by chris

New Glasses

I’ve had the same pair of glasses for about four years.  Or maybe it was five years.  I can’t remember.  A long time either way.

One of the downfalls of modern glasses are the various coatings they put on the lenses.  New, they work great and do good things.  Given time, they start to fall apart.  Which my old pair has been doing for at least a year now.  I wouldn’t be suprised if this was a feature of the coatings. 

Anyway, the new glasses have just arrived.  They are, as one would hope, awesome.   Everything is clear again, text is readable at a distance, and there is the general joy of having something new.

Pictures will follow when I get a chance.

by chris

for you ebay people…

For those of you that do ebay, and are in need of tools, here’s a place to look:  Sears on Ebay

That’s sears liquidating returned items.  Pretty clear notices that there might be parts missing and all that, but some guys at the office have gotten good stuff this way.  (a couple of drills for better than 75% off the buy new price).

If I had the money, and had the non-time-dependent need, they have several 100+ piece sets out there for much less than you’d pay at the store.  As of now, there is one ~348 piece set out there.  Regular price in store would be about 550; the ebay item is sitting at 200.  (ok, with 1 day to go on the auction, so it’ll climb)

Even so, I imagine buying a large set like that for 100 bucks off retail price, then going to a store to buy a few missing pieces… you’d probably come out ahead.

Anyway, just something interesting out there.

by chris

Travelling for the coming holidays

There has been some talk about travelling up to Ramona’s for the holidays, either Thanksgiving or Christmas. Seeing snow, possibly sking, and generally enjoying the outdoors in conditions mostly unseen down here in Texas.

Christina and I have been talking about it and, as great as it would be, I don’t think we’ll be able to make it. I’ll explain why after the jump…

Continue reading →

by christina

kind of like deja vu

We took Mr. Blue to the vet today. Right before Christmas I noticed a small little lump on his back right hip. I couldn’t even find it every time I tried and I admittedly kept quiet. Then within the last month… it seemed to just grow out of no where. It is odd shaped, very firm, and seems to be attached to something (even to my lay person’s touch). I had a bad feeling about all of this… so it didn’t come as a shocker at all when the vet mentioned possibilities like “fibrosarcoma.” I was kind of shocked that he even mentioned that it could be vaccine related, though it was hard to say right now.

Tuesday Mr. Blue will go and get his growth removed and sent for biopsy. The vet felt like it was best to go ahead and remove it all now. Once we know for sure what it is…then we’ll know. Chris and I have decided that if it is something that is going to return we are not going to put him through chemo or additional surgeries but make the rest of his days as happy as possible. The vet also said that he’s seen the masses come back anywhere from before it was time to take the stitches out to years and it was a toss up.

We’re all doing ok. Just kind of in that “well DAMN” phase….but I know that this isn’t the first time something like this has come up and that you guys understand too.

by chris

Black and White treatment

These are two pictures that I took and converted into black and white.

First, here is a picture of one of the many cousins. I think that the original is a decent shot. The colors are nice. But I didn’t think it brought focus to her expression well enough. Converting it to B&W emphasizes that she is the center of the picture. I’m taking advantage of her shirt being the lightest element in the picture to draw attention and once your eyes are there they should naturally migrate north looking for something more interesting to look at: her face. I also feel the B&W version shows off her expression better than the color version.

I am so bored I am so bored B&W 

Next we have Aleah looking out the window. The color version isn’t that interesting to me. Aleah looks a bit dulled out in the shot with more interesting/bright detail being out the front door. I suppose that could make one think of the outdoors being more interesting than indoors… but I’m not that artsy. Now, when I shot the picture I was thinking about making it into B&W later. In the B&W, I think Aleah has more of the picture’s ‘focus’. She is the point making a contrast from the dark indoors and the light outdoors. I’ve also seen this style of shot done in the past and I like the effect.

Front Door Front Door B&W 

Thoughts?

by chris

Stainless Steel Drinkware

With some of the recent news about plastics containing various chemicals that aren’t the kind of thing people should be consuming, Christina went on the hunt for options. Turns out one of the safest drink containers is stainless steel. Doesn’t leach chemicals, isn’t made out of funny chemicals, and it lasts.

After some looking and thinking, she decided on kleankanteen as the best option. A bit more looking and she found them for a decent price at reusablebags.com. The prices there seem to be reasonable and a bit cheaper than some other places.

We bought three of the 27oz bottles. Christina likes the sports top (easy to suck water out of); I went for a flat top screw on lid. I like the style, even if I can’t drink in a moving vehicle without taking a quick bath. We also bought their small version with a sippy-cup top for Aleah. It works well and it came with a sports top for later.

The shipping was reasonably fast (we used USPS, as UPS doesn’t do well by us out here) and we would buy from them again.

by chris

Rating a music library

I won’t say that I have the largest library around. I do have, however, more music in my library that I have not heard than I have. This is true due to the austin music festival South By Southwest. Each year they put a song or two from nearly every artist that is going to be playing on their website for public download/preview. I’ve downloaded every such song from the past three years. I’ve also downloaded the entire music library on OCRemix, a site dedicated to remixing game music. There are a few gems in there, especially for inducing nostalgia. So when I put my music player on “Random”, I get exactly what I ask for. Most of the time I have never heard the currently playing song before.

Now, this presents a kind of problem. With so many songs, there are quite a few out there that I’ll have no interest in hearing again. Some songs don’t even get to play all the way through. Others I’ll love, but I’ve got no chance of remembering which ones those are. Since I’m playing these on the Ipod, the only way I have to sort through these songs as they play is the five star ranking for each song.

After some debate, this is the system I’ve come down to:
0 star – have yet to get playtime, or I didn’t think enough of them to rank them. Every now and then I will up-rank the unstared but played songs to be 2 star ranked.
1 star – never play again. Incomplete songs, songs I didn’t like, or for other reasons.
2 star – Ok songs. Don’t mind them on random, but I probably won’t seek them out either.
3 star – Good songs. I like these enough that I will probably put them all on big playlist someday for when I want to listen to what I like without the drudge of songs I don’t care for.
4 star – Personal favorites. Songs that I can play over and over without getting tired of them. Songs I do seek out to listen to every now and then. I’d recommend these to people with music tastes like mine.
5 star – Songs that I would recommend to anyone. Best in class by me.

My goal is to really start figuring out what music I really like. A song can (and will) get moved around a good bit in these ranks. One thought I’ve had is squish rank 4 and 5 together for a time and use 5 star to be songs that I think are interesting on one listen, but need to hear more before really making an opinion. This would be good for all the artists that I’ve not heard before, as it might mean I go out and listen to/buy more of their music.

by chris

On IMing

One of the neat features of a few IM clients I’ve used recently is reporting the typing status of your contact. Seeing that they are typing a message lets me know they are actually responding in some fashion. However, there are a few times when this feature becomes more annoying than useful. Case in point, one person always shows up as “User has entered Text”. As if they had typed a reply but had not hit the ‘send’ button. I sit, waiting expectantly, for a response that never comes. At its worst, this happens when trying to get a message to the president of the company.

Anyone else have this experience?

by chris

Random thoughts and Little Things

– We’ve gone a week without air conditioning. Weather was nice enough and having the house open that long did wonders for getting rid of the random weird smells that build up in a house. Now if we can just get the kitty boxes to not smell, we’ll be doing great. Anyway, we had to turn the AC back on to deal with humidity. The carpets were starting to feel a bit too damp.

– The 3 movies, unlimited plan has the best ‘dollars per movie’ ratio at Netflix. You would actually come out a dollar and change ahead if you had two people, each with the 3xUnlimited than getting a single 6xUnlimited account.

– Downloading a new podcast’s catalog of ~40 issues at 3-40 minutes each eats through hard drive space fast. Especially when doing it on four new podcasts ‘just to try out’. Makes me happy to have a larger Ipod.

– Speaking of Ipods, I enjoy watching movies on it. On some mornings (weekends), Aleah will wake up if I get up… and promptly fall back asleep once I’m carrying her around. She’ll wake back up if I put her down, and repeats the process. So I’ve taken to watching a movie on the ipod while she sleeps on me. I’ve watched more movies in the past week or two than I have… um… in a few months.

– I should really keep away from camera lens reviews when I know there is a tax refund coming our way soon. So many other things that the money can get used for instead.

– Some days I think it would be cool to do a massive house cleaning, then hire a cleaning service to come out and do the detail work I usually don’t have time to get done. (baseboards, fans, mirrors, windows; that sort of stuff) I think that’s just about the only way we would reach that ‘really clean house’ goal these days.

– Pursuant to the above, I have way too much stuff for the amount of storage we have. Time to get a ladder and check out the attic!