The Third Lens

Summer Fun

2011-07-05T17:13:00.002-04:00

Having a great summer so far spending time with my family and friends.

Jethro's Smile

2011-05-06T14:49:00.001-04:00

Cool Photograhy!

2011-02-01T12:56:00.000-05:00

175 Photos of Day Taken at Night

The 175 photos that follow look like they might have been taken during the day. But it's not day. It's night. The photos are lying, thanks to long exposures that soak in the colorful nightlife.

Lead Shot - Lifeguard

I was camping with my son at San Elijo State Beach in San Diego, CA when I took this photo of a lifeguard stand in the middle of the night on Jan. 23rd, 2011. Since I did not have a tripod, I just leaned my camera against the staircase. When I was editing I noticed you cans see the constellation Orion in the clouds at left. Nikon D3 17mm, f2.8, 6 seconds, ASA 4000
-K.C. Alfred

Snow Day

I live in the midwest and it just so happens that, on the night of the full moon, January 20, we received a very heavy snow storm(9in where I live). The most unfortunate part about this snow storm was that you could not see the full moon at all and it really didn't help that the wind chill was 0 degrees, there was snow flying all over the place, and my equipment was getting all wet. So I decided to take this shot from my back door, I had my lens hood on and that was filled with snow even from inside the house. Overall it was a terrible night(based on the complaining I did in the previous sentences) and this was the best that I could get while being snowed in and having limited resources. Canon EOS 20D, Canon 28-70L, ISO 200, 55mm, 25.0s, f/6.3.
-George Westlake

Haystack Rock

This is Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach, Oregon. The shot was taken about 3 hours after sunset and the moon had just risen. As I was finishing another project and packing up to leave I looked behind me one last time and saw this... And knew I had to take this picture. Nothing special was done in post production other than some simple RAW adjustments. Canon 1D Mark IV, 35mm 1.4, 8 second exposure, 200 ISO.
-Paul Seeber

Cliffs at Sunrise

With school engulfing much of my time on top of tragically having to sell my Nikon D200 to afford a car, I haven't had a chance to shoot anything digital recently. My boyfriend and our other friend wanted to go have a stab at this challenge, and I decided to tag along with my Mamiya RB 67 for fun. The 120 back to my camera was malfunctioning, but I managed to steal my boyfriend's Canon 5D mk II away and shot this: my first day for night exposure. The exposure was 30 seconds long using a Canon 15mm at ISO 800, f6.3, and was taken around midnight on the rocky sea cliffs of Santa Cruz. I was happy with the simplicity of it.
- Jennifer Kehl

Laguna Beach

My friend told me about this contest so we both went down to Laguna Beach to shoot photos. I had never done a full moon shot like this before. Not the darkest place in the world but we didn't want to travel very far. Shot this from a stairs that lead down to the beach. I liked the lights in the background because they still showed it was night even though it looks like late afternoon. This was really fun. Canon 20D, 70-200mm @ 70mm, F8 @ 90 seconds, ISO 400
-Zach Hunter

When the Coyotes Started Circling

This is one of my favorite New Mexico back roads, and this tree has always been my favorite feature. It stands all by itself, out in the middle of the desert. I've wanted to shoot it for quite a while, but I've never been able to envision the right scene in my head. So, every time I take this road, I just drive past and smile at it, thinking that someday I'll get that shot.

And then there was this shooting challenge. I knew what I had to do.

I started shooting around 11:30 at night. The moon, about 2 days past full, gave me a nice side light. I used my old manual Vivitar 19mm f/3.8 wide open on my Nikon D300, daylight white balance, ISO 1600, and a 20 second exposure. This let me snap off one or two before having to move the camera and tripod out of the middle of the road for traffic. However, none of those middle of the road shots came out as nice as this from-the-shoulder one did. When the coyotes started circling, I decided to pack up and call it a night.
-Adam Wolf

Spark at Dawn

I was out for a Moonlight climbing trip and stopped when I saw my friends coming up the path to me. I waited for them to enter frame and let the camera do its thing. The lights are headlamps. We were on our way out of Hueco Tanks State Park in Texas. F8 30 seconds, 14-24mm f2.8 Nikkor lense, D3 on Tripod.
-Craig Copelin

Sunrise?

Took this shot with a Canon Rebel T1i using a Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 lens. I carefully placed the camera on my bedpost and pointed it out the window, balancing the camera basically on the lens. It was also on top of a couple hats, so I didn't feel worried about it falling too much. Used a remote shutter to pull off the 8 minute exposure at F8 using ISO 100. Reminds me how Sunrise looks from the same spot, because the window faces East, so the sunrise is almost the same spot. The light source is actually a street lamp by an intersection.

Was going to try something else, but last night was -2F, which was far too cold for me!
-James Grabow

Curu Wildlife Refuge

Photo was taken at the Curu Wildlife Refuge, Peninusla of Nicoya in Costa Rica. Curu it's close to the public after hours unless staying in one of the cabin's they have for rent; this night my wife and I were the only ones on the park so we had an entire private beach to ourselves. The light in the distance is from the port of Puntarenas.
-Pablo N. Piedra

Gordan MacFarlane

This is my first submission, after many many months of weekly keeping up with the challenges, this one seamed very Interesting. The example shot seamed impossible that it was done at night and really wanted to try it out for my-self. I went out on 2 nights to take some pictures, Wed was the full moon and it finally cleared up much later at night. I got some photo's I was happy with but I realized that they did not really capture the spirit of this challenge so I went out Thursday night and decided to head to the cemetery. Sadly I could only see the moon threw some thick cloud so I had to shoot with the available light pollution that my great city was offering me. It was still night and it took a lot of experimentation to get the settings just right. I think what turned out was a great shot. ISO:200, f/11, 121s exposure, 50mm on my 18-200mm nikkor lens. Taken at around 11pm. Shot with my Nikon D70s.
-Paul MackKenzie

Water Under the Bridge

So I finally decided to take part in a shooting challenge. Why this one? Well about a year and a half ago, I shot a photo at midnight of a cow in a pasture. What made it so special was that the photo looked like it was taken on a sunny day. When I showed the picture to friends, they often could not understand what was so special about the photo. I would tell them; "what if I told you that wasn't the sun." They would think about it..... then, OMG how did you do that?. Long exposure and a cow that stood very still. I included that photo, but not as my submission for the shooting challenge. The photo for the shooting challenge was a bit different. About 40 degrees different. Saturday night my buddy and I drove out of the city to get away from all of the light pollution. After about an hour of driving, we drove across a bridge that spanned the Haw river on the outskirts of Pittsboro, North Carolina. I had fished below the bridge in the past, and I knew that it could make for an interesting photo. Over the years, frequent visitors of the area have cleared out a make shift parking area in the woods and a trail down to the rocky river. Knowing we would be there a while, the first task was getting a fire going. After thawing my hands out, it was time to get down to business. I found a flat area along the bank to set up my tripod. Took some test shots, cranking my ISO to 1600 so I wouldn't be waiting as long for my results. After finding my desired framing, I dropped the ISO down to 400, calculated my new shutter duration (5 minutes) and went for it. As you can see in the photograph, the sky moves quite a bit in just 5 minutes. You can also see the red glow of our fire, on the underside of the tree branches hanging over the river. The photo was taken Sunday Jan. 23 @ about 1:30 A.M. I had a blast with this challenge, so expect more entries from me in the future!! Canon 30D, Canon 24-70L 2.8 @ 25mm, f/ 5.6, ISO: 400, Shutter Speed: 5 minutes (I used an intervalometer)

p.s. The timing of this challenge worked out well for digital SLR photographers. Shooting in low temperatures helps keep long exposure heat noise down.

Also, I attached a cool photo of the fire nestled in the rocks that kept us warm.
-Danny Boemermann

Winner - Moonlight Tan

So I live in Puerto Rico, where there is beach everywhere. I was at a friends house and i explained the challenge to them they liked it so bad that we all went to the beach to take some pics, I Had my Canon T2i, with a 24-70 F2.8, and a Slik Tripod, the settings were Iso 400, F 8, Shutter 302 secs. and at 24mm. I did several pictures of 8 guys playing soccer, standing there for 5 mins!! but this one was the more sharp! It was really Fun.
-Juan Lizarzaburo

There were so many surreal, haunting and beautiful shots. This challenge was a whole lot of fun, no? Granted, some of you stood out in zero-degree weather, but for the rest of us, SO MUCH FUN! As always, full-size shots are at flickr, and we have the entire collection of galleries below.

Gallery One

Gallery Two

Gallery Three

New Year

2011-01-06T13:24:00.003-05:00

Yes, I realize that I have been absent from the blog world, but hey I've been busy. I just wanted to stop by and let everyone know that I now have an iPad!!! I am actually typing this on my iPad right now:) I'll be back again soon, I hope.

Les Mis

2010-11-18T13:52:00.005-05:00

Last night my Dad and I went to see the 25th Anniversary Show of Les Miserables at the O2 Theater in London, England.

Okay just kidding...well sort of. My Dad and I did see the 25th Anniversary Show of Les Miserables, but we weren't in London at the O2 Theater, we were in our own theater, but the show was in London at the O2. We watched the show broadcast from London, but it was just like we were there! Dad even had to wear earplugs!
I had the best time and Dad had fun too! They had an awesome cast and the coolest part was they had the original cast come out for the encore and sign the HIT Les Mis song One Day More. I will have to say that the guy that played Jean Valjean was AMAZING!!! I mean his voice was angelic! Think of Josh Groban times 5 and you've got him. Les Mis was just the best show, I can't wait until the DVD comes out in two weeks. (Hint, hint Mom & Dad, Christmas is right around the corner.) Daddy thank you for taking me to see Les Mis, I loved it especially since you were there.

I have to say that I am a musical junkie, and that show was the PERFECT musical. Les Mis was inspiring, breathtaking, and astounding. It was quintessential Les Mis.

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?

A few words

2010-11-13T20:46:00.002-05:00

"When faced with two choices, simply toss a coin. It works not because it settles the question for you, but because in that brief moment when the coin is in the air, you suddenly know what you are hoping for."
Anonymous

I'm in uncharted waters

2010-10-02T21:25:00.002-04:00

I am in Ocracoke, North Carolina, and I have no cell phone service what so ever, at all! Also I have no internet accept in the hotel, at all. I am in so much TROUBLE!!! So Mom, Dad, Jethro, and anybody that is trying to contact me, Skype me, call the hotel, or email me. See civilization soon.

Sun Stand Still

2010-09-21T18:38:00.003-04:00

My all time favorite pastor Pastor Steven Furtick has just released his first book: Sun Stand Still. He is awesome and his book is awesome, so go get it now. Oh by the way, Pastor Steven is doing a 24 hour preach a thon at sunstandstill.org/experience . Go there and watch it, it's crazy and awesome at the same time. You'll love it. So go buy the book and watch the preaching.

I'm Home

2010-09-15T10:33:00.003-04:00

I am home in the wonderful South, and just about the whole time that I've been home I have been at the beach! I know weird at the beach in September, but it is so awesome! If you want to see some picture from my mini beach vacation jump over to my other blog.

Kingdom Come

2010-09-07T11:11:00.003-04:00

They are at it again! Elevation Worship, the worship leaders at Elevation Church have just released a brand spanking new album called Kingdom Come! It is an awesome album, all the songs are written by these worship leaders, and they are so talented! If you go to iTunes TODAY and buy the album, which you know you are going to anyway, ALL the proceeds go to Samaritans Purse! And not just to make those cute Christmas Shoe boxes, but to give clean water to people in Uganda. The proceeds from just one album pay for the water for a whole year! So go get this sweet music and help out desperate families on the other side of the world!

The Best Emmy Opening EVER!!!

2010-08-30T12:41:00.000-04:00

I cannot wait for this movie!

2010-08-22T19:59:00.000-04:00

Ole Rudyard

2010-08-21T20:31:00.002-04:00

I love writing and I love the subject of English, but I especially love studying poems and quotes, so I would like to share with you one of my favorite poems, by a man named Rudyard.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

–Rudyard Kipling

7-Year-Old Painting Prodigy

2010-08-06T13:20:00.000-04:00

Funny Funny

2010-08-04T13:58:00.003-04:00

The Funniest Thing I've Seen In A While:

Adventurous Family

2010-08-02T15:46:00.001-04:00

The Crafton Family:
After living the past seven years in this cabin the size of a hotel bathroom, the Crafton family seems in no hurry to clear out now. On a muggy, sun-drenched morning, all five of them -- knees just touching, lives completely entwined-- sit cheerfully in the sailboat that has been their home since they pulled away from this Severna Park dock in 2003.
Kalena, 18, who went through puberty and adolescence in this room, has her eyes fixed on a laptop slideshow of their travels that's playing on the galley table. For her, college awaits on land. Her mother, Kathleen, fingers a Melanesian carving she picked up in a trade during one of the family's countless island anchorages; the relaunch of her nursing career can wait until next week. Jena, 22, and Ben, 15, settle in for yet another telling of the family's greatest adventures (such as the three-day trek into the mountains of Papua New Guinea, or the village festival no white people had seen before).
Tom, the dad, is most ensconced of all in the confines of the 43-foot ketch. If it were up to him, the Nueva Vida would still be out there and America 2010 could wait.
"I went to a Wal-Mart the first week we were back, and I had to come home and take a nap," says Tom, rolling his ice-gray eyes and leaning against the teak bulkhead. "It's way too soon for that. Some of our cruising friends warned us about reentry. Baby steps, baby steps."
After seven years at sea, the Crafton Five are coming ashore, but slowly. They are in no hurry to shed the awe they feel about what they have accomplished: an 83-month, 30,000-mile circumnavigation of both the globe and the roughest years of their kids' childhoods.
"We just seemed to get along better the longer we were out there," marvels Tom, who turned 50 in May as they crept through the doldrums of the equatorial Atlantic. "The day we moved onto the boat, the sibling rivalry stopped. I don't think they ever complained, not once."
His wife bobs her head slightly in the wake created by a small boat puttering by on Cattail Creek, just off the Magothy River. She concedes that she was the driving force behind the decision to finally point the bow homeward, but she, too, would set out all over again -- if the kids were younger.
"I would never trade the time we had to raise our kids out there, seeing the world through their eyes, being together 24/7," she says. "But now it's time for them to come back and learn more about their own country. They need to start their own lives."
"And plus, we're flat broke," she adds with a laugh.
Focusing on family
It took everything the Craftons had to keep afloat for most of the trip, but that was largely the point. After achieving two-career success in Anchorage (Kathy as an ICU nurse, Tom as a family psychologist), the couple found that big-house status and plenty of everything left them feeling not much of anything, save frustration and want. With both Jena and Ben having significant developmental and speech delays, what the parents really craved was less stuff and more time together.
"We looked at each other and said, 'What the heck are we doing?' " Tom says.
It took six months to liquidate everything. By 2001, they had sold two houses in Alaska and their share of a family property in Severna Park, where Tom grew up. With the proceeds, they bought the sturdiest ocean crosser they could find, a Taiwanese-built Hans Christian with twin yellow masts, and set forth.

It was an adjustment, of course. There were head bumps in the tiny sleeping berths and five hurricanes during the year and a half they spent prepping in Florida. But almost at once, an instinctive choreography emerged, allowing five people to colonize a space not much larger than a minivan.
This Story
The close quarters stayed remarkably clear of clutter. They even got rid of the small refrigerator, not wanting to run the smelly engine just to keep beer cool. At sea, they lived on fish and canned goods. Ashore, they delighted in taking jitney buses to the market each day, living a local's life.
They wandered the Americas for a couple of years, finally crossing the Panama Canal in 2006. This was pure blue-water cruising, sailing for miles and for months between Pacific Islands. Vanuatu, where the people owned the least and smiled the most, was one of their favorites. They stayed three months.
"They are the happiest people in the world," Tom says. "It reinforced everything we believed about putting time with the family over this blind pursuit of material things."
There was a break, 18 months in a New Zealand harbor. They would have settled there permanently but for bureaucratic hassles and the cost of living. To buy a house would have meant selling the boat, and that wasn't an option. "She's like a member of our family now," Kathy says.
And so they sailed, ever westward. Even now, they make a point of gathering to watch the sunset together, and of getting up early to see it rise.
In many places, they traded for fresh food from the canoes that surrounded them when they dropped the hook in an island harbor. Bunches of bananas and mountains of fish could be had for an empty plastic bottle, coveted for storage in places where everything is biodegradable.
But it wasn't all mangoes and papayas. Their Pacific diet also included betel nuts, kava (a ceremonial hallucinogen), fish intestines and, at separate events, dog and bat. Last spring, during the final 43-day crossing from Ascension Island to Charleston, S.C., they lived almost entirely on canned tuna. "Ascension is the worst place to provision," says Tom. "It's like a desert with volcanoes."
They spent hours in that first grocery store in Charleston. "Oh my God, Pop-Tarts!" Kalena, who goes by Kali, remembers exclaiming.
Together still
They were done. Although Tom still yearns for those days when cyclone season was the only item on his calendar, even he cops to the emotional fatigue of facing potential hazards month after month, connected to their former lives only by sporadic e-mail via high-frequency radio.
After seven years without using a credit card, they went into debt the day they reached the United States, paying marina fees upon their arrival. A few weeks after getting back to Tom's parents' house in Severna Park, they are still debriefing each other on a remarkable chapter in their family history.
Least favorite ocean: the turbulent Indian ("the washing machine," they call it). Worst moment on land: when the jeep they were riding in plunged over a ridge on a steep New Guinean mountain. Rudest encounter: a few days after reaching Maryland, when a cranky boat owner warned Jena and Ben to keep their rowboat away.
"I can't remember a mean word anywhere else on our trip," Tom says. "We're relearning how things are around here."
And maybe doing some teaching, too. Tom thinks the experience that buoyed his own family so profoundly could be a model for anyone looking for a kinder, family-focused way to navigate the world. He's working on a book and hopes to find some public-speaking gigs.
For now, they plan to stay in their floating cocoon. Tom will home-school Ben; Kathy will begin a nursing job in Baltimore in August. Jena has already joined a choir at a church down the road. Kali, who evolved from an 11-year-old passenger to an ace sailor, multilingual adventurer and published essayist (Cruising World, August 2010), is climbing onto the launching pad. She's applying to college, working part time, and beginning to meet friends and venture away from her two-mast shelter.
"It's nice to be able to make some long-term plans, yeah, rather than changing countries every month," she says. Faintly freckled with a friendly grin, she could have stepped from a Norman Rockwell painting, except for the henna chain snaking up her ankle. "It's nice to get some space."
After spending most every night of the past seven years sharing a V-shaped mattress in the bow compartment with her sister, last week Kali spent her first night ashore in her grandparents' air-conditioned guest room. It was very still, very roomy and very lonely.
"I missed the boat," she says. "I missed being with everyone."

Yahoo News

Happy [Belated] Birthday America!

2010-07-07T11:55:00.001-04:00

My friends in Charlotte wrote the lyrics and sang this song, it's pretty cool. Enjoy!

Blog Drought

2010-06-06T20:14:00.003-04:00

Sorry there has been a long drought on the ole blogitty blog. But let me give you a bit of a quick catch up version of what happened in the past almost month:

Almost done with school (WOO HOO)
Went on vacation to the mountains!
Saw a REAL WATERFALL!!! (I got like 200 pictures of it, they'll be up soon.)
Saw a real live wild bear in the national forest!
Traveled a lot
Learned how to cook, well only like 5 things but hey it's a start.
Getting ready for some major traveling this summer. (SWEET)
Saw some great shows in Gatlinburg, Tenn, (The Comedy Barn and The Black Bear Jamboree.)
Took hundreds of pictures
Had a great time

I'll have more posts soon. Hope everyone has a GREAT summer!

To be continued...

2010-05-19T13:19:00.004-04:00

I hate season finales of tv shows. I can't stand watching them, it's torture. I have watched NCIS and NCIS LA, and it is getting that time of year again where it's season finale time...and I hate it. I hate it because every episode is a "to be continued" one and it stinks. NCIS LA hasn't been quite as bad they haven't started this to be continued thing until this week, so I'm not so mad at them, but I am furious with NCIS. Okay I LOVE NCIS it's the best show on TV, and Gibbs is my favorite character, I named my dog after him! Where did you think I came up with the name Jethro? And well to put it nicely they are putting Gibbs through torture, all because that stupid lawyer lady Hart, I don't remember the actress' name. She started all of these problems, and I just can't stand it! I mean last year it was one thing to throw Ziva in some terrorist prison but destroying Gibbs and Abby finding out about him killing that Mexican that killed his family, it's just too much! I mean NCIS has been building up on this whole thing all season and it just kills the fans which means me! I don't know how I'm going to make it until the next season, well I guess this post will just have:

to be continued... at least GLEE is still on:)

A Tiny Apartment Transforms into 24 Rooms

2010-05-04T11:59:00.000-04:00

Palm Tree

2010-05-03T13:53:00.002-04:00

I vote for Sue to replace Simon!

2010-04-15T16:25:00.000-04:00

Back on track...

2010-04-15T12:41:00.002-04:00

After we got home from our thousand mile trek, I came down with the stomach flu, so after I was able to sit up reasonably straight, my Dad, went and got me some movies to watch, and he taped some on the DVR. One I was pleasantly surprised with, and now I LOVE is Julie & Julia. I didn't see it in theaters because I thought it ended sad, but I love Meryl Streep, and I didn't have anything else to watch, so I watched it. And it was awesome! It is a great movie, and it's really funny. I loved Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side, but Meryl Streep worked harder and deserved the Oscar. It was great. So if you need a movie to watch when your sick, or anytime for that matter, watch Julie & Julia.

To interrupt this series...

2010-04-13T11:14:00.001-04:00

GLEE will be on tonight for the 1st time in a long long long time. So I officially make this GLEE Day on the blog. It's on tonight on FOX at 9:00 p.m. And this is how I see it:) Quote for all you gleeks:)

Things I learned on the road.

2010-04-12T18:20:00.000-04:00

Since my traveling adventure and thereafter effects of it, (see previous post) I have had some time to think. To think about all sorts of things. And not only think, but absorb some pretty cool things as well. So I am going to be doing a series of blog posts about those things. I hope you enjoy.

When I went on my little thousand mile jaunt the one thing that kept me going was music, so here are my top musical choices for traveling and some other tips too.
Best Music for "On The Way There"
Life is a Highway-Rascal Flatts Version
Fireflies- Owl City
Hey Soul Sister- Train
The Killers
Michael Jackson
Hillsong
Anything 80's
Black Eyed Peas
Brett Dennen

Best Music for "On the Way Home"
Coldplay
Elevation Worship
Glee
Jesse McCartney
Any song from a James Bond Movie
Lifehouse
&
Put the i-Pod on shuffle

A Thousand Miles in 3 days

2010-04-12T14:20:00.002-04:00

This last week has been crazy.
On Wednesday of last week my great uncle died.
On Wednesday evening at 8:30 p.m. we pulled out of our driveway in South Carolina and drove until 3:00 a.m. to somewhere in Virgina. Sometime the next morning (probably around 10:00 a.m.) we drove the rest of the way to Ohio, without changing out of our clothes that we had worn all night. On I forgot to put in there that Jethro the dog came along too. One hour after arriving in Ohio we changed into dress clothes and went to the visitation. After the visitation the family went and grabbed a quick bite to eat, before we all had to be back at the funeral home for the Masonic Funeral. We were there for a few more hours, and we had all had very little sleep. That night, which would be Thursday night, for those keeping track, we all went to bed around 10 or 11. The next morning everyone had to rise and shine early since the funeral was at 10:00 a.m. sharp. After the funeral we had the burial on top of a hill, seriously, it was on top of a hill, then after the burial, which was in 45-50 degree weather, honestly, we had lunch. After lunch Grandparents, Aunt, and I went home and tried to nap. Since I am synonymous with not taking naps I only slept for a few minutes, then tried to catch up on school. Then after everybody wasn't falling down tired we all we out to eat, which was fun. We got home about 9 and had a pre-birthday party for Dad, then stayed up and talked for a long time. On Saturday we got up and left Ohio for home. That night I was sick as a dog with the stomach virus. Today has been the first day that I have been able to sit up and eat anything besides ice chips.
So how was your week?

Recent Reading

2010-04-04T15:45:00.002-04:00

I love books. I really love non fiction books, no matter if they are biography, self help, finance, inspirational, or business strategy. I love them all. recently I have been reading three books that are all great! Usually when I read a bunch of books at one time one of them is a dud, or they are all boring. But this time around all three of these books have been really interesting, and completely insightful. Here are the three books:
Start Here: Alex & Brett Harris
It's just an awesome book, it's the twins second book, and it doesn't disappoint. It packs just as much punch at Do Hard Things, and it gives the reader an inside look into their lives. Start Here is a much shorter book, the Do Hard Things but it has just as much if not more great information and stories. When you finish Start Here you'll be looking forward to the Harris brothers next book.
Crazy Love: Francis Chan I haven't finished this book yet, but so far it's great. It's a lot of information, even though it is a short book. It's a great read so far. And I would highly recommend it.
Stuff Christians Like: Jon Acuff
It's so funny. This book was written after Acuff started writing a blog of the same name, and it exploded on the web. The book is just a few of Jon's musings, but they are priceless. The put is not only funny as can be, but it's a great way to give yourself and others insight into how people see you and others. It's super super funny

Creative Amazment

2010-03-26T10:59:00.003-04:00

Your Friday is about to get awesome. Below is a video of The Kuroshio Sea, a ginormous fish tank at the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in Japan. It holds almost 2,000,000 gallons of water. And it's the home of 4 whales sharks – the largest fish in the world. This video will blow your mind, and your eyes and ears will thank you. So sit back and don't do anything for about four minutes. Make sure the video is in HD and make it full screen. Wait for it to load it will take a few minutes but it is so worth it.

This kid didn't watch enough TV...

2010-03-25T17:43:00.001-04:00

By STEPHEN SINGER, Associated Press Writer Stephen Singer, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 35 mins ago

STORRS, Conn. – Even at 13, Colin Carlson believes he's running out of time.

Colin is a sophomore at the University of Connecticut, seeking a bachelor's degree in ecology and evolutionary biology and another in environmental studies. But he's been knocked off course by the university's rejection of his request to take a class that includes summer field work in South Africa.

He and his mother say university officials told them he is too young for the overseas course. So he's filed an age discrimination claim with the university and U.S. Department of Education, which is investigating.

"I'm losing time in my four-year plan for college," he said. "They're upsetting the framework of one of my majors."

Michael Kirk, a spokesman for UConn, would not comment on Colin's case. But he said that generally, safety is the university's first concern when travel is involved.

The university would not let Colin enroll, even after his mother, Jessica Offir, offered to release UConn from liability and accompany her son as a chaperone at her own expense, she and Colin said.

Colin was 2 or 3 when he began reading on his own, Offir said, and was up to "Harry Potter" by the time he was 4. An only child, he has faced trouble before because of his brainpower. His kindergarten teacher would not allow him to take books with him at nap time, and he was ridiculed by other children who fired math questions at him to entertain themselves, she said.

"You have no idea what kids like this experience," Offir said.

Colin skipped two grades in public school and began taking psychology, history and other courses at UConn when he was 9. He graduated from Stanford University Online High School at age 11, and soon after enrolled full-time at UConn.

"I'm actually like any other student, he said. "The faculty and students have better things to do than worry about a 13-year-old holding his own."

Over the years, Colin, who said he is fascinated by natural ecosystems, has traveled extensively. He has gone sea kayaking off Nova Scotia and Ecuador, hiked in numerous national parks and, with his mother, has traveled across the U.S. by car.

"It's important to have a very wide world view," he said. "Biology is fundamentally about the diversity of life, with a focus across the planet."

Colin says the course in conservation work in South Africa would have been critical to his studies and the rejection has forced him to change his thesis plans.

He said that once he's completed his undergraduate studies, he wants a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology and a degree in environmental law for a career in conservation science. He intends to earn the two degrees by age 22.

Carl Schlichting, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology who has taught Colin in two courses, said he is not only an outstanding student, but is unusually certain for a 13-year-old about where he is headed professionally.

"He has very strong ideas about what he wants to do," he said. "His self-confidence is very high. It's a very unusual package to see the intellect and confidence at that age."

To be eligible to study abroad, students may not be on university probation or academic probation and must have earned a grade point average of at least a "C" — no problem for Colin, who's an honor student with a near-perfect 3.9 GPA.

The study abroad office and faculty member leading the trip ultimately decide who may go, Kirk said.

Brian Whalen, president and chief executive officer of the Forum on Education Abroad, a nonprofit member association of 400 schools, agencies and other groups, said he has not heard of another case where a college student Colin's age had tried to study abroad. When accepted into a college or university, a student generally is assumed to have access to academic programs, he said.

Although Colin was barred from the South African field trip course, he will participate in a National Science Foundation-funded research group that also will take him to South Africa to study plant ecology.

Colin and his mother say they would be satisfied if the university ensures that the NSF-funded research trip and a seminar fulfill the academic requirements of the course he originally sought. They also have asked that $5,000 in stipend and expenses be reimbursed.

Their lawyer, Michael Agranoff, said he wants to negotiate a solution. He and a lawyer for the state have scheduled their first meeting Friday, he said.

Colin says he would prefer not to have to fight, but he has no choice.

"When people are drawing lines in the sand, you're going to have to cross them," he said. "I'm not going back."

How to save some money this tax season

2010-03-15T12:32:00.002-04:00

Here is another installment of How to save some money! Since everyone is crunching the numbers right now trying to get any and every kind of tax rebate I thought I would help. Here are a few websites that can tell you what you can do to get a tax rebate.

Energy Star for anyone who wants to help the environment and save some cash go here: Energy Star
Or you can get it from the horses mouth at Energy.Gov: Here
And here you can go to About.com and it gives you a whole list of what kind of tax credits you could get. Click here

So there are some ways that you can get some tax breaks and credits from the government, but now on to more piratical and cheaper ways to save money:

Eat at home, and don't just bring McDonald's home that doesn't count, fix something at home.
If your going to eat out, eat out on Monday's or Tuesday's that is when fast food chains (Sonic), restaurants (Buffalo Wild Wings), and entertainment (Movie Theaters) have their biggest deals.
"Cut" coupons. Go to coupons.com or couponmom.com both have FREE coupons for just about everything from grocery items to free dinners. There is no catch just register by putting your name, email, etc. and you get free coupons. All you have to do is print them out to use them.
It's Spring time in the South so go outside. Instead of going to the theater, or out to eat go to the park, walk the dog, just go outside. *And remember the more your outside the more money your saving by not using inside things like electricity, water, and other things that cost money.
Read the paper...online. First I should not even be telling you this stop getting the "paper" paper, read it online, it saves a ton of money in the long run. While you are reading the paper online find free community events in your neck of the woods, like kids festivals, free concerts, and city wide activities.
Want to purify the air in your house? Don't buy a purifier open the windows. It lets fresh air inside. Also buy an air-cleaning plant, this is what NASA says.

I {HEART} Matt Damon

2010-03-14T16:19:00.003-04:00

Matt Damon is quite possibly my favorite actor. I have loved his work since Good Will Hunting, and he is the freaking man in the Bourne Series, he is just an awesome actor. Matt Damon seems to be in many of my favorite movies including The Bourne Trilogy and The Ocean Trilogy, and he not only seems to be in awesome movies, but he is a great writer as shown with Good Will Hunting. So it was no surprise when I wanted to see The Green Zone the newest Damon flick, and as with all of Matty boy's movies it rocked. I mean when you go to the movie DON'T expect Bourne, it's not not like Bourne, but if you expect Damon's character to kill people with his little toe in two seconds then could be disappointed. Now Damon's character does kill people and still kicks butt, but instead of him killing like twenty people in 10 minutes he only kills a couple. Anyways on to what this movie is about.
Damon's character is a Chief in the US Army stationed in The Green Zone in Baghdad in 2003. He commands a group of troops in Iraq that try to find the WMD's (Weapons of Mass Destruction) hidden by Saddam and the Bathist Party. Well Damon and his troops never find any weapons anywhere, and the Army is getting impatient wanting to tell the public that they have found these weapons. Damon begins to go to his superiors and tells them that wherever they got this info that it's very wrong. But the people in charge tell him to stop questioning and just to do his job. Well a CIA guy over in Iraq who looks a lot like Phillip Seymour Hoffman, but is played by Mad Eye Moody from Harry Potter, gives Damon his card and tells him that he will try to help him. Well a reported girl wants Damon to give her info on the WMD's but he tells her there isn't anything to tell. Well the movie goes on Damon kills people and finds out a huge conspiracy and he saves the world.
It is a GREAT movie, and anyone that likes Matt Damon movies or likes war movies or likes mystery movies will LOVE this movie.

Sweet Photography

2010-03-12T11:55:00.003-05:00

Clark Little is one of the most unique and innovative photographers that I have ever seen. He takes pictures from inside of ocean waves off the coast of Hawaii. The pictures he captures are beautiful. Here is the link to his website. {HERE} I am unable to post the pictures on the blog because of copyright, but you can go to his website and see his amazing pictures in his gallery. I don't know much about him except that he takes remarkable pictures that every should see.
Have a great weekend!

I forgot

2010-03-11T18:49:00.002-05:00

Well it's been weeks since Myrtle Beach got snow, and I have been meaning to post some pictures of the snow, but I forgot. So there go a true snow covered beach.

Can't Make This Stuff Up...

2010-03-09T14:05:00.001-05:00

Her name is Lindsay Lohan and she's a delusional narcissist milkaholic?

Yes, folks, apparently this is the world we're living in: LiLo has filed a $100 million lawsuit against the baby-loving ad men over at E-Trade, alleging that they unlawfully encroached on the Lohan brand by having the gall to name the milkaholic tot in their talking-baby Super Bowl commercial—get this—Lindsay. The nerve!

This is what happens when you suddenly have too much spare time on your hands.

As for how she's justifying the exorbitant figure? Well, apparently that's what Oprah and Madonna would ask for, ergo that's what Lohan feels entitled to, too.

Her attorney, Stephanie Ovadia, says Lohan warrants the same single-name recognition as those superstars, and claims that using "Lindsay" as the name for the milk-guzzling boyfriend stealer in the commercial is capitalizing on her fame.

"Her name was used for the commercial benefit of E-Trade and she should be compensated fairly for that," Olvadia told E! News. "She's very upset about it. They did not have permission nor her consent. It's not something that she would have agreed to."

Broken down, Lohan's attorneys, who filed the lawsuit in Nassau County Supreme Court Monday, say the spot violates a New York state civil rights law that used her name and characterization without approval—or, more importantly, compensation.

Lohan's team is seeking $50 million in exemplary damages, and another $50 million in compensatory damages.

"We actually haven't seen the complaint or gotten documentation from her people, so we don't have a comment as of yet," E-Trade spokeswoman Allison Jeannotte told E! News.

Presumably they will, just as soon as they're served. And stop laughing.

—Reporting by Whitney English

I caved in

2010-03-09T12:13:00.003-05:00

Yes after month's of going against the social grain, after standing firm on my stubbornness I finally caved. After going four months and not seeing it I finally went and watch Avatar. I went this past Saturday night after already seeing another movie Friday that could quite possibly be the worst movie of the 2009-2010 movie year. So I went, I didn't fork out the extra cash to see the 3-D version mostly because I was sacred I'd get sick, like some of my friends did when they saw it. So I went to the 7:00 showing of Avatar and their were some people besides me in there, it wasn't full mind you, but there was a good number of people seeing this movie. So I braced myself for the utter stupidity that was about to enter my mind, and I was pleasantly surprised.

Avatar is an AMAZING movie. Yes the story is Pocahontas with a twist, but the visuals were incredible. This was a HUGE turning point for movies. Only 30 minutes of the entire 3 hour movie were filmed with real actors and sets. The rest was a computer rendered fantasy. And it was spectacular. It was a brilliant movie. I am definitely going to pay the extra money and watch it in 3-D, I could care less if I barf.
Since I LOVE this movie you could probably figured that I was ticked off that it didn't win best picture at the Oscar's, it should have. Well if you are one of the 5 people left on the planet that hasn't seen Avatar go see it now. You'll love it and if you don't you deserve to be slapped...hard...in the face...and the back of the head. Just wanting to make sure you know where I stand on this issue.
Oh, by the way, the Vatican overreacted, HERE.
I really hope you go see this movie, it is truly amazing.

SPRING!

2010-03-08T12:18:00.002-05:00

Yes, it's FINALLY SPRING! Well at least it feels like it. It's 61 degrees and the sun has filled the sky, these are the days I LIVE for. So today I'll be blasting my i-Pod, taking my camera everyone, and Jethro will be by my side, well probably in front of me, and we'll be outside...all day. So for anyone who lives where it's snowing or cold or just nasty outside right now sorry. But to anyone who lives in the Carolina's right now, isn't it great to be us? Well I have typed/ worked enough for the beautiful day. See Ya...Wouldn't want to be ya:)

This is so cool!

2010-03-01T14:18:00.001-05:00

Tech Tourism

The San Francisco Bay Area is a unique playground for those who want to ogle Google, sample Apple, relive high-tech history and gaze into the geeky future.

By Julio Ojeda-Zapata
jojeda@pioneerpress.com

Updated: 03/01/2010 12:26:35 PM CST

I call it Nerdvana.

It's the San Francisco Bay Area, which includes the city of San Francisco and the famed Silicon Valley, and it's a play land for geeks. Given my own dorky leanings, the region is high on my list of preferred travel destinations — I have been there three times.

My latest Bay Area foray last month was a work trip that certainly didn't feel like work.

Most of what I did on my four-day trip was privileged stuff, requiring a press pass. I got a hands-on look at Apple's coming iPad tablet computer, for instance, and built in a day of press meetings on the Google campus.

But, for the sake of fellow geeks who don't have media credentials, I packed my schedule with tech tourism along with a couple of sci-fi excursions. Yes, "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" fans, the region also calls out to you. Thrusters on full!

But be warned: The Bay Area can sometimes be a less-than-hospitable place, as I discovered time and again.

Are you kidding? Of course I hit the mother ship. For an Apple fanatic, no visit to the Bay Area is complete without a stop at the Apple campus in the Silicon Valley city of Cupertino.

Sadly, there isn't a lot to see. Apple is a hypersecretive company, so forget about touring the iPad-development facilities or peering into Steve Jobs' office. (I felt sorry for a college tour group that arrived there expecting to get up close and personal with the still-unreleased

iPad; dream on, friends.)

But the Apple mother ship does have a publicly accessible retail store. This famed destination is called the Apple Company Store, and it's different from other Apple stores in that it sells all kinds of Apple apparel and tchotkes. You can buy iPods, Mac accessories and software, too — but no Macs.

The Company Store is, as you'd expect, a gleaming paragon of Apple minimalism and elegance. As with other outlets, you can sidle up to a display Mac to map out your next destination or see what's up on your social-media networks. Yet, there's a feeling of uniqueness about the spot, a sensation that true-blue Macaholics say they savor for months afterward.

The last time I was there, a decade or so ago, I made the mistake of not buying anything. At a St. Paul-based Apple dealer later, I bought an Apple-branded coffee mug, but felt sad I couldn't hold it up and say, "I got this in Cupertino." This time, I did snag a metal mug along with a keychain.

If you visit, make sure you check out the Apple-logo-ed baby apparel, and the "I visited the mother ship" T-shirts (the latter are extremely popular).

And then, naturally, I headed to the Googleplex. Google didn't

Google fans in Silicon Valley can pay homage to the Android statue, which represents the company's operating system for smartphones. (Pioneer Press: Julio Ojeda-Zapata)

exist the last time I was in the region. Now, the Internet firm is a tech titan on par with Microsoft and Apple and is much beloved among geeks. So, a stop at the Googleplex in Mountain View as a part of my nerdy tour was de rigueur.

Alas, tourists can't show up and expect to be ushered into one of Google's famed all-you-can-eat employee cafeterias (though Google workers have been known to take pity on google-eyed visitors and give them whistle-stop tours, something only an Apple worker with a death wish would ever attempt).

All is not lost! You can, at least, pay homage to the Android statue.

The gigantic green apparition on a lawn outside one of Google's office buildings honors the up-and-coming Android smartphone operating system used in a growing number of handsets, including Google's own Nexus One. Google fanatics immediately will grasp the significance of pastry-themed statues beside the bot: "cupcake," "donut" and "eclair" are code names for versions of the Android OS; expect more pastries as it continues evolving.

Google, an engineer-centric firm that is averse to PR glad-handing, has done little else to welcome average visitors (that statue is not a sanctioned destination). There is a modest company store, but it is only for workers and their guests. Google should do an Apple and put a nicer store in a public area. How about a public eatery? Show off that legendary grub. As one who got to eat it during my day of meetings, I can attest

Apple's retail store in Silicon Valley's Palo Alto is on a fun, Grand Avenue-like main drag that is well worth a visit. (Pioneer Press: Julio Ojeda-Zapata)

to its googliciousness.

If you love computers, you must see this museum. I am allergic to museums. When traveling to far-off cities or countries, museum hopping is the last thing I want to do. Yet, as a technology enthusiast, I found the Computer History Museum in Mountain View to be a riveting experience.

I had just finished reading "Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer," a lengthy yet spellbinding tech-history tome. Eerily, as I wandered through the museum, I felt like I was experiencing a multimedia supplement to that authoritative volume.

It's all there: The Altair 8800, the pioneering microcomputer; Douglas Engelbart's original, wood-encased computer mouse; the Apple I, Apple II, Apple Lisa and original Macintosh; an IBM PC; a NeXT Cube; and on and on. I found plenty of "big iron," too, in the form of hulking supercomputers once designed by Cray, a company with deep Minnesota roots, and others.

There were oddities like a French Minitel terminal and a transistor radio, along with recent relics like the Netscape Navigator browser packaging and prototypes of the trailblazing Newton and Palm handheld computers. The museum even had a Babbage Difference Engine, the 19th-century precursor to modern computers, on prominent display near the entrance.

Amazingly, admittance to this museum is free, though donations are encouraged. The staffers go about their work with a near-religious zeal and are really nice — unless you utter something sacrilegious, like, "Can I pick up that Xerox mouse?" upon which a staffer will answer with a firm "NO" and give you a scandalized look.

Apple retail nirvana (with a touch of paranoia). You didn't think I was done with Apple, now, did you?

On trips to major cities, I always try to scout out one of the company's retail locations, especially if it is a distinctive store in an interesting neighborhood.

The Palo Alto outlet definitely fits the bill. Downtown Palo Alto is lovely — think Minneapolis' Uptown or St. Paul's Grand Avenue — with lots of shops and restaurants. If you are a Macolyte in the company of infidels, split up so you can make your pilgrimage while the others do something else.

The Apple store has a distinctive exterior meant to blend in with other eclectic storefronts on University Avenue, a really-fun-to-walk main drag. The inside is hardly unique, but you are not there to sightsee. Go check e-mail, Facebook or Twitter on a shiny, sexy iMac — you know you want to.

Apple-store workers are welcoming and helpful, but it doesn't take much for the firm's supersecretive personality to reveal itself from time to time.

I was standing at the rear of the Palo Alto store, waiting for a worker to fetch a product from the back room, when my gaze wandered over to a clump of other Apple employees deep in conversation about the iPad. (I didn't catch any of the chat, but one was holding an iPad photo.) Suddenly, the workers froze as they realized I was standing nearby, and one turned to me with a thin, tense smile: "Can I help you with anything, sir?"

Whoa there, big fella, just mindin' my own business here.

The other Apple outlet worth visiting is in San Francisco, in the heart of the Union Square shopping, dining and lodging district, where I stayed to check out Apple's iPad press event at the nearby Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

There, again, you need not inconvenience your Apple-indifferent companions since so many other urban wonders await. Send them on their merry way so you won't feel rushed in your journey up the outlet's grand stairway to one of the cushy theater chairs in the second-floor presentation area. Savor this, because Apple is removing those theaters from its stores.

Track down Yoda's statue and fountain. Not far from that Union Square store — and practically a stone's throw from San Francisco's famous Golden Gate Bridge, the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre and the adjacent Exploratorium museum — a statue of Yoda, the "Star Wars" Jedi Master, awaits.

For sci-fi geeks, this is a unique thrill. They're not only paying tribute to an iconic character, immortalized in life-size form atop a gentle fountain, but also stepping onto the grounds of LucasFilm, the George Lucas outfit responsible for the still-evolving "Star Wars" canon.

This facility, called the Letterman Digital Arts Center, is a nice place to spend an hour or so. After admiring Yoda from all angles, walk just past it to the facility's main entrance. If you fail to sweet-talk the guard into letting you inside, peer through one of the big windows for a peek at the Darth Vader and Boba Fett mannequins to the left. With a bit of maneuvering, you should be able to get good photos.

Backtrack a bit and head deeper into the Letterman Center grounds, which have the feel of a college campus. You will get a dynamite view of the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, less than a mile away.

A retail play land for techies — but no cameras! A Fry's Electronics superstore is a bit hard to describe. It's part Best Buy, part theme park. It has a mind-boggling selection of tech products both mainstream and obscure — all a geek would require to achieve world domination — but also a legendary lack of friendliness at times.

I experienced such Fry's surliness first-hand. I was at the Palo Alto outlet, agog at the superstore's wacky Wild West trappings (each Fry's typically adopts a distinctive theme) and eager to document this with my camera. But about a nanosecond after a worker spotted the iPhone, a manager descended on me with a livid look on his face and told me to put away the device lest I be expelled from the premises.

Let's think about this for a second. A superstore chain goes to enormous effort and expense to deck out its outlets in Mayan, Egyptian and Roman trappings, which will inevitably lure tech-centric tourists like me, yet we can't take pictures? (Apple stores do allow photography.)

Such baffling policies aside, the Fry's stores are definitely worth a look. The Palo Alto store is one of the smaller yet most interesting ones; bigger stores in Sunnyvale and San Jose are not as peculiar, but their huge selections of merchandise make them a sort of living high-tech museum.

Ax-Man Surplus, meet WeirdStuff Warehouse. As an eccentric counterpoint to all the shiny-new merchandise at the Fry's stores, the endearingly bizarre WeirdStuff Warehouse in Sunnyvale has all the old — sometimes really old — tech gear you'd ever want. If you are familiar with the Ax-man Surplus Stores in the Twin Cities, you're getting the general idea, but WeirdStuff Warehouse focuses only on technology-related surplus.

Digging around in a box of old computer mice, I found the second-generation Macintosh rodent my son needed to complete a mouse collection for a school project. Inside the store, I stumbled on such treasures as an old Minnesota-spawned Imation SuperDisk drive and a selection of classic Global Village dial-up modems. There were cables, cables and more cables, almost any old cord or connector you'd need.

WW has changed since my last visit. It has moved and no longer has such sensational finds as original (inoperative) Macintosh computers, one of which is on display in my office. But it's still a must-see.

I'm not certain if WeirdStuff has official picture-taking policies, but no one ever hassled me as I snapped a few shots, inside and outside.

A technology museum goes "Star Trek"-crazy. I've been frantic to check out "Star Trek: The Exhibition," which is touring the country much as a "Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination" exhibit did a while back. So, it must have been fate that a business trip landed me in the "Star Trek" show's current home base, San Jose — specifically, the downtown Tech Museum of Innovation (or "the Tech" for short).

The exhibit is, in many ways, a major thrill for any Trekker. It is brimming with costumes, starship models and other memorabilia from the many "Trek" films and television series. Certain settings, such as interiors of the Jean-luc Picard-era "Enterprise," have been meticulously re-created. I was a bit less impressed with the exhibit's much-ballyhooed James T. Kirk-era Enterprise bridge and the transporter room, which don't look as authentic as they should. Still, I sat in the captain's chair, looking all commander-ly, and I stood in the transporter and uttered the immortal command: "Energize!"

Exhibit employees will take digital photos of you in the chair and on the transporter. Their cool cameras have attached wireless-transmission hardware that zaps the just-snapped pictures to a computer elsewhere for your perusal and, if you choose, pricey purchase.

Here's where I soured on this "Star Trek" experience. I wanted my pictures in digital form. In fact, I could see the JPEG files, right there in a folder on the preview terminal. C'mon, guys, burn them onto a DVD or put 'em on a thumb drive. I would have paid handsomely.

No such luck: The staffers would sell only a cheesy physical picture partially obscured with "Star Trek" lettering, and charge a fortune (while acknowledging almost everyone asks for the files). What a scam. I didn't bite. And — you guessed it — you are not allowed to take your own photos.

"Star Trek: The Exhibition" is in San Jose through April 11.

Canada's got class

2010-02-26T10:00:00.003-05:00

Well I watched in disappointment as the USA Women's Hockey Team lost to Canada 2-0, but USA played a great game, as did Canada. USA held them to 2 goals, and they fought HARD. If you didn't watch the game let me give you a little background so you can understand.
Canada's women are bigger then our men. They are really tall, really fast, and just HUGE. Really they look like Maple Leaf Monsters compared to the USA team. And their coach is a whole other story, she's pretty short, but she looks so mean. But Canada not only had the big, mean monster look going for them, they were good, great hockey players. And not only were they great hockey players, but they had 18,000 Canadians cheering them on inside of the arena. They had a couple of crowd shots and I'm telling you I didn't see one person that wasn't decked out in Canadian gear. I mean for the USA team it was like being thrown to the gladiators and the crowd having no mercy. In Canada's past games in this Olympics the average score was 12-1 Canada. We held them to two. We played incredible defense, but the beast of a hockey player that was Canada's goalie just wouldn't let one by, she was amazing. We played an excellent game against a better team, and we lost, but we were closer to beating them then any other team, and that should've said something to the Canadians...and it did.
During the medal presentation the crowd of Canadians did something that we would have never, ever, ever done. When the USA was presented their silver medals the Canadians cheered USA-USA-USA-USA. Yes they really did. If you don't believe me read this article, it's near the middle-end of it. What Canada did showed some real class and respect, and for that I didn't mind that during the good-game hand shake that one of our players didn't take a hockey stick to some Canada players head. Yes, I really did just type that.

NCIS

2010-02-25T17:00:00.000-05:00

Don't forget NCIS has a NEW episode on Tuesday and it looks REALLY good!

Shout Outs!

2010-02-25T11:15:00.003-05:00

Here are a couple of friends of mine who are just awesome, and their blogs/websites/projects are just SWEET, so go check them out.

Caleb & Ryan just designed this sweet new blog, good job guys: {link}
Jared, Adam, Wes, and company just made a killer movie: {link}
Justin & Mary have been traveling cross country since January. They left from Connecticut, and they have been to Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Diego, and they still aren't done! They are traveling in a SVU with their Golden Retriever, I might add:) {link}
Jasmine just got back from Sydney, Australia! Her pics are awesome! {link}
Financial Guru friend Joesph just had a kid! {link}
Wade, Chris, & Mack are making a new record, right now down in Georgia! {link}

Financial Tips

2010-02-24T12:14:00.002-05:00

No I am not a financial guru, but I have picked up a few tips on how to save some major amounts of money pretty easily. And sense right now everyone could use some extra jingle in their pockets I thought I would share some of my thoughts on the subject.

Get rid of your home phone, my family hasn't had a home phone in YEARS, and we have been just fine. Since the whole family has cell phones anyway there is absolutely no reason for a home phone.
Stop buying brand name stuff like food and medicine. Almost all food and medicine now has an off-brand or generic substitute. It is so much cheaper for the exact same stuff.
Shop at Wal-Mart, I know some people hate bowing down to the big multi-billion dollar corporation, and some people to this day the Sam Walton was the Anti-Christ, but let's face it Wally World has the cheapest food, clothes, medicine, and anything you could possibly need to buy. Whether you like it or not shop at Wal-Mart you'll save a bundle on everything.
Make your own Mocha Frap, instead of going to Starbucks. If you go to Starbucks five times a week now, and if you start having your fraps at home you'll save $1000.00 a year...on coffee.
Do you know how much you spend on stamps to pay bills through the mail in one year? You spend $50-$75 a year to pay bills. That's kind of redundant isn't it? So get in the 21st century and pay bills online for free.

For more tips Google it.

Olympics, Modern Miracle, & Sports from far away lands

2010-02-23T12:09:00.005-05:00

If you have been watching the Olympics this past week you have seen some amazing stuff, to sum it all up America is kicking butts and not stopping anytime soon. The US is at the top of the medal count right now, and hopefully adding to that count today. The Olympics have been very interesting this time around, some very cool new sports (Cross-Country Skiing) and some old favorites (Hockey, Ice Skating) If I had to critique the Olympics right now I would say that they are doing a pretty good job scheduling things and so far it's been good. I only have three things that I have noticed that could maybe make it better:1. During the prime time show from 8 p.m. - 12 p.m. on NBC, show the best stuff going on LIVE, not something that I can go on Google and already see what has happened.
2. Schedule the best events for prime time, Olympic Committee, like the Hockey, Ice Skating, Speed Skating, Snowboard Half-pipe. And show the best one on NBC not CNBC, half of America doesn't even know what channel CNBC is on, I sure don't. I have had to write down on a sticky note what channel number CNBC and MSNBC is on, because the are showing some of the best events on those channels like hockey.
3. And last but not least if you are showing Ice Skating, don't cut in and out of the performance. Show the entire competition. I know that some people aren't big into the Ice Skating, but how would you like it if when Canada was playing USA the other night that they take the game off of the TV in the 3rd period to show Bob Costas talking to Michelle Kwan or the Slovakia Curling Team? Yeah you'd be mad.
FYI to Curling Haters they are showing the most curling on USA, so if you don't want to watch curling turn it on CNBC or MSNBC, just a warning they might be showing a replay of something, but hey it's better then curling.
Well if you haven't been watching the Olympics then just stop reading now, because that is all this post is going to be about. I know you thought after I got done with my above rant that it would be over, but it's not. I live the Olympics so just get used to it, it only happens every two years. (Hey you didn't think I was just like this about the Winter Games did you?)

So moving on. I was so so happy when the Men's Hockey played the other night and USA beat Canada, yes we the football playing, could careless about hockey nation beat Oh Canada home of Wayne Gretzky. Yeah we rock. It was a great game, and I HATE hockey, but it was one of the best events of the entire Olympics. If you didn't catch it, it was on MSNBC, not NBC. Anyways to top off an awesome win over Canada, it was on the 30th Anniversary of the 1980 US Olympic Hockey Team's win over "the unbeatable" Soviet Union. So it was a pretty cool night. If you didn't know I LOVE the movie Miracle which is about the 1980 US Hockey Team. I went and saw it in theaters 10 times, yes I really did. I have the DVD, and I have watched it more times then I can count, as a matter of fact I just finished watching it about an hour ago. I never ever have liked hockey, but I love this movie. I especially love Kurt Russell as Herb Brooks, he is just so good. So if you want to get in the Olympic Spirit or in a Patriotic Mood go watch Miracle, it's awesome.

To close this post I wanted to touch on some sports that you never ever ever see being played except when you watch the Olympics. Curling is pretty cool, and it actually takes a lot of skill. I don't know how to explain it, but it's on TV all the time right now so find it and watch it. Biathalon these people are CRAZY and really strong, they ski uphill, yes I said uphill for three miles in a circle, with a rifle on their backs, the shoot the gun five times, for every missed shot they have to do 1 mile lap extra then do the regular 3 mile trek. they do this for almost 15 miles. It's really cool to watch. Next would be Nordic Combined, which I don't know how to explain this one, except it looks really hard.

Stephen Colbert is awesome...

2010-02-16T08:51:00.000-05:00

Go USA!

Ready for Summer

2010-02-15T15:33:00.002-05:00

I'm ready for Summer, aren't you?

I LOVE THE OLYMPICS!

2010-02-14T12:13:00.003-05:00

If you couldn't tell from the title I love the Olympics. I like both the Winter and the Summer Olympics, they are awesome! I watch it all day and all night, I just can't help it, I love sports and just all the whole package of the Olympics! So if your wondering what I'm doing for the next 2 weeks I'll be tuning into NBC to watch the Olympics.
Disclaimer: On Tuesday Nights I will be watching NCIS, sorry Bob Costas, Al Michaels you can't touch Leroy Jethro Gibbs:)

Cool Idea for Old People

2010-02-11T14:37:00.001-05:00

London to open 1st exercise area for older people

By RAPHAEL G. SATTER, Associated Press Writer Raphael G. Satter, Associated Press Writer – Wed Feb 10, 1:07 pm ET

LONDON – Swinging London will take on a whole new connotation for the capital's aging baby boomers, who will soon get their own specially designed outdoor playground.

The park will offer low-impact exercise equipment to help older people improve their balance and flexibility and tone muscles that may not have been tested for decades.

"Every park has a children's playground, very few have playgrounds for adults, and none have playgrounds for the elderly," said Madeline Elsdon, whose local residents' association has won funding for the playground, which is planned for London's popular Hyde Park.

"We wanted something that would be of long-term benefit to people, so we came up with this idea for an older person's playground."

Exercise areas aimed at the elderly are popular in Europe and Asia, and there's already a U.K. precedent — an over-60 playground billed as Britain's first opened in Manchester's Dam Head Park two years ago. The equipment there was still seeing use Wednesday — with senior citizens swinging their legs and working their hips on the machines despite temperatures that hovered around freezing.

Elsdon said the Hyde Park playground, which is due to be built by this spring, will have six pieces of equipment bought in Denmark, including a stationary bicycle, a cross-trainer and a sit-up bench.

British group Age Concern, which works to help the elderly, said the playground sounded like a great idea.

"Frankly, it's the first time I've ever heard of such a thing," spokesman Stefano Gelmini said. "It looks like a nice initiative."

The group's charity director, Michelle Mitchell, said in an e-mail that the playground "could be a great way to encourage older people to exercise and socialize."

"Many older people aren't exercising enough," she said, adding that working out with others their own age could help older people alleviate feelings of loneliness and depression.

Elsdon said she had been "absolutely overwhelmed by the number of people who have shown an interest" in the free play area.

Westminster City Council, which gave 40,000 pounds ($60,000) to fund the project, said a sign would identify the area as the "Hyde Park Senior Playground" but anyone of any age was welcome to use it.

It raises the question — why not just go to the gym?

Elsdon said older people have been hard hit by Britain's recession and many found gyms too intimidating in the first place.

"Too much firm flesh," she said, laughing.

Drew Brees Teams Up With Pampers

2010-02-11T13:22:00.001-05:00

Wasn't that cute!

This why I love football...

2010-02-08T11:01:00.003-05:00

Hope this brightens your day!

2010-02-05T11:56:00.002-05:00

Is Avatar Really King Of The Box Office?

2010-01-28T11:49:00.000-05:00

Is Avatar Really King Of
The Box Office?

by Dorothy Pomerantz · January 27, 2009

Yes, it's got the biggest worldwide gross of all time.
But it's still no "Gone With The Wind."

James Cameron broke his own record Tuesday. With a $1.86 billion haul, "Avatar" beat "Titanic" to become the highest grossing movie of all time at the worldwide box office.

It's a remarkable achievement. But before every Hollywood studio exec decides that all future movies must be in 3-D and feature blue aliens, it's worth getting a little perspective on the film.

"Avatar" has the advantage of showing in 3-D (which usually commands an average $3 extra per ticket) and coming out at a time when even 2-D movie tickets are more expensive than ever. According to the National Association of Theater Owners, the average ticket price in 2008 was $7.18, up 56% from prices in 1997 when "Titanic" was in theaters.

A look at domestic grosses adjusted for inflation shows a more realistic view of "Avatar"'s performance.

In the U.S., "Avatar" has grossed $555 million making it the second highest grossing domestic (as opposed to worldwide) film of all time. Titanic is temporarily still in the lead here with $600.8 million.

But adjusting for ticket price for inflation, Avatar ranks as the 26th highest grossing film in the U.S., according to Box Office Mojo. Number one? "Gone With The Wind" with $1.5 billion adjusted gross in the U.S. "Star Wars" ranks second with $1.3 billion.

Cameron's "Titanic" ranks sixth (just behind "The Ten Commandments") with an adjusted $943 million take in the U.S.

Movies are released very differently today then they were in 1939 when "Gone With the Wind" premiered. The film showed originally in 156 theaters in the U.S. "Avatar" premiered on 3,452 screens. "Gone With the Wind" was re-released in 1947, 1954 and 1961. In 1967 it was shown in 70 mm. With as many as 600 films being released per year, these days few films get a second shot in theaters.

Of course movie now can sometimes double their box office with DVD and television sales. Here we're only looking at box office.

Even some modern films beat "Avatar" when looked at through a price-adjusted prism. "Forrest Gump" (1994) ranks 22nd with an adjusted $623 million box office. "Star Wars: Episode 1 -- The Phantom Menace," which was released in 1999, ranks 19th with an adjusted $623 million domestic gross.

But most of the films at the top are from at least 30 years ago. "The Sound of Music" ranks third with an adjusted $1.05 billion take. "E.T." is just behind with $1.04 billion.

With no film on the near horizon poised to challenge "Avatar"'s dominance, the film is sure to continue to mint money. But it's got a way's to go to catch up with a classic like "Gone With The Wind."

I love HGTV

2010-01-22T11:09:00.001-05:00

Well I don't know if you have ever watched HGTV, but it's awesome. It makes you feel inspired to fix up your house, garden, or just one room. It's a totally great channel and you should tune in sometime.

Two Cool Kids

2010-01-21T12:04:00.003-05:00

Alex & Brett Harris are two cool kids who have already published a bestselling book, have a highly successful website and blog, and are on the verge of publishing their second book. And these two just turned 20. Alex and Brett are twin brothers, who were home-schooled and now attend Patrick Henry College in Virgina.

They both have won national competitions like debate and speaking, and for the past 4 years every summer they have went around the country on their own speaking tour. And I know what you are thinking they just go to churches and speak, no, they go to convention centers and colleges, and speak to sold out crowds. These two guys are really cool, and you should go check out their website and see what they are all about, I have been following them for about a year, and trust me, it just keeps getting better.

Jethro's got my shoe

2010-01-15T10:52:00.002-05:00

The Pope VS James Cameron

2010-01-12T16:04:00.001-05:00

Vatican says 'Avatar' is no masterpiece (AP)

VATICAN CITY - "Avatar" is wooing audiences worldwide with visually dazzling landscapes and nature-loving blue creatures. But the Vatican is no easy crowd to please.

The Vatican newspaper and radio station are criticizing James Cameron's 3-D blockbuster for flirting with the idea that worship of nature can replace religion — a notion the pope has warned against. They call the movie a simplistic and sappy tale, despite its awe-inspiring special effects.

"Not much behind the images" was how the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, summed it up in a headline.

As the second highest-grossing movie ever, "Avatar" is challenging the record set by Cameron's previous movie "Titanic."

Generally it has been critically acclaimed and is touted as a leading Oscar contender.

Bolivia's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, has praised "Avatar" for what he calls its message of saving the environment from exploitation. But the movie also has drawn a number of critical voices. Some American conservative bloggers have decried its anti-militaristic message; a small group of people have said the movie contains racist themes.

To Vatican critics, the alien extravaganza is just "bland."

Cameron "tells the story without going deep into it, and ends up falling into sappiness," said L'Osservatore Romano. Vatican Radio called it "rather harmless" but said it was no heir to sci-fi masterpieces of the past.

Most significantly, much of the Vatican criticism was directed at the movie's central theme of man vs. nature.

L'Osservatore said the film "gets bogged down by a spiritualism linked to the worship of nature." Similarly, Vatican Radio said it "cleverly winks at all those pseudo-doctrines that turn ecology into the religion of the millennium."

"Nature is no longer a creation to defend, but a divinity to worship," the radio said.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said that while the movie reviews are just that — film criticism, not theological pronouncements — they do reflect Pope Benedict XVI's views on the dangers of turning nature into a "new divinity."

Benedict has often spoken about the need to protect the environment, earning the nickname of "green pope." But he also has balanced that call with a warning against turning environmentalism into neo-paganism.

In a recent World Day of Peace message, the pontiff warned against any notions that equate human beings with other living things in the name of a "supposedly egalitarian vision." He said such notions "open the way to a new pantheism tinged with neo-paganism, which would see the source of man's salvation in nature alone, understood in purely naturalistic terms."

The pope explained in the message that while many experience tranquillity and peace when coming into contact with nature, a correct relationship between man and the environment should not lead to "absolutizing nature" or "considering it more important than the human person."

The Vatican newspaper occasionally likes to comment in its cultural pages on movies or pop culture icons, as it did recently about "The Simpsons" or U2. In one famous instance, several Vatican officials spoke out against "The Da Vinci Code."

In this case, the reviews came out after a red-carpet "Avatar" preview held in Rome just a stone's throw from St. Peter's Square. The movie — which has made more than $1.3 billion at box offices worldwide, partly boosted by higher 3-D ticket prices — will be released Friday in Italy.

"So much stupefying, enchanting technology, but few genuine emotions," said L'Osservatore in one of three articles devoted to "Avatar" in its Sunday editions. The plotline of aliens who live on a distant unspoiled planet and the humans who want to pillage their resources is a universal theme that can be reminiscent of past colonizations and wars, the paper said. As such, it is easy to relate to it, but also unoriginal.

"Everything is reduced to an overly simple anti-imperialistic and anti-militaristic parable," it said.

In America, the big numbers and media hype have been accompanied by some controversy.

Blog posts, newspaper articles, tweets and YouTube videos have criticized the film, with some calling it "a fantasy about race told from the point of view of white people" and that it reinforces "the white Messiah fable." Cameron says the real theme is about respecting others' differences.

An LA Times blog noted that the movie "has inflamed the passions of right-wing bloggers and pundits."

"Cameron incensed many voices on the right by acknowledging of-the-moment messages about imperialism, greed, ecological disregard and corporate irresponsibility," it said. Anti-smoking lobbies have denounced the cigarette-puffing character played by Sigourney Weaver.

Back at the Vatican, the reviews did praise the groundbreaking visuals of the movie.

Vatican Radio said that "really never before have such surprising images been seen," while L'Osservatore said the movie's worth lies in its "extraordinary visual impact."

So what do you think?

One of my Dad and my favorite shows gets a movie...

2010-01-12T14:11:00.002-05:00

Is God a Mac or PC: By Jon Acuff again

2010-01-11T10:38:00.000-05:00

Debating whether God is a Mac or a PC

“Do you consider yourself a pastor?”

Someone asked me that once during a Q&A at a conference. That one threw me for a loop and I answered it the best way I knew:

“I consider myself terrified.”

That’s the truth. I don’t know how to do most of this, so these weird moments are a mix of abject fun and slight terror. Like the time I mentioned having struggled with porn in the past to a reporter. You know what the first line of his article was? “In addition to many other problems, Jon struggles with P.” Awesome. Thanks fella. “Many other problems.” Fantastic.

But no one tells you how to do smart interviews. So you do dumb ones and then realize later, that was dumb. And part of the reason this whole thing is so weird is because I’m boldly and bravely tackling such hard issues. Like today’s. I don’t see Mark Driscoll or Rick Warren stepping to the plate on this one. But I am. We are. Today we’re going to settle something that is divisive and critical and currently tearing the church asunder:

Is God Mac or PC?

That is, up in heaven, is he cranking away on a Mac or a PC? Does he love the iPhone or is he currently listening to Michael W. Smith’s greatest hits on a Zune? Does he have a little apple sticker stuck anywhere?

I feel like lists work well on blogs, so let’s break it down list style and weigh all the facts.

1. Macs are beautiful and glimmery white in their design. Christ and God are always represented as the “light of the world.” PCs are often dark. God is definitely a Mac.

2. As soon as you own an iPhone you start to feel a potpourri of pity and shame for anyone who does not own one. Someone whips out a Blackberry and you immediately, smugly think inside, “That poor person. Pushing on physical keys. The horror.” God doesn’t like that arrogance. God is a PC.

3. Apple makes real efforts to improve the planet and recycle their products. God loves that. God is a Mac.

4. Apple is notorious for rejecting apps that people try to put on the iPhone. God doesn’t reject anyone. God is definitely a PC.

5. PCs are often plagued by viruses and crashes. Much like sin, God hates that. God is definitely a Mac.

6. Mac commercials are constantly mocking people who use PCs. God hates mockery. God is definitely a PC.

7. You don’t have to learn a complicated operating system to use a Mac. You turn it on and go. Same with God. Repentance and salvation are not complex systems designed to confuse people. God’s a Mac.

8. PCs are constantly needing to be upgraded and updated with the latest software and operating systems. Just like sanctification. You are constantly changing and being renewed. God’s a PC.

9. Macs take a very holistic approach to computing. There’s iLife and iTunes and iPhone. They all work together seamlessly. Just the way God wants to be integrated into every part of our life. God’s a Mac.

10. Some people treat Apple’s Steve Jobs like he’s God in a mock turtle neck. Turns out God is not cool with that. God’s a PC.

11. Macs are very intuitive. When you want to do something, you don’t look up how to do it, you just do it. With a PC, things are often backwards. When you want to shut down for instance, you have to click “Start.” The Bible is very intuitive too. Proverbs lays out pages of simple wisdom that just makes sense. God is a Mac.

12. Macs are all about outside appearances. They look fantastic. But God cares more about what’s inside. Macs are too vain. God’s a PC.

13. Macs make music easy to enjoy. They’re more artistic and often the choice of graphic designers and photographers. God is a great fan of the arts, as evidence by the colorful sunsets and sunrises he paints each day. God’s a Mac.

14. Macs are really expensive. God’s not. He paid the cost. He paid the debt we owed to him. God’s a PC.

15. The Mac logo, an apple with a bite out of it, is reminiscent of our fall from grace in the garden of Eden and God’s forgiveness of us. God’s a Mac.

16. The Gates Foundation has given millions and millions of dollars to help people around the world. God’s all about generosity. God’s a PC.

17. Apple stores are not designed like traditional retail outlets, but are more like aesthetic sanctuaries. They’re practically consumer churches. God’s a Mac.

18. Mac is constantly teasing us with information. There is a tablet. There’s not a tablet. God, on the other hand, is much more direct with his love and purpose in our lives. God’s a PC.

There’s the list and I’ve got to tell you, I’m stuck. I have a PC desktop and an Apple laptop. I don’t know who to score this one as anything other than a tie. How about you?

Is God a Mac or a PC?

What evidence would you offer to support or deny either decision?

Tropical Tips

2010-01-09T20:34:00.003-05:00

Since the whole country is having an Artic Blast right now I thought that it would be a good time to give a few tips on how to bring a little sun shine and summer feel to your cold winter.

Turn on the lights, get your house bright! It makes a BIG difference.
Get a tropical plant, not like a banana tree but maybe a cactus or aloe plant, they'll live inside, they aren't hard to care for, and they give you a summertime feel.
Make a smoothie, yeah I know its cold outside, but make yourself a smoothie! Throw in a handful of strawberries, blueberries, a banana, and some ice, mix it in a blender, and drink it! Everyone needs some extra fruit in their diet, and your mood will change after you have one.
Have a citrus fruit a day, yeah I know the saying is an apple a day, but change it up to an orange, it gives your taste buds a little excitement, and it's good for you.
Have some winter cleaning, no, you don't have to clean the whole house, but reorganize the pantry, rearrange furniture, paint a room a bright color, or have a house project, don't wait for the spring!
Be active, although everyone is locked in the house, be active! The way I am doing it is playing Wii Sport Resort, it's a great, fun, active video game that is set on a tropical island! It's a great exercise.

More tips coming soon!

Meet Jethro

2010-01-08T15:46:00.002-05:00

Meet my new dog Leroy Jethro AKA Jethro, yes he is names after Leroy Jethro Gibbs of NCIS, our family's favorite TV show. So I give you Jethro:

What a decade!

2010-01-01T19:51:00.003-05:00

Well since everybody else on the Internet is recounting what all has happened to them in the past decade I thought that I would give it a shot.

In ten years I have moved over a dozen times everywhere from beach houses to apartments, to hotel rooms.
In ten years I have traveled to another country, flown in airplanes, sailed on a cruise ship, canoed in a canoe, rode in a train, trolley, tram, and monorail.
In ten years I have been to concerts, opera's, musicals, movies, and shows.
In ten years I have met a Governor, many Senators, Representatives, and Presidential Candidates.
In ten years I have been to more sporting events then I can count, I have met many head coaches, and famous players, from all over the country.
I have been to another country and many other states, and I have met people from all over the world.
I have been to both Disney World and Disneyland, and they are both the happiest places on Earth!
I have traveled across the country, literally.
I have lived life the best I know how, and I think that I have lived it as awesomely as possible!
I have done so much more then this too, but I am too tired to type:)
I plan to live the next ten years better then the previous, so stay tuned world.

2010 I'm ready for you!

A new year

2010-01-01T12:00:00.003-05:00

Well we are now into a new year, a new decade, a new day. A fresh moment in time to begin life anew. So what are you going to do differently this year, this decade, this day? Happy New Year

My Top 10 TV Shows!

2009-12-31T12:22:00.003-05:00

Well since I have been absent from the web world for a few days I thought that I would close out 2009 with my top 10 list. I'll be starting at 10 and working my way to the best aka #1
My Top Ten TV Shows of the Year:
10. Family Guy, okay it is a horrible show, that really shouldn't be aired on TV, but is so funny!
9. Law & Order, it's holding on stongly, the story lines aren't great, but it's still Law & Order
8. Law & Order SVU it's a great show both the replays on USA and the new ones on NBC.
7. House okay it's losing it's mojo slowly, but it still is pretty good.
6. Mad Men, it's set in the 60's and it's a quirky, slick, cool show.
5. NCIS LA Okay, it's not as good as NCIS, but it's young, funny, and different.
4. White Collar, it's on USA and it's a surprisingly funny show, could become a great series.
3. NCIS This is a juggernaut kind of an awesome show.
2. 18 Kids & Counting I just LOVE this show!
1. Glee, it's is the biggest show in 2009, and it is AWESOME

Merry Christmas

2009-12-24T19:46:00.002-05:00

Hey everybody just wanted to say Merry Christmas! I'll be back and talk all about what's been going on around here! Have a very Merry Christmas and have some fun!

I LOVE Christmas

2009-12-16T09:40:00.003-05:00

Well that's it I LOVE it all, the music, the food, the shopping, the outfits, the trees, EVERYTHING! Bing and Andy are on rotation at my house 24/7 singing classics. Yes, I am wearing the Sirius Satellite out, if the charged the more you listened we would be bankrupt. So today I am going out and about and starting my Christmas shopping in overdrive. And when I shop I SHOP. I mean I steal a cart from Sears in the mall and just go the whole mall, knocking 80 year olds down if I have to! But most of the time I have been the one who gets thrown to the floor, by the old women who are searching for a sale. But I can be a lethal Christmas shopper, so watch out. If you see me this Holiday Season running through a store looking like something life and death...it probably is, like a 30% off sale on dress pants at JC Penny's.

Good Post from Jon Acuff:

2009-12-15T12:08:00.000-05:00

It's a very different point of view from Stuff Christians Like Blogger: Jon Acuff

Saying Merry Christmas.

I wasn’t going to write about this one. The Christmas season was going to come and go and I wasn’t even going to touch it. Like every fraternity at Samford University’s view of Freshman Jon Acuff, I was going to reject this.

Until I saw the billboard.

Sunday night, driving home from vacation with my family outside of Atlanta, GA, I saw a new billboard.

On a background of festive red, with big white letters I read a simple message:

I miss you saying “Merry Christmas.” – Jesus

And that’s when, much like the mafia, just when I thought I was out, they dragged me back into the conversation.

I don’t have a problem with that billboard, but there are three things it calls to mind:

1. We invented the phrase “Merry Christmas.”

I’ve only read the Bible from front to back one time. I read it a lot, but from a “read through it straight in 2 years point of view” I’ve only taken one spin. But when I did, I swear I couldn’t find the phrase, “Merry Christmas” anywhere. That billboard kind of makes it seem like Paul said that while he was making tents before he went on his wild missions. “Making tents on Christmas Eve. That is completely bogus. No one even said ‘Merry Christmas’ to me. All these heathen tent makers all say, ‘Happy Holidays.’ So whack.”

2. How do we know Jesus misses that?

Maybe he does. Maybe he doesn’t. I honestly don’t know. Maybe Jesus would say things like “I miss hearing you say, ‘Let’s play some Frisbee golf’” or “I miss hearing you say that you pre-ordered the ‘Stuff Christians Like’ book.” I’m not certain, but I am certain that the times I’ve misquoted Jesus or put words in his mouth, in my mouth I’ve felt that feeling you get when you chew aluminum foil with metal fillings in your teeth. God isn’t technically striking me with lightning but He’s definitely firing up the lightning bolt 300 for imminent release.

3. We would be upset if someone else quoted Jesus for their cause.

If some other group made a billboard that quoted Jesus and that quote was not solidly based in the Bible, we would go spider monkey crazy. (You might rock out squirrel monkey style, but that’s really a personal preference thing.) If someone, even just for emphasis, quoted Jesus as supporting their cause and it wasn’t straight up Bible, we would be straight up upset.

I will see that billboard everyday during my commute, but I’m at peace with it. And there’s a pretty simple reason – It’s not belligerent. I always get a little weirded out when people aggressively make the distinction between “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Holidays.” I completely understand the frustration with a culture that is actively and deliberately removing Christ at every given opportunity, but when we angrily say, “It’s ‘Merry Christmas, not happy holidays!’” we might as well say, “It’s ‘Merry Christmas,’ not happy holidays you jerk!” And that makes people want to celebrate winter solstice instead of whatever those grumpy, fight you on a vernacular level Christians are down with.

I promise.

The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody

2009-12-06T18:55:00.001-05:00

Wasn't that FUNNY!

Yellow by {Coldplay}

2009-12-04T21:52:00.001-05:00

The music you heard watching the artistic dancing is by my favorite band of all time COLDPLAY! Wasn't it [GREAT]

Tiger...

2009-12-02T21:17:00.002-05:00

I LOVE Tiger Woods, I think that he is one of the greatest athletes of our time, and I will still love him, and be a fan of his, after all of this, but I must say that this article is great!

How Tiger Woods could rehabilitate his image now

By Jay Busbee

OK, so I guess we can say the whole "stay silent and hope this goes away" approach didn't work out so well for Tiger Woods, yes?

Woods is in the midst of the worst crisis of his life, a marital apocalypse brought on by his confession of "transgressions" that, at best, involve one woman not his wife, and at worst -- well, you can imagine the "at worst."

So it's time for Tiger to come clean. (Aside: we see now why he didn't in the first place, don't we?) Hopefully for Tiger, it can't get much worse than this -- the first revelation of infidelity is far, far worse than any possible subsequent ones -- so now that the first skeleton has tumbled out of the closet, it's time to haul out any more that may still be in there.

There are several steps he needs to take, immediately. First off, he needs to quit blaming the media. I'm not saying this as a member of the media, I'm saying this because blaming someone else for his own failures of character isn't going to win him any lasting sympathy. The whole "I did wrong but it's also your fault for publicizing it" approach he took in his apology is cheap and a way to skirt the real issue. (Plus, there's an old saying by Mark Twain that you don't pick a fight with someone who buys his ink by the barrel -- or, in 21st century terms, who counts his site visits in the millions.)

I'm not saying the media were blameless here; you could sense TMZ salivating with excitement at the prospect of Woods or his wife getting arrested and perp-walked out of their Windermere home. And when the "charges" against Woods ended up totaling $164 -- or what Woods has lying around in his change jar -- TMZ looked both foolish and vindictive.

Not every media outlet is that bloodthirsty. Most are simply reporting the facts, and thanks to Woods himself, the facts alone are damning.

So this is what Tiger needs to do. He needs to use the media like he's never used it before. He needs to go on "Oprah" and do a Barbara Walters special. He needs to appear with his wife, Elin, at his side -- assuming, of course, she wants to stay at his side after all this -- and he needs to appear in lots of long, slow shots staring out over the water behind his house in contemplation. He needs to get new images of himself out in public to counteract the sound of a desperate cheater on that voicemail.

He needs to open every door, tell every tale, lay out the truth. Not in graphic detail, but complete in scope. If he's been a serial adulterer, he needs to confess. If it was this one time, he needs to confess. But no more half-truths, no more hiding. He can't crack the door partly open and expect that people will be satisfied. That's how this:

... becomes this:

If he wants this to go away -- and it will, eventually, no matter what -- and yet still retain some of his dignity and his image, he needs to open every door now.

He needs to go on soft-pitch talk shows and use some handpicked Golf Channel/ESPN interviewers to lob him questions that are hard, but not too hard. And he needs to go on David Letterman's show, for obvious reasons -- Letterman had his own dalliance with infidelity earlier this year and would be a sympathetic figure.

Along the way, he should hire a willing and malleable writer -- one of the ones who kept insisting that this is no big deal and we needed to move on -- to bang out a quick autobiography with a soft-focus photo of him and his family and a generically inspirational title like "Lessons Learned." There are surely already books in the works on this; why not get the story straight from Tiger himself?

Also, he needs to undercut the people who would sell him out for a quick buck. Was there only one mistress? Were there more? He knows, and he knows that they're seeing the six-figure check that Jaimee Grubb just banked, and he's got to realize that they're thinking they could use a little extra holiday cash too. So he's got to do everything he can to marginalize any woman who might come forward with her own "My night with Tiger" story, by painting them as opportunistic gold-diggers ... though not in so many words, of course.

He needs to do this all now, in the Christmas season but before the holidays actually hit. People will be more focused on their own lives and less likely to sit down and pore over the details of his stories. And then he needs to zip it shut tight and disappear for six weeks. The media needs fresh meat, and by the time Tiger returns to the course in late January, his story would be old news. He'd have one extremely uncomfortable press conference, and then he'd get back on the golf course and that would be that.

Tiger Woods screwed up. Phenomenally. But there's a way out of this for him, a way that these sins could actually humanize him in the eyes of the public. What worked for him before isn't going to work for him now, but there's still a chance he could rehabilitate his image.

But he's going to have to start from the ground up.

Good job November, you did well!

2009-11-30T20:16:00.002-05:00

Well, November you pulled through, you did a great job with everything this time around: fun, food, football, vacation, and shopping, yeah November can't wait to do it again. Well I don't know about everyone else, but this month has been rockin out, and it has flown by! I hope everybody else has had an awesome month, too.
Sorry for the lack of blog posts this month, but with vacation to the mountains, tons of shopping, and a whole lot more, I just haven't had time. But this week I'll be doing a Thanksgiving recap, and and start up on the Christmas Season. It's gonna be great a great week!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-24T11:08:00.004-05:00

I won't be on the bloggity blog for the rest of this week because I am going on VACATION!!! Yes, I know it's gonna be awesome! I am going to have a blast and I hope that you have a good Turkey Day too. I hope that you are able to eat massive amounts of turkey and stuffing and awful amounts of desserts, and watch tons football with family.
I hope that everyone is thankful this Thanksgiving, and I hope that you are able to have an enjoyable weekend with family.

BTW: Don't forget about Black Friday, the GREATEST SHOPPING DAY OF THE YEAR!!! I'll be shopping, hope you will be too!
And to close out this post here is a picture from the very best artist of all time: Norman Rockwell.

California Dreamin

2009-11-03T20:54:00.002-05:00

That's what I've been doing lately:-)

How's College Football?

2009-10-18T17:58:00.000-04:00

THE BCS: A CLOSER LOOK
Here is the BCS top 12, with the school, its spot in the coaches' poll, its spot in the Harris poll and its BCS computer average. A bonus: We've included NCAA strength of schedule (SOS), which is not part of the BCS formula..
Team	Harris	Coaches	Comp.	SOS
1. Florida	1st	1st	1st	8th
2. Alabama	2nd	2nd	2nd	43rd
3. Texas	3rd	3rd	6th	T-33rd
4. Boise State	5th	5th	5th	T-59th
5. Cincinnati	6th	6th	4th	T-67th
6. Iowa	7th	8th	3rd	9th
7. USC	4th	4th	11th	T-67th
8. TCU	8th	7th	8th	39th
9. LSU	9th	10th	7th	38th
10. Miami	10th	9th	13th	T-22nd
11. Oregon	12th	14th	9th	T-18th
12. Ga. Tech	13th	13th	10th	T-29th

Help the Duggars!

2009-10-13T11:33:00.002-04:00

Michelle and the rest of the Duggar's want everyone's help!!!They want us to help them pick out a name for Baby 19!!! So go here and comment what name you think that the Duggar's should name Baby 19!!! The baby is due in March, and if you can't tell I am very excited!

Also, Josh and Anna Duggar had their little baby, the first Grand-Duggar, Mackynzie Renee, on Friday!!!

So go pick out a name for Baby Duggar, you never know it might get picked!!!

For more information about the Duggar's click here!

This is so funny

2009-10-09T16:05:00.001-04:00

FAME!!!

2009-10-09T11:33:00.001-04:00

You must go see the movie Fame!!! It is so good, I am going to go and see it tonight for the second time:)

This guy is great...

2009-10-06T20:37:00.002-04:00

If you haven't heard of Ben Windle, Google him or follow the link. This guy is pretty smart, and he is a great orator. Windle lives in Australia, and I found him through a friend of mine, and I am sure glad I did. Really you should go listen to Ben Windle right now.

You go Nancy Grace!!!!

2009-10-06T14:12:00.001-04:00

Cool Article

2009-10-05T15:27:00.001-04:00

Homeless Man Leaves Behind Surprise: $4 Million

July 27, 2009

Every day on NPR, listeners hear funding credits — or, in other words, very short, simple commercials.

A few weeks ago, a new one made it to air: "Support for NPR comes from the estate of Richard Leroy Walters, whose life was enriched by NPR, and whose bequest seeks to encourage others to discover public radio."

NPR's Robert Siegel wondered who Walters was. So Siegel Googled him.

An article in the online newsletter of a Catholic mission in Phoenix revealed that Walters died two years ago at the age of 76. He left an estate worth about $4 million. Along with the money he left for NPR, Walters also left money for the mission.

But something distinguished Walters from any number of solvent, well-to-do Americans with seven-figure estates: He was homeless.

Walters was a retired engineer from AlliedSignal Corp.; an honors graduate of Purdue with a master's degree; and a Marine. Walters never married, didn't have children and was estranged from his brother. But he wasn't friendless.

Rita Belle, a registered nurse, met Walters at a senior center 13 years ago.

"He always came in with a little backpack on and a cap on," Belle tells Siegel. "And always kind of looked at me, but [was] very reserved. And I'm very outgoing and outspoken. So I said to him, 'Hey, you got a minute can we sit down to visit?' And we'd have coffee there at the senior center."

Belle and Walters became friends. Belle stayed with Walters when he was ill. She became his nurse and ultimately the executor of his estate — as well as one of the beneficiaries — despite fundamental differences between them.

He just gave up all of the material things that we think we have to have. You know, I don't know how we gauge happiness. What's happy for you might not be happy for me. I never heard him complain.

- Rita Belle

"He was an atheist and I'm a very profound practicing Catholic, and I'd never met an atheist," Belle says. "And that just blew my mind that somebody could not believe in the Lord."

Belle volunteers at the mission in Phoenix, which like NPR and several other nonprofits got about $400,000 from Walters.

Belle knew him as a very well-informed man who could fix her air conditioning — someone she just assumed had a place to live. Then he told her that he had no home. She heard that he slept on the grounds of the senior center. He told her he ate at the hospital and used a telephone there or at the center.

"And I'm sure that's when he was making his trades and so on," Belle says. "He was involved in investing; we talked investments a lot." Belle says Walters even did his own income taxes.

When Walters retired, he evidently retired from the world of material comforts. He didn't have a car.

"He just gave up all of the material things that we think we have to have," Belle says. "You know, I don't know how we gauge happiness. What's happy for you might not be happy for me. I never heard him complain."

Evidently, among his few possessions was a radio. Hence those announcements listeners hear now and again on NPR stations.

Did You Know?

2009-09-30T15:36:00.001-04:00

Gibbs is the man!

2009-09-23T12:00:00.001-04:00

Social Media Revolution

2009-09-22T11:14:00.001-04:00

Move On...

2009-09-18T13:08:00.002-04:00

This post is something that I am going to try to do every couple weeks. This is about stuff that we still use today that if we stopped using or changed we would save a lot of money. So here we go:

Home Phones, really if every person would just get a cell phone how much money would you save without a home phone. Or maybe instead of a phone use this.
Internet with wires, I mean really get wireless, it's so much easier. Also hey government how about internet outdoors?
Telephone Lines well if we wouldn't have home phones we wouldn't need them, and would town's look so much nicer without all of the lines everywhere?
Newspapers. Okay people who still order the paper stop. Go on the computer google your paper's name, they have a website, read it there. Newpapers are dying a painful death, it would save a lot of money if we just euthanized them. Wonder if Kevorkian would do the honors?
Gas Guzzlers, your telling me that these car companies can build cars that go 800 miles a hour but they can't make a car that gets 40 miles to the gallon. Come car companies, I expect better.
CD's Honestly who really buys CD's anymore? I haven't bought a CD in years! Okay Record Companies give it up just sell the music online or on iTunes, and stop wasting money! By the way the only CD I might ever buy is The Beatles, just because Paul McCartney won't put the music on iTunes.)

MIT always has the genuises

2009-09-15T17:25:00.002-04:00

How smart are these two kids?

The $150 Space Camera: MIT Students Beat NASA On Beer-Money Budget

The $150 Space Camera.

Bespoke is old hat. Off-the-shelf is in. Even Google runs the world’s biggest and scariest server farms on computers home-made from commodity parts. DIY is cheaper and often better, as Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh found out when they decided to send a camera into space.

The two students (from MIT, of course) put together a low-budget rig to fly a camera high enough to photograph the curvature of the Earth. Instead of rockets, boosters and expensive control systems, they filled a weather balloon with helium and hung a styrofoam beer cooler underneath to carry a cheap Canon A470 compact camera. Instant hand warmers kept things from freezing up and made sure the batteries stayed warm enough to work.

Of course, all this would be pointless if the guys couldn’t find the rig when it landed, so they dropped a prepaid GPS-equipped cellphone inside the box for tracking. Total cost, including duct tape? $148.

Launch

Two weeks ago, on September 2nd 2009, at the leisurely post-breakfast hour of 11:45AM, the balloon was launched from Sturbridge MA. Lee and Yeh took a road trip in order to stop prevailing winds from taking the balloon out onto the Atlantic, and checked in on the University of Wisconsin’s balloon trajectory website to estimate the landing site.

Because of spotty cellphone coverage in west Massachusetts, it was important to keep the rig in the center of the state so it could be found upon landing. Light winds meant the guys got lucky and, although the cellphone’s external antenna was buried upon landing, the fix they got as the balloon was coming down was close enough.

The Photographs

The balloon and camera made it up high enough to see the black sky curling around our blue planet. The Canon was hacked with the CHDK (Canon Hacker’s Development Kit) open-source firmware, which adds many features to Canon’s cameras. The intervalometer (interval timer) was set to shoot a picture every five seconds, and the 8GB memory card was enough to hold pictures for the five-hour duration of the flight.

The picture you see above was shot from around 93,000 feet, just shy of 18 miles high. To give you an idea of how high that is, when the balloon burst, the beer-cooler took forty minutes to come back to Earth.

What is most astonishing about this launch, named Project Icarus, is that anyone could do it. The budget is so small as to be almost non-existent (the guys slept in their car the night before the launch to save money), so that even if everything went wrong, a second, third or fourth attempt would be easy. All it took was a grand idea and an afternoon poking around the hardware store.

The project website has few details on how the balloon was put together — but the students say they will be selling step-by-step instructions for $150 soon. That means you will soon be able to launch your own balloon for just $300 — $150 for the instructions and $150 for the parts.

Have I been busy

2009-09-11T13:28:00.003-04:00

Well, the past two weeks have really just flown by! It feels like I have barely had time to breath! Sorry for not posting anything, but I have just not had time. I thought I would have an update post about what I think are some of the coolest things about Fall. So here we go!

Football, I love the fall, if for nothing else but Football, high school, college, pro, I love them all!
The weather, I mean how can you not LOVE the weather!
Beef O Brady's Monday night trivia, yes, I know my team stinks, but it is so much fun!
The TV, yes I know it sounds weird, but the best shows are on in the fall, like: NCIS, Law & Order, Glee, Community, and many more:)
The food, I mean what is better than pot roast, chili, and winter desserts?
Thursday night dinner, every Thursday, going out with friends to watch football, yeah it's a good time.
Saturday tailgating, and football. Eating more great food, and watching football in the stands, what could be better?
Holidays are right around the corner! Start breaking out your Bing Crosby and Burt Ives!
Vacation is only two months away! Come on Thanksgiving! And Day After Shopping!
Wearing jeans & sweatshirts again, I could live in jeans & sweatshirts so woo hoo!

So what did you think of Obama's speech?

2009-09-08T09:27:00.001-04:00

So what did you think?

Remarks of President Barack Obama
Back to School Event

Arlington, Virginia
September 8, 2009

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

One of my favorite shows is getting bigger!

2009-09-01T13:27:00.003-04:00

If you did not know I LOVE the Duggar Family! I watch them every Tuesday night on TLC, and I have watched them from the very beginning. And I have always, since then loved them. Well they are preggers again with baby 19! Now my dad and I have been betting if they were going to have another one, and I thought that they would, and we are soooooo excited!!! If you have never watched the Duggars you should, they beat out Jon and Kate anyday everyday! If you can't tell I don't like Jon and Kate:) Well I am super excited for the Duggars, and you should be too! So watch the Duggars tonight on TLC!!!

Great Quote

2009-08-27T15:00:00.001-04:00

Don’t make something unless it is both necessary and useful; but if it is both necessary and useful, don’t hesitate to make it beautiful.

I will be glued to my TV

2009-08-21T19:19:00.003-04:00

Yes, I will be in front of my TV for the next 2 weeks every night. I will be watching Little League Baseball on ESPN! I love the Little League World Series, it is so much fun!!! You should watch it too, it's awesome!!!

Amazing Business Strategy

2009-08-20T13:29:00.003-04:00

I just read these two quotes in a book last night, and it just completely wowed me: "Extract as little value as possible so they can grow as big as possible." and "...thinks in distributed ways. It goes to the people." These quotes are both by Jeff Jarvis.
Think over those quotes for your life today, they make a ton of sense.

Give something Valuable for Free

2009-08-14T14:46:00.003-04:00

Have you ever visited a church or school, that says that they will give you a great free gift just for visiting them? I know that I have heard that line so many times, and anytime I hear it, I always think "oh great I get another pen to add to my collection or some great cheap hard candy to crack a tooth on" And it's not that I don't appreciate the gesture, but really why would anyone want to come back to your function, when you are giving them the same thing that another school or another church is handing out right down the street from you, what makes you so different? And I know that the basis for someone to attend a church or school should not be on what kind of free gift you give them for visiting, but it is. It isn't the complete reason, but it sure helps.
Remember when your child was little, and you went to the bank? The teller at the window would always give you a candy of some sorts to give to your little rug-rat. And every other time what did the kid expect, and what did you pray that the teller would give you? A piece of candy. You would want it to shut your kid up from crying and complaining, and your child wanted it because he expected it but also because it was a treat.
The church and school needs to be like that. They need to stop handing out pens and caramel chews and start surprising you and your family when you walk in the door.

This part is especially for churches: surprise your audience, that is a way to keep their attention. Don't just surprise people when they walk in the door, but make their experience memorable, then they will come again. Remember people have choices you aren't the only church in town, so compete for your audience, put your best foot forward, and keep pushing the envelope. Don't just give away the gospel in an unmemorable way, it and your audience deserves better then that.
So let me tell you what a church did that made a memorable impression on me:
Last week I was out of town so I visited a church with my family. We went to the church and it was a great message, and everyone was very friendly, we had a really nice time. At the end of the service the pastor got up and said if there were any first time guests put your name and address of the piece of paper and put it in the offering plate, so we did. When my family and I got home we each received a letter from the Pastor and the church, which you expect from most churches these days. But what was really surprising was the next day we each got a package from the church, yes I said package, and what were in these packages but t-shirts, free t-shirts! Now we were surprised.
You see what I am saying about leaving an impression, that church left an impression, in a pretty non-expensive way, but it was a way that was different then everybody else. To be memorable you don't have to spend a lot of money just be creative and heartfelt, and it touches a lot of people.

I love books

2009-08-10T19:53:00.003-04:00

Well if you didn't already know, I love books! I love all kinds of books, except I am not really into fiction, but I'll still read it. Right now I am reading two books, that are both really good. And I will give you a short overview of them once I get them done. One of my favorite books is Outliers by: Malcolm Gladwell, but I love about any and every business or sociology book. So what is your favorite book? Or if you can't pick one, what is the most recent book that you have read? Let me know!

Do Hard Things.

2009-08-10T12:02:00.002-04:00

I began reading this book yesterday, and I just couldn't put it down, so I finished it yesterday too:) The book is titled Do Hard Things and it's authors are teenage twins: Alex and Brett Harris. I would recommend every teenager, parent, or anyone who is around teens, like teachers, coaches, mentors, to read this book. It is in no way a how to book, so don't expect it. This book is an amazing look at how teens want to live, and how, I am sure most adults, would love for their teens to live. This book will make a difference in your life, and it will give you a completely new way to view teenagers. So go read this book, it's a wonderful opportunity to challenge the way you think. If you would like more information about this book click here.

My Summer

2009-08-09T17:51:00.003-04:00

My Summer has been the most amazing time! I have gotten to do so many things and go so many places. I will describe my Summer in more detail in future posts but here is a preview of what I did this weekend:

I love E! News

2009-07-31T22:47:00.003-04:00

Listen to this, and enjoy:

What if Jon & Kate were faking everything???

INFphoto.com

We've got a theory: Anything that seems too bad to be true probably is.

Jon and Kate Gosselin are Exhibits A-Z. The cheesy alleged affairs. The cheesy midlife-crisis clichés. The cheesy Fantasy Island-style cameos.

You think this stuff just happens? We don't. And just in time for Monday's return of Jon & Kate Plus 8, we blow the lid off the evil-genius TV plot that has produced the world's greatest reality drama—onscreen and off.

The evidence (by which we mean, stuff we strongly suspect):

• Circa 2006: Discovery Networks, a cable giant arguably then best known for a series about a guy learning to scrape up roadkill, trains its cameras on a young, innocent Pennsylvania couple who recently welcomed sextuplets to a family that already included twins. A gut feeling tells us that executives notice right away that the Gosselin brood is far more fetching than scraped-up roadkill.

• May 2006: The Gosselin documentary special, Surviving Sextuplets and Twins, debuts. A gut feeling tells us that executives notice how Kate could use a tummy tuck, and how Jon could use a blonde. (The giveaway for Jon? His on-camera quote, delivered as he sits beside the then-brunette Kate: "I only like blondes.") Another gut feeling tells us that the executives and the Gosselins start to talk about how they could help each other out.

• January 2007: A sequel, Sextuplets and Twins: One Year Later, premieres. Kate gets her tummy tuck. Jon doesn't get his blonde. A gut feeling tells us negotiations are ongoing.

• April 2007: Jon & Kate Plus 8 premieres on Discovery's TLC. The cable giant gets its new signature series; Jon gets his blonde: a dyed Kate. A gut feeling tells us everybody's happy.

• Circa 2008: The Gosselins move into a new house. A gut feeling tells us the Gosselins have never seen the real-estate tax on a five-bedroom, $1.3 million mansion.

• March 2009: Real-estate tax bills are mailed out in the Gosselins' Berks County, Pa. A gut feeling tells us negotiations between the Gosselins and the TV executives are reopened. A new (moneymaking) storyline is needed—pronto!

• April 2009: Jon is "caught with another woman" (a blonde—natch) by Us Weekly.

• May 25, 2009: With the Gosselins dominating the tabloids, the fifth-season premiere of Jon & Kate Plus 8 debuts to series-record ratings. A gut feeling tells us that executives notice they're onto something.

• June 22, 2009: By day, the Gosselins file for divorce; by night, Jon & Kate Plus 8 hits another new ratings high. A gut feeling tells us that executives notice they're really onto something. Central casting is called. Guest stars needed—pronto!

• Spring-summer 2009: A gut feeling tells us Deanna Hummel is hired as the Other Woman No. 1 because of her brother's willingness to spout sound bites fit for Days of Our Lives; Hailey Glassman is brought on as the Other Woman No. 2 because of her appeal to potbellied NASCAR dads who fancy themselves studs; Steve Neild is cast as the Other Man No. 1 because of his appeal to soccer moms who can't resist a Harlequin romance hero ("Oh my, he's a bodyguard!"); designer Christian Audigier is inserted into the storyline in order to grow the family-friendly brand among Ed Hardy dudes; his yacht is brought on board to appeal to easily impressed young women, like Glassman; former Star reporter Kate Major is enlisted as the Other Woman No. 3 to complete the harem (and give the tabs even easier access to the story).

• July 2009: Jon watches his and old Kate's own E! True Hollywood Story special (while in the company of new Kate) at Michael Lohan's Hamptons pad. Our gut tells us Jon went rogue on this one. Even for this show, it's too bizarre a twist.

• Aug. 3, 2009: Bloodied but certainly unbowed, Jon & Kate Plus 8 returns with new episodes. Our gut tells us the TV executives and the Gosselins think they've put one over on us.

Then again…:

Jon isn't that good an actor. Kate isn't that good an actress. They really are ordinary people who got in over their heads and, oh by the way, happen to be the parents to eight dragged-along-for-the-ride kids.

You gotta admit, our conspiracy theory is way less depressing.

I'm back but heading out...

2009-07-31T18:51:00.003-04:00

Well I just got back from Charleston today, and I am heading to Charlotte Sunday, I told you it would be a busy Summer! I had a great time in Charleston, I went to the Citadel and got a ton of pictures, and I had a great lunch:) I will try to post some pictures on my other blog soon, but I promise once I stop traveling later in August, I'll post all kinds of pictures, so just be patient! I'll try to post some while I'm in Charlotte but I can't make any promises! Also I'll being seeing Coldplay in concert, so expect a full review when I get back.

Reading Time

2009-07-25T10:10:00.004-04:00

I have been reading a great book by Mark Penn, it's called Micro Trends, and it is fascinating! If you have read any of Malcolm Gladwell's stuff, this book is right up your alley. It is an interesting, edge of your seat book about the latest upcoming trends to hit America.
I picked up the book in an airport in California, for some heavy reading on the plane's that I would be on for the day, and I am so glad I did. Now it's a huge book, like 400 pages, but every page is captivating, and every chapter is filled with knowledge and amazing observations. So go read Micro Trends, you will love it.

Toally Awesome!

2009-07-24T13:16:00.001-04:00

Style is everything.

2009-07-23T16:43:00.002-04:00

Okay substance is important, but first impressions are crucial. Style sells, quality is important for repeat business, style should be too.
I am going to prove this point with two companies, now both have good quality, but one stands out for it's fresh, clean, cutting-edge style. Apple and Microsoft. Now what one do you think I was talking about when I said that one company stands for fresh, clean, cutting-edge style?

Microsoft, ever since old Mr. Gates retired and went all Philanthropist on us, has went down hill, not only in marketing, but actual product quality. You know what I'm talking about Vista users or for you select few, Expression Web 2 users, can you believe they had a EW1! Before old Gates retired can you imagine Microsoft letting messes like those reach the public consumer? Now, yes, Microsoft has made some good decisions: Microsoft Office 2007, although it was hard to get used to, it is very nice and you can really use it. And Bing could be a smart move, I never use it, but it is gaining some popularity. And lets not be idiotic here Microsoft is a multi-billion dollar company and is still more richer and popular then Apple or any other computer software or hardware company, so I am trying to be-little their magnitude of massiveness. But I am going to say that if they don't shape up, one of these days, maybe not soon, but in the future, Microsoft can fall as the King of computing, to number 2.

Now let's talk about Apple. Apple a company that twenty years ago was pretty popular, then fell off of the face of the Earth, well now Apple has re-emerged, and it's sleek and smart. Apple may not be mac-daddy of the computers but it sure is in the MP3 realm. Apple is gaining ground in the computer kingdom, not only because of it's fresh, young style, but because of it's quality. Apple's are high quality, they have high quality software on them, and they almost never crash. Apple's are extremely expensive though, fully loaded with software, or even down to the bare minimum. Apple's are pricey,. but many people say that they are worth the money. And that is another thing going for Apple, people with PC's don't like PC's, people with Apple's love Apple's. I have never met someone who owns an Apple, who would marry it if it was legal. Now Apple does not have the storage space for the money that a PC does, as well.

So if style is everything why doesn't Microsoft care? Why don't they care that they are looked on as the old fashioned unstylish system, and why is it that while Apple has the style and substance, they are still number 2 in the computer kingdom? (Now they aren't number 2 in popularity, I might remind you.)
Microsoft cares that they are unstylish, but they also realize that they are the cheaper brand, they don't have to be as stylish, because they have the upper hand right now, but they should try to pull it together, because while Microsoft is lagging behind, Apple is jumping leaps. And all Apple has to do is make a "cheap" computer, the same price as Microsoft, but better quality, and more stylish.
FYI I have a PC, fully loaded with Microsoft, but if Apple makes a computer that isn't too pricey and I can get everything I want on it, you better believe that I am going to become stylish, with my i-Pod in one hand and my Macbook in the other, I mean I am so not getting a Zune:)

Coming Soon...Pictures

2009-07-14T22:23:00.002-04:00

I have tons of pictures to post, and I promise I will start posting them soon. I have just not had time recently! I just have returned from Ohio, so bear with me. For now here is a picture of Hollywood:

Oh, where I've been...

2009-07-07T18:58:00.003-04:00

I was there...I was at the Staples Center 5 days ago, I breathed the smog polluted air the stars breathed, I rode bumping, soaring fast roads the stars rode. I was there, right where Michael Jackson's Memorial service was held today, I was there 5 days ago.
I watched part of the memorial today, I'll finish watching after I watch the Duggar's tonight, yes I have a varying taste in television entertainment. I must say that MJ's memorial was cool, I never thought I would say that about a memorial, but it seriously was cool. Whether you like the guy or hate the guy, he had a really cool memorial service. I truly have been there, no I was not there today, but I was there. I was there where the stars, lights, cameras, people, where they all were. And it is a really, really cool feeling. So it really doesn't matter if you watched the memorial today or not, I just wanted to let you know that I was right there, I have pictures of it too.
My trip to LA was awesome, the coolest experience I have ever had, it was surprising and astounding, surreal and an experience of a lifetime. No I didn't meet any stars, (although I could have sworn I saw LL Cool J in a Bentley passing us on the 101) I felt over the moon. I saw the walk of fame, the Hollywood Sign, Venice Beach, Santa Monica Pier, LA, Beverly Hills, drove on Rodeo Drive, went to Disneyland, went to Universal, Fox, CBS and NBC studios, ate at the Farmers Market, practically lived on Hollywood Blvd. for 2 days, and had the TIME of my LIFE! It was the best, it was expensive, crazy, and heart attack stroke wild, but it was insanely fun and just cool. I loved it. And I'll have pictures soon

Tiger Woods funny?

2009-07-06T17:59:00.000-04:00