The Poll Results Are In!

And I've got all the evidence in the world now that nobody really reads my blog. I've figured that the 4 measly votes in 30 days is a pretty good indicator of that. Oh well. "At least I have job!"

Overwhelmed by females.

Yesterday we had a birthday party for our daughter, and it was then that I realized that my little girl is becoming more of a 'girl' each day. The picture above displays the remnants of Audrey's birthday cake. What is missing? The icing, of course. She only eats the icing. This, to me seems to be the obvious signs of feminine taste. As a young boy, I'd always eat the icing too, but I'd never let the cake sit there. Gotta eat the cake. Its a preference of quantity that has always dominated my taste buds to some degree. But my daughter (and my wife as well) would prefer quality, sweet pastries, and sugar in varying degrees. Oh, I sure win with my daughter's preference to fruit over ice cream. That's something I've handed on. But eating only icing off of the cake is not from me. I told Meg that next year I'm going to save money and buy her (Audrey) a tube of cake icing instead of a cake. I don't think she'd notice.

The Things that People Do

I may not be much of an expert when it comes to naming children. Although, with the exception of my father, everyone has like our daughter's name. Anyways, it seems that we now live in a world where no absolutes, self-expression, and moronic stupidity are prevalent. At least for people who decide to name their children things like "@". I'm not kidding. Check out the article here:

Naming kids weird things, like @

And while we're at it. How about these people who make couches out of things such as mousepads, old computers, fed-ex boxes and whatever else they dream up after dropping acid:

crazy mouse pad couch

The adventure of Mr. Sh@rts Head and his sidekick Miss P@nty Head

As we left our heroes, they were last seen stranded on the love seat pondering ways to save the universe. Unfortunately, Mr. Sh@rts Head and Miss P@nty Head had, once again, misplaced their sh@rts and p@nties, resulting in yet another spoiled adventure. Tune in next time when Miss P@nty head says, "Hey Daddy, what's that on your head?"

(Note: Actual spellings have been modified to protect the innocent.)

Harry Potter and Metaamphetamines

I have enjoyed reading the Harry Potter series. I borrowed book 7 from my friend this time, since I didn't think it would be smart to invest 20 bucks in another of one of the maybe 3 books that I own. Anyways, the thing about reading Harry Potter is that it has an addicting element to it. Once you pick it up, you just can't get enough. Its very hard to put down. So hard that in the past 3 days, I've been not been able to get into bed any earlier than 1:30AM. In fact, the past two days, I've been up to 3AM. This stinks when you consider that I am awoken on average by 7:30am by my darling 3 year old daughter. Let's face it, 4 and 1/2 hours of sleep a night is not healthy. So I'm guessing that my addiction to Harry Potter might be what it would be like if I was addicted to Meth. I'd get no sleep, feel a longing loss and mental pain from not being able to read/have it, while all at the same time feeling guilty about it all. I'm nowhere saying that I understand what it is like to be a Meth addict. Those people need love and compassion. However, I'm quite thankful that J.K. Rowling doesn't put out several Harry Potter books a year or I'd be destined for rehabilitation and intervention.

Camping Photos

This is old news to some people, but we actually did go camping a week ago and took some pictures. Here are some choice shots to share:

http://picasaweb.google.com/abjurina/Camping_8507

Overall, it was nice to rough it for a day, but next time we do it, we'll make sure: 1. our children have had decent sleep. 2. Meg is not 9 months pregnant 3. I don't have a head-cold 4. Its not upper 80's with 75% humidity. I think that if we work with those above guidelines we should be all set for next time.

New Photoblog Added

Okay, I may be way ahead of myself on this one, but I've decided to start my own personal photoblog. If you like photography or pictures, give it a look if you want.

http://jurina.wordpress.com/

Being who you want to be

One of my most favorite songs on a lyrical level is a song by Switchfoot called "This Is Your Life". I've posted the lyrics to this song on my blog here before: http://thejurinas.blogspot.com/2005/02/good-music-good-lyrics.html

I can't help to continue to look at my job and really feel blessed that God has led me where He has. I have so many friends and acquaintances who really struggle with what they want to do in life. I understand to some degree because I went through that same realization not too long ago. I thought I wanted to be a computer programmer. For two years I trudged through it, convincing myself that this is surely where God wants me. I lied to myself repeatedly with thoughts of contentment at what I did. The reality was that I was miserable. I wasn't "who I want to be". I wasn't making a big difference in the lives of others as I was with teaching. I missed the relationships. Looking back, I realized that I was being prepared through that experience to appreciate so much more my gifts and love for teaching and serving others.

So I guess this is the challenge for you. To borrow from Switchfoot: "This is your life. Are you who you want to be?"

Some Fun Worth Sharing

My cousin decided to share a relatively humorous SNL video that he found on the internet recently. I found it funny enough to share...along with some other skits some of you might enjoy:

(I take no responsibility for the 'other' links or ads that might be available on these sites.)

Taco Town:
http://danwho.net/mp/index.php?id=snl_tacotown

Baby Toupees:
http://danwho.net/mp/index.php?id=snl_babytoupee

Swedish Chef Ringtones:
http://danwho.net/mp/index.php?id=snl_swedishchef

Evangelism Linebacker:
http://www.sermonspice.com/cart/?p=product&id=722

The Blonde Antelope:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3728266100951844857

New Poll Added.

Well, my curiosity has gotten the best of me. My wife has been blogging for a couple of weeks now. She's way better than I am at keeping it up. I guess she's a bit more interesting than I am. In any case, I just put up a poll to check on who is actually reading this blog. Feel free to vote if you want. I guess its more motivation for me to keep it up frequently if I know that people are reading it.

In other news, now that August is here, I'm bracing for my life to turn upside down. A new baby is about due, which will bring our total of young 'uns to 2. For those who don't know, babies are evil. They take away your sleep, spit up on you a lot, cry and scream at you, and then poop and pee themselves and make YOU clean it up. Then when you just can't take it anymore, they crack a little smile or make a little twitch and grab your finger with their tiny little hands and make a coo noise. At that point you're toast. Well, this is coming to our house. I'm also entering into one of the busiest seasons of my professional career with organizing and managing the technology in a brand new school. Its going to be one crazy month of August. If you don't hear anything at all from me soon, check the insane asylum.

Tags are here.

I finally got a clue and started tagging my posts a little bit. I can't imagine that anyone cares, but I figured that it would be good to tag the posts for sorting or browsing later. I'm always one who likes to be organized. Anyways, if you like tagged posts, then I did you a favor today.

Thoughts from Clive Staples, Part 1

I've been reading a lot of books this summer over various topics of interest. The problem never seems to be, "Should I read this book?", rather, "Which book should I read now?". My issue is that I see 3 or 4 different books that I want to read and then get them all. I then strategically place them all over the house in various places where I might have some spare time to pick them up and read a few pages (yes, like the bathrooms). This becomes a problem because I now find myself reading only small portions from one book rather than large portions of a whole book. So I never get anything finished. Anyways, sorry for the rant.

I was reading The Screwtape Letters today when I came to this explanation of Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood concerning what he wants the human to believe humility is. I found this very convicting for myself and just wanted to share:

"You must therefore conceal from the patient the true end of Humility. Let him think of it not as self-forgetfulness but as a certain kind of opinion (namely, a low opinion) of his own talents and character...By this method millions of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. An since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the impossible." pgs 70-71

Ouch.

How to ruin the moment

So I decided to take my 2 year-old to the mall the other day to play in the play area and enjoy an Annie Anne's Soft pretzel (mmm, yummy!). One of the things that she enjoys doing is going to where the coin-operated rides are and pretending that they actually are real vehicles, or horses, or whatever. Now I'm sure that everybody remembers these types of "rides". They usually are parked outside of your favorite department store. Your mom or dad would sit you on it and drop in a quarter (nowadays it's between 50 cents and a dollar..yikes!) and the machine would move up and down or back and forth and play music or make noise for like 3 minutes and then stop. For the most part, a terrible waste of money. Meg and I have resolved not to waste our money on things like this in order to teach our children the value of money, as well as to save it for yummy soft pretzels.

Anyways, so we're at the mall and Audrey is playing merrily on the rides, role-playing between and astronaut or a bus driver (depending on which ride she is on), when some woman with her 0.5 year old comes over and drops in 50 cents into the machine so that her toddler can sit there in a trance, drool, and then eventually cry and try to get out of the thing. What ruins the moment for me is that, all of the sudden that parent has just created a situation for my daughter and I. She inadvertently "unlocked" the knowledge that money could be grossly wasted on these "rides", and that eternal happiness could be achieved at the price of 50 cents. I now need to convince my 2 year old that she doesn't need to slowly go back and forth for 3 minutes to the sounds of Old MacDonald playing over and over again for 50 cents. It took about 5 minutes to explain this to her, but thankfully she dropped the topic and went on to her new position as a train conductor.

What a Camera Can't Do

_{My Canon Powershot S2 IS}

So I was on my summer vacation with my family and a good friend who enjoys photography like me. We decided to go out and shoot shots at the beach during the evening hours just to practice some low-light photography and see if we can find some interesting compositions.

My friend utilizes a Nikon D70, which is a DSLR camera with some pretty nice features. I'd compare it with a Canon EOS Rebel XT or something along those lines. My camera: Canon Powershot S2 IS...NOT a DSLR, so pretty limited. I didn't think this way at the time. When I had purchased my camera, the idea was to get a camera with good quality, virtually no shutter lag, and lots of room to learn photography and advanced settings. We didn't want something that was "too complex" until we felt that we felt that we've learned more about the more advanced facets of photography. The camera was not disappointing. It has a nice 12x zoom which comes to about 435mm (cropped) 35mm equivalent plus many manual settings and such. Prior to the trip, I believed that, other than the possibility of purchasing different lenses, there wasn't much I was missing. With my ongoing learning of digital photography, I was elated to find that so far, I've been able to apply much of what I've been learning on this camera.

However, then we started shooting. I made some manual adjustments to find that my aperture only closes down as far as F8. This could be very limiting for me in circumstances where I'd like a little more DOF (Depth-of-Field) in my shots. It also limits me when playing with slower shutter speeds. Speaking of which, I can only slow down my shutter to 15 second exposures with no bulb-mode option or anything similar. This clearly took the fun out of my night-shooting. Not that a 15 second exposure is extremely limiting, but it certainly hurts when I'm trying to get shots of lightning or make star-trails. No fun.

However, there was a feature on my camera that I wish that DSLRs would have, and that is the adjustable lcd screen. Because of the flexibility of my screen, I could get some really cool shots without having to contort my body into yoga-like positions. In any event, for a point-and-shoot camera that was half the cost of an entry-level DSLR, I think it holds it own. On the other side, I hate the thought of, with my new knowledge and desire to explore in photography, having a camera that prevents me from exploring other creative options. I suppose that mastering the stuff I can now do will allow me to get the most out of this camera until the time when I can move up to DSLR joy.

Summer Vacation

We just returned from a week at Bethany Beach in Delaware. It was a really good time. We went down with our friends Chadd and Cheryl Caldwell, co-workers of mine at Hershey Christian. Chadd and I are avid photographers and event went as crazy as getting up at 5am one morning to get some photos of the sunrise. Towards the end of the week we were joined by the rest of Megan's immediate family for a birthday celebration for her mom. The whole week seems like a blur now, but here are some of the highlights of the hundreds of photos we took on the trip.

http://picasaweb.google.com/abjurina/BethanyBeach2007

Apple's Safari Browser for the PC (Beta) Review

Last night I decided to see what Apple had to offer with their new Safari Browser. From what I've heard from Mac users, Safari is less of a resource hog than Mozilla Firefox on the Mac, and it also seems to load pages a lot quicker. The download took no time at all, nor did the installation. However, like all Apple products for the PC, it simply has to install at least one other piece of software on your machine that you didn't ask for. In this case, it was the "Apple Product Update" and "Bonjour". I believe that these pieces were optional, but still, the point is that you get nagged to install them anyways.

To apple's credit, the browser certainly was fast. I felt like my internet connection increased significantly as pages rendered and loaded quite well. The interface was weird. Apple certainly went to great pains in making the Safari Browser look a lot like OSX's platinum theme. Using their browser in full-screen view made you think that you were on a Mac, with the buttons and animated features working seamlessly as you surfed. I found it quite annoying for some of its functions with tabs and configurations, but that's probably stemming from years of Firefox and IE. It was something that was going to take some getting used to. At least I had tabbed browsing.

Installing plug-ins was not that difficult to do, but unless you scoured the download page or did some decent Google searching, you were out of luck. Also, a lot of pages weren't ready to distinguish between Safari Plug-ins for the Mac and ones for the PC. What's more, some of the so-called "plug-ins" were actually full versions of the software.. This left me with stuff I didn't want, like Adobe Acrobat Reader 8, which is one of the chunkiest pieces of software out there (The install was about 123 MB once installed).

My favorite remote PC access site Logmein.com didn't work so well. For some reason, after installing the Java Plugin, restarting, and various other attempts didn't fix the issue. I was forced each time to use the HTML implementation which is way too annoying for anyone.

Then came the killer. I was browsing randomly and ready other forums and reviews on Safari when I noted that one article mentioned something about memory usage. I had known that Firefox has had issues with memory management, but these days, things were much better than originally. The article prompted me to check out my memory usage from Safari. After spitting out my drink in a spray all over my desk and picking myself up off of the floor, I looked again at what the memory monitor said: 131MB of memory used (and counting). That was rediculous. More than 10 percent of my system memory (1024MB) was being used up by Safari with just one tab opened. Despite its speediness, that's enough to take a toll on any system. I feel bad for the poor chap who has 512 or even 256MB on their system trying to run this thing.

With that revelation, I quickly uninstalled the browser from my machine. It was clear that the glaring issue was the system memory usage. And with LogMeIn not working so well, I could find little to justify using it in day-to-day use for my job.

In conclusion, the Apple Safari browser is a slick and snappy program. It has available plug-ins for the typical browsing needs such as Flash and Java and even Media Player. However, the interface is not too configurable, the tabbed browsing can be tiring when compared with Firefox or even IE7. Lastly, the fact that it eats system resources for lunch make it not too great of a browser for less-equipped PCs with less than a gig of memory. Thankfully, Apple can punt to "Beta" as a good excuse for these things. It is noticeable, however, that anything that Apple tries port over to the PC (such as iTunes) proves to be less than stellar. Nice try Apple, but it's not ready quite yet.

The Linux Dilemna

Besides the obvious factor of being a computer geek, there is some mysterious appeal to learn and use an operating system other than Microsoft Windows. Am I against using Microsoft Windows? Not really. Most of what I know and understand about computers has come from learning it in a Windows environment. I guess I'm curious to know how the other half lives. Recently, we've been toying with the idea of possibly running Ubuntu Linux on the computers in the elementary lab. This idea is mainly motivated by the idea of saving a lot of money, as well as giving a chance to an open source alternative.

So what is the dilemma? The dilemma has a lot to do with the support and maintenance of Linux. As well as the unpredictability of what could go wrong. What if the printer stops working? What if certain well-used programs don't work? What if our web-filtering software is not compatible? What if I die in a tragic blimp accident and they don't have anyone else who even remotely can figure out the mess I've made using Linux? These questions keep me away. Admittedly, I've been using Ubuntu Linux on my home desktop and my work laptop for about 2 weeks now and I'm really content with it. Only rarely do I find any need to boot into Windows for the use of Internet Explorer or Picasa2 (it runs so slowly in linux for me). Would I recommend Ubuntu Linux to others? Sure. Would I use it in my school's elementary lab this coming year...probably not. Not yet, at least.

A Very Dark Graduation

Friday June 1, was Hershey Christian School's first high school graduation. They graduated 8 seniors. It was a momentous occasion for the school. However, it was probably like no other graduation. About 10 minutes before the ceremony began, a strong storm knocked out power to the area and the entire ceremony was done in the dark. I commend our headmaster for sticking it out, but there's just a little less magic in a room where you can barely see anybody. I kind of felt bad for the people that put so much hard work and planning with the assumption that there would be electricity readily available. There was no slideshow, video address, microphones, speakers, video recordings, air conditioning, etc. In any event, the kids still got their diplomas and will be able to look back on it and say that they got to graduate in the dark, I guess.

The Blue Angels

This year we were able to travel down to Annapolis, MD to watch the Blue Angels perform their practice run at the United States Naval Academy. We joined up with some friends from the area for the event. It was quite a fun event, with plenty of room for the kids to run around as well as an outstanding day weather-wise. To view some pictures from the event, check out the link: Blue Angels

Photography Ethics?

I was just reading an article out of a special edition of National Geographic that I found kind of interesting. The author was talking about digital photography and emphasizing with great effort, the issue of trust. His point was that with digital photography is it very easy to "manipulate" color, contrast, lighting, and other parts of a photo which can "deceive" the viewer. The idea, he says, is to develop a trust with the viewer of your photo. If you attempt to digitally manipulate a photo with an intent to deceive the viewer, then you are entering "treacherous waters". The author then went on to assure that the photographs in National Geographic are in no way enhanced for this reason.

Personally, as a hobbyist in the field, I'd have to say that anything I want to do with my photos to improve them for my own enjoyment is valid. I also think that if I want to enhance a photo in a way that will make my intentions of the shot more clearer to the viewer, there is nothing wrong with that either. Some people are purists in this field. Anybody else have opinions on that? Feel free to leave some comments.

My First Trip to the Big Apple

This past weekend I was able to go on a two-day trip to New York City with the high school choir. It was a really fun trip. Our itinerary included a concert in St. Paul's Chapel, shopping in Chinatown, dinner in Little Italy, a Broadway show (Phantom of the Opera), a 4 hour tour of the city which included excursions through Central Park and Rockefeller Square, a trip on the Staten Island Ferry (with a view of the Statue of Liberty), lunch and shopping in Times Square, and a visit to the Metropolitan Museum. This was the first time I've ever been to New York City, so I was able to snap some photos. I've only put about 1/6 of those on our photo page. Feel free to check them out.

The scary thing about computers.

Have you ever seen those "end of the world" movies where the computers crash and pandemonium breaks out and people start raiding stores, etc.? Yesterday I was going through the self-checkout of the local grocery store when the kiosk I was using crashed on me. Suddenly, I noticed that other people had concerned looks on their faces. As I scanned the faces of the cashiers, I realized that their machines had crashed. It was then that the manager called all of the store staff to the front of the building and was giving them frantic instructions. This was going on, of course while the lines were beginning to build with confused customers with huge piles of groceries.

There was an announcement made that they were experiencing a computer issue and it would be fixed momentarily. Well, 10 minutes later it was still not fixed. I overhead one employee tell another that not only had the store's computers gone offline, but the entire chain of grocery stores in the area were experiencing the exact same problem at the exact same time. Needless to say, I had to get back to work, so I left my stuff and walked out.

This experience kind of woke me up to the reality of how much of what we do everyday is relied upon the use of computers. If ever a Y2K situation ever occurred, I think we'd be seeing a major catastrophe. Humans have been too conditioned and dependent on machines for operating in every day life. Kind of scary.

Embarassment

If anyone feels like an idiot for blogging, its me. My new job has made blogging very difficult to do regularly. This is the reason for the lack of posts. Oh, and my evaluation of Vista? Nevermind. It lasted about two weeks, and then I realized that Windows Vista had nothing to offer me that I couldn't already get elsewhere.

So lets move on. I've been attempting to try and find a lazy man's way of posting photos on the internet without really dealing with managing a website and such. I found that Google has a nice offering with Picasa's web pages. I get to easily select the photos and upload them in a matter of a few clicks. I love this. Its so easy. So what's the url for our pictures? Here you go:

http://picasaweb.google.com/abjurina/

You can go there to see our pictures from time to time. Now that the weather is nice, we'll be taking shots pretty often, and I'll try to keep it updates much more often than my blog. In any case, if you read this blog, you've now got a way to check out pictures now and again. I'll try and get the blogging going more often once the school year calms down a bit. Its going to be a busy summer, but I want to continue the writing as much as possible. Also, if you are into technology at all, you can keep up with my other blog at http://hersheychristiantech.wordpress.com. I mainly write on topics of technology that are relevant to the parents and school community, but there might be some good jewels there for somebody.

I'm back (2-1-07 post)

Not that anyone is paying that much attention, but I'm finally taking the time to write more. I've been caught up with work and holidays and work and, did I mention work? Well, needless to say, I found a sliver of time to write.
I decided to recently become an early adopter of Windows Vista. I can't say that I've found anything to do back-flips about over it. It certainly has a nice interface and some neat eye-candy (if you are using the Aero features). However, when you've become used to so much not changing for 6 years in Windows XP, its a bit intimidating. I certainly applaud the fact that Microsoft has updated the operating system with some better and more useful applications. The Windows Calendar is quite useful, and well-integrated with Microsoft Mail. However it turns out that Microsoft Mail is little more than Outlook Express with some small changes. Another really cool application is the windows snipping tool. It allows you to take great screenshot clips anywhere. No more annoying pastes of a yucky bmp file into a Word or Mail document. Its actually quite handy. Well, I'll not make any more comments until I play with it more, but this is my impression as of one weeks use. There's plenty more to say about it, so stay tuned.

Entry for 12/20/06

I saw this article today which stated that Firefox's share in the browser market slipped slightly from last quarter. To be honest, I'm not surprised. I've been using IE7 occasionally, and I'd have to say, other than the annoying ads it seems to still allow, it seems to be quite a nice browser in comparison to IE6.



In other news, with windows Vista now on the horizon and scheduled for launch on January 30th of 2007, I will be soon ordering a copy for evaluation. Our school is building a new facility which will have two computer labs. We'll be equipping each lab with new machines and, if Vista turns out to be decent, new operating systems as well. It should be quite an interesting adventure this summer, as we try and take partial occupancy of the new building with our high school.