Silence Is Gone

Everywhere I go I see people walking around with something in their ears: earbuds, cellphones. Perhaps it's mainly due to the Christmas season. I'm sure a lot of people got iPods or some other MP3 player for Christmas this year. Maybe this is why I keep seeing so many teenagers with earphones walking around with their parents at the grocery store.

In all honesty, I haven't been around to too many places to draw these conclusions, I just believe it's a growing trend. Regardless of this unscientific method, I have to ask, How many people spend any amount of their waking hours in quiet? I would guess not very many. I'm guilty of it myself.

I've been off this past week (which I've been thoroughly enjoying) and not long after getting up, the computer is on. Not much longer after that, the TV is on (usually for a video game). Why is this? Is it because of habit? Is it because, since I'm off, I think the only way to truly enjoy it is to constantly be doing something? I hope not.

With all this noise in our houses, in our cars, even when we are out walking around, can anyone really ever stop and think? Can anyone ever really ponder anything, meditate on anything? I believe that's difficult now, especially for younger people, and it's only going to get worse. Technology, for all of its advantages, is steadily becoming ridiculously ubiquitous.

We are losing something and soon we won't even be able to remember what it was.

Using Ubuntu

So this is my first post using the Ubuntu operating system. I'm totally new to this platform, but so far I really like it. It was a bit of a challenge to get my wireless network card up and running but figuring it out was actually kind of rewarding.

Anyway, just felt like typing.

See ya.

Happy Thanksgiving

So, we're watching the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade or, as it should be known, the extended NBC lineup commercial. Seriously, it's getting kind of old seeing Al Roker interview one NBC tv show actor after another. I know I could turn it anytime I want but, in a way, doesn't this qualify as one of those 'captive audience' situations. I mean, I just want my kids to see the parade. Specifically, I just want them to be able to see all of the giant floats and balloons.

Which reminds me, I really don't care to see yet another Broadway show translated into street-parade format. Yuck.

Anyway, back to the three hour long NBC commercial (that's an exagerration, I know).

Happy Thanksgiving.

All Smiles

Here's a great (in my opinion) shot of the new baby.

Pretty cute, isn't she?

Blu-Ray Player For Under $150

Sounds crazy but, according to a scan linked from over at theblackfriday.com. Apparently, Wal-Mart will be selling a Magnavox blu-ray player for $128 on black friday, November 28th 2008. If you're looking for a blu-ray player, looks like Wal-mart might be your place. Good luck!

Pregnancy Journal? Oh, Riiiight...

So, I claimed I was going to use this blog as a pregnancy journal for our third child. I had good intentions but, I just didn't follow through. Basically, our baby was born two weeks ago. I don't feel that bad about it since I have been taking plenty of pictures. The only thing is none of those pictures are here on my blog yet. But they are all on my flickr site. I may or may not have a link to that here. If not, I've fix it.

So there you go. A slight explanation.

See you later. Pictures to come soon.

Maybe...

Very Funny Video From The Onion

I thought this was particularly funny. Especially given the fact that none of the actors are well known. It adds a bit of realism to it all. Enjoy!



Congress Debates Merits Of New Catchphrase

Some Thoughts

Brownies are good.

I am tired.

Work is bad.

I cut the grass today.

...in my non-grass-cutting shoes!

I feel bloated since I ate a brownie and drank some milk.

The milk was 2%.

Milk stays around $3.59 at Harris Teeter.

Dexter's Lab is on.

Very funny show.


Bye.

No More Classes!

Well, almost. Tonight I am studying for my last two tests (Physics and Ship Construction II). I honestly want to take more classes but, for now, I am happy to be done with studying at night after working all day.

Hopefully the tests will go well tomorrow.

Another Week Gone By

Well, that was nice weekend. With the exception of painting and caulking at our house. I don't actually mind doing work around the house, I just dislike the investment of time involved. Here's the bottomline: I need a vacation.

We had originally planned to take a vacation of sorts this spring or sometime in the summer but, now that Joy's pregnant I will be saving the vacation for something a little more important. Something like the birth of our child.

Anyway, this is my last week of classes, which I am very excited about. Non-stop classes for the last two years with only a week break here and there has really burned me out. I would like to go back to school someday but I'm being very liberal with my use of the word "someday".

To my sister who has been having some computer-related frustrations this week:

I was going to post a link to that laptop I saw in Best Buy's ad but it is only in their ad. I don't see it on their site. It's $449, Dual Core, 120GB hard drive, reads/writed dual layer DVD's, 15.4" "Brightview Widescreen". By the way, the 15.4" is the same size/orientation as the screen on my laptop. The only thing it would need would be another Gig of ram (about $35) since it only has 1GB with Vista Home Premium.

Have a great week.

P.S. If anybody has any tips on how to widen this main column a little so that the pictures I post won't get cut off, let me know. I don't know much about HTML code and I don't want to go poking around and mess the layout up (which I happen to like).

Just a Post

Work went fine today. I'll be getting a little overtime tomorrow but I guess what I'm being faced with is the fact that it's never guaranteed. I always knew that you shouldn't plan on overtime but, in my defense, we never bought this house thinking I'd be getting any overtime. We did, however, bank on Joy's job which pretty much ended over a year ago. Uh oh, I think I'm getting a little too "real" here.

The most important thing is that the more I face the day to day barrage of the unknown, the more I realize that I should have been relying on the Lord all along.

I've been posting pictures from my flickr site recently because I started trying to organize them a little more.

By the way, I think the layout of this blog messes up the way pictures are displayed. Basically, if the picture is wider than the main text column of the blog, the right side of the picture gets cut off. How do I fix that?! It's kind of annoying.

Here's some pictures anyway:

Here's a picture of Caleb from December 2003. He has really grown.

Molly, November 2003. Such a cutie.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow I start my next "rotation" at my job. It's a new supervisor, a different area, different people, and so on. Sadly, the main thing I'm worried about is overtime. Hopefully I will be able to get enough. I never thought I'd actually want to work overtime so much but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Joy is still feeling sick which I'm really praying she gets over soon because it is really kicking her butt.

On a lighter and cuter note, Molly has been playing her Animal Hospital game today for her Nintendo DS. In this game, the player acts as a vet trying to heal sick animals. Well, one of the animals, a cat named Chloe, has been at Molly's hospital since Christmas when she got the game. Today, Molly took care of it enough so that it was able to go home. This upset Molly enough that she got a little teary. Joy and I weren't laughing at her. We thought it was sweet. She really has a good heart.

Caleb has been playing the game Trouble a lot since we got it for 25 cents at a yard sale yesterday. Good times, good times.

That's all I have for now. See ya.

Just a Couple of Pictures From My Flickr Page

Nothing really out of the ordinary to see here. I just felt like posting a couple of pictures from my flickr site. Wait, did I just repeat the title of this post? Oh well.

Molly and Caleb feigning surprise over their Easter baskets. Yep, this was totally staged. Can you tell?

This is the "I can't believe it! I just can't believe it!!" routine.

Pregnancy Journal, Part II

Yes, I've been taking my time updating this blog with respect to Joy's pregnancy. It's been a little hectic, I guess. Joy's been feeling pretty sick lately. Yesterday, she was especially nauseated. Although, we're not totally sure that was just from the pregnancy. It could've been the spaghetti she and kids ate Thursday night. The spaghetti that Molly vomited all over our bedroom floor around 1am Friday morning. Who knows?

Anyway, Joy went to her obstetrician last week and she had her initial ultrasound. Here's a picture I took of it since I don't own a scanner:

The large black void area in the middle (the part that looks like a pinto bean) is where the placenta, baby, etc. is starting to form. The area near the top of the pinto bean that looks like two short horizontal lines is actually the little "yolk sac". I put "yolk sac" in quotations because that is what the doctor called it, although I'm not sure if he would have put a "k" on the end of "sac".

At the time of this ultrasound, the doctor estimated the baby to be only about four weeks old. He/she is so small in fact (about 1mm) that the doctor couldn't take a measurement. We have to go back in about four more weeks to have another ultrasound. Then, we will get a more accurate due date.

Until then, there is nothing really new to report other than Joy feeling pretty darn sick all the time. Yuck.

Until next time, I'll leave you with this peaceful portrait of our current youngest child. See ya!

News Story: Dead, Then Not Dead

I ran across this story while browsing Yahoo's "most emailed" photos. Pretty amazing story.

Here it is.

Does That Count?

Does it really count as a "blog entry" to simply link to an article? I mean really, that's too easy. Then again, why shouldn't it be easy? I mean, it's not like I'm getting paid for this. Or am I...

(I'm not.)

Hilarious Onion Article

I read this article about a year ago but after seeing a pug (or whatever that dog is called) on an episode of "Bringing Home Baby" on TLC (my wife was watching it, I swear) I was reminded of just how funny this was.

My apologies if you are a pug lover. It's still funny.

Dog Breeders Issue Massive Recall Of '07 Pugs

Dawn

No, I'm not talking about a dish detergent. I'm talking about my favorite time of the day. Ever since I started in my current job about two years ago, I have had to get up before dawn. Sometimes ridiculously early but I have grown to really enjoy the pre-dawn to sunrise hours. I have always loved seeing the sun come up but, in the past I was staying up pretty late so the sunrise was something I rarely saw.

I'm not sure why I like it so much but it's probably most related to the lighting. Everything takes on this bluish color before the sun comes up. The most ironic thing about all of this is the fact that I'm going on and on about the sunrise and yet, here I am sitting at my laptop typing instead of standing outside.

I think I'll change that. See ya.

Pregnancy Journal, Part I

As I mentioned above, Joy is pregnant. So, as I sort of promised, I plan to start and try to maintain a sort of photo journal. I'll be uploading pictures that document her pregnancy up to my flickr site and then linking them here.

This picture is of the second pregnancy test Joy took. The first test was taken at night but the "you are pregnant" line was rather faint. So I told Joy, "That's awfully light. I wouldn't trust it." Anyway, she took another one the following morning (they say your mornin' pee is best for a pregnancy test) and this showed up. The second line was originally a little stronger but it's faded since this test was taken well over a week ago.

There is another test Joy took that her mom purchased without our knowledge. I think it was called Clear Blue. On this type of test there are no lines, only a small LCD display. A display that reads "Pregnant" or "Not Pregnant". Sadly, I waited too long to photograph the "Pregnant" display so it has since faded. Oh well. The real test comes next Thursday when Joy goes to the doctor for a preliminary ultrasound and a due date.

We've been through this twice now but it's still exciting.

See you later.

Weeping Willow

My favorite tree, if a person can have one, is the weeping willow. I'm sure there are countless others that share my fascination with the unique look this tree has. Anyway, we were at Busch Gardens today and I was able to take a picture of a weeping willow. I shot it with my Canon S2IS set to "foliage" (surprise!). I was then able to use Microsoft Picture It to remove the color and mess with the contrast.

I always loved shooting black and white photos with infrared film and I still love high contrast black and white photos. Hope ya like it.

See ya!

An Experiment

Well, Joy is pregnant. Let me be more precise: a few over the counter tests show positive as do a couple of other biological/natural tests. She goes to the official appointment next week for a due date, etc.

We kind of want to keep it quiet since, this early on, many things could go wrong and we don't want to get anybody overly excited if something goes awry.

Anyway, if everything goes okay, I want to do a sort of photo journal of the pregnancy. It will be fun and cool to look back on later.

Hopefully, I will be updating soon on the pregnancy. I'll also still be doing more of my more useless posts so this blog won't be entirely pregnancy related.

See you around.

Funny Story

Yeah, you know the deal with The Onion. Hilarious but sometimes vulgar. The following article is clean but I don't make any guarantees about the ads in the background.

Seriously, this article is one of the funniest ones I've read in quite some time.

Enjoy!

Packers Tell Fans They Gave Favre To A Nice Farm Family

Changes? Yes? No? Maybe? So?

Big changes on the way at home? (For me and my family, I mean.) Maybe. There's always something new and, in some way, huge going on at my house. Stay tuned...

...Maybe I'll update this blog before November.

How...?

How can I put into words...

...how much of a headache these contact lenses give me? Oh wait. I just did (put it into words that is.)

Anyway, I was reminded that I have a blog when I recently received an email from sort of 'bot attempting to get me to let them advertise on my blog. I'm sure I have so many readers that it would only make sense to run ads on here, right?

Nah.


I saw a t-shirt for sale on despair.com. It pretty much sums up my opinion of this blog:


Have a good day!