Mom’s Journal
Two weeks before my delivery date the doctor thought there was a slight possibility of twins. He wasn’t the only one. Strangers asked me often (because of my size) if there was a chance of twins. However, from very early in my pregnancy 99% of everyone to wager a guess, guessed it would be a boy. I intuitively felt it would be a boy early within my seventh month. Until then I thought of people’s guesses as just what they were – guesses. The beginning of my ninth month Dr. Song predicted a boy from the sound of the baby’s heartbeat. Even as early as my seventh month I was getting very anxious. For me pregnancy was only the means to the end product – the baby we’d been trying to have for a year before I got pregnant.
Some of the names we talked about were -
Margo
Marjo
Greer
Mercedes Diamond
Reed
Colin
Sam
Max
Benjamin Moore
An ultra sound x-ray was done a week before my due date (April 30) to determine that it was only one baby. The baby was kicking so much it was difficult for the technician to complete the x-ray.
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Labor and Delivery
I started feeling a little sick on Sunday. May 1st. I could feel that the baby had dropped more than before. On Tuesday night I went to bed about 10:30. George had gone to a meeting at the hospital. I vaguely remember him coming in and showing me he had picked up our certificate for completing the 6-week Lamaze class. I woke up with contractions at 2 a.m. The first two were about 15 minutes apart. Then they started coming 8-53 minutes apart in no particular sequence. I woke George up at 6 O’clock. I couldn’t wait any longer to tell him I was having contractions. ”Call the doctor.” I said no you just get up and get ready for and then we will call the doctor. The contractions were not consistent and I kept thinking, “no this can’t be it – they started too close together.” We called the doctor at 7 and checked into the hospital a little after eight. I still kept thinking the nurse who examined me was going to say that I hadn’t dilated anymore and to go back home. But I was dilated two centimeters and went into the birthing room while Good Morning America was still on. George sat in a chair with his feet up & timed my contractions while we watched TV. I can remember the contractions started coming no longer than 2-3 minutes apart about the time All My Children was going off. George went to eat (finally) about 2. The contractors were becoming a little more than uncomfortable. From 3 o’clock until the time of birth I was contracting only on the pain of the contractions & grateful for the short rest in between them. Because the baby was posterior (his head) there was a lot of pressure on my back & the top of my legs. When I did start pushing about 4:15 or so the pain was so intense I felt like I couldn’t stand it. But, of course, I had to. George stood by the side of the bed now so I could squeeze his arm during the contractions. The Lamaze breathing was beginning not to be helpful in getting through the contractions. I threw up after some especially strong contractions. Mostly George and I were by ourselves with the nurse and the doctor coming in every once in a while. Once again Dr. Song’s predictions that the baby would be born around six was correct. As much as I wanted the nurse’s prediction of 5 to be closer to the truth the baby was born at 5:35 pm. I knew the moment he was finally coming out. George (who was supposed to be staying near my head) was right down there watching as the baby came out. I remember first seeing the look on his face and him saving “That’s amazing” the moment before the baby was placed on my stomach and I saw how beautiful our baby boy was. I have heard women say that initially the baby on them felt like a stranger – ” was that what was inside of me?” – in other words, some kind of distance to this new little stranger. I felt an extreme closeness, an instant strong emotion and bond to the baby placed on me.
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Benjamin More Eubank
May 4, 1983, weighed 9 lbs 13 1/2 oz, 21 1/2 inches long with dark brown hair. His eyes were open when he was on my stomach after the birth. He had grabbed a pair of forceps as the doctor pulled him out & George had to help release them from his grip
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The first week I was exhausted. I could have used help, help I thought I wouldn’t want for a while. It wouldn’t have been nearly so bad if I wasn’t extremely sore from the birth. I couldn’t sit down, I couldn’t raise myself up with him in my arms. Ben woke up every hour and wanted to nurse. I would nurse him for about 20 minutes, soothe him for about 20, he would sleep for about 20 minutes and be right back up. I wasn’t sleeping at all. He and I were sleeping on the pullout.
About the third week Ben started sleeping at night a little. He would sleep about four hours and then two hours and another two hours. He pushed himself off my lap for the first time & at night when I lay him down to sleeping on his stomach, he would somehow push himself all the way to the of his crib where his stuffed animals are.
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Benjamin likes to fall asleep in the middle of everything - not in his crib.
He likes to be entertained – meaning to be held and talked to. He rarely is content to sit in his chair or lay on a blanket. He is Mr. Motion, always moving his arms and legs – even in his sleep a lot of times.
At almost five weeks now he seems most fascinated by night shadows. He watches them intently behind us, his eyes wide.
His grandmother Eubank is coming to see him this week & the other grandparents are counting the days until we come to Texas.
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7 Weeks
I started giving B. formula at 6 weeks. In only one week he has adjusted pretty well, although we went through three nights of his schedule being messed up, stomach cramps, and finally, a new formula. (Isomer-soy bean formula)
He is smiling a lot now (he started at about six weeks) & tries to communicate by going and sometimes lets out kind of a yell.
He is much more relaxed, taking both a morning and afternoon nap and last he -almost- slept through the night, sleeping 7 hours. His eyes have already turned brown. He and I have been going out ot the pool now & then. He wears the blue striped “Bing Crosby” hat we bought him he was two weeks old. It fits him snuggly now – it was huge on him.
He stills prefers not to sleep in his crib during the day. Since he can’t fit in the borrowed Moses bed anymore I have just been laying a quilt down on one of the couches & he sleeps for hours through all kinds of commotion.
We live on the third floor. There are two lights in the stairway coming up the steps. Already George is teaching Ben about the universe around him. He always says as we come up the stairs (and B. is looking at the lights) “this is the sun, Ben (the first light) and this is the moon.” (the second light.) This is probably more than enough universe for BME.
Right this moment he is lying on his red checkered quilt asleep (on his stomach) with his nursery rhyme-pictured blanket over him while King Kong is on the TV and Gomez is out of his cage carrying on about something in parrot.
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8 Weeks – 12 weeks
At 8 weeks, Ben made his first trip by jet plane. He was great and slept through the landing. His ears did seem not seem to be affected at all. It was in Texas, while visiting my parents and brothers that Ben’s personality blossomed. He waited (it seemed) for the boys to do or say something to make him laugh. He loved the ceiling fan in their living room and would by lie & watch it and smile. He also started watching TV (especially the rock video cable station). He stopped fussing before he fell asleep at night, instead we would just simply doze off while looking at the fan or being held.
Ben looks at everything now. He will contort his body trying to watch George or I as we leave the room. We bought a mobile for him when we got back from Texas to take the place of the fan. He loves it, but everything catches his interest now.
He turned himself over for the first time when he was 11 weeks old.
His babysitter’s name is Richie Eby, she likes to play bingo & watch “soaps”. She talks a lot and does to Ben all day too. He hasn’t seemed to have any problem adjusted to a sitter. I miss seeing him during the most alert times of the day but we still have some pretty good times when George and I get home. I have to keep him awake sometimes but he doesn’t seem to mind.
Ben will look at books with me now. I noticed he kept looking at catalogs or magazines I was reading and so I got out my big Cinderella book & showed it to him & told him the verbal story line. He was interested, I think.
He is getting mouthy. He thinks he is really saying something. Sometimes at night he sits in his chair & makes a rhythmic sound like singing just before he goes to sleep. He has been sleeping 7-10 hours at a time, and still takes good naps during the day. Usually a couple of hours in the morning and afternoon. He takes only his Isomer, his vitamins & fluoride.
Everyone says Ben looks mature for his age because he is so aware and conscious of his surroundings and also his physical prowess.
He looks at George now the way he looked towards his uncles - just waiting for him to do or say something so he can laugh. And just about anything his father does makes him laugh.
Ben moves swiftly in his walker. Swiftly backwards, but swiftly none the less. The first time he was placed in it he looked so proud of himself. He smiled & laughed & stood up. Just thought he was hot shit in general.
Ben likes his crib very much now & takes his naps there too.
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Ben 12-17 weeks
Baths are great stuff. The image in the mirror is funny looking. And standing up while holding mom/dad’s fingers or the walker is
living dangerously. Ben would rather play than eat. He is eating a little bit of rice cereal and drinking some juice.
On George’s 29th birthday, a few weeks ago, Pam & Phil had a surprise party for him. As a gift, they hired a belly dancer. we were all out on the patio when she came. Ben was in Adam’s walker, the woman came around from the side of the house & started dancing around George. She had long dark hair & a gold sequined costume on. We were all laughing. suddenly I thought to look at Ben to see how he was reacting to all of this. He was standing on his tip toes, his hands waving in the air, his head shacking – was literally trembling from head to toe. I picked him up – was stiff as a board & I tried to calm him down. It was as if, for him, it was a nightmare figure come to life….
It’s September 12, it’s getting to be Ben’s first Fall.
BME 4-6 months Nov. 2, 1983
One night a few weeks ago Ben discovered his universe had other rooms. It doesn’t just encompass the living room or his bedroom. He manipulates his walker to go wherever he likes and he knows which room contains what. “The study has the long curtains that sometimes just might be left draped down; it has the books, the birds and the little boy in the mirror; it used to have Dad’s bike until I pulled it on top of me and now that’s in the front room closet.” “The bathroom has magazines, the soap (sometimes) and the slick floor.” “The back room where Dad is usually sleeping when I get up has nice blue curtains with pink flowers; it has the closet door always open that I like to play with (even though my walker won’t go in the closet) – and right next to the closet door is the great big jar of change that I play with all the time; there’s the old swing I used to have to be in once in a while and I didn’t like – sometimes I pull on that – I’d like to see it fall down & crash one day if I could; There’s a the chair blocking off the area by the plans (unfortunately!). My room I pretty much stay away from unless my mom is cleaning it or something – I’m in there enough.” “And there’s the Kitchen with another big slick floor the boy in the over door and the towels I always put on top of my head; the trash is there too and if I can get to it I will.” “The living room has new things all the time I can get in too- one day I can’t reach the magazines on the table, the next day I can; one day I can’t pull the phone off the table & the next day someone has put it down in a different place yea! I can pull it right on top of me; I can terrorize Gomez by pulling on his to or his cage- I can play the stereo – I can see if the blinds have been left down by mistake & grab them – I can eat paper & try to pull out plugs- I can talk to the little eboy in the windows when it gets dark – I can watch TV – can grab soda cans – the boundaries of the living room are haphazard & limitless.”
My toy keys open up my universe every morning.
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Ben has just started to hold his bottle, he sits up at an angle & then falls back down. He is more interested in learning to crawl than sitting up. He’s up on his knees rocking but that’s all. In the last couple of months the only word he has accidentally verbalized were “mom-mom” and & “mommy.”
He plays very hard during the day and his usually ready to go to bed around 8.
He is not afraid of the dark. the other morning he was up playing in the middle of the night with his busy box. In the morning I found all his little stuffed animals scattered all over the crib. Unless he wakes up crying (which is rare) he will go back to sleep if it looks like no one is awake.
Ben wants to eat, or at least taste, everything. The only thing he’s tried that I can say he didn’t seem to like was pumpkin pie & the hamburger in some stew George had made. He eats his cereal & also has some fruit. He loves bananas. The other night he insisted on eating dinner with us. He had little tastes of stew bread & grape kool-aid. I was afraid he had eaten so much he might get sick from the spices, etc. – but he didn’t. He loved it.
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Ben 6-12 months
Ben started crawling when he was six months old. For a very short time… He was barely 7 months old when he first pulled himself up on his play-pen. He was still in his seventh month when he, remarkably, simply, walked across his playpen one day. As Ben does with everything – his first discovery that he can do something new – only leads him to almost obsessively repeat the performance over & over again until he gets it right. Soon he was pulling himself up on the table, the couch, his high chair. And, of course, he had lots & lots of bruises. When we went to Danville at Christmas, Ben was taking several steps, unassisted. He was an excellent traveler – as always. Unfortunately, Ben was just getting over a small cold which had been causing him to have some trouble sleeping (I thought) & even though he was better, he would still awaken a couple of times during the night. in fact, he did that from his very first day he stood up to a couple of months ago. He screamed whenever I left the room when we were on vacation. I’m still not sure why exactly but it made our trip difficult in that sense. even when we first got back he would scream with Richie & cry for me when I left for work. But he got back o normal before his first week home was out. Richie thought he was mad at her for leaving him, and without his routine, he was worried I was going to leave him too.
The weather had just started getting nice enough for B. to play outside – he loves being out. We are moving to a house in Homewood the end of this month (May, 1984). It has a big backyard. Ben will have a pool in the backyard this summer.
He had his first birthday Friday. I made cupcakes that were decorated different colors & said “Happy B-Day Ben.” But I knew he wouldn’t really be interested in the cake. He doesn’t eat stuff like that - bread doesn’t interest him at all. He still eats & tries many different kinds of foods – yogurt, fish, spaghetti, pizza, ice cream. He has little desire to feed himself, however.
But – back to his birthday – he received many presents. Jody (Aunt doe-doe as she wants him to call her) gave him one of her huge teddy bears & also bought him a little piano that plays “This old Man” and then the magic man – a neat little man who sits permanently atop a blue & yellow ball – as it rolls he always stays on top. Great grandma Erthel Jones (his grandmother by friendship) got him a big red punching balloon and a little shopping cart. Pam & Phil & the kids got him a dashboard driving machine that you can shift gears & makes noises & lights up when you use the turn signals. Richie got him a practical gift – a toilet & Elmer, her husband bought him a little cart on wheels that carries four funny-looking plastic animals. He picked this out himself at the toy store. It’s also one of
his favorite toys over at Adam’s house so I wasn’t real surprised that he chose it. And George and I got him a Brio caterpillar toy, a top that has race cars zooming as it goes around & planes flying the opposite direction above them. We also got him a soft train that animals fit into. I want to get him a rocking chair but we are going to wait until we move.
Ben can say many words. Of course he has said many words once or twice & uses others frequently. He says (to name some) ”crackers, all gone, momma, Da Da, Pa Pa, Bath, George, Bye Bye, hi.” He seems very interested in how words sound. What he says, he says very clearly. He over emphasizes to get it right sometimes – like “George” he says “Geor——GE!”
Ben has quite a temper & gets furious when he can’t have what he wants – particularly if it is something he has worked very hard to for - a book of matches he has painfully labored for in a drawer just above his reach. I think he gets very frustrated thinking he hasn’t made himself or his wants understood. he will be happier when he can communicate more verbally it seems. He has a temperament a little like his uncle Jason. And always has that look in his eye as if he has just done something he shouldn’t have or is just about to.
When he laughs, he really lets loose. Ben laughs when his father laughs & sometimes he laughs for no apparent reason at people in the grocery store or on TV.
Subway: Redefining Meats Since 1965
What the hell Subway. Cold Cut Combo – That’s Bologna, Salami and Ham. But wait, what’s that you say? (All Meats Are Turkey Based). Okay assholes let’s go ahead and look up the definition of Ham: meat cut from the thigh of a hog. There’s a few others but they basically all the say the same thing. It’s a pig. It’s easy to be a little skeptical about what is in Bologna or Salami but there’s no way Ham can be Turkey.
Subway and I already have our problems so this is just one more thing. I don’t know how long the Cold Cut Combo has been tainted with gobblers but I sure won’t be eating it again. What I don’t understand is how come the Black Forest Ham is not made from Turkey? Are they using some awkward shit meat solely for the purpose of a Cold Cunt Combo? They must be. This sort of feels like the time I saw the paste they used to make chicken nuggets at McDonald’s. But worse…
Anyone that knows me would tell you I don’t care much about what goes on behind the scenes with my food. “As long as it tastes good” is what I say. And that still holds true but right now I feel a little bit cheated. When McDonald’s sells me an all beef patty, it might be every type of cow waste part under the sun, but at least it’s a cow. I’ve been deceived for how long? Here I am thinking I was eating a pig when it’s really some crappy bird that Fox Sports turns into a robot once a year. No Subway, you don’t get to do this to me. You don’t get to trick me into thinking I’m consuming something delicious by hiding small text under your meal.
Turkeys are also losers. I’m fed up with everything being made from them. They already took over our bacon and burgers, two sacred foods, and now they want to come and just rob Ham from us too? Will this trend carry out past Subway? “Excuse me Sir, does your store carry turkey ham? I don’t eat pork.”
So I have one more free idea for Subway. I swear I’m a genius but how about this:
Cold Cut Combo
Bologna, Salami & FUCKING TURKEY
Android Apps
Just because I’m a “Geek” or “Techy” or whatever it is you want to call me does not mean I’m recommending the following apps for those reasons. These are apps that everyone should at least consider. Unlike iOS (iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad) Android allows us to do much more with customization. In my opinion, too much, for most people. But since we’re going to customize the hell out of our phones I guess I’ll just touch on a few apps I find essential. Almost all of these have alternative solutions that are nearly/just as good. If you already use an alternative that’s great! The ones I’ve mentioned are there because I feel they’re the best at what they do but we might disagree. The point here is to bring awareness to a type of app someone might not be currently using.
- ShopSavvy Barcode Scanner
Why use a barcode scanner? Because QR Codes are becoming increasingly more popular. You can scan a QR code (the box I’ve included above) to feed your phone information. They can link to a variety of things and people are getting more and more creative with them. Recently I saw one on a piece of McDonald’s information that when scanned brought you to a map of where that McDonald’s was located. I’m using them in this post to directly link to apps and let you scan them. ShopSavvy also let’s you scan Barcodes at retail stores to look up the prices online. It’s a great way to know if you’re about to buy a DVD player at Best Buy that is considerably cheaper online.
- Launcher Pro
This is a home screen replacement. Your home screen is the main part of your phone where all your widgets sit, the place you put apps on, your wallpaper, it’s essentially your starting point on the phone. Having a home screen that is tailored to how you use your phone, not how Motorola, HTC, Samsung, etc thought you should, can increase productivity by giving you easy access to the things you use most. The more notable reasons to use Launcher Pro over the one that came with your phone:
Programmable dock icons (those icons at the bottom that typically have a phone and app drawer). You can tell it any app you want to appear at the bottom of your screen. I use phone dialer, text, email and web browser since those are my most used functions.
Ability to hide apps from the App Drawer. The App Drawer is that place where you can scroll through all your apps if they’re not already on the home screen. Almost every phone carrier adds a bunch of applications you don’t want but are unable to uninstall. Launcher Pro allows you to hide them so you’re not constantly forced to sort through and look at them.
Limit the amount of screens, or expand the number, you can scroll through. A lot of phones come with 5 to 7 screens you can place widgets and applications on. Given that Android is a battery hungry monster I’ve always found myself limiting my Widgets to the ones that I actually use on a regular basis. Once I’ve done that there are a bunch of unused screens on my phone. Launcher Pro will allow you to choose how many screens you’d like to use between 1 and 7.
- Google Voice
I see a lot of people who don’t use Google Voice (GV) because they don’t quite understand why they should. Most understand that GV will allow them to make calls and that it gives them a new number that no one will know. This is true, and it’s why I don’t use GV for making calls on my phone, I use it for Voice Mail primarily. Google Voice is an excellent tool for acting as your voice mail service. It’s free, no one ever has to know your Google Voice number, it stores messages for as long as you’d like, and it even will attempt to transcribe your messages into a readable text. If you’re on Verizon you can alternatively pay them three dollars a month for a similar but more limited service. Getting it set up is not confusing and it will even ask you if you just want to use the app specifically for your voice mail. - SMS Popup
Simple solution to have better notifications of text messages that come in. Pops up a window with the text message and customizable buttons to respond, delete or close the message. Alternative options will completely replace your text messaging system. The problem here is that both apps will now run in the background and give little in the way of new functionality. When installing SMS Popup you will have to remember to turn off the notifications for your default SMS application. To do this go into your text messages, press menu, and select “Messaging settings”. You should be able to figure out how to turn off notifications from there. If you don’t do this you’ll be receiving duplicate messages when a text is received. - z4Root
Without a heavy explanation of what “rooting” your phone is I’m weary about recommending this app but at the same time find it very valuable. In short, rooting your phone lets you act as an Admin of the device. This mean you can use functions typically restricted from you as Joe Phone User. In the past rooting your phone could be scary involving many steps and computer terms that would likely confuse the average person. This application roots your phone with a click of a single button after install. Done. Why would you care or want to do this? Because there are a few applications that very useful once you are rooted.
Wireless Tether will allow you to freely use your phone as a hot spot and Titanium Backup the ability to easy uninstall preloaded bloatware apps (Good bye Sprint NASCAR App!). When I first got my Droid X I used Titanium Backup to “freeze” Blockbuster, Amazon mp3, My Verizon, Voicemail, VZW Navigator, City ID, NFS Shift, QuickOffice Demo, Skype Mobile and a bunch of other garbage applications that the carrier felt obligated to force onto my phone. The apps themselves were previously popping up asking me if I wanted to pay for them without any way of stopping them.One incredibly important thing to note about rooting your phone – it voids your warranty. That said, z4root provides an easy to way unroot if you ever need to and I’ve never had trouble getting a phone replaced that was rooted anyway. My last four Android phones were rooted and replaced without any trouble.
Now, the app I wish everyone would just stop using, Task Killer. I know it’s crazy that I say this because the guy at the cell phone store knows a lot about phones and he told you that you definitely have to have it. Hell, it was even installed on every single phone in the store! Also your really good friend has it on their phone and they agree with the people at the store, it’s great.
Google has even written an entire somewhat technical article about why they are unneeded. I’m not going to go into great depth about all the reasons they do more harm than good but I’ve provided you a start in learning more about that yourself if you feel the need. If you don’t care about the technicalities of the why just stop using it.
Cat Photos Account For Approximately 82% Of All Web Storage
Not to beat a dead horse but I’m going to. This topic gets covered by people all the time on the Web. It’s the zombie apocalypse of photography sharing, infections and unstoppable. The things everyone wishes you’d stop taking pictures of and posting. Here are my top five least favorite types of photographs to run across on the internet.
Your Kids
Just got that new DSLR and you’re ready to show off what it can do. You bring it on yourself to torture your poor children with being your first subjects because no one else will model for you. Oh aren’t they adorable? No they’re not. You’re still a crappy photographer and all we see is more crappy photos of some random kids. Of course it’s great to get out there and practice especially when you have a willing subject (most kids are) but stop showing everyone else.
Macro Shots of Every Day Shit in the House
Another common favorite thing of budding photographers. It’s a simple formula. Take camera, place it next to anything in your vicinity, take picture. Yep, it’s true. Taking a picture realllly close to something is going to make it look super big and blur out a lot of things in the background (bokeh). You will see every inch of detail of that coffee mug or lego brick. How riveting and original.
HDR Pictures
There is such thing as good HDR photography. It does have a purpose but you’ll never do it right. To most people HDR photo means:
- Take photo
- Use PhotoMatix Pro or some other software you pirated off the net to convert to HDR
- Push sliders to the max
- Make super saturated colorful picture with giant light halos around all dark subjects
- Amaze friends with picture of some every day scene that is now colored funny
It’s an abused photography technique that people think instantly makes them a star photographer. In reality it just makes you an asshole with a camera since any idiot can take a picture or two and run it through a program.
Pets
Yes of course after the made up statistic in the subject of all this I have to address this one. Unlike Your Kids pets applies to even pets you don’t own. Every imaginable picture of a cat or dog has been taken. There are millions if not billions of them in existence on the net today. Unless your dog is doing something remarkable (perhaps performing open heart surgery on a 14th month old baby?) it’s been done before. Every time I see a picture of a cat sitting on a couch, being a cat, all I can think is “Yep, that’s a cat.” Thanks for wasting my time. I wonder how much energy is wasted daily to power all the servers around the world which are hosting your crappy pet photography. I’d imagine it’s more than I’ll use in a life time, and I have a bad habit of leaving lights on in every room I visit.
Your Neighborhood
Ah what a beautiful day to take a walk down my street and take photos of fire hydrants, stop signs and parked cars. Maybe when I get back home I’ll convert them into HDR images to really make them shine. Everyone will be extremely impressed with the effort I’ve put into these masterpiece photos.
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Everyone needs to start somewhere. I’ve shot all these things before myself but that doesn’t mean you have to share them. Every time you look at your own photos ask yourself it’s interesting because you took it or interesting because of what is actually in the photo. Would you pay good money to print it? Would you actually charge someone money for the photo? Would you hang it in someone else’s home for all their guests to see? You don’t have to answer yes to any or all of those to say something is a good picture but those are the types of questions you should still ask yourself have before sharing.
You should also never need to explain your picture to people. While captions are certainly useful when done properly a good photo can always speak for itself. Many times I’ve commented on someone’s photo saying I didn’t get what was going on, what was the point or “why do I care?”. In response I get a laundry list of the reason this person took that photo and a bunch of other excuses why something doesn’t look good or right. It’s almost as if because something else messed up their photo that some how makes it okay if you just tell me about it. If I did a shoot and presented my client with photos all blown out or underexposed and said “It’s okay though, the sun was just too bright” they’re not going to really care about my excuse. Crappy photos are not made better by any sort of reasoning; don’t defend garbage, just throw it away and try again.
….or just start submitting your photos to this fabulous FlickR Group
Nerds
So many people I know have at one point in time called me a Nerd or Geek. While I find the word “Geek” some what acceptable (and possibly appropriate) I want to stand up and say one thing right now; I am not a nerd. To me a geek is someone who likes to learn things, usually technology oriented, but I have been known to “geek out” in a variety of other fashions. It’s understandable your average non-geek/nerd would confuse the two and use them interchangeably. Nerds like all the same things geeks like, truth, but they’re also disgusting cave creatures who take uncoolness to the next level. Unfortunately I have some friends who are nerds and might be put off by this next part but it’s time to really just put my frustrations with Nerd activities to rest.
Not sure if you’re a nerd? Well I’ve put together a good starter list. If you do more than one of these you’re in some serious trouble.
You Like Anime
Oh Man! Those Girls Are Bangin'
Over the top ridiculously loud and often senseless cartoons. Chicks with giant eyes, asses and tits to go with it. And stop right there. If you’re sitting there saying to yourself ”Dude tits and fine asses are cool” keep in mind we’re talking about cartoons. If you still think they’re cool well obviously it’s because you’re a nerd. Hate to spoil the party but not a single woman in the world looks like the girls in those cartoons; also many of them don’t fight with swords and belong to secret societies. The second problem here is, even if those girls did exist, please remember you’re a nerd and they’ll be repulsed by your Dorrito stained attire the second they have laid eyes upon you. Yes someone may like Anime for other reasons aside from tentacle rape scenes but you’re still going to be a nerd for watching.
You Still Read Comic Books
I’ve never really been into comic books, not even when it was appropriate to be. You know, when I was a child. It’s not quite as horrible as Anime (unless your comic book tastes are Manga) but it’s kind of like watching Saturday morning cartoons. You should have stopped about the same time it was awkward to be trick or treating.
You Dress Up For Movie Premieres
Do I really have to go into detail here? When you’re dressed like a storm trooper for opening night of Star Wars all I can think seeing you is: “ugh”. Actually that’s not even true. I hate Star Wars and would never go see it. And that’s not because liking Star Wars makes you a nerd; it’s because Star Wars, all them, are horrible movies.
You Even Partially Speak A Fake Language
Do you speak Klingon? How about refer to shit in the real world with terms you picked up in Harry Potter? Well that’s sad. See as a geek I would never spend the kind of time needed to learn it. Mainly because it will never be useful for any kind of intelligent conversation, ever. If you do everything I’ve mentioned on the list so far, god have mercy on your soul.
You Complain About FLAC And Other Audio Lossless Formats Being Unsupported By Devices On Internet Chat Forums
Yeesh, that’s a long one and probably just went over the head of anyone who isn’t a geek or nerd reading this. I’m basically talking about people who hate Mp3s, who claim that Mp3 music is essentially sounds like nails grinding on a chalk board. Instead of MP3s companies should support songs in other mostly obscure formats that are 10 times the file size of an MP3 to fix this problem.
You’re Over 18 And Your Parents Pay For Your World Of Warcraft Account
You have no excuse. There is nothing you can say or do to justify this. Playing WoW is bad enough, being too poor to actually afford it is another. Okay okay, maybe you’re in college right, full time. You don’t have time to work and have some sort of income that would pay for WoW so your parents help you. God knows school full time plus a 60-hours-a-week worth of WoW really does very little time for work.
You Wear Black On Black
Listed on the net as "My Favorite Black Jeans"
Black t-shirt tucked into your black jeans? Okay nerd. Even better that the blacks are different shades.
The Happiest Moment Of Your Life Can Recollect Happened In A Video Game
Remember that time when all I had left was my pistol and I took out the entire other team with one headshot each and didn’t get hit once? Really cool. I should write a book about it.
You Write Fan Fiction
You just couldn’t handle Fox cancelling Firefly. Continue the story with your horrible writing. Play out that sex fantasy between the two main characters you were dying to see but never got the chance. Maybe the characters will meet a new friend who is totally coincidentally the person you wish you were in real life. Now go post your awesome stories somewhere on the internet and watch another rerun of Deep Space Nine. P.S. If you read Fan Fic it’s equally horrible you’re just less creative and just subjecting yourself to someone else’s fantasy.
Hot Summer Months
Act fast because time is running out. The supply of available significant others is about to run thin in the Midwest. Based on purely anecdotal evidence and backed with self made theories I think are rock solid I’ve devised a chart that brings together the singles market for any particular year. Dark red being the hottest times to find a mate and blue being the impossible. Believe me when I say, the blackout months are coming in full force.
I’m not sure what it is exactly about December but to me it always seems like it’s on the cusp of break up time. Most people would think the opposite; maybe because Holidays bring a togetherness and so forth. I think it’s because right around that time you need to buy the person a Christmas gift you realize you don’t really want to spend money on them and maybe things aren’t as magical as they were when August hit and you had spent two months holding hands on the beach.
January to February can be tricky. If you’re seeking your perfect partner at this time just realize you’re likely a rebound and won’t make it past the big April dumping phase. Of course all those people meeting in April could be considered rebounders as well but it’s a whole new ball game here.
January sucks. It’s cold, miserable and grey. You’ll be doing everything right and if you’re a December rebound you’ll be lucky to make it to February 14th, if you do you’re surely dead in the water by mid April. My vast fictitious studies have shown that Valentines day has a Mini Christmas like effect that causes breakups for relationships that were never very serious. This is usually the ones that had recently started. Hello Rebounds your time has come.
May is when it really starts to heat up again though. Now that all the crappy months are behind us we venture out into the world again and realize: “holy shit my boyfriend/girlfriend is really boring compared to all these other people having fun with their lives!” We tend to ignore the fact that everyone has been inside hating on cold weather for the last 6 months. Also the temperature goes up, clothes start flying off and that person you’ve been lugging around since last summer, if you made it that far, is starting to stagnate in their looks.
No of course you’re not shallow like that, you’d never leave someone just because you found someone hotter. You’ll just find random things wrong with them until you work up enough reasons why it needs to be over. Being a May/June rebound is okay. With fantastic weather and a million events you can attend with your new partner it will be awhile before the other person catches on that the only reason you guys started seeing each other was because you were sorta hot and they needed a summer fling.
By mid June through the beginning of July you’d have to be horribly disfigured or a recluse to not find someone if you were trying. For the last two months the singles pool has been watching everyone else fall in love and really wants to play too. They’ve been third wheel more times than they want to think about and are just about ready to settle for anything coming by. Plus it’s really hot out and make believe research shows that makes people mildly retarded.
So here we are now approaching the current date. The cold death months. Two things happen in the next few weeks. Mass breakups and stick togethers. However this giant break up session does not bring on a new single market right away. The people who met in the beginning of summer may decide that they want this magic to continue and will stick it out, until Christmas time.
It appears that the single market does not start up again because we’ve had all the fun we needed for awhile in the summer and just want to spend the winter dicking around on the couch watching this season’s hottest new fall line up. The partial boost we see circling back up to december is you couch potatoes, having been lonely since August when you and your sweet pea went separate ways, want to reinvigorate.
Here and there you’ll find exceptions to the rule and also remember this applies only to the Midwest. I’m sure in places where it’s hot all year long and everyone has a billion dollars (Miami) it’s mating season forever. Just a big dark red circle of lust. You can try and prove me wrong in the coming months and attempt to find your soul mate during October but they’re probably too busy watching the latest episode of How I Met Your Mother to even notice you.
No Option
Choice sucks. Obviously that statement is taken to a extreme but for the purpose of writing this I’m going to stick to it.
The root of all choice problems can be identified with Subway. It’s their pointless and tedious sandwich creation system that has turned me into sounding like someone out of Ninteen Eighty-Four. Here’s what I’m talking about:
Ben: Hello Kind Sir, I would love to try your new Southwest Breakfast Sandwich that I have seen on my television. It looks positively delightful!
Subway Guy: Okay, what bread will you be having with this sandwich?
Wait, let’s pause for a second. Already the problem begins. What do you mean “what bread”? I want the bread on saw on TV. Why am I being asked this question? I suppose it’s semi legit since people are rather particular about their bread so we’ll go on.
Ben: I don’t know what options I have, how about just the one shown in the picture behind you.
Subway Guy: Okay, we will be having many kinds of bread… (proceed to rattle off 40,000 varieties of bread I didn’t even know were in existence)
Ben: That’s great, can I please have the bread in the picture behind you?
Subway Guy: Okay.
…
Subway Guy: What would you like to be having with this?
Ben: Umm, whatever comes on a Southwest Breakfast sandwich would be perfect please.
Subway Guy: Do you want peppers?
Ben: Is it supposed to have them!?
Subway Guy: You can put peppers on the sandwich.
Ben: Can you please just make this sandwich look like the sign behind you and what I’ve seen on TV?
Subway Guy: Would you be liking me to put onions on your sandwich?
Look subway, if I wanted to order my own sandwich from scratch I’d sit at home and probably make it myself. What is the point of naming any kind of sandwich if it’s not made from a specific list of ingredients? In the given situation I could say the name of almost any sandwich and walk out with a completely different one given my options.
Here’s subway’s real menu. Meatball, Philly Cheese Steak, A Sandwich, A Breakfast Sandwich.
Why complicate things by making me think you’re making me some kind of specially crafted sandwich if really the only thing I’m going to choose is what stupid meat I want on there.
Idea for Subway: Make your sandwiches to the recipe unless otherwise requested. For people who are not me and would like to customize their experience down to the leaf of lettuce continue to sell your most popular item “Sandwich.” Do not proceed to ask me how I would like my Buffalo Chicken sub created. I’m not a sandwich artist; I do not know. I would just like what I’ve seen on TV! Please understand because I’m a simple man.
Many people say they want choice but they really only think they do. If your choices are limited but the options are pretty good most people are happy. Want to argue that with me? Then answer this, do you own an iPhone yet?
Thanks Pals
A few months back in a small spur of inspiration I went to Costco and purchased a book of one hundred stamps. Having received a letter delivered by the mailman that was not junk it occurred to me that I like to get things that aren’t from Verizon, Sprint, ComEd, The Government, Allstate or Someone’s Wedding Invitation. My plan? Write my friends letters in the mail.
I didn’t ever expect them to write me back because who actually buys stamps these days when all your bills are paid online? Though I sort of expected some type of acknowledgment that I’ve mailed them. I thought “If I like getting stuff in the mail who wouldn’t?” At first I was a little bit worried because my boss had said “You’re going to what? No I don’t think they still sell stamps downstairs… Plus I’d think if any of my friends did that they would be weird.” At that time I just summed it up to jealousy that I wouldn’t be writing him and he’d just be stuck receiving free magazines at work from all the tech conferences he attended. Sucker.
I sent quite a number of letters. Most pointless, all handwritten, but took the painstaking time to do it anyway. I only received feedback about my letters once and it was along the lines of:
Friend: Dude, did you send me a letter?
Ben: Yeah, while I was in Nashville at the airport waiting for my plane.
Friend: Did you have a little kid write it?
Ben: No, I wrote it myself.
Friend: Wow your handwriting is complete shit.
Ambition to write new friends is now effectively Zero. I’m fully aware my handwriting is bad. It’s a drunken version of JinkyA font in a land where capitalization DoEsn’T HaVe MeaNinG. On top of writing like an ESL first grade drop out it takes me about fifty-nine thousand seven hundred and forty-seven times longer to scribble out nonsense by hand than anyone else on this Earth. I’m the DSL of written word, the Slowskis would adopt me.
If you are one of my friends who did not receive a letter and are sitting there a little “wtf” right now, well, I’m sorry. I was getting around to you eventually but now it may be never. Since I’ve disclosed my dark mail sending secret I no longer really want to do it. All the fun is ruined because the fun never really came in the first place. This has potential to be a bigger failure then when I finally attempt to solo N’Sync’s Bye Bye Bye at Karaoke; dance movies included.
The Bland World of Tech News
Gizmodo, CNET, PC World, Wired, eWeek, CNN… you are all failing me, and don’t feel bad, you’re not the only ones. Is it because talking about anything related to Apple raises hits on your site the reason about 25% of your articles are something related to the company? Please find something new and nerdy to report on and if you can’t do that then at least find something interesting to report on with Apple.
The whole stolen iPhone prototype story, not boring. The whole thing can be summed up like this: Apple employee gets his phone stolen, it looks different than other iPhones, was locked so no one has any idea how it runs. Excuse me while I change my pants because that is absolutely riveting. Yet Gizmodo ran with that garbage for days and any site that wasn’t Gizmodo just talked about their iPhone discovery. As far as I can tell in the world of Technology the only other thing that happened this week was Facebook had some privacy control changes for the 800th time in the last 30 days.
4 out of 7 Articles are Apple Related
Stop being so lazy, find some real news.
No Photo Selected problem in Lightroom 2
Missing Photos
I’ll keep this short. It might not ever happen to you, probably because you don’t use Adobe Lightroom. Recently I had to reformat and do a reinstall because I was clinging to the Windows 7 Beta for dear life never wanting to have to redo everything all over again. Unfortunately having the computer reset rather randomly every two hours or so got to be a little too much. After restoring all my files and checking to make sure my Library was all there life was good.
Today I fired up Lightroom to try and sort through the pile of trash known as My Photos and was presented with the above screen. It’s actually happened to me once before, the first time lent me to wasting two hours of my life dicking around on the internet not finding a solution. I backed up my library, restored it, repaired the catalog, reverted to an old version, nothing worked. Ultimately I was like “Hey what happens if I go back to Lightroom 2.4?” Well that worked.
So once again here I was presented with the missing photos that are actually there. I refuse to give into the 2.4 downgrade this time around. I mean, I know there are a hundredmillionkajillion other people using the proper version of Lightroom, so damn it, I will too. I tried my luck at Google again and finally came across something that helped. Thing is, shortly after redoing my computer, and verifying the photos in Lightroom I noticed the color profile for my monitor was off. Not enjoying a yellow tinged photo I picked a new profile to work under. Well apparently LR isn’t a big fan of WCS Device Profiles.
The fix is as simple as picking, or creating, a new ICC Profile and restarting Lightroom after applying it. Seems rather stupid Adobe couldn’t have thought of some type of warning system to tell me it’s not compatible rather than letting me guess at the problems but there you have it. Don’t use WCS profiles with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.