The High Life

I can hardly believe how perfect my life is right now. I mean.......everything is just so amazing. It is hard to describe this level of joy. I couldn't complain about anything right now. Well....I take that back. That Meijer job.....leaves much to be desired. But honestly, that's it. Everything else, every other event on my planner is something I look forward to. Every week is so exciting and busy and satisfying.
Anyway, I imagine this is probably the most boring blog I could possibly write. I realize that good news is all too unpopular. Probably more people would read this blog if I whined a bit or ranted more. Not that I care if anyone reads. Merely observing. I think I just type out these blogs as a way to pass the time. Sometimes it helps me to relax and contemplate my life more acutely.
Well, I guess I'm done. Off home soon for another peaceful, relaxing evening with my beautiful wife in our wonderful house.

WWII Programs

Here is a small flyer for this year's upcoming WW2 programs, coordinated by Mr. Larry Martin.

The Brutal Onslaught of Despair

I tend to be an optimistic person. I have been oft criticized for this fact. When times are hard, I find it easy to see the bright side of things and to look forward, putting things in their proper perspective. Yet, while this does seem to come naturally to me, and I am clearly a minority, my positive outlook is challenged and shaken no less often than anyone else.
I was at work the other day, following much of my usual routine consisting of browsing lots of news headlines and corresponding with friends and colleagues. It was a rather slow day, and I had little to keep me busy and tear me from the depressing daily reports filled with tales of tragedy and woe. The rain was coming down steadily outside and we seemed to be in the midst of a depression epidemic, as everyone I encountered had a sullen, hopeless expression on their faces and grim attitudes to match. Even I found it difficult to maintain my optimism in the face of such negativity. However, in spite of all this opposition, I continued to persevere and remain stalwart in my happiness.
I must fully admit at this time that those around me who choose to persist in their grouchiness are not entirely to blame. I will not argue with their claims that times have never been harder, that the future never looked quite so dark or that there seems to be little hope and purpose in even trying when just getting by takes all that you have. This is the message, the trumpeted report, I received in constant salvos of gloom throughout the day. Close friends spoke of their hopeless quests for employment and others of the overbearing weight of countless debts and bills. I read a report from "Forbes" that listed Jackson, Michigan as the worst small city in the nation for jobs.
After awhile, these things began to weigh more and more heavily on my mind. I began to ponder the future myself and question whether it really was as bright as I had so firmly upheld. My fiance and I have discussed very seriously whether this was the right place for us to settle and raise a family. We have always felt very strongly that it was and neither of us have felt any inclination to explore anything outside of this county. But reason, it seemed, was pointing somewhere else. 

As much as I resisted this not-so-subtle nudge of fate, I felt responsibility compel me to at least consider the future in a more serious manner. I began to question my motives for everything and imagine every possibility. I thought long and hard about what was best for my family-to-be and tried to ignore my own desires and dreams. It was with these heavy thoughts on my mind that I left the library and began walking through the dreary, sprinkling cold to my car. The picture outside was indeed dismal. Weather aside, there was little good to be seen. A lone bum in tattered clothes stumbled across the parking lot, muttering to himself. I could see someone bundled tightly in a thin rain coat riding his bike down the cracked, puddle ridden sidewalk. Rusty, clunkers filled the parking lot and I could just discern the sound of a siren wail in the distance. Yet somehow, in the midst of all this gloom, I smiled. I cannot really say why, but I smiled. Something deep inside told me that I was right where I belonged. That no matter what happened or how dark things became, everything would be just fine. Even if things were bad, worse than anywhere else, I could make it through. Ashley and I could make it. 

I held my head high and proceeded to walk proudly across the street towards my own rusty clunker, having accepted fate's challenge of making a life in the most challenging town in the country. Having overcome of my own will, the powerful urge to succumb to the wave of despair, I felt a renewed sense of joy as my jovial spirit returned in full force. It seemed to me that the sun began to shine again and, for a moment, everything was right.

It was at that moment that I happened to hear a loud, gruff voice shout "HEY!!". I whirled around and, as I happened to be the only person there looked up towards the caller. I saw a dark SUV cruising down Blackstone with a large, angry looking man protruding from the passenger window. He held up his right hand in an obscene gesture, scowled at me and shouted "F*** YOU!!"

The crib

So we are buying this cool house finally. Closing date is officially next Friday. I am, needless to say, extremely excited. Just days away from owning my first house....pretty awesome. This is a picture from the front. Not too special right now on the outside, but it will be when I am done with it.

New Year rant

School is really boring me these days. I never have time to study and the homework can hardly hold my attention anyway. It seems that I have completely lost interest in school. I don't learn nearly as much as I would like to. Learning is not a problem in fact I enjoy it. However I usually learn more working an afternoon in the reference department here at work then I do in a day of classes. Each class is filled with silly activities where we split in to groups and try to agree on what the teacher actually wants us to do. Invariably, I am placed with a quiet, clueless freshman and a loud, clueless sophomore and I have to explain what we are doing and get them to do it right or just do it myself. They are always very simple problems that are somehow made difficult by my fellow students. Then if we are not doing a project, we are listening to monologues by the loud, ignorant "genius" in the class who decides they don't want to be a student but rather the teacher. Economics is great for that. Everyone there thinks they know the answer to why the economy is suffering, and are filled with their own fool-proof and often half-witted solutions to the worlds problems. Good for a laugh now and then but after a while I get tired of it. Just let the professor talk and tell us which page to read so I can get my grade and go home. I feel a bit sad that I don't enjoy school anymore. I don't hate it either but I just find it to be a waste of my time. I can't seem to find any other students that I can talk to anymore. No one else is in the same boat that I am in and I can't connect with anyone. No other students that I know would dream of getting engaged at my age. None of them work as many hours as I do. All of them just look forward to the next party this weekend and wouldn't dream of spending Friday night at home with their family. In the end, I end up being a tad anti-social amidst the college crowd. I usually keep to myself which is not my nature. Strange really.
Well, that sounded very angry. I'm a little surprised at myself that I wrote all that. Maybe I should not publish this post. I guess it doesn't matter really.
The New Year has otherwise been good to me thus far. I am still counting the days before I get to be married to the most amazing girl in history. 188 days today. She is too perfect for words. I wish there was more I could do for her.
I should be going on my lunch break soon. I have some hot pockets in the freezer upstairs. Not very good at all but it is a lunch. Hopefully Ash won't make me eat this crap every day and I will eat decent lunches but until then, it's hot pockets and pb & j. Yay........

So I have been researching alternative software lately. Primarily focusing on free, open source applications such as internet browsers, office suites, photo editing, and even operating systems. It has proven to be a fascinating and rewarding endeavor.
For starters I explored alternative internet browsers. It is now common knowledge, it seems that Internet Explorer is deplorable at best when held up to any of many other options available to us. Among those I have tried were Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Maxthon, Opera, K-Meleon, The World, and Nubonyx. Trying them all was a lot of fun and yielded useful results. However, I have not yet discovered my perfect browser. Each one of these has many redeeming qualities but not one has proven so far to perfectly suit my taste. In fact, on a normal day I use anywhere from two to five different browsers simply because they all have different functions that appeal to me. I must add that IE is NOT on that list and I really never use at all. My most used browser so far has been Google Chrome, for its speed, reliability and friendly interface that I enjoy using. Firefox is also among the top and is arguably the best all-around alternative browser available. Maxthon and Opera also have nice features that I use frequently.
For day-to-day software I have found a multitude of useful, free programs. It would take too long to list them all but a few worth noting are Paint.net for photo editing, also Gimp for more advanced users, Audacity for audio recording, Open Office for any office projects, GreenFish Icon Editor for creating fun .gif images (like the simple one at the top of this post), Undelete Plus for recovering deleted files and FS Capture for snagging screen shots into simple image files.
Lastly, and most radical of all, I am looking into other operating systems BESIDES WINDOWS!! Yep, that's right. I was looking for a way to set up my home PC with a new OS but wasn't willing to shell out the dough for anything from the lords of the realm at Microsoft. I then discovered what may prove to be my answer: Linux. Many versions of this frequently updated and altered open source OS are comparable or better than any Windows OS and here's the clincher....it's FREE!! Sounds like a winner to me. As soon as I do a little research on compatibility I will be ready to make the jump to a totally new world of computing. Fun stuff.

Learning Lesson #5: Generators

So I made one of these little magazines. What fun. Although, I couldn't seem to find a place to edit the text of the cover. I'm sure there are ways to do that somewhere. Anyway, it's highly entertaining.

There were also lots of fun, goofy things to play with on the chocolate bar site. I can think of lots of kids I could show this who would spend lots of time playing around with it.

http://www.magmypic.com/. This is great as a joke. I can think of lots of good pics I have that would be hilarious for some of these covers. If nothing else, these are great for a laugh. I am highly amused. http://thoseposters.com/index.php. This is one of my favorite generators. Some of the pics people have put up here are HILARIOUS! I am having internet problems right now so I can't put one of mine up. Next time maybe.

Overall, the generators just seem like something that's fun in spare time. I will probably show these to some people who get bored online a lot.

Learning Lesson #4: Flickr

Well, I browsed around the sight for quite a while. It was certainly impressing. There are so many talented photographers. Mostly, I just ran a search for "guitar" and found thousands of cool pics of people's sweet axes as well as some very unique and artistic images featuring this beautiful instrument. I found a few pictures that really stood out for me. Among them

was this one of an electric guitar built on to a machine gun. Some people are so creative. Such ingenuity fascinates me. There were many others like this and I was amused by all of them.

Here are a few other pics I enjoyed. Brilliant pieces of work. I really spent a great deal of time on this site looking at all of these great photos.

Cool! A reader!

Thanks for the comment Joyce. Anyway, those are good questions. I guess I don't bother to explain anything because I have begun to think of this as a sort of journal for myself to pass the time. So, I reckon I could clarify a bit. First, the kids are just three or four of my younger siblings and a couple of their close friends. We have been making movies for several years. We all enjoy making them very much and everyone who watches them loves them. The kids are actually (with a little practice) tremendous actors. Making these films is a lot of work though. For a ten to fifteen minute show, we spend anywhere from 5-10 hours shooting. Also, I am cheap and the technology we use is very primitive, which prevents me from doing any extensive editing and/or putting them on my PC.
As for Ash, she is just this super amazing girl I found somewhere. We've been hanging together for about seven months. I guess I like her a little bit, and for some reason, which will always be a mystery, she seems to tolerate me. Now, I know that sounds completely crazy, but it's true. Honest. Anyway, she is perfect and we had a great time yesterday. Went out to dinner with some mutual friends and had a blast. Tonight, I think we are going to see "Hancock".
Now I am back at at work again, laboring intensively over my endless projects. I am growing weary just thinking about it. I must go.
O.K., I lied about that last part.

Oh, the good life!

Well, our 4th of July party was a blast (literally). We had quite a number of guests and everyone enjoyed themselves. Great food, lots of pool-time, some intense badmitton and a great fireworks show were all part of this year's celebration.

Yesterday I spent the entire afternoon making another movie with all the little kids. I love working with them. We put together another Civil War adventure with the 10th Michigan regiment. Everyone was pleased with the final result which, I think, was one of our finest films to date.

Now I am back at work. This week promises to be a long one. I should be working over 45 hours with the two jobs. Also, this Wednesday is Ashley's birthday. I am pretty short on ideas for that. Honestly, I am a terrible boyfriend. I have no clue. I have been wracking my brain over this for months but I have come up with nothing. I want it to be really nice. Oh, well.

I'm beginning to wonder why I bother typing out these pointless blogs. Typing practice I guess.

The War Against Boredom

Well, I am doing my best but it is a challenge. Yesterday I had a job interview and was hired at a Meijer gas station so I am now carrying two part-time jobs. I am also getting all kinds of extra hours at the library due to sick and vacationing co-workers. So things are getting better.
I think this new job will be alright. Admittedly, it was not my first choice. I have been submitting apps all over Jackson for about a month and they are the first to call me so I figure, might as well just go for it. Better than sitting around waiting for something better. My folks kind of disagree. They say I should find something else. Well, they have a point but I really did look and I would really hate to turn this down and end up not getting called by anyone. So that is my situation. I hope it works out. This will really reduce my free time. This is good except for never getting to see Ash anymore. That pretty much blows. I wish there was some way around that.
I've been trying to choose my classes for this fall semester at JCC. It's getting harder now that I have taken so many of the easy basics. I think I'll take a few computer classes, even though they are not on the MACRAO. They will probably make me better at my job and there are a few that look really basic. I should really get down to that, though.

Ouch!

So, I guess I'm getting braces. Long story. Complicated. Jeez. Anyway, this morning they put in some separators which are causing me a significant amount of pain. Now, I have a splitting headache which was not helped by me staring at a computer for the last 7 hours. Bla. I am ready to go.
I think tonight will still be fun, even with this discomfort which is not only painful but prevents me from filling my empty stomach with anything that requires chewing. Grrr.....Nate said Jessi is putting together a Denny's night so I will just have to party through the pain. Good times.