Dorothy

Can I say "I'm not in Kansas anymore"?

#fotb

Hello GA!

Today

Grateful instead of fearful. 

Axios!

Was watching a webisode of Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn and just ate this quote up when I heard it - "At the end of the game, the king and the pawn go back in the same box." Don't know where that comes from and I'm too tired to google it but I simply like what it means or what I think it means...that all of us are the  same no matter where we are in our lives at the moment. 

Axios! 

An Apple A Day...

"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."
- Steve Jobs

Head on? Nope, I Mostly Shy Away...

Too often, we run from challenges. Yet the people we love to read about in the Bible are impressive becausethey battled challenges. Consider Paul. With the confidence of God’s help, he faced troubles head-on—and conquered them. Christ’s promise to Paul and to us is: “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). Like Paul’s example, in the confidence of God’s care we can say to the next challenge: Bring it on! —Dave Branon

More Pictures

The only willing "models" I can coax to try out some simple tricks our point and shoot Canon can do...Bono our boston terrier and a gum's plastic container.

"wha...what's going on?"

"Okay, stop it...you're embarrassing me"

"Just wake me up when you're done."

Cutie Bono

The Photography Bug

A friend who recently bought a Lumix GF1 gave me several 10 to 15 minute “lectures”, a photography 101 of sorts. So there was talk of shutter speed, apertures, contrasts, histograms and then some. I was a bit dizzy afterward but my interest was piqued. He was by no means the first one to eagerly explain in great detail the nuances of digital photography, but somehow, his talk enticed me into reading, experimenting and trying out some simple but quite surprisingly neat camera tricks. I don't have a single artistic bone in my body. You see, I can't draw (I can only do stick men). I can't paint. I can't sculpt. Heck, I can't carry a tune to save my own life. Now, when I took these pictures and applied long shutter modes and some photo effects...man, I couldn't believe how I still sucked with the aid of technology! Even though the pictures weren't works of art, I realized that manipulating the settings of our lowly Canon PowerShot SD450 was so much fun and it felt like I was creating something. This supposed basic point and shoot camera can really do some amazing stuff and it's up to me to discover them. I started thinking what I could do if I had a dSLR, but that's a story for another time. I don't want to be one of those SLR toting Tom, Dick and Harry (more Juan's and Maria's) in the malls and other public places because there's just something wrong with that picture, pardon the pun. I don't have anything against them but if I could get a dime for every Juan who carries an SLR and knows how to use it, I won't even have a buck. Yeah, I know. I'm just green with envy that I don't have one! What I'll try to do though is just try my hand at photography using basic point and shoot cams.

Lashing out

It's sometimes nice to lash out and just not care about the consequences. The feeling of unbridled emotional release ranks somewhere between genuine happiness and your run-of-the-mill pre-dawn euphoria. Problem is, every time I get the urge to just let it all out, I bottle things up...afraid of the repercussions and the guilt which starts to eat me up inside immediately after hurtful and probably unfair words comes out of my mouth. We are taught to hold our tongue, to be civil and not make rash retorts that would escalate already negatively charged situations...so in the meantime, my punching bags (be it running a kilometer more, hitting that tennis ball extra harder, adding more weights to the usual rep or simply writing) will have to bear the brunt of my anger.

Thank you, Sony!

My once cool Vaio VGN-CS290...reduced to being a lowly desktop

Thank you Sony for producing such high quality products that breaks down less than a year from the purchase date. Thanks for all the shutdowns this Vaio does at the most inappropriate of moments...when showing PowerPoint presentations, after composing an important, long, unsaved email ...the usual stuff. Thank you, Sony, for rousing my resourcefulness thereby effectively grounding a laptop onto a desk with a fan pointed at its side to prevent it from overheating and shutting down. Thank you Sony for making me lose face to my friends whom I bragged about your superior laptops. Lastly, thank you, Sony, for your excellent chat, email and phone support for delivering me this message: we can't help you.