Tuesday, August 31, 2010

RMV Hell




It could be worse... Much worse.

Frantic! Crazy! Out of Control!

Frantic! Crazy! Out of Control! All phrases that describe my stomach right now. Urgh... it's supposed to get easier as you jump over the hurdles on the path to eternal debt, isn't it?

Urgh! I say!

This weekend Jen, the love of my life, and I had planned to pack. Or at least start packing. Then Jen made a comment that I 100% agreed with. I don't recall the exact quote but it was something along the lines of, what if we start packing before we have a mortgage commitment letter and we some how jinx the whole deal? Kinda like how you're not supposed to buy baby gifts for some one who is pregnant (except for baby showers? How does that compute?). What if, cosmically speaking, throwing all of the shoes at the bottom of the closet into a box or two (or ten, I have big feet) caused fate to measure up our karma as slightly lacking and it flushed the whole house deal down the john? (I've often mixed metaphors... but mixed philosophies? This might be a blogger first for me)

So we canned the idea of packing for a few days. We did lighten our load slightly though. Jen and I had five laptops between us. One is her work issued machine, but still... five... for two people. She had her work box, a super awesome gaming machine, and a MacBook. I had my main lappy and my old Gateway that runs Linux. We decided to look into selling the MacBook and the Gateway. The Gateway might have nabbed us about $20. The MacBook though... those suckers age well.

She tried to sell it on ebay and got a really good price for it. Unfortunately the twit who won the auction defaulted. Asshole. So she tried again, this time on craigslist. Success! She got a bunch of offers and settled on the best one. On Saturday we met the buyer in Burlington where we looked out my favorite restaurant and fought back tears of temptation and made the sale. We then went into Barnes and Noble and perused the home improvement section. Just looking... not jinxing anything.

On Sunday we spent the time that we should have been packing at my parent's house playing with my niece. After a long day of being the star of the show she did something that made me nearly combust with glee. She was getting really cranky and decided she wanted a ride in her stroller. No, said mom and dad, we're getting ready to go home so the stroller has been put away. While her dad, my brother John, held her she started to cry and she... she... called out for her uncle Rob!

I nearly bust with pride! She does like me! (granted I had just finished wheeling her around the yard in her stroller, so maybe she was just assuming if she came to me she'd get another ride... stop it Rob, don't ruin the good uncle feelings!)

Yesterday was back to reality. The mortgage broker sent us a conditional commitment letter. That's right, if we can answer a few questions they will give us a truck load of money to buy a house! Success! Happiness! But...

For some reason Jen and I both felt our excitement over the commitment letter disappear to be replaced by nerves and fear. So what if we have a conditional commitment letter... so what... we still don't have the commitment letter. We don't expect to have that until the middle of September. A lot can change between now and then. Now we're both really unsettled when we should be drawing up furniture floor plans. (not that we're not doing that anyway, but you know what I mean)

We are excited. We can't wait to move. We're just scared to death at the same time. It's an odd feeling, ya know?

Monday, August 30, 2010

Why?

8:19pm... still no post... what's that fat red head doing? We (meaning the no one who loves to read this ridiculous drivel) need today's post!

Well let me get on with today's question.

Why? That's the question. Why?

Why is it that now that we have the conditional commitment letter from the mortgage company are we more stressed than before? I don't know. It's crazy, we should be dancing around the house with glee.

But we're just extra stressed now. I can't believe it.

Maybe this will cheer us up...

Sunday, August 29, 2010

WhatWhatWhat?

What was that you said Mr Banker Mortgage Broker Sir?

The appraisal is all set and the first commitment letter will be sent out to us tomorrow?

WhatWhatWhat?

Look behind us... what do you see? A couple more hurdles crossed, that's what you see.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

I Love Jen

Love love love.




Just Browsing




Ya know... Just in case.

I Wanna Move Now!!!

Last night my step kids were shining stars on the stage at their summer camp's gym. It was wonderful. First my step son played the Star Wars theme on the piano. He was awesome. He forgot the second section and just stopped, but otherwise he was spot on perfect, including crossing his hands on the keyboard. I am so proud of that guy! Next my step daughter did a little unaccompanied vocal performance of some pop song I don't know. She belted out that song like the Earth depended on it. She was by far the best performer of the night. No one even came close. She was awesome.

Today looks to be an important day. We haven't heard back about the home appraisal yet, and we don't have a commitment letter from the bank (our mortgage broker was on vacation this week), but we are going to start packing today. This is a momentous occasion.

I wanna move NOW!

Friday, August 27, 2010

I Reiterate

The Jonas Brothers are evil. Pure Evil.

Just saying.



Way too Early

I'm wicked early for something... For a change.

I used a little comp time today to get my self up to Salem, NH for a talent show that a certain pair of ridiculously talented kids are appearing in.

And surprise of surprises, I made it up here about half an hour early.

To celebrate, here are two pictures of a blimp that I took out of my office window yesterday. One does not make use of the iPhone's crummy digital zoom, the other does.








Summer's End is Nigh

My step son is all happy that today is the end of the last full week of summer. I bet you $1.00 that he feels differently next year at the end of his pre-third grade summer vacation.

When it comes to school vacations he is still a rookie.



Thursday, August 26, 2010

Traffic

I heard a traffic report after dropping off the kids at their dad's house. It said 93 South was backed up from 133 to River Road. I drive right through the middle of that. I decided to get off 93 early and take route 213 East to 495 South.

I hit a traffic jam on 495 South that was just about the same size as the one on 93 South that I was trying to avoid.

Oh yeah.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Looking Back at Us

I read an article today that included a number of pictures of Earth taken from great distances. A couple from the moon, one from a probe traveling to Mars, one from Mercury, and one from Saturn.

I will now repost the pictures because the NASA nerd in me thinks they are unbelievably awesome. After that I will post a link to the actual article.

Enjoy

This is what the Earth and the Moon look like from somewhere like Mercury.


See that very faint blue dot in between the two very faint outer rings? I hope you said cheese when they snapped that.


This is what we look like when you blast off toward Mars and take a second to look back over your shoulder.


Remember this old Apollo shot?


Here's the updated version, from Japan's lunar orbiter.


Now read the article and check out the awesome images again.

Enjoy, again.

Countdown to Closing


Created by OnePlusYou



I'm curious if this code is going to work. The test I ran seemed to think it was still 2009.

Date Night Recap

I needed that.

I came home and Jen was cooking dinner. Steak Tips. Delicious. We sat at the table for a while and discussed some really cool things she's discovered at work. Yes, we talked about HTML during our date. We are definitely nerds.

After dinner we perused on-demand looking for romantic-date-night-friendly-comedies and pretty much found nothing. While scrolling through the mostly crap offered by the pay-movie channels we found a serviceable non-romantic comedy and settled for it. We hung out on the couch, arms around each other like youngsters at the theater and just enjoyed being together. (You know you are wicked old when you start using the word youngsters.)

It was a wonderful quiet night of stress freedom that we both really needed, and really enjoyed. Thank you sweetie, lovey, wifey.

Oh yeah, the house appraisal was scheduled for yesterday. Now we can start stressing again. WOOHOO!!!



Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Something to Look Forward To

Today began as another crummy day, but it mellowed out a bit. Regardless of how the business hours went, I have something really great to look forward to tonight:

Date night with my lovey.

Coming home now, sweetie! See you soon!



Monday, August 23, 2010

Moron

I truly am mentally deficient. I keep proving it to myself over and over again.

Next weekend isn't a three day weekend. Next weekend is Game Night in Nahant. The weekend after that is a three day weekend... and it looks like we might get to meet Maria's baby. WOOHOO

Outage

I came to work today with the sincere hope that today (Monday) would be better than last Friday. Friday sucked. Usually Monday sucks, but this time Friday sucked. It was painful.

I was hoping Monday would vindicate me.

The network has been down for a couple of hours. I've been sitting here waiting for it to come back.

Nothing.

Monday is sucking too.

That was Quick

Wow... that was a quick weekend. It was over before it started.

We went bike riding on Saturday and my step-son managed to ride without training wheels. It only worked when he got a push to start off. He still has trouble starting on his own, and he hasn't mastered turning yet. My step-daughter successfully rode standing on the pedals, and one handed (not at the same time, of course). Big steps taken by everyone.

Yesterday we wanted to ride again but the rain washed that out. Later in the afternoon we went to Mike and Tammy's and hung out with them and their daughter, who gets cuter by the minute.

The big news was signing the purchase and sales agreement on Friday. Now we have to wait for the appraisal and the mortgage. Nothing major there, just more money than I can even fathom. >gulp<

Next weekend is a three day job. I can't wait. I can't wait. I CAN'T WAIT!

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Rain Sucks

We had planned to go bike riding again today but the rain spoiled things. Instead, we watched Return of the Jedi, and then my step son and I broke out the Star Wars toys and had a good time being goofy.

Later tonight we are going to Mike and Tammy's to visit with them and their daughter. Should be a fun time as usual.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

I watched Star Wars with the kids tonight and something reminded me of the Hardware Wars parody. So here it is. Aint youtube grand?

Part 1/2


Part 2/2

Evil Incarnate

I know that evil is among us on Earth today. Pure, undiluted evil.

I have seen the face of this evil. Worse, I have heard the sound of this evil.

It's on the Disney Channel as I type this.

The evil is: The Jonas Brothers

>Robbie shivers in horror<



Saturday

So yesterday was a crappy day from the start almost all the way to the finish. The two and a half plus hours in the car going home from work was just the final kick in the teeth.

Things turned around at our 6:00 meeting, the one that I didn't get to until about 6:15, when we signed the purchase and sales agreement.

Today is a housing stress free day... I hope. The sellers are supposed to be signing the p&s. We, however, are going to take the kids somewhere where they can ride their bikes.

Ahhhhh

Friday, August 20, 2010

Frick Frick Frick on a Stick

I left work at 3:30 and headed straight to our 6:00 appointment...

I was 15 minutes late.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU














Oncoming Weekend

The weekend is almost upon us. It could be an eventful one. I am leaving work early today because my company has a little summertime perk that lets you pick one Friday during the season to split a couple of hours early. Today is my day.

I get to pick up the kids. That makes me very happy. I love doing that.

Later we might be signing a purchase and sales agreement. Or not. depending on what the other side does during the day. I can't wait to find out. It's all so exciting. Frustrating too, but still exciting.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

P&S Drama

On Saturday we asked the sellers for a couple of provisions.
On Monday they sent us their draft of the purchase and sales agreement.
On Wednesday we sent them our draft of the purchase and sales agreement, which was theirs plus a couple of edits we asked our lawyer to make.
Today they sent us back what they said was the final purchase and sales agreement, with the provisions and our edits factored in.

Nope.

What they really sent us was page 1 of our document with the provisions added in, and the rest of it was their original document. Either they (and by they I refer to the seller's representatives, not the sellers themselves) are incompetent or they are trying to fuck us.

My optimistic side says they are incompetent. Unfortunately my optimistic side only represents 0.68% of my conscious mind. The rest of me thinks they are trying to pull one over on us... and our lawyer... and our agent... and our banker... so maybe my optimistic side is right?

I don't know.

I just want to buy the damn house.

Oh No!

My step daughter just said she wants to play something for me on the piano...

Then she asked me if I like Journey.

Oh No!!!

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Housing

So the radon test came back clean. That is the final exclamation point on our home inspection. Nice. They sent us a purchase and sales on Monday. We went over it with our lawyer... well, Jen went over it with our lawyer. She's pretty amazing, ya know. I am really the luckiest red head ever. So now we're waiting on them to get back to us again. We also want to try and move the closing date up a little, but we have to hear back from them on that one too.

I want it done NOW NOW NOW!!!

Mosquito Spraying

If you're like me and you live in Methuen, MA you may want to take note that there could be some noisy trucks on your street late tonight. The town is spraying for mosquitoes starting tonight at 8:00pm. They expect it to run until about 4:00am tomorrow morning. You might want to close any windows that face streets, but other than that I don't think there's much to worry about. Keep the kids out of play grounds and fields from sunset tonight until after sunrise tomorrow.

Mayor Manzi's blog
Boston Herald story

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Cemetery


photo
Originally uploaded by robj_1971
We visited Jen's aunt and grandparents' graves this weekend. We were asking for some help from above in our attempt to buy a house.

See that little dark dot in the sky above the trees? It's a hawk. I take that as a really good sign.

Capitalism Rawks!

The free market has spoken and the result?



Robbie gets a free iPhone bumper.

Now if only I could get the package open.........

Return of the Jedi Deleted Scene

Yeah, I'm nerd enough to post this...



This is a deleted scene from Return of the Jedi. All six movies are slated for Blu-ray release in the fall of 2011. Let the hype build up begin!

Another Hurdle Jumped

We applied for a mortgage last night.

Oh.
My.
God.

That's a lot of money.

Now we have to focus on the Purchase and Sales agreement. We have the document that the sellers made up, but we have to run it through a lawyer and make sure all is well. We also want to tweak a couple of things on our end. We should have all of that taken care of by the end of the week.

Progress is being made each day. There will come a time when the progress happens outside of our view, and that is going to be stressful. Even more so than the already insane level of stress.

It's all worth it though. Totally.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Quiet

Nothing new to report on anything. We had a very quiet Sunday yesterday. We thought we were waiting on one document from the home inspection but it turned out we already had it. Blame that one on me.

Jen woke up with a very stiff/sore neck yesterday so we basically sat in the living room watching movies, watching television, surfing the web for home decorating ideas, and just being quiet and hanging out. It was nice, but some how we were both more tired at the end of the day than usual. We took a nap in the afternoon and Jen was still ready to go to bed at 8:00. This morning her neck was much better, so maybe going to bed early was the proper medical treatment for whatever was wrong. I won't argue.

Tonight starts another nerve wracking week of home shopping (not the network) stuff so sleep will probably be hard to come by. It'll all be worth it though. I am trying not to get overly confident. I am trying to stay at a safe level of cautious optimism. So far so good.

Having said that though... I WANNA MOVE NOW!!!!

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Another Hurdle Jumped...

Another hurdle jumped, but a new one has popped up.

We had the home inspection yesterday. It went surprisingly well. I expected to have bombs dropping on us left and right, but there was only one thing worthy of adding to the negotiations. That little addition to the negotiations counts as an additional hurdle to cross, but it's not a big one and we think it's reasonable enough that it won't cause too many waves. If it does we'll deal with it and find a way to smooth it out.

We are both very, excited...

and my step son offered to start packing his toys now.

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Inspection

So we have agreed to spend an obscene amount of money on a house. The sellers have agreed that this specific obscene amount of money is acceptable to them. Both sides have signed the document that legalizes this agreement.

Hurdle number one has been jumped.

Hurdle number two gets under way this afternoon. The home inspection. That's where we pay some one a fair chunk of money to tell us everything that is wrong with the house we agreed to pay the obscene amount of money to buy.

This Is further into the process than we've gotten in the past and the stress level continues to rise.

I can't wait!



Friday, August 13, 2010

Goings On

So there are things going on in Robbie's world. We've been trying to keep things quiet, but totally let the cat out of the bag today.

We are trying to buy a house.

We put in an offer, haggled a bit, and eventually came to an agreement. On Wednesday we signed the offer and sent it to the sellers who appeared to sit on it for a couple of days.

We are starting to think we are in for another screwing of the real estate variety.

But alas, they came through. We have a copy of the signed agreement.

When the agreement came to us I was listening to the Red Sox. The team responded to our happy news by hitting three home runs in a row.

The Red Sox are pleased with our real estate venture.




What?

We don't have another group trying to dick with us, do we?

WTF?


Missed Camera Phone Opportunity

I was on Glezen Lane in Wayland this morning. I had just taken a right off of Moore street and came around a bend in the road.

Standing still in the middle of my lane, perpendicular to the traffic, was a deer. A big one. It was a doe, but she looked pretty big to me. She turned her head and looked at me as I rolled nearly to a stop. My hand was reaching for my phone on the passenger seat but Mrs Bambi didn't wait around to pose for me. She dashed out of the road, into some trees on the opposite side. I lost sight of her instantly. I did see that the bushes were moving a little on my side of the road and I was thinking that there might be another critter in their waiting to run across the street, but alas there was none.

So... one has a camera in one's phone so that a camera will be available to catch those surprising, out of the ordinary moments that one may come across during the course of one's day.

...and in this instance I blew it.

Sorry.

Urgh

Looks like I picked a bad day to chance route 3.






Thursday, August 12, 2010

Thursday Night

File under quiet.

Nothing happening tonight. For the none of you who know what I'm talking about. I expected nothing tonight and I got it. I'm folding laundry, watching Smallville, loving my wife as she sits in the living room working late. I hate that, but I love her so what are you going to do?

My step son lost a tooth yesterday. Figuratively and literally. One of his front teeth fell out while he was at his day care. He put it in a plastic bag, put the bag in his lunch box, and proceeded to somehow lose it. Soooo, he wrote a note to the tooth fairy apologizing for losing the tooth. We'll have to see if the Toothy lady will still pay up. I think she will. At least I hope so.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Crazy?

Jen and I were asking each other something tonight: Are we crazy?

Why yes, I believe we are.

The real question should be, was there ever any doubt?

Nope.

Hey, we jumped on the Red Sox bandwagon last night and what did they do? Won. What are they doing tonight? Nuking Toronto, of course.

Hey Red Sox Nation: You're welcome.

Nevermind

You know that last post I made?

Nevermind.

Did I mention that Jen and I watched a Red Sox game last night? Me, the obsessed Red Sox fan dating back over 30 years hasn't watched a full game this whole season. I just didn't feel like there was all that much to get excited about, and then the team that wasn't exciting was decimated with injuries and they turned into a not very exciting (more or less) minor league team.

Still... I think I might be on the wagon now. They can keep me from being interested for a while, but not for a whole season.

Go Red Sox.

Respond

I don't get it. How do you get something like that and then not respond?

You don't know what I'm talking about and it's going to stay that way. I just needed a forum for venting and I chose this because barely anyone reads it.

Seriously, unless you aren't taking the situation seriously, how can you not even respond? I don't even mean say yes, I mean say something. Even if it's a flat out no, or to tell us that you haven't had a chance to take care of it and you need another day. Damn, just say something.



Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Cravings

I'm craving ice cream. I don't care from where, or what flavor (within reason, of course)

I just want some ice creamy goodness. Mmmmmmm ice cream.



Weird Street Names

I can't remember where I was surfing... it must have been Flickr... but I recall once seeing a photo site or group or something that was a collection of street signs and town signs where the name was, let's just say, riddled with multiple meanings.

Intercourse, PA. Ya know... stuff like that.

No specific reason I mention that... just saying, ya know?

**Subject Change**

Read this story.

Now I do not condone what he did. He deserved to be arrested, that is clear.

But... if you're going to quit a job... I don't think it's possible to do it with any more pizazz than that. Give him thirty to forty thousand points for style.

Monday, August 9, 2010

I Love Her





I Love Her





Sun and Teeth

Weirdness.

Yesterday we went to an empty parking lot to let the kids ride their bikes. It was sunny, it was hot. I put on a significant amount of sunscreen and then Jen and I sat on our cool camp chairs and watched the show, giving them occasional "missions" like ride all the way to the other end of the lot and back without stopping (turning around has been an issue).

After a short while everyone but me needed to go to the bathroom, so they all walked over to the nearest open building and did their thing. I took the opportunity to lather on another dose of SPF 1,000,000,000. We were outside for about two hours before calling it a ride and packing up.

When I got home later that night I noticed that my knees... my twice heavily sunscreened... knees were bright red and pretty badly sunburned. Figures. That is the down side of being a red head... a daywalker if you will... I get burned no matter what I do.

Fast forward to about 12:30 this morning. I had a pretty bad dream. I dreamed that all the teeth on the right side of my mouth fell out. All at once. One minute they were there, the next minute they were in a pile in my hand. Pretty disturbing. I woke up with a tooth ache on the right side of my mouth. Hmmm... do dreams come true? Hopefully not, but was that dream an actual omen? Probably not. The tooth ache was gone when I got up this morning. Strange stuff.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Recap

The bicycle part of the weekend concluded about six hours ago. To give you an idea of how Earth shattering it was, my step son just gave me an in depth, detailed recap of one of the hills he road down.

What a fantastic weekend it's been.



Birds

Why did this bird puff out it's feathers like that when it was just sitting on the ground hangin' out?







Bike Day #2

Bike day #2. Bathroom break.




Sunday

Yesterday was so much fun. My step daughter can now officially say she can ride a bike. My step son took a shot without the training wheels but he isn't quite big/strong enough to hold himself upright. He's close, but not quite ready.

We are going to celebrate the bicycle success by doing a little more riding today.

My step kids are just plain awesome.



Saturday, August 7, 2010

Bike Day 2010

I'm married to a woman who has a daughter who can ride a bike.




Saturday

Today's plan is pretty simple. Drive over to the kids' father's house, pick up their bikes, drive to Jen's mom's house, watch the kids ride the bikes.

Simple... perfect.

Both bikes have training wheels on them. We're hoping the bravery level will rise high enough that at least one of them sees the training wheels come off and the real bike riding begins. I'm trying to limber up seeing as I may have to run behind a bike for a while today. I expect a heart attack or two. hehe

Friday, August 6, 2010

Jen the Film Maker Take 2

Jen's second stab at being a film maker.

BRILLIANT!!!!

Jen the Film Maker Take 1

My wife's first stab at being a film maker.

Brilliant!

WEEKEND!!!

WEEKEND!!!!!




Friday

It's Friday again. This week has been quietly stressing me out in a number of small, random ways. I am really looking forward to the weekend.

I missed a chance at a good silly picture today. My step daughter washed her flip flops and we set them to dry in front of a fan. Silly, but I still wish I got a pic.

Speaking of the kids... There may be bike riding lessons tomorrow... of the sans training wheels variety. Stay tuned!



Thursday, August 5, 2010

Okay, One More Tonight

I'm reading Bill Bruford's autobiography these days, which naturally makes me want to listen to him playing the drums. It's King Crimson tonight. Here are the results of a few minutes putzing around youtube.

Indiscipline - Leave it to television to lose Robert Fripp in the mix, and did Adrien Belew ever have hair?


Improvising in Central Park in 1973. This is what King Crimson is to me. There are so many different versions of the band, and I love the original band, and I love the 80's Discipline band, but this is where it's at for me. Fripp/Bruford/Wheton/Cross.


Starless. Or at least the second have of it. Is the sync off by exactly one beat? I actually got yelled at by my mother because of this song. I was trying to play along with it once when I was a teenager. My amp was probably way, way, way too loud, and as you can tell by the beginning of this clip Fripp gets a tad... how shall I put this nicely... repetitive. It drove my whole household nuts. hehe

One for the Road, From the Road

I was still in take-pictures-of-the-drive-home-and-run-'em-through-camerabag mode last night. Here are the only ones that were worth keeping...

The biggest speed bump in the Country perhaps?
photo

This is a crypt in a little cemetery on the side of route 27/126 in Wayland. I like the look of this place, and the pic is all right by me.
photo

Light Sabers

This is the world's greatest video compilation...

Every light saber ignition from all six Star Wars films, in order. Followed by every light saber closing from all six Star Wars films, in reverse order.

Cutting it Close, Eh Mister Robert?

One of those days, ya know?

As soon as I got to work this morning the phone started ringing and the email started flying and I was just busy for the whole day.

Jen has the same problem. We had planned to visit Mike and Tammy and their daughter tonight, and unlike Sunday when Tammy came to our house we would have the kids tonight.

But as it turned out, their Dad had to pick them up at their summer program because Jen and I were both stuck at work. To top it off, Jen is still working now. I'm hiding in the office so she can have some peace and quite in the living room. The kids went to their room a little early, which was very nice of them. They go to bed at bed time and then read until go-to-sleep time. I am giving them a little extra read time tonight to thank them for going upstairs early.

Of course, they are in their air conditioned bedrooms and I am sweating like a fat guy stuck in the Sahara.

Still... I am home with my family, and I love every second of it.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Oh the Stress!

Don't you hate it when some one says you are going to need your 2008 W2s and all the tax forms from the last two years...

And then you can find the 2009 stuff... and the 2007 stuff... but not the 2008 stuff?

Damn, that is stressful.

But...

We found it.

My wife did, however, make fun of my filing system. (ie the pile of random shit on the shelf above my desk. hehe)

Deservedly so?

Perhaps.

Self Destructing Washing Machine

Watch...
Laugh.

Camerabag Retest

I did a test post looooong ago where I took a few pictures with my old iPhone, ran them through the camerabag app, and posted them to see if I'd like them.

Now that I have a new iPhone with a much swankier camera, I thought I'd retest.










Or at least start to, and then get distracted and stop. Typical.



ADDENDUM:
I thought I'd link to the old post I referenced above, only to discover that it was actually a couple of different posts I was thinking of. There were two where I played with camerabag to test it out, and another one where I took a bunch of Concord Center pictures and processed them in Camerabag. That's the one I was thinking of when I started this thing, but I was confusing it with the other two.

This one was a Camerabag test.
This one was a similar Camerabag test.
This one was the actual post I was remembering when I took the pictures above.

The downside is that Camerabag still thinks it's dealing with the small file sized images it had on the 3G. Now the iPhone 4 has much, much higher resolutions, but the processed images are dropped way down to a much, much lower resolution. At least they are in the few filters I used today.

Example:
The full resolution on this file is 2592 x 1936:
photo

The full resolution on this processed version (using the Helga filter) is 800 x 800:
photo

Quite a difference.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

My Wife is Amazing

My wife is absolutely amazing. Just incredible.

Example:

I mentioned in a post yesterday that we had an offer to go to The Border Cafe on Sunday and I had to decline because I was on call.

Yesterday evening when I got home she forbade me to go into the kitchen. I sat in the office, loading music onto my new iPhone 4. After a while she called me in to eat dinner.

Because we had missed out on The Border, she had decided to surprise me by making a home made version of the meal I usually order. A chicken dish with jambalaya on the side, and a little piece of corn bread. Also, a big bowl of tortilla chips. It will forever rank very high on my list of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me.

You are truly amazing sweetie. I am the luckiest man alive.

I love you!

I've Hit the Big Time

Yes this little retarded monkey of a page has apparently hit the major leagues at last.

How do I know, you ask?

Because I got a spam comment last night, that's how I know.

I deleted it, of course, but I still take it as a positive bizarro-universe style sign.



Monday, August 2, 2010

CHAOS!

There is a series of clips on youtube called, "What it's really like to work in a music store."

This is the first clip... prepare yourself... it's painful.

Enjoy!

Monday... The Upside?

Sometimes Monday morning can be a good thing. Actually, sometimes punching in at the office on Monday morning can be a good thing. You wouldn't think so, but in one case it is. Today is an example of that one case.

What's the one time when getting to work on a Monday is a good thing?

When it officially marks the end of an on call weekend, that's when.

Now granted, it's just a little bit better than the usual horrible Monday start to the work week, but at least when I go home tonight I will be able to turn my phone off if I want to. Hell, if I want to go out after work tonight I can without stressing that the phone will ring.

Last night we beat the on call blues by having some people come over for a visit. My friend Mike is about to have stomach surgery (in a month or so) and will shortly be going on an extremely restrictive diet. So as a sort of last hurrah a Border Cafe trip was planned for yesterday. I couldn't go. Jen and I stayed home and worked on a code project. I happily got our .net project to connect to our SQL Server database and return a row of data. Granted, all I did was follow a list of instructions my brilliant wife gave me. She then walked me through a unit test. Something I've technically never done. I have done the equivalent, but I have never automated it. MS .net has that capability built in. It was pretty cool, I must say.

After the Border Run was complete most of the group came over to our house to hang out. Mike, the guest of honor, had to go back to work, which sucked, but Tammy and their daughter were there, as was Larry, Nawal, and their baby. We watched Cars, we hung out, we had a nice night. Thanks to all of them for coming over.

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Hey Jenny?

Did this work?

Passed

My first ever MS .net Unit Test worked.

Proud of me?





Drunk History Vol. 6 Featuring John C. Reilly, and Crispin Glover

Day Two

I am afraid I'm going to jinx things here, but it must be stated:

I made it through a full day of being on call and the only times the phone rang were when my beautiful wife called me.

So far so good. One day left to go.