jeans that make your butt look fat.
24. There is a very fine line between 'hobby' and 'mental illness.'
25. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them..
26. You should not confuse your career with your life.
27. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.
28. Never lick a steak knife.
29. The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.
30. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.
31. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.
32. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above average drivers.
33. Your friends love you anyway.
34. Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.
35. How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?
1. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.
2. Don't worry about what people think; they don't do it very often.
3. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian anymore than standing in a garage makes you a car.
4. Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
5. Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.
6. A person, who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person. (This is very important.. Pay attention! It never fails.)
7. For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.
8. If you look like your passport picture, you probably need the trip..
9. Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.
10. A conscience is what hurts when all of your other parts feel so good..
11. Eat well, stay fit, die anyway.
12. Men are from earth. Women are from earth. Deal with it. Embrace your differences. Love each other.
13. No man has ever been shot while doing the dishes.
14. A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand.
15. Middle age is when broadness of the mind and narrowness of the waist change places.
16. Opportunities always look bigger after they have passed.
17. Junk is something you've kept for years and throw away three weeks before you need it.
18. There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.
19. Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
20. By the time you can make ends meet, they move the ends.
21. Thou shalt not weigh more than thy refrigerator.
22. Someone who thinks logically provides a nice contrast to the real world.
23. It ain't the jeans that make your butt look fat.
24. There is a very fine line between 'hobby' and 'mental illness.'
25. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them..
26. You should not confuse your career with your life.
27. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.
28. Never lick a steak knife.
29. The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.
30. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.
31. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.
32. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above average drivers.
33. Your friends love you anyway.
34. Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.
35. How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
PriMerica
I saw a sign, or a decorated car, or something for it the other day. The funny thing is that a couple days before I met someone who offered me a job. Found out today, when I went to the interview, that that's the company I was interviewing for. The funny thing, I really don't have any information on who they Really are, so I'm perplexed.
The interview went well, I have an open job offer, I just need to pull together $99 (one time) fee for a background check as well as the materials for prepping for and acquiring a state license. I could work 10-15 hours a week, working in the evening hours as that's when I have time, going to people who've asked to meet with us, entirely referral based. Working that little I was told I could earn 2-3 thousand a month. Compared to the 600 I've been making a month it's very very lucrative as either replacement or supplemental.
I have a funny feeling about it though, and I can't shake it. I don't know why. We were going to go up to a meeting about it tonight, the weather closed in and we didn't make it. Oh well, anyone who has some info on this group I'd appreciate info.
I know they're a part of Citi-Group, as I recall their (citi-groups') CEO took over a hundred million bucks this last year as a bonus even though they were declaring bankruptcy. Maybe that's part of why I'm having issues with them.
The interview went well, I have an open job offer, I just need to pull together $99 (one time) fee for a background check as well as the materials for prepping for and acquiring a state license. I could work 10-15 hours a week, working in the evening hours as that's when I have time, going to people who've asked to meet with us, entirely referral based. Working that little I was told I could earn 2-3 thousand a month. Compared to the 600 I've been making a month it's very very lucrative as either replacement or supplemental.
I have a funny feeling about it though, and I can't shake it. I don't know why. We were going to go up to a meeting about it tonight, the weather closed in and we didn't make it. Oh well, anyone who has some info on this group I'd appreciate info.
I know they're a part of Citi-Group, as I recall their (citi-groups') CEO took over a hundred million bucks this last year as a bonus even though they were declaring bankruptcy. Maybe that's part of why I'm having issues with them.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Brickfish
Hey all;
I've put a bunch more posts up on my Brickfish site, entering some 5 or 6 more images for contests. Give it a peek, give a vote, leave a review.
Honestly though, if you leave me a review it gives input that is greatly needed, so really, please do leave some feedback.
http://www.brickfish.com/fotoneurotic
on the right hand side you'll see my current entries.
I've put a bunch more posts up on my Brickfish site, entering some 5 or 6 more images for contests. Give it a peek, give a vote, leave a review.
Honestly though, if you leave me a review it gives input that is greatly needed, so really, please do leave some feedback.
http://www.brickfish.com/fotoneurotic
on the right hand side you'll see my current entries.
"I think some idiots must live here" ~Achmed
So, the school I'm attending. They do funny things. They used to have it available that students could change their degree through their online access to their profile at the school. It was really nice.
Now I've run into an issue where I can't. It wouldn't be an issue except that I've hit my max credits for an associates program while receiving financial aid. I can either appeal it, or matriculate. I want to matriculate. Unfortunately no one can help me except for my academic advisor, who wasn't available to reach today. Fortunately I'll be able to get in tomorrow. The funny thing is had they told me two weeks I could have the money already applied to my account and have no stress on my shoulders about if the money was going to come through or not. Furthermore I wouldn't have stress if I was going to get money in time to get the books that I need for my classes. Yay for idiots. They surround us all.
Now I've run into an issue where I can't. It wouldn't be an issue except that I've hit my max credits for an associates program while receiving financial aid. I can either appeal it, or matriculate. I want to matriculate. Unfortunately no one can help me except for my academic advisor, who wasn't available to reach today. Fortunately I'll be able to get in tomorrow. The funny thing is had they told me two weeks I could have the money already applied to my account and have no stress on my shoulders about if the money was going to come through or not. Furthermore I wouldn't have stress if I was going to get money in time to get the books that I need for my classes. Yay for idiots. They surround us all.
trust and faith in each other
I was thinking tonight. As I was waiting for my wife to fall asleep, so I could then snuggle in and not wake her or keep her from sleeping via my snoring. Frequently in the LDS faith we refer to a husband and wife as being in a relationship triangle with diety, and how to grow closer to one in an eternal sense you must also grow closer to the other. It dawned on me, that the type of growth is across "all the fields" if you will.
Faith in Christ leads to salvation, as it's your faith in Him that leads to your acting upon your beliefs, knowledge, and faith. How can a person possibly grow closer to God in their faith without also increasing in their faith in their eternal companion.
When I first was married I wasn't able, capable, of allowing my wife to take care of our finances. I was so afraid she'd flub it up. Well, eventually I allowed her to (she was really persistent), and the first time she missed paying a bill I flipped my lid. :( I thought it was a sign of how right I was, and how dare I allow someone else to manage my finances, I was the one making All the money.
Well, she still takes care of our finances, and in the past year she's not missed a bill, we've missed some pre-pays (paying a week or so early, allowing you to not pay the extra required to electronically pay some bills the day or three days prior to their due date...) but since then we've not missed one bill. She's done very good. So good in fact, that for a while there we were a month and a half ahead of our bills. In the time we'd been married I'd never had us more than a week or two ahead, but somehow with No accounting experience, no budgeting practice and had not only figured out how to pay everything, but also how to get ahead of our bills enough so when she lost her job at the start of december she had us taken care of through nearly the end of january. With my (now very minimal, she became the bread winner as I started last term and went to a part-time job) income we're still able to get food, and take care of our personal needs. On top of that all, we were able to get some food-storage put together while she was managing our finances, allowing us to focus our money on fresh produce and using our food-storage along with it.
I'll be the first to admit (though you can likely tell from what I've said so far) that I had much less faith in her in the beginning than I should have. Having had no experience with what her abilities could be it was difficult to have faith in that aspect. Now, I see her wonderous possibilities and know that with her our finances will always be secure, I don't need to worry when she's in charge of them.
Now our faith is being challenged again as she's trying to find a job. Some times it seems that frustration and despair frequently knock on our door, begging us to let them in. In my heart, I see, and feel, know..., that we will be taken care of, that there's something in store, but the time isn't right for the other party yet, though it will be, soon.
There is nothing that a person can't do, if they believe in themself, and surround themself with persons who believe in them as well.
Faith in Christ leads to salvation, as it's your faith in Him that leads to your acting upon your beliefs, knowledge, and faith. How can a person possibly grow closer to God in their faith without also increasing in their faith in their eternal companion.
When I first was married I wasn't able, capable, of allowing my wife to take care of our finances. I was so afraid she'd flub it up. Well, eventually I allowed her to (she was really persistent), and the first time she missed paying a bill I flipped my lid. :( I thought it was a sign of how right I was, and how dare I allow someone else to manage my finances, I was the one making All the money.
Well, she still takes care of our finances, and in the past year she's not missed a bill, we've missed some pre-pays (paying a week or so early, allowing you to not pay the extra required to electronically pay some bills the day or three days prior to their due date...) but since then we've not missed one bill. She's done very good. So good in fact, that for a while there we were a month and a half ahead of our bills. In the time we'd been married I'd never had us more than a week or two ahead, but somehow with No accounting experience, no budgeting practice and had not only figured out how to pay everything, but also how to get ahead of our bills enough so when she lost her job at the start of december she had us taken care of through nearly the end of january. With my (now very minimal, she became the bread winner as I started last term and went to a part-time job) income we're still able to get food, and take care of our personal needs. On top of that all, we were able to get some food-storage put together while she was managing our finances, allowing us to focus our money on fresh produce and using our food-storage along with it.
I'll be the first to admit (though you can likely tell from what I've said so far) that I had much less faith in her in the beginning than I should have. Having had no experience with what her abilities could be it was difficult to have faith in that aspect. Now, I see her wonderous possibilities and know that with her our finances will always be secure, I don't need to worry when she's in charge of them.
Now our faith is being challenged again as she's trying to find a job. Some times it seems that frustration and despair frequently knock on our door, begging us to let them in. In my heart, I see, and feel, know..., that we will be taken care of, that there's something in store, but the time isn't right for the other party yet, though it will be, soon.
There is nothing that a person can't do, if they believe in themself, and surround themself with persons who believe in them as well.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Memories
I have a song stuck in my head. It goes by the tune "Oh my darlin" (you know, oh my darlin oh my darlin of my darlin clementine...oh course why someone wrote a song about a fruit seems a bit nutty to me). The song is something I believe is from the Girlscouts, it's "Found a peanut". Ok, I should say both songs have been stuck in my head and as the verses play inside my mind they switch from being about a fruit to being about the peanut. It's kinda funny some times how it ends up being a love song to a rotten peanut.
When I was little my family was planning a long trip, I think it was a roadtrip to Disneyland. In our preparations for this trip my mom had us come up with something that we could do while we were on the drive, so as to not go completely insane. Well, as it would turn out one of the things we decided to do was to write extra verses to "found a peanut". It was marvelous by the time we were done. It must have had an extra ten verses when we were finished, or maybe we'd gotten it so that it now had ten verses, either way it was much longer than it had been previously.
I seem to remember that we completely forgot the papers that had the words to the song, some time down the road it was brought up, and we didn't have them. Perhaps it was mom knowing that she would go insane if she had to hear it one more time, or maybe she was thinking of dad knowing he would go insane while we were singing it, there's always the chance that it was completely forgotten by accident by everyone as well. Either way I don't recall us having the words we'd written, though I think we may have tried to sing it anyway, at least once.
There was something about it. Not so much when we were singing it in the car, but when we were putting it together at home, working together on the words, trying to keep it funny and yet prolong the song for greater duration than it's original verse(s) allowed, there was something about doing all that that made it a fun memory, it's something I enjoy having stuck in my head. For as much as I usually don't enjoy having songs stuck in my head, the associations with this one make it enjoyable.
When I was little my family was planning a long trip, I think it was a roadtrip to Disneyland. In our preparations for this trip my mom had us come up with something that we could do while we were on the drive, so as to not go completely insane. Well, as it would turn out one of the things we decided to do was to write extra verses to "found a peanut". It was marvelous by the time we were done. It must have had an extra ten verses when we were finished, or maybe we'd gotten it so that it now had ten verses, either way it was much longer than it had been previously.
I seem to remember that we completely forgot the papers that had the words to the song, some time down the road it was brought up, and we didn't have them. Perhaps it was mom knowing that she would go insane if she had to hear it one more time, or maybe she was thinking of dad knowing he would go insane while we were singing it, there's always the chance that it was completely forgotten by accident by everyone as well. Either way I don't recall us having the words we'd written, though I think we may have tried to sing it anyway, at least once.
There was something about it. Not so much when we were singing it in the car, but when we were putting it together at home, working together on the words, trying to keep it funny and yet prolong the song for greater duration than it's original verse(s) allowed, there was something about doing all that that made it a fun memory, it's something I enjoy having stuck in my head. For as much as I usually don't enjoy having songs stuck in my head, the associations with this one make it enjoyable.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Obstacles
For me there was a time when it used to be playing WarCraft3. I would stay up into the midnight hours playing and playing in efforts to feel tired, feel fulfilled, and to have completely avoided whatever it was I was trying to hide from.
There were other times when it was homework.
Other times still it was work. (ProPix anyone?)
I think there are things we all hide from. Change is a big one. People don't seem to like that one. Like how it's now around 0 degrees outside, I don't like the change from the 40's that it was at today and yesterday to the 0 it is now. Now I'm hiding inside a nice warm house, much warmer than the chilly air outside.
I'll not lie, there have been times when I've hid from things through the use of game systems, or rather, a game system, the Xbox (or it's revised younger brother, the Xbox 360).
Sure some times the things being hidden from are family, or homework, or religous responsibilities, civic duties, personal hygeine (like flossing twice a day every day, or once for that matter, it hurts!).
Surely I'm not alone in these matters. In fact, I can personally guarantee countless hundreds of thousands who live this every day, and will for most of their lives.
I was watching a movie. It made me question why we hide from these things, these changes we face, and/or the responsibilities of civic, personal, and familial origins. It talked about taking baby-steps into the changes and challenges we face in our lives.
I realized that facing things is called responsibility. I wish I had a better word than "things" but they take so many faces it's difficult to call a plethora of possibilities anything other than things. So keep in mind when I say things I'm referring to these challenges, duties, responsibilities, options, choices, that are available to any given person on any given day. Not facing these "things" is called irresponsibility.
The funny thing.
Most of them aren't that hard.
Most of the time conquering the issue leaves you feeling more whole and complete. Feeling good.
If I were to set a particular "new year resolution" it would be to get over my "things" that I hide from, whatever they may be and by so doing: to move on in my art, to better my relationship with my family, friends, and wife, and to get my body back into better shape like I've been meaning to for the last 5 years.
An observation in closing.
Memories are a funny thing. They get the best of you. Some times they're held in the most inconspicuous places, and others (like journals, blogs, etc) they are much more apparent and obvious to everyone. When Sister was moving her room downstairs I was helping dad to move his office out of that bedroom. In a few short months he'd covered the walls, the floors, the desks, with everything. There was "stuff" all over the place, just like there's been stuff all over his desk and things, for, well, as long as I can remember. It was really hard for him to get rid of some of the stuff, some things are very near and dear to his heart. Like a broken lamp. It was made by the one of my brothers, the woodsy slave-driver type ;) and he gave it to dad, whether he made it with him in mind or needed a father's day present and it happened to be handy I really don't know. It broke but dad fixed it, ish, and it's been on his desk ever since. It brings so much joy to him though, who it came from, the love that was put into it when it was made, and he can't get rid of it even though it's not the greatest, and very obviously has been repaired.
I began to realize how many things dad has connections to. How much joy he has in the memories of the objects, they're representational to him of events, memories, experiences. So when he was packing up it was difficult for him. I can relate. I had to pack all my crap up out of that room not a year before when my wife and I had gotten married and I finally moved out. There are so many memories that I had that I relived as I put things away and prepared to move out. It took weeks for me to pack up. One suburban load took almost everything I had, even though it took me so long to pack everything up. I remember crying. A lot, and many times, knowing that things wouldn't ever be the same way that they were, knowing that the memories would carry with me in the objects, but I was leaving the location where they were made. It was very difficult. I think dad relives experiences in much the same way. Though, I think for him it's a more regular thing, and he has more memories to relive.
It's funny. He has an astounding memory for someone who can't keep a name straight... ;) I think a lot of times he isn't given credit to the amount that he deserves. Part of it might be that he's non-confrontational. Which isn't a bad thing, if the person who is working with him is willing to be patient in helping him to feel comfortable to release the information. In the past couple years he's been opening up more and more to me, perhaps it's because I'm older, maybe it's because I started asking questions and waited for him to respond (some times silencing others who may have chimed in to respond for him) and I have begun to realize how similar I am to him in so many ways. See, my wife some times will want a response from me, but she pressures so much, so frequently, that right when I'm ready to respond she pressures again, I feel uncomfortable, and clam up, not wanting to share as I feel I'm being attacked. We've come a long way with that, it's not nearly what it was a year ago, and we communicate much much better in so many ways it's not even funny. Relating my experience to my father's however, I begin to wonder if he isn't responding in the same way that I was, clamming up and turning inwards when he felt pressured or "attacked", obviously compounding the problem but not feeling "safe" to be able to speak and shortly shutting-down on the person.
Maybe my father looks inward like I do, maybe he doesn't. I like to think. I like to think about my behaviour (the u in behavioUr is deliberate, it's more coloUrful), the reactions people give to my behaviour, their responses, my own personal feelings toward how I handle situations. I don't know why I think about things, mulling things over and over trying to understand them better. I blame that for my opinions of Love, and what Love really is, frequently I find people asking me about love, and other things, and being surprised by my responses (maybe it's because of the blonde hair, though one sibling seems to feel it's brown {it's getting there, sadly}) but I think it's the side of me that analyzes things, for whatever reason, it's part of me.
There were other times when it was homework.
Other times still it was work. (ProPix anyone?)
I think there are things we all hide from. Change is a big one. People don't seem to like that one. Like how it's now around 0 degrees outside, I don't like the change from the 40's that it was at today and yesterday to the 0 it is now. Now I'm hiding inside a nice warm house, much warmer than the chilly air outside.
I'll not lie, there have been times when I've hid from things through the use of game systems, or rather, a game system, the Xbox (or it's revised younger brother, the Xbox 360).
Sure some times the things being hidden from are family, or homework, or religous responsibilities, civic duties, personal hygeine (like flossing twice a day every day, or once for that matter, it hurts!).
Surely I'm not alone in these matters. In fact, I can personally guarantee countless hundreds of thousands who live this every day, and will for most of their lives.
I was watching a movie. It made me question why we hide from these things, these changes we face, and/or the responsibilities of civic, personal, and familial origins. It talked about taking baby-steps into the changes and challenges we face in our lives.
I realized that facing things is called responsibility. I wish I had a better word than "things" but they take so many faces it's difficult to call a plethora of possibilities anything other than things. So keep in mind when I say things I'm referring to these challenges, duties, responsibilities, options, choices, that are available to any given person on any given day. Not facing these "things" is called irresponsibility.
The funny thing.
Most of them aren't that hard.
Most of the time conquering the issue leaves you feeling more whole and complete. Feeling good.
If I were to set a particular "new year resolution" it would be to get over my "things" that I hide from, whatever they may be and by so doing: to move on in my art, to better my relationship with my family, friends, and wife, and to get my body back into better shape like I've been meaning to for the last 5 years.
An observation in closing.
Memories are a funny thing. They get the best of you. Some times they're held in the most inconspicuous places, and others (like journals, blogs, etc) they are much more apparent and obvious to everyone. When Sister was moving her room downstairs I was helping dad to move his office out of that bedroom. In a few short months he'd covered the walls, the floors, the desks, with everything. There was "stuff" all over the place, just like there's been stuff all over his desk and things, for, well, as long as I can remember. It was really hard for him to get rid of some of the stuff, some things are very near and dear to his heart. Like a broken lamp. It was made by the one of my brothers, the woodsy slave-driver type ;) and he gave it to dad, whether he made it with him in mind or needed a father's day present and it happened to be handy I really don't know. It broke but dad fixed it, ish, and it's been on his desk ever since. It brings so much joy to him though, who it came from, the love that was put into it when it was made, and he can't get rid of it even though it's not the greatest, and very obviously has been repaired.
I began to realize how many things dad has connections to. How much joy he has in the memories of the objects, they're representational to him of events, memories, experiences. So when he was packing up it was difficult for him. I can relate. I had to pack all my crap up out of that room not a year before when my wife and I had gotten married and I finally moved out. There are so many memories that I had that I relived as I put things away and prepared to move out. It took weeks for me to pack up. One suburban load took almost everything I had, even though it took me so long to pack everything up. I remember crying. A lot, and many times, knowing that things wouldn't ever be the same way that they were, knowing that the memories would carry with me in the objects, but I was leaving the location where they were made. It was very difficult. I think dad relives experiences in much the same way. Though, I think for him it's a more regular thing, and he has more memories to relive.
It's funny. He has an astounding memory for someone who can't keep a name straight... ;) I think a lot of times he isn't given credit to the amount that he deserves. Part of it might be that he's non-confrontational. Which isn't a bad thing, if the person who is working with him is willing to be patient in helping him to feel comfortable to release the information. In the past couple years he's been opening up more and more to me, perhaps it's because I'm older, maybe it's because I started asking questions and waited for him to respond (some times silencing others who may have chimed in to respond for him) and I have begun to realize how similar I am to him in so many ways. See, my wife some times will want a response from me, but she pressures so much, so frequently, that right when I'm ready to respond she pressures again, I feel uncomfortable, and clam up, not wanting to share as I feel I'm being attacked. We've come a long way with that, it's not nearly what it was a year ago, and we communicate much much better in so many ways it's not even funny. Relating my experience to my father's however, I begin to wonder if he isn't responding in the same way that I was, clamming up and turning inwards when he felt pressured or "attacked", obviously compounding the problem but not feeling "safe" to be able to speak and shortly shutting-down on the person.
Maybe my father looks inward like I do, maybe he doesn't. I like to think. I like to think about my behaviour (the u in behavioUr is deliberate, it's more coloUrful), the reactions people give to my behaviour, their responses, my own personal feelings toward how I handle situations. I don't know why I think about things, mulling things over and over trying to understand them better. I blame that for my opinions of Love, and what Love really is, frequently I find people asking me about love, and other things, and being surprised by my responses (maybe it's because of the blonde hair, though one sibling seems to feel it's brown {it's getting there, sadly}) but I think it's the side of me that analyzes things, for whatever reason, it's part of me.
Friday, January 2, 2009
15 idiots from congress
So, congress wants to make up for our driving habits. Seems our cutting back on driving has caused a fund shortage for our road repairs, and building. They want to raise the federal tax by up to 50%. They're urging states to raise their rates too. I don't know if you've looked at how much you pay per gallon before, but in states like Utah and New York, in fact, most other states that I've paid attention to it in, you're paying around 50 cents a gallon for state, city and federal taxes on your gas. To top it all, in a weakened economy these people are wanting to not only increase this tax, but to tie it to inflation, so as we start paying more for everthing else, we start paying more for it too!
How about this.
We stop paying congress so much money, we give them what they Really need to live for a year and make them come up with the rest on their own, it's not like they're working all day every day, they hardly even meet for half a year in two years time. That was based off info from a political science course I took.
You want to come up with money in hard times? Take it from the people who have more than they Need. Don't take it from those supporting your industries and economy.
15 idiots.
I vote we don't vote for them next time.
How about this.
We stop paying congress so much money, we give them what they Really need to live for a year and make them come up with the rest on their own, it's not like they're working all day every day, they hardly even meet for half a year in two years time. That was based off info from a political science course I took.
You want to come up with money in hard times? Take it from the people who have more than they Need. Don't take it from those supporting your industries and economy.
15 idiots.
I vote we don't vote for them next time.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Woot-Off Lights vs. Breville Blender from Woot Video on Vimeo.
I love woot
It's woot-er-ific
btw, this is from their new years eve-new years day woot-a-thon
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Fools in sheeps clothing
It's wrong, all wrong. Even when you make it right, right to how you think it should be, right to how the instructions say it should be, and right to how experience has said it should be.....
Someone recentlt mentioned to me to put "shoe goo" on parts of a toilet that were leaking. I did. Made it worse. Immediately. Instead of a small little leak coming here and there, it turned into literally all the water that should be flowing from the tank into the bowl was coming out from between them. The leak had been just a drop or two every ten minutes coming down from one of the bolts.
Now...The third time I've fixed it I saw the instructions again don't express what's being said, the parts listed aren't the parts given, and I tried something new. They gave 9 beveled washers and 9 flat washers. So I tried with some beveled washers.
It didn't leak. For a minute.
nearly two hours later, the problem still isn't fixed, and I'm tired and frustrated.
9:30 pm honey-do's are post-now recommended to me and all others to not be done until some time the next day, it's just a bad way to end a day.
Someone recentlt mentioned to me to put "shoe goo" on parts of a toilet that were leaking. I did. Made it worse. Immediately. Instead of a small little leak coming here and there, it turned into literally all the water that should be flowing from the tank into the bowl was coming out from between them. The leak had been just a drop or two every ten minutes coming down from one of the bolts.
Now...The third time I've fixed it I saw the instructions again don't express what's being said, the parts listed aren't the parts given, and I tried something new. They gave 9 beveled washers and 9 flat washers. So I tried with some beveled washers.
It didn't leak. For a minute.
nearly two hours later, the problem still isn't fixed, and I'm tired and frustrated.
9:30 pm honey-do's are post-now recommended to me and all others to not be done until some time the next day, it's just a bad way to end a day.
Nosy Mouse
This is based off of hearsay. I hear my wife say things, and I get ideas based off of them. Hearsay. Sister it seems feels awkward helping around mom's house, but wants to do more around to help. When Sister first moved back in mom was wanting Sister to be able to work through internal issues and not need to worry about things around the house as much, thereby "disabling" the 'help-around-the-house' mode. There's the basis for some of the rest of this.
Dad, loving as he is, his main chore every day is to make sure that the dishes are done, if he does this his wife is happy, if she's happy she likes to be around him, if she likes to be around him he is much more happy as she's more responsive and snuggly. Husbands' like it when their wife is snuggly, responsive and happy. So, when Sister tries to be helpful around the house and do the dishes to do something to help out Dad gets upset. Sister is trying to move his cheese. Without doing the dishes his wife isn't snuggly, happy, or responsive. Even though by Sister doing the dishes he could then do something else around the house it's His chore and He wants to do it. It's his cheese. So, sister is told "no" 'help-around-the-house' is again "disabled" and sister isn't able to get the weight off of her mind/shoulders/heart about being able to do more around the house to help out.
I'm not sure of the entire situation, I can't be, I wasn't in the conversation between Sister and Wifey, therefore I'm a nosy mouse. From the outside though...
It sounds like Sister wants to be able to help around the house more, feels awkward and like she's not able to, or like she doesn't have permission to.
Permission is a funny thing. We grow up being told when we can or need to do things, we go to school and get told when we can or need to have things done by, we go to work and find the same thing. At your own personal home you can tell yourself when you can or need to do something. At someone elses' home they don't want to ask you to do something they would really like done, and it's uncomfortable asking if you can do something. So, both parties end up being frustrated, wanting more, much more, to be done but neither ever bring it up, and nothing changes, or it might if someone moves anothers cheese or squeeks a bit too much perhaps.
When I was serving in a volunteer position back east for a couple years we had a few leaders that got switched around on us, they're referenced as presidents though not to be confused with the kind of presidents who are elected and seem to either steal and lie or tell the truth but get walked over for it by those who said they would support them. Anyway, the last president that directed the group I was volunteering with said something very profound to us volunteers. See, we had a lot of guidance, a lot of instructions, and some of it seemed a bit distressingly stringent some times to some of the volunteers. As such he said "I give you PERMISSION to be obedient" (obedient to the things we said we'd do, things we'd promised we'd do).
In the past I've found that was was being done is he gave us quite literally permission to act for ourselves. Permission. It's a powerful situation. It's called being ENABLED. A clock might be able to wake you up in the morning, but despite how loud it wants to be, what song it might play or the kind of buzzer it blares it's not going to wake a cockroach if it's not been enabled by flipping the little switch on it. I can tell you from experience that many things in life have been missed by not Enabling the clock to do what it's meant to do.
How this all relates.
Dad, it's ok if someone moves your cheese, some times maybe you just say "thank you" and plan on doing it the next night too, if it's done the next night for you too then you just wait until the person who was doing it doesn't do it, when it's not being done by someone else then it's your job to do it, but if someone else wants to do it, let them. Give them a big hug and say "thank you". It's ok to squeek a tear too, if you're so inclined.
Mom, some times people need to be enabled after being disabled. An alarm clock with the switch still on off isn't going to do much good, pretty to look at, may have sounds it makes if you turn the radio on, but it's still not going to wake you up in the morning without being enabled. It's ok to enable people. "It's ok for you to help around the house, I'll try to understand how you did what you did and accept it if it's not how I would have done it" may be one way of enabling the alarm clock.
Sister. If you're going to move someones cheese let them know where you put it. ;) Some times dad gets stuck on his cheese and if you hug him, tell him you love him, and say that you just want to help around the house some by doing the dishes I'm sure he'd let you and understand just fine that his cheese is still being protected by someone and isn't being stolen away.
Mom, don't steal Dad's cheese in the garage, I can't find tools when you steal his cheese. You can move the cheese together, but he has to know where things are otherwise I can't help fix things either.
Dad it's ok for old cheese to go out to pasture...books on programs that haven't been in use for years aren't likely to be resurrected and keeping the books though they might be cherished memories, if you write down the memories you won't have to worry about losing them, and written down the memories take up less space than a book case in the garage... I'm sure mom would love to help you use Dragon Naturally Speaking if you would rather speak your journal as opposed to writing or typing it. I'm sure your grandchildren would love to read it typed, and maybe even hear sound bytes, that could be a fun thing to add to journals, voice, what awesome technologies we have at our finger-tips now.
But mom, really dad's tool-cheese in the garage needs to be in a place where he knows where to find it (cause where he always puts it away is where I always know where to find it, which means when you move his cheese you move my cheese, and then if neither of us can find it we're both grumpy which means you and my wife both end up grumpy, which is no good. lol)........
Just don't set the cat loose on the nosy mouse...it has point teeth and shiny claws....
Dad, loving as he is, his main chore every day is to make sure that the dishes are done, if he does this his wife is happy, if she's happy she likes to be around him, if she likes to be around him he is much more happy as she's more responsive and snuggly. Husbands' like it when their wife is snuggly, responsive and happy. So, when Sister tries to be helpful around the house and do the dishes to do something to help out Dad gets upset. Sister is trying to move his cheese. Without doing the dishes his wife isn't snuggly, happy, or responsive. Even though by Sister doing the dishes he could then do something else around the house it's His chore and He wants to do it. It's his cheese. So, sister is told "no" 'help-around-the-house' is again "disabled" and sister isn't able to get the weight off of her mind/shoulders/heart about being able to do more around the house to help out.
I'm not sure of the entire situation, I can't be, I wasn't in the conversation between Sister and Wifey, therefore I'm a nosy mouse. From the outside though...
It sounds like Sister wants to be able to help around the house more, feels awkward and like she's not able to, or like she doesn't have permission to.
Permission is a funny thing. We grow up being told when we can or need to do things, we go to school and get told when we can or need to have things done by, we go to work and find the same thing. At your own personal home you can tell yourself when you can or need to do something. At someone elses' home they don't want to ask you to do something they would really like done, and it's uncomfortable asking if you can do something. So, both parties end up being frustrated, wanting more, much more, to be done but neither ever bring it up, and nothing changes, or it might if someone moves anothers cheese or squeeks a bit too much perhaps.
When I was serving in a volunteer position back east for a couple years we had a few leaders that got switched around on us, they're referenced as presidents though not to be confused with the kind of presidents who are elected and seem to either steal and lie or tell the truth but get walked over for it by those who said they would support them. Anyway, the last president that directed the group I was volunteering with said something very profound to us volunteers. See, we had a lot of guidance, a lot of instructions, and some of it seemed a bit distressingly stringent some times to some of the volunteers. As such he said "I give you PERMISSION to be obedient" (obedient to the things we said we'd do, things we'd promised we'd do).
In the past I've found that was was being done is he gave us quite literally permission to act for ourselves. Permission. It's a powerful situation. It's called being ENABLED. A clock might be able to wake you up in the morning, but despite how loud it wants to be, what song it might play or the kind of buzzer it blares it's not going to wake a cockroach if it's not been enabled by flipping the little switch on it. I can tell you from experience that many things in life have been missed by not Enabling the clock to do what it's meant to do.
How this all relates.
Dad, it's ok if someone moves your cheese, some times maybe you just say "thank you" and plan on doing it the next night too, if it's done the next night for you too then you just wait until the person who was doing it doesn't do it, when it's not being done by someone else then it's your job to do it, but if someone else wants to do it, let them. Give them a big hug and say "thank you". It's ok to squeek a tear too, if you're so inclined.
Mom, some times people need to be enabled after being disabled. An alarm clock with the switch still on off isn't going to do much good, pretty to look at, may have sounds it makes if you turn the radio on, but it's still not going to wake you up in the morning without being enabled. It's ok to enable people. "It's ok for you to help around the house, I'll try to understand how you did what you did and accept it if it's not how I would have done it" may be one way of enabling the alarm clock.
Sister. If you're going to move someones cheese let them know where you put it. ;) Some times dad gets stuck on his cheese and if you hug him, tell him you love him, and say that you just want to help around the house some by doing the dishes I'm sure he'd let you and understand just fine that his cheese is still being protected by someone and isn't being stolen away.
Mom, don't steal Dad's cheese in the garage, I can't find tools when you steal his cheese. You can move the cheese together, but he has to know where things are otherwise I can't help fix things either.
Dad it's ok for old cheese to go out to pasture...books on programs that haven't been in use for years aren't likely to be resurrected and keeping the books though they might be cherished memories, if you write down the memories you won't have to worry about losing them, and written down the memories take up less space than a book case in the garage... I'm sure mom would love to help you use Dragon Naturally Speaking if you would rather speak your journal as opposed to writing or typing it. I'm sure your grandchildren would love to read it typed, and maybe even hear sound bytes, that could be a fun thing to add to journals, voice, what awesome technologies we have at our finger-tips now.
But mom, really dad's tool-cheese in the garage needs to be in a place where he knows where to find it (cause where he always puts it away is where I always know where to find it, which means when you move his cheese you move my cheese, and then if neither of us can find it we're both grumpy which means you and my wife both end up grumpy, which is no good. lol)........
Just don't set the cat loose on the nosy mouse...it has point teeth and shiny claws....
Monday, December 29, 2008
craziness
I woke up around 6 this morning (sunday dec 28th), couldn't fall back asleep. My fever started coming back. It had broken the night before, but before 8 it was up in the 99's again. Before 11 it was in the 100's. I tried to sleep several times during the day, but I couldn't for even a minute. Not in the bed, not on the couch, not on the floor.
Around 5pm or so my fever broke, and my temperature had fallen back down to my normal 97.6. It was a very relieving feeling, as my energy started coming back, I began to feel like myself again. My in-laws invited us over for dinner, so we took the short walk over and ate some crock-pot "chicken cordeon bleu" which was interestingly good. (can of cream of chicken soup mixed with a cup of milk, pour enough to cover the bottom, lay in chicken breasts, cover them with a slice of ham and cheese, pour the rest of the first mixture over them then top with dry stuffing mix. Drizzle melted butter onto the stuffing. It seems if you cook it on high the stuffing stays crispy in a large sense, maybe on low {longer cook time} the stuffing might absorb more moisture). Anyway, it was the first real meal that tasted like it should, and that I could eat a normal portion of in the better part of three days. It was nice.
My wife and I came home, looked at the latest deal on woot.com (internet window-shopping, what's the world come to! lol), made some brownies, and played on our xbox. We started watching a movie she'd wanted to see for a while, and she fell asleep before it was half way over (around 1am...) I played some Halo3 (finally got it to freeze, I've been trying to since we bought it about a year ago, but I finally tricked it into freezing mid-play....lol) watched most of LiarLiar (funny movie, but hard to not laugh at in a lot of instances, which plays out to be problematic with a sleeping wife who you don't really want to wake. Now it's almost 5:30 monday morning.
23 hours without sleep. And I'm still not tired. I've had 4 Tyelonol PM's within the past 23 hours and they've not helped a wink. :( It's like all the energy that I wanted to use the past few days all got bottled up and it's coming out right now as I'm trying to fall asleep.
Yawn
Maybe that means my body will let me rest now.
We'll see.
Around 5pm or so my fever broke, and my temperature had fallen back down to my normal 97.6. It was a very relieving feeling, as my energy started coming back, I began to feel like myself again. My in-laws invited us over for dinner, so we took the short walk over and ate some crock-pot "chicken cordeon bleu" which was interestingly good. (can of cream of chicken soup mixed with a cup of milk, pour enough to cover the bottom, lay in chicken breasts, cover them with a slice of ham and cheese, pour the rest of the first mixture over them then top with dry stuffing mix. Drizzle melted butter onto the stuffing. It seems if you cook it on high the stuffing stays crispy in a large sense, maybe on low {longer cook time} the stuffing might absorb more moisture). Anyway, it was the first real meal that tasted like it should, and that I could eat a normal portion of in the better part of three days. It was nice.
My wife and I came home, looked at the latest deal on woot.com (internet window-shopping, what's the world come to! lol), made some brownies, and played on our xbox. We started watching a movie she'd wanted to see for a while, and she fell asleep before it was half way over (around 1am...) I played some Halo3 (finally got it to freeze, I've been trying to since we bought it about a year ago, but I finally tricked it into freezing mid-play....lol) watched most of LiarLiar (funny movie, but hard to not laugh at in a lot of instances, which plays out to be problematic with a sleeping wife who you don't really want to wake. Now it's almost 5:30 monday morning.
23 hours without sleep. And I'm still not tired. I've had 4 Tyelonol PM's within the past 23 hours and they've not helped a wink. :( It's like all the energy that I wanted to use the past few days all got bottled up and it's coming out right now as I'm trying to fall asleep.
Yawn
Maybe that means my body will let me rest now.
We'll see.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
I'm sick. Both literally and figuratively.
My temp. is hovering between the mid 99's and the high 100's. Most of the time people wouldn't worry too much about that, but my temp. in normal circumstances is 97.6 as opposed to the normal 98.6 that most of the humans on earth call normal. I'm not sure how many people in the world have a higher or lower than "normal" 'normal-temperature' but I'm one of them. If you were wondering. (probably weren't, lol)
Figuratively. I'm sick of people claiming that the more science proves the less there is to believe in diety. Albert Einstein said (paraphrased) "the more I learn about science, the more I'm convinced it was not created out of chance but put here for us to explore and understand." That's the basic idea of what he said, though i'm not entirely sure precisely what was said. If you're interested where I got the quote, it's from a talk, which is also on tape, titled "17 points of the true church". The quote is given by the author, as he heard it from Albert Einstein himself as a disortation to those scientifically minded. With this as a basis, I see that it's those who want to challenge beliefs in diety (for whatever reason) that use the knowledge we gain from science who use it as such, while those who live by faith understand that when inconsistencies show up between what we learn through science and what we learn through faith one of two aspects should be questioned. Is our scientific knowledge correct, eg if everything was placed here by a form of diety then obviously our knowledge should be aligning with our faith, if the faith and knowledge from faith is true then perhaps we need to research the science aspect more, as it's likely either incorrect, or we're interpretting the data related to the science incorrectly. The other aspect is that if we are the spawn of diety then as a fawn grows up to be a deer, a tadpole becomes a frog, so likewise a man becomes a God through the precepts upon which that God has set. As such, to become a God man likely must learn the true process of creation, which with all the doubts a mortal imperfect man has may be impossible during a mortal probation, and likely the knowledge comes after death through a perfect learning from a perfect knowledge of a perfect being.
If you're curious. I was watching a documentary by Ben Stein, it's called "Expelled, no intelligence allowed" It covers the issues that are currently being faced by scientists in the world today, particularly based around "Intelligent Design" or the concept that earth was created by God and not a Big Bang theory or other theories that currently exist. I think everyone should watch is, as it's important to know what's going on in the scientific communities as they ultimately decide what is or isn't taught in school in relation to creation and existence of man and the galaxy we live in.
Stand.
Figuratively. I'm sick of people claiming that the more science proves the less there is to believe in diety. Albert Einstein said (paraphrased) "the more I learn about science, the more I'm convinced it was not created out of chance but put here for us to explore and understand." That's the basic idea of what he said, though i'm not entirely sure precisely what was said. If you're interested where I got the quote, it's from a talk, which is also on tape, titled "17 points of the true church". The quote is given by the author, as he heard it from Albert Einstein himself as a disortation to those scientifically minded. With this as a basis, I see that it's those who want to challenge beliefs in diety (for whatever reason) that use the knowledge we gain from science who use it as such, while those who live by faith understand that when inconsistencies show up between what we learn through science and what we learn through faith one of two aspects should be questioned. Is our scientific knowledge correct, eg if everything was placed here by a form of diety then obviously our knowledge should be aligning with our faith, if the faith and knowledge from faith is true then perhaps we need to research the science aspect more, as it's likely either incorrect, or we're interpretting the data related to the science incorrectly. The other aspect is that if we are the spawn of diety then as a fawn grows up to be a deer, a tadpole becomes a frog, so likewise a man becomes a God through the precepts upon which that God has set. As such, to become a God man likely must learn the true process of creation, which with all the doubts a mortal imperfect man has may be impossible during a mortal probation, and likely the knowledge comes after death through a perfect learning from a perfect knowledge of a perfect being.
If you're curious. I was watching a documentary by Ben Stein, it's called "Expelled, no intelligence allowed" It covers the issues that are currently being faced by scientists in the world today, particularly based around "Intelligent Design" or the concept that earth was created by God and not a Big Bang theory or other theories that currently exist. I think everyone should watch is, as it's important to know what's going on in the scientific communities as they ultimately decide what is or isn't taught in school in relation to creation and existence of man and the galaxy we live in.
Stand.
RedNeck Xmas...Don't scoff. In this case I'm a redneck.
You might be a redneck if: It never occurred to you to be offended by the phrase, 'One nation, under God..'
You might be a redneck if: You've never protested about seeing the 10 Commandments posted in public places.
You might be a redneck if: You still say ' Christmas' instead of 'Winter Festival.'
You might be a redneck if: You bow your head when someone prays-even if they aren’t praying to your God.
You might be a redneck if: You stand and place your hand over your heart when they play the National Anthem.
You might be a redneck if: You treat our armed forces veterans with great respect, and always have.
You might be a redneck if: You've never burned an American flag out of protest, nor intend to.
You might be a redneck if: You know what you believe and you aren't afraid to say so, no matter who is listening.
You might be a redneck if: You respect your elders and raised your kids to do the same.
You might be a redneck if: You'd give your last dollar to a friend.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
spammers
FYI, in case you didn't already know.
mycheckfree.com is spam. it's also checkfree.com
They try scaring you saying that when you were logged on trying to make a payment certain things may have happened, saying they partnered with McAfee and when you tried to make your online bill pay and the page didn't load it's because there was a virus, they detected it, and you can get a "free" download of McAfee. Funny thing is, we already have mcafee. We hate it, but it was free for 15 months when we got my system.
So, beware of people who say they know things about you, double check your browsing history to see if you really were banking at the time it says you were (between 12:15 am and 10:30 am), note if it's a broad time like that it's most likely spam, as if it were real IT personell contacting you they wouldn't need to include your home address, and they wouldn't be offering free virus protection. They would say "you have an issue...deal with it". Or, something more along those lines. Long and short? Keep your eyes out for people trying to tell you they know things about you, if it feels fishy, it's probably the kelp. Er, uh, it is.
mycheckfree.com is spam. it's also checkfree.com
They try scaring you saying that when you were logged on trying to make a payment certain things may have happened, saying they partnered with McAfee and when you tried to make your online bill pay and the page didn't load it's because there was a virus, they detected it, and you can get a "free" download of McAfee. Funny thing is, we already have mcafee. We hate it, but it was free for 15 months when we got my system.
So, beware of people who say they know things about you, double check your browsing history to see if you really were banking at the time it says you were (between 12:15 am and 10:30 am), note if it's a broad time like that it's most likely spam, as if it were real IT personell contacting you they wouldn't need to include your home address, and they wouldn't be offering free virus protection. They would say "you have an issue...deal with it". Or, something more along those lines. Long and short? Keep your eyes out for people trying to tell you they know things about you, if it feels fishy, it's probably the kelp. Er, uh, it is.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
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