March 31, 2008 at 7:57 pm · Filed under Stuff
Continuing with the theme of photographic improvement, I’m going to start this new…thing. For the next month or two (possibly all the way until June 7th, probably just until I get tired of it) I’m going to make a point of taking & posting new photos. It’s easy for me to only take pictures at specific events or places, but being deliberate about shooting the “boring” everyday world around me will, I hope, help me improve. Stuff like cute kids and exotic locations shoots itself, so by saying I’ll semi-regularly be posting new stuff here I’m hoping to make myself work harder at this …thing.
Tomorrow is Sizdah bedar, the end of the Persian New Years’ celebration. It’s the 13th day of the year’s largest holiday, an auspicious day, the end of one era and the beginning of a new one. My family is pretty Americanized, but we still go through the motions of Norouz. An important aspect of the holiday is the Haftsin table, symbolically similar to the Christmas Tree. Every Haftsin table has some type of Sabzeh - growing green stuff - and ours is usually a tray of wheat grass. This morning I was watering that bit of grass when I decided to grab my camera & mess with DOF. This was the result.
March 21, 2008 at 8:58 pm · Filed under Stuff
Confession: a lot of the motivation behind this post is that I want to knock the last one off the top of the proverbial stack. I want it to be there for good, but I don’t want to see it right now. So… now for something completely different.
Not long after my last entry I started going through old photo albums, digital & otherwise. A day or two after that, I used up a lot of frustration working on the code for the gallery here on Whimsi: fixed the stylesheet, among other things (finally!). Ultimately I combined the two efforts into making a new album: my favorite photos of the last 12 months. (Incidentally, PLUG for Picasa. Made narrowing down the last 12-months’-worth of photos stupid easy).
Making that sort of collection actually turned out to be pretty fun. It’s a nice boost to the ego to see how I’ve improved (in my own opinion, anyway) over the past few years. “Fun” also to look back and remember details of the year I’d forgotten.
So new album here: Favorites 2007-2008. If you have any constructive criticism, I’d really (really) appreciate hearing it. I turned on the Rating System for that album, so you don’t even have to spell words - just click stars. At least let me know what’s better & what’s worse. Help me improve before I go to Ghana and waste all that sweet subject matter. If you’re only comment is “hey, 50% of those are from China! You were only in China 20% of the year!”… then shut up, come visit me, and be more interesting than a Chinese kid.
February 25, 2008 at 8:51 pm · Filed under Stuff
Small town (county) fun: seen today at the local probate office. If you understand what it’s trying to say, please do tell.
February 20, 2008 at 5:06 pm · Filed under Stuff
This photo makes me happy.
Marie + Moe :: Feb 19 ‘08
February 10, 2008 at 2:17 am · Filed under Stuff
This is Marie.
Marie is the daughter of a very dear friend of mine (my brother-in-law’s sister). She calls me “Aunt” Sara, and I call her my niece-in-law. She is 3 years old, and as of two weeks ago - a big sister.
Yesterday, I spent a few hours with Marie, her Uncle Ben, and her Grammy. We get along really well - favorite games include “throw 12 bouncy balls on the kitchen floor at once”, and “hide from the sharks under blankets”. Good times. She also loves me because I let her use my camera, which is actually really awesome because I love seeing what she chooses to shoot.
So yesterday, Marie & I decided to give Uncle Ben & Grammy some visit time alone; we grabbed the bouncy balls and headed off to explore the (shark-infested) bedroom. Sometime while we were running from sharks… Marie bumped her head. For those of you who haven’t witnessed such things recently, let me explain what happens when a 3 year old bumps her head: it takes a little time, maybe 5 seconds, before she realizes something’s wrong, processes the shock and pain, and then decides it’s worth crying over. When that happened, Marie ran for me and hung on for all she was worth - but it only took her a few hiccups to see I wasn’t the right person to fix this. She needed Grammy.
Marie needed the only person she trusted more than her mommy and daddy to hug her tight and just love her until the tears stopped. She didn’t need Grammy to tell her it didn’t really hurt or to stop crying. She just needed time & proof of love, so she held onto her Grammy with all she had. In a few minutes, she stopped crying, and looked over at me. “Hey, Aunt Sara!”, she said (in that unmistakable “Guess what? tone). “I’m all better now!”. That cracked us all up. It was totally true, and we “grown-ups” couldn’t have put it better ourselves. “Well what happened, Marie?!” I asked - mainly just to see what she came up with. “I don’t know,” she said. There were still leftover tears in her eyes, but she’d already forgotten about them. “I just had to cry for a while. Let’s go play now.”
I have Marie days. Sometimes I bump my head, and the shock and pain send me reeling. I’ve got over two decades on Marie, but she still manages to deal with the bumps a lot better than I do. Why do we grown-ups try to make life so damn complicated? We take a whole lot longer than a scant 5 seconds to figure ourselves out. What the hell gives us the audacity to believe that age or experience grant us magical understanding of whatever life throws at us, and why does that same manufactured “maturity” stop us from humbling ourselves into the only posture of the only relationship that will really fix things? The weirdness of that concept would probably crack Marie up (except I can’t say hell or damn in front of her, and I don’t think she knows what audacity means).
So tonight, I’m trying to deal with some things like my favorite three year old would. There aren’t many who I trust; only One who I trust completely. I’m not all better yet… but I think I will be soon.
February 6, 2008 at 12:09 pm · Filed under Stuff
I had text messages at 7am Friday — before I was even awake to shower before the surgery. Since then, I’ve had lots of people send warm fuzzies, happy thoughts, and healing prayers on my behalf. So… thanks, people. I appreciate it a lot.
In return, I offer this really sweet picture. Not Safe For Lunch; there’s even some blood in it — but I find it incredibly awesome, because even though I Hate Hospitals©, I find the magic of medical science very cool. When I joked around telling people “they cut my thumb off and pinned it back on” — I wasn’t exaggerating THAT much!
(I’ll be nice and not inline the image; click to view.)
The stylish turquoise bead is screwed onto the end of a pin which extends about 3″ through the joint. The nurse who changed my cast just looked at me weird when I asked if they came in other colors. Oh well.
December 19, 2007 at 1:30 am · Filed under Stuff
(OR lose my hat.)
The graduation ceremony went off without a hitch (minus idiots with microphones; seriously, WTF mate?).
The post-ceremony-diploma-retrieval went off with slightly more of a hitch: Your’s Truly still, technically, does not have a degree. In a “funny” turn of events, Auburn University either 1) lied to me earlier this week, when I was told my transfer transcripts were all A-OK, or 2) “misplaced” a transcript. in either case, I’m supposed to try again later this week to see if I can retrieve that all-important piece of paper.
Anyhoo. I have a “Photos” section. Did you notice? There are now way too many photos of me available for your perusal.
On the waiting-for-news front: we’re still waiting for news.
November 10, 2007 at 12:56 am · Filed under Stuff
(I’ve only ever participated in one “real” Show & Tell, which I just thought of at this minute. I was in kindergarten. I took a baby chick. In a coffee can, with air holes and grass. Wow.)
Moving on…
Yesterday I finally got my new computer to completely accept Compiz’s 3D goodness. Considering my lack of experience (and my blacklisted graphics card), this was no small feat. Likewise, this makes me happy to no end, and so I felt like showing off.
Screenshot number uno
- XP (virtual machine)
- Gimp (screenshot goodness)
- Amarok (music)
Various random windows. The Virtualbox is running in seamless mode but cube rotation works just as well with it as a fullscreened virtual OS.
Screenshot the second
- Same as above, plus Amarok running visualizations at full size. Jagged edges just beginning to show up in the screenshot; CPU maxed out at 50% usage.
Anyway. That was my last rainy day slow day at work project for the new toy, so now I’m not sure what to mess around with next.
November 6, 2007 at 10:48 pm · Filed under Stuff
For the past few weeks I have, semi-successfully, combated the drudgery of existing in a 9-5 window with weekend (or longer) escapes. This last weekend I turned a trail on Mt. Cheaha into an overnight trip. It was my sister’s birthday, and for some reason she decided she wanted to go hiking too. And then my other sister decided the same. I’m still not sure why: this is not exactly within their realm of comfort & familiarity.
It was an… interesting… trip.
The drive was long…
…but the weather was perfect.
Mystical abilities to remain always fashionable extended even to the wilderness.
It was cold; we experimented with a new recipe. There was much rejoicing.
…and ultimately, I think they had a good time, but intuition led me to believe they were happy to make it out of the woods. Call it a hunch.
September 23, 2007 at 9:32 pm · Filed under Stuff
[Continuing in the vein of pseudo-counterpatriotic-arrogance…]
I went to a football game this weekend. For those counting, this makes two. It was long. The sky was pretty. I was nearly molested by a bird. Some guy proposed to his girlfriend after it was over. I was able to watch on the 12002 ft.* ubertron I helped pay for.
I think we won, too.
*Yes. A screen with the squarefootage of a two-bedroom-house. That is correct.
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