Ebola-Shmola

 

Seems like that’s the new scare.  It covers my news feed in Reddit, so that I miss new Hunger Games girl nudes… It blacks out daily tv news coverage so I miss out on sappy stories about Hollywood-has-bins that died.  Now its spamming the shit out of my twitter feed that I can’t get Walking Dead news.    Ebola-Shmola.  I’d worry, if it was really worth worrying about.

Ebola has [gasp] killed 4,000 people in Africa, home of the world’s longest running genocide antics, and yet everyone is freaking out about how awful it is.   To tell you the truth, as a disease, HIV kills 6,000 and Tuberculosis kills 5,000 PER DAY.  We’re talking 6 to 8 months worth and were only at 4,000 in Ebola-ville.  Put it in to comparative numbers for a second, that means Ebola is on pace to kill off about 5500 people this year.  Or yeah, about what TB and HIV do per day… If we really want to tug at the heart, 6.3 million children under 5 died last year… due to malnutrition, disease, poor neonatal care.  Not Ebola.   Not being fed.  Not having a hospital.  Punemonia.  Ghradia from shit filled water.  That’s a real killer.   And before we get snooty about it, I ripped all of those numbers from the World Health Organizations website.  All of them. 

If you really want to die in Africa, HIV and TB will get you, if you make it past 5.  Before 5 years old, you’ll die because there isn’t drinking water, food to eat, and your HMO is run by a guy with oxblood and feathers on his face dancing outside a hut.  That’s a a fucking problem.  But should you make it…. should you really, really want to wait for Ebola to kill you… think again.

Africa has been the home to genocide in the world for the past 40 years.  Its got serious street cred.  Al-Qaeda sends guys there as a study-abroad project.  I’m not kidding.  Last year alone, one guy, killing only Christians and Christian schools, in Nigeria alone, Abubakar Shekau, has raked up 1500 murders.  He’s pretty discriminate as far as ethnic cleansing goes in this part of the world.  Look at Sudan. What Hollywood lib’s want you to pay attention to as Darfur [forgetting the awful mess of political boundaries], in a year they’ve managed to kill 175k to 400k.  That includes the government helping out.  What the fuck are you doing worrying about Ebola in Africa???  Most of the populations in this region aren’t sustainable with a birthrate of 3x the United States… that’s adding up to be a lot more than Ebola.

Don’t get me wrong, I really don’t want to catch Ebola.  But I’m also not going to walk around Africa anytime soon, for any reason. People in America think 1 dead kid in St Louis is a clusterfuck, wait till they walk around in Kenya and watch children with AK’s shoot up people dispensing grain from UN dispensary sites, while on the other side of town, they machete arms off people attempting to touch Bibles.  That’s whats something to worry about.

#thefappening by the numbers!

Last night I witnessed the Internet do the one thing that I think it was born to do #thefappening.

#Thefappening is born out of a few things that are really not newsworthy. It's not newsworthy that celebrities, especially attractive B list celebrities, would take nude photos of themselves on unsecured cell phones. It's also not newsworthy that all of these unsecured images of nubile nude bodies are somehow floating in the ether-ware that is the cloud. Also it's not newsworthy that anything in the cloud is subject to be hacked and disseminated.

Pure and simple what was newsworthy with the sheer volume of people spectating this madness. At 1 AM I was still watching a form on Reddit thread that had 36,800 active viewers. This was nearly 7 hours after your initial bombardment of nude images. Even as new images appeared, in all more than 100 celebrities have been targeted, Torrents and zip files in the hundreds of megabytes are being distributed like baseball cards at a six-year-old convention. Well I don't know what kind of numbers 4Chan was pulling down for all these things let's just look at some numbers based on my thread alone.

If we assume only one in 25 males was actually masturbating who watch this thread, that gives us 1,472 men who were happier playing along at home. You'll be on average 2.5 teaspoons per ejaculate 4Chan helped create a way to decimate the gallon challenge... Producing nearly 5 gallons of semen. All told at somewhere between 50 and $100 per donation of sperm typically paid, we lost a net revenue of nearly $74,000 in that one thread last night. If I were Jennifer Lawrence and her freshly unveiled boo bees, I would probably make a strong convicted approach to say go donate the proceeds from all your sperm you're donating on your computer monitors to my pictures to some worthy charity. And besides we're all fooling ourselves thinking only 1 in 25 wanted to satisfy their "hunger games "

But I digress...

Knowing that all these individuals were waiting for more images to upload they were constantly refreshing the website on average every five seconds. The thread help nearly 400 MB of images plus who knows how much and text let's call it 425 total megabytes of information per page refresh. Multiply this by our total viewers of just this thread alone, And we find it we are pushing nearly 14.9 TB of thorough put every five seconds they hit refresh.

So what? Well Jennifer Lawrence's booby's are best known for the hunger games 2013 release which is 142 minutes long. The DVD comprises about 25 GB of data in a Blu-ray form. This means Jennifer Lawrence and her bouncy's are worth about 900 Mb per every five seconds of her appearance on film. We are nearly 15 times the amount of data every five seconds just in still images that she is worth in 1080p x 5 .1 channel surround sound. It's possible she could move more data if she took off more clothing as our boys at 4chan found out.

But wait here's more. Last year the Super Bowl average 111 million viewers. It was carried on network television composing about 19.5 Mb per second to stream a three hour game. Which whatever and all that means a total amount of data moved for the game was approximately 4,458,732TBs. By our comparison our one thread was pushing 32,184 TB in the same time... With just text and some pictures. Or... About 1% of the entire volume of data needed to carry the Super Bowl around the world by .03% as many viewers.

The pains the screams the stained carpet but what other costs can there be???? Or so screams J Law's lawyers???

So the power up our computers lets low "ball" it some more. Let's be stupid and say our power supplies for monitor and computer use just 300 W per second. Multiply this by or 36,800 viewers only, And every refresh of five seconds of golden panties bills out we are consuming 55.2 mega watts of energy. Or about 40,000 MW per hour! Jumping G strings Batman! On average a Kilowatt hour is about $.15 in the United States. Meaning Those refresh of fun bags cost us nearly $10,000 in energy use.

That my friends is a great "American Hustle."

Unless you really want to stop there.   At 1am, on my facebook feed I had 15 people actively viewing and discussing this out of my 600ish friends.  Thats about .25%.  So lets say of the 300 million American's lets extrapolate and say .25% were logged into OTHER threads watching this.  That summons the Hoarde of 7.5 million boobie seekers.  Meaning.  Nearly half as many people were up at 1am watching for Beverly Hills Punanny as watched the Walking Dead premier [15 million], 11x as many as watch Sports Center all day [660,000 per 6a to 6p], but just about a quarter as many as watched the latest State of the Union Address [33 million].

Now you're getting the hint about the power of #thefappening by the numbers.

S

Back In the Working World

Two days into the working world and I'm already getting bored.  Lets be honest, the new guy gets one of three paths in the world:

A) Avoid him.  Make him stand around.  Pretend he isn't really there because, its a new guy and we miss the old guy.  And the new guy is likely worthless any how.

B) Treat the new guy like he's in kindergarten.  Read documents to him like he's retarded.  Seriously; split your words in to syllables for even more dramatic reason, because he's new here... he must be new to english too.

C) Forget he's new; pretend he's the guy that worked there for 32 years and knows everything already. If the new [old] guy dares ask a question, brow beat the fuck out of him.  If there is a second question to clarify, proceed back to step B) [kindergarten].

For the most part, I'm in category A).  For reasons I don't understand people avoid me.  Conversations flow through me --- but right past me.  It's implied I'm so sufficiently incompetent I can't pick parts orders, and as a driver, I probably don't know how to drive either.  I guess I walk the 8 miles to work each day... who knows.  There are some brief glimpses of category B).  "This is an inventory screen.  IN- ven-TOR eee.  Its how we see what parts we have on hand today."   Not kidding.  Its refreshing to see how little they train me and how bad they will berate me.  I'm certain I have the only college degree in the building.  Most definitely the only one who wants to pursue post-graduate work.  I have more experience in handling parts, customers, inventory concerns, purchase order issues than they do.  Not to mention I have 10 years experience as a manager, running facilities larger than this, with more employees, that did more business.  But it's so much simpler to pretend I'm not there.

I had one quick glimpse of category C) the other day.  It had to do with letter codes on picking tickets using proprietary short hand for their antiquated computer system and how to file them.  I had yet to hold or read over a picking ticket when I was dumped on.   Naturally, I was mean-mugged, and reduced to category A) again.

All in all its going about how I thought it would.   As a driver I haven't touched a steering wheel in 2 days.  I've been sitting in the passenger seat for some screw up deliveries, and left to count dusty parts bins in a sweltering warehouse.  It isn't so bad.  If the pay was higher, I'd enjoy it! I really don't want to complain because I know they'll figure me out soon enough.  So in the meantime, being back to work is a great feeling.... even in the classic American Federation of Labor-market Training Academy.   Its just 3 short steps to success!


S.

Surprise! -- There’s NO Surprise!

Back to waiting again.  Being unemployed for nearly 2 months now, many things don’t surprise me.  But, I am surprised that there hasn’t been any surprises.  Meaning: I wasn’t expecting to be down this long without any kind of a job.  I’ve had places deny me because I was over qualified and they refused to pay me more for the position because of it.  I was dumbfounded, and said I’d take the entry level payment.  The answer was a clear “no.”  Although I’ve had a run of about an interview per week; still nothing has materialized into any sort of an offer.  That’s very discouraging.  I remember back to the last time I was unemployed and it took about 2 months before I ended up working part time.  Cross our fingers, but 2 months is about up come next week.  And while I can probably hold out another month; things start getting uncomfortable for me come the end of August.  I’ll have to start making some quick decisions about major expenses I wont be able to afford… like my car, like my mortgage.  I’m holding on to my dog as long as I can, but I recognize even he is expensive in his own way; and should we hit DEFCON III, and I’m forced to move…  I don’t have any idea where I can go with him and be affordable.   It’s a shitty feeing to say the least. 

On the positive… the last few weeks has been completely refreshing.  I’ve been able to finish most of my house related projects I’d been putting off for nearly a year, I’ve spent lots of time with Wrangler, and had plenty of time to see friends.  One of mine came into town from North Carolina… under the old Menard schedule; it wouldn’t have been possible for me to see him… but being free from that, we were able to drink a few beers and chat until the sun came up.  That’s something important in my life I’ve missed out on in the past few years.  Yes, here and there it happens; but not to the level it should.  I’m a single male in his mid 30’s… that’s the kind of thing I should do.  It just doesn’t work out well when you got up at 430am and worked until 11pm.  That’s been the biggest positive to come out of all this mess; getting some semblance of my life back.   Yeah, gain lots of fear, lose lots of money, and kick your pride in the nuts; but you get some bits of your old life back… in the kind of way you want to live.   That’s not really a surprise either, when you think about it.

 

S

The Wait

The wait is by far the most nerve wracking part about find a new job.   I'm still unemployed.  Its been a month.  For a college graduate, with 10 years of management experience, I never would have thought I'd be waiting a month + to find a new full time, 30k / year job.   But thats what happened.   And the wait just kills me.

First you wait to find places.   Places you actually want to work at -- forget the job at this stage, is it even an employer you want to work at?  Then what.  Whats hiring?  Nothing.  Keep waiting.

Once you've waited long enough, and said employers are hiring for something; is it worth applying?  Screw qualifications, is it worth it?  I'll apply to be a master level electrical engineer... but if the area is flooded with them, or they expect such minute detail and 58 years of experience, its probably not worth applying.   So you wait it out.

Eventually you've waited out an employer, challenged the line for a position and applied the shit out of it.... now you wait to see if there is any interest.   98% of the time there isn't.  You just keep waiting.

2% of the time we get some interest.  A bite!  A yank on the line.  Then we wait for what else they have to say.  Sometimes you get to wait a week for a phone interview then wait all day for them to call and reschedule it.   Maybe you get one.  Then you wait while they connect the line three ways.  Then answer two questions.  Then you wait some more.   They hang up.

WE  WAIT SOME MORE!

And so on.

Ad nauseum.

Ad infinite.

Ad sighs.

S.

Wrangler Updates

More life with Wrangler updates for all the #beagle crazy people on the internet.

As we can all see, Wrangler is growing fast!  We’re right about to the 5 month age, and I’d estimate he’s tripled in size.  He is about 18 pounds now, and probably close to full length.  His ears and paws are about fully grown, but his legs and shoulders will still grow some.  The breeders thought he would stay under 30 pounds fully grown in a year and a half.  So far there are days where I doubt that, and there are days where I think this is as big as he’ll be. 

He spends most of his time chewing on anything.  He’s made this peculiar practice of trying to bury his chew toys and treats; which doesn’t work well on the carpet in the house.  Usually I let him paw at it a bit before I throw a blanket or towel over it.  After some more sniffing and hopping around it, it seems to make do for him. 

His temperament varies day to day.  Most days he’s easily excitable, plays very roughly and will bite quite often.  Some days he will be more relaxed, content to chew and jump around from furniture piece to piece and climb stairs for no reason.   I definitely know he has no fear of heights anymore!   The first few weeks he was at home with me, he struggled to climb stairs and then was too scared to come down.  Now he runs up hills and stairs for no reason, jumps to the back of the couch, like a cat, just for a better vantage point.   Silly.

He is still eating Purina Pro Pack puppy food.  Per the vendor, he should stay on this for at least a year.  With his major growth spurt over, I’m playing it by ear when his big bag runs out.    I might start weaning him to adult food slowly and go to small bags of puppy food for a few months.  My vet told me I could feed him more than I do, which is what the back of the bag said… 1 1/2 cups per day.  Some days he’s extra bitey or crazy I feed him and extra helping and it slows him down.  Never an issue eating more!

Lastly we are working on learning a few things.  We started with a clicker on walks to get his attention.  It does work, but its not the most convenient thing to carry around the house.   Lately I have him coming to with “peep peep” type whistle noise.  Breaking his sense of scent and tracking is difficult with a whistle or a clicker, but with a gentle tap, he usually shakes it off.  Sit, is the first real command we are working on.  I know everyone says it should be Stop or Drop, but he won’t.  Sit seems to be working.  We are rewarding with food pieces and he’s about 2 / 3 times reliable to sit with food reward by second call.  Much better! 

S. + W.

Wine OF the Week… Fish Eye!

Just something we have been laughing about on the podcast  [Rivalcastmedia.com] aka Far A Field podcast…

I’ve been taking down a different bottle of wine on each episode.  I’m not Wine Guy.  I’m not even Snooty Beer guy, but this is fun.  This weeks pick:

Fish Eye – Pino Noir / 2012

 

  I don’t have tons of experience to compare this to, however the price tag was an absurd $2.99, which also had Fuel Saver credits attached to it at my local Hy Vee grocery store.   Since the big draw on this weeks episode was me losing my job; I thought getting plastered on cheapo vino was in order!   I’ll admit, after downing the entire bottle in an hour and change I did have a slight buzz going.  It’s alcohol content labeled as 13.5% by volume but that was really the best part.  It was fairly harsh, and I felt the alcohol had separated from the flavor pretty widely.  Not the worst on the shelf, and I’d use this to cook with or make a rum punch or especially good sangria; but on its own, I wouldn’t expect to see this guy served table side, by the glass, anywhere. 

S

Will Work.

Will work for [period]

For the second time in my adult life I've found myself jobless.  On Sunday my long time, asshole inclined, boss decided he wanted to make a change.  I was out.  It happened pretty fast.  The details of it all take longer to go through that it matters.  I really had no reason to be let go.  I was by far the hardest working manager in the store; I met all the goals and requirements ever handed to me and often had to do it short-staffed while on ridiculous stretches [15 days were common in a row, 16 hour shifts were the norm].  For it to be a finger snap and be gone is a little unsettling.   So as it sits, two days removed, I put out my homeless person sign and hope the offers come in.

I'm not always super confident about things.  I prefer to say I'm a realist.  This is the type of situation you really need to be an optimist about to get through.   But here I am.  By everyone's standards, I'm smart, I'm educated, I'm hard working, and I'm unemployed.

S.

The Pebble Smartwatch

I don't claim to be a gear head, or a techno blogger.   But sometimes something comes around that seems so simple and chic, yet oozing with technology, that I can't stop myself.   The Pebble smartwatch is one of those things.   You can read gobs about these things all over the internet by lots of smart and qualified people, but my thoughts are pretty clear; I think its nifty; and I like that.

In the above image, I have loaded some optional software called SmartCards; which I noticed adds lots of functionality and sacrifices alot of battery life as well [both watch and phone].  The "out of box" experience, is more like the image at the end of the post.  As a watch its extremely light weight.  I didn't realize I had it on.  The case and strap fit my large wrists quite well, although  I could see some smaller sized people [maybe the Munchkins from the Wizard of Oz!] say its too big.  Its a large, in step, fashionable watch size.  Its also 5 meter water resistant.  Also a perk I hadn't anticipated, but admired as a puppy owner.  We frequent the places we should not be, and knowing I won't ruin 150 dollars of technoporn in a splash is very reassuring; and found to be a challenge to the puppy!

As a watch without a bluetooth enabled smart phone, its pointless to own this thing.  Really.  Although, the text version of the watch is very cool and catches everyone's attention when I wear it; see the bottom image for what I mean.   Its very easy to read, in the light and dark!  Its a back lit e-ink design for very low power consumption and crisp viewing [it has more in common with an Amazon Kindle than a Casio calculator watch honestly!] But paired with a smart phone it takes me the next most logical step in the evolution of a watch.  Why wear a watch?  To know what time it is.  But WHY do you need to know that time it is?  This watch will tell you.  What time to I need to be there?  This watch tells me.  Who the hell is calling me at 4am? This watch shows me.  Its simple.  Its amazing.  Its really the logical step in wearable technology because it customizes to my personal need, and answers all those above listed questions without me really thinking.  Lets face it, we live in a "right now" world.  I don't always have the time [or patience!] to pull my phone out and see what time it is or who is texting me now.  Hell, at work, I can't even pull my phone out and I likely don't have the free hands to use it anyhow.  All I do now is check the time and I answer those questions.  Nifty.

So for what it does: A+  Its simple.  Its in-obtrusive.  It requires very minimal learning or manipulation.  It does have three buttons.   In all honesty, it could be done in one or two though...  In all functionality its 90% there.  So whats missing?  Well.  Some will say its one-way.  I like that.  I give that merit.  Other companies are making the Dick Tracey specials.... video chat, speaker phones, color screens, separate cell radios.  I wanted a simple watch.  I wanted black.  I wanted sleek and modern.   And I dont want to fuck with charging another battery twice a day.   Iphone kills me that way.   This watch touts 5 days between charges.  I'd say thats accurate using only the build in software.  If you add things, cut it by a third.   Still.  Not bad at all.   The fancy Galaxy Smartwatch does all that.  Its bright.  Its shiny.  Its twice the price.  Its a horrible watch.   This is a great watch; that doesn't require a backpack battery like my iphone to make it through the day.  But it is a one-way deal.  Thats a deal breaker for some of you I'm sure.  For someone like my dad, this is a deal MAKER.  For me, I'd prefer my technology to be under the hood, just out of the way.  It is missing a few things I thought it would have on board.  Some additional sensors, a basic gps [instead of eating at your phones data + assisted gps {which isn't real gps}], its own temperature / barometer, heart rate sensor.   Thats really it.  The gps part doesn't surprise me.  Thats expensive to miniaturize and hell to simplify.  But, if a freaking camera can have GPS built in, why shouldn't this? Even if it only pings every 10 minutes, it could probably do it more accurately than cell phone and use half the power the cell phone would need to triangulate it anyhow.   Sigh.  Temperature sensors are cheap.  There is plenty of space to do this on the watch case.  Sure, its not going to be 110% accurate since its sitting on my wrist; but again; it would be much more effective than pulling data through a cell phone, fetching a google search, pairing a gps position, then pushing the data pack to the watch.  Heart rate? That should be here.  Even the cheapo heart rate watches under 20 bucks would work fine.  Does it need to be as accurate as my cardiologist? NO. Just get me in the ball park within 5 bpm.  Its simplicity.  And what better place to take my pulse than where we teach med students to take it from, than the wrist?  

But what it does leave me with is two questions.  How long does this really stay relevant for me?  How long until this gadget is replaced with something more fully featured? Its a mouse trap.  Its just not one you've ever seen, because you use the same snap trap your grandparents used because it kills mice.  This one has a lot going on.  It kills mice two ways.  But that doesn't mean someone won't make a better mousetrap yet.  For me, does the utility outweigh the novelty?  I don't know yet.  After a day I'm still treating it like a piece of jewelry.  I take it off at night.  I take it off to do delicate or rough tasks.  But it goes back on.  Its a great watch.  Its clear to read.  Its sleek.  And I get the Red Sox scores and text messages with a tug of my shirt sleeve.   The Pebble smart watch is a winner.   For 150 bucks its a good deal.  When it drops under a 100, you better have one.... unless the next mouse trap hooks to your cell phone in a better way!

S

Both images are my own, as are my opinions!

Life With Wrangler

Life with Wrangler seems to be getting on track.   For the most part he listens to me.  That’s saying a lot for a puppy that’s 12 weeks old.  He still chews and bites at me.  Its not a vicious thing; its his version of playing.  That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, or I don’t bleed.  Were working on curbing that.  We’ve had two vet appointments and they say its normal for a puppy.   We’ll go with it. 

So far, crate training is going above average!  He will stay in it at night, and I can even sleep in my bed upstairs.  However, he tolerates it for a maximum of 8 hours.  After that, he barks and yips and howls to get out.   Still.  That’s along time for little guy to hold it, but sleeping helps.  We also us it to take naps in.  I’ve even caught him just wandering in there a few times.  All great signs!

Walks are the next biggest improvement.   Our first time out, we barely made it a block and couldn’t stay on course.  Everyday we are trying to get 2 walks in, and he can focus better and generally can go everywhere with minimal carry time.  When he does get carried is to cross the street [he tends to want to play in the middle of it], or when we won’t stop straining off the path.  A little bit of redirection, then he is ready to roll again.   Its usually a half hour of run around time up and down hills all around the park that’s across the street.  If he does well, we then go farther to a newer place he can sniff and he gets all the time he wants to sniff around.  But he has really improved with walks.  He will stay on the right side 75% of the time and moves at the right speed.  Otherwise he will dance all over the sidewalk and sniff at things or gallop along.  Still good for his age.

As far as play time: well, he shreds tennis balls in minutes!  My mother made the mistake of buying him a couple to chase…  He had peeled them like an orange and now I have neon green fluff everywhere.  Wrangler looked quite proud of that.  Kong toys are still the best, nuclear option.  I load it with a treat and give it a dab of peanut butter for crate time, and he’s good for 10 minutes.  Otherwise, we seem to enjoy toilet paper [it now can not be on the roll on the wall because he runs it off or chews it], shoe laces [I’ve replaced 2 pairs in past few weeks because of it], blue painters tape [which was left on a doorway] and any kind of zipper.  Yes. Zippers.   I don’t know why.  Metal, nylon, plastic, all of them get chewed up.  I have 2 coats I can’t wear now because the zippers are trashed.   But still, considering his teething stage, he’s doing well. 

Potty training is our big success.  He’s quite good about it.  He will go sit by the door if need be, but if we stick to the first out, 20 minutes after eating, and 20 minutes after play time, he’s not had any incidents.  And this little guy craps like a race horse!  So far so good.

Last but not least was bath time tonight!  Every morning when I shower he comes in, puts both paws up on the tub and cries as he tugs on the shower curtain; obviously he’s curious.  So we had our first bath tonight on my kitchen floor in a plastic tote.  I couldn’t get any pictures as I have to do this solo; but I will say it was funny watching his expressions!  He wanted out pretty bad. And he kept trying to drink the water or bite bubbles.  Pretty funny little guy!

A few people have asked me on twitter if I’d start a divergent Beagle bog… not interested… I neglect my Burrito blog [BuyMeABurrito.Blogspot.com] as it is; so I introduced the #Beagle tag to filter my blog with. 

Lazy day

Even though he whines and cries, or bites at me when he plays hes still a good dog.

As I'm sitting here having a beer waiting for The Walking Dead to begin, he's passed out on my lap snoring away.  It's hard to deny how cute and innocent he is.

Show and Tell

.... other things, non beagle in my life...

Far Afield Podcast -- Rival Cast Media.

Do listen in.  This is the spin off show that came from the popular Grand Old Podcast, that really centers loosely around the 3 hosts Iowa roots [or issues].  Its a twice monthly run, sometimes up to 3 hours lin length, where we just sit around and have fun.   The other two hosts have shows in their own right, and I can just coast in and out where comfortable.  We bounce alot of humor off each other.  Seems to work well.  Lots of you are hitting me on twitter about the show with feedback.  I'm always listening.  Find stream links for the show on the networks site, or http://www.rivalcastmedia.com/shows/far-afield/

.... working my day job is about to get nutty again.   The crazy business season is about underway.  Due to the market expansion, they are replacing a store nearest to me... meaning it goes dark; so my store gets greenlighted for the next 3 weeks of insane traffic.  Not that I haven't been through this before, but I still dread it a little bit.  Most of my staff is stretched thin, customers are upset about traveling 15 miles to my location, and the extra workload doesn't make me thrilled.  It should be over soon.  Then its just normal busy mode.  For the next 4 months.   sigh...

.... photo work has slowed.  My website is up and functioning, and some new images are up for purchase.   The last few months have been terrible to get it working.  The root of the problem was the buyout of FotoMoto a while back.  Accounts were not transitioned very well, and mine was actually frozen; worse yet, the links crashed out so I wasn't able to sell any work for a month.  After that, and tinkering with new settings; I managed to get new images up for about 3 weeks.   Then ICANN hit me.  Their policies on domain registration changed, my hosting company failed to inform me, so ICANN delisted my site.  Not cool.   I actually noticed my email was offline first; but a day later found a potential client calling me asking: "is this a joke, your website doesn't even exist?"  I was pissed.  After raging at my hosting provider for an hour, I was told it would take 24 hours to repopulate on DNS entries.  I laughed.  It should take seconds.  More than 10 years with my hosting provider is about to cost them my business over this.  When my contract expires, they harass me with letters, emails and phone calls: but when my site is going to be blacklisted because they wont offer me terms of service renewals on time? Hardly an apology.  I can bitch  more. I suppose, but its done and settle at this point.  My contract is up in June, so I hope Ipower is listening to the bad rap I'm banging out on them!   More photos are coming; due to the puppy though, I'm stuck keeping close to home, so expect some random macro works and small projects to experiment with light in the mean time.   When he gets bigger, we can go explore.

....  on the personal level....  I had a pretty big falling out a few months ago.  I try not to talk about it.  She ended up moving out, unannounced over a holiday.  It was upsetting to say the least.  Does it matter? No.  I can still pay my bills.  I still function.  And I still want her to be happy.  I will delicately state, it wasn't about me or what I did.  It was her.  It was her decision to leave; as I even tried to convince her to stay and work on things in her life.  I'm a good trusting soul for that sort of thing.  She meant alot to me anyhow.  But I'm not kidding myself, what was the future anyhow?  She was a recent divorcee from a long term marriage who questions alot of things about life as her own person. Thats fair.  For me, she was never interested in anything long term.  There never were going to be kids or marriage or long romantic unending stories.  There was no reason there couldn't be, but its her choice.  I do wish her the best.  I was honest when I told her that her future is important to me; but I have to be me, she has to be her.  Thats kind of where we left it.  Its fair, but we both lose to win in the end, if that makes sense.    I also had a birthday.  Right after all that mess.   Which was sobering as usual because of it.  Big thanks to the phone calls and messages from friends to cheer me up.  This year looks to be more changes ahead!  

S

Welcome Mr. Wrangler

Mr. Wrangler

The last few days have been consumed with this little guy!  I decided a few months ago I wanted to get my own pet again, and had been doing alot of window shopping.  Eventually I decided on a beagle because of the HoA issues of my condo.  After cruising alot of forums and websites, I decided to stay local; and can say Mr. Wrangler is also an Iowa native just like me.  I spend the day making a 7 hour, one way, drive and brought home a big challenge.  He is about 10 weeks old at this point, full of energy and chewing teeth!  We're learning pretty quickly though.  Potty training over 5 days has resulted in 2 incidents, of which one was my fault.  Crate training has been more cumbersome.  He hates it.  Clearly.  As I'm writing, hes napping in the crate, but it took a half hour to get him to go in, and even then he still cries for 10 minutes before settling down.   But so far, so good.  Honestly.  For a dog this young, with a first time puppy parent, by myself, were doing good.  Follow me on twitter: alvarado_scott  as I'm sure more pictures and posts about him will show up there.   He managed to sit still just long enough for one portrait with a real camera.  Hes definitely a cute little guy....   even if he chews my hands apart!

S