Pic of the Day – Kyra’s Tooth

Kyra lost a tooth today. She’s excited and waiting for the Tooth Fairy to come.

Weekend Normalization

Even though the weekend has passed and we are in the middle of the week, I am still writing this..

Saturday and Sunday were both beautiful days.  The weather was exceptionally warm and welcoming for both days. On Saturday, we took the kids to Vasona Park.  At the park, the kids went into the creek and did some searching and playing.  They found different shaped rocks and even found some fish eggs (which we relocated so the public cannot disturb them).  We went into a little cove that Annette knew about and the kids went digging for fresh water shells and wade out into the deeper end.

At one point, a family of ducks & baby ducklings swam through briefly chirping along. I tried to teach the kids (and Annette) how to skip a rock across water.  They did not get the concept, however I didn’t get it either until much later in my life.

On Sunday, we were invited to a BBQ that my Sister was planning.  Upon arriving, everyone set off to do activities that involved being outside.  Annette and I took the dog for an extended walk behind the creek there more towards the lake in San Martin.  The kids set off to do their own thing and we mainly spent the day relaxing.

Close to the evening, we started cooking dinner / BBQ’ing.  We cooked a tri-tip, some salmon and various other vegetables including corn and asparagus.

We did feast upon this wonderous meal and enjoyed the evening with family. The weather made it great to spend the time outside with the kids and everyone else.

On a side note though, the great day ended up killing my allergies Monday morning.  My nose did a full assault on me the next day, so be sure to take allergy medicine if you enjoy a good weekend like I did.

Apple Does Not Get Social Media

Apple has brought us platforms that have expanded social media. It was through products innovated by apple, such as the iPhone and iPad, that allowed developers to write and produce applications that become the game changer in the social media sphere. Social media is the new way of life. Connection though different platforms is the way business must run to survive. Although apple has given us ‘this’ platform, Apple as a company does not get social media. It is because of this that apple will always have shortcomings. Here is why.

Closed Platform / Limited Communication

Apple has had a history of being a closed platform. Communication outside of the apple campus has always been ‘hush hush’. It’s because of this that they have missed the boat on many opportunities to improve their products. An example would be cut and paste in the iPhone. It took them 2 OS versions to finally include cut and paste. Twitter, blogs, all sources across the web were in an outcry when cut and paste was not implimented during the first and second major OS versions. Only after the third did apple finally listen to their fan base and did something about it. What does it take for Steve Jobs to actually listen to his fan base?

Twitter/Facebook Presence

There is none. I see Microsoft and Major Banks like Bank of America on Twitter all the time listening to their customer base. People like @comcastcares are out there listening to people and taking care of their issues. So far, I don’t see an @apple out there listening to what people have to say or managing any concerns. This concerns me because it shows that Apple has turned their backs on what people think, and it’s either Steve’s way of the Highway.

It seems to me that Steve Jobs is out there overseeing the world in his tower, surrounded with lightning and laughing menacingly at the people below. Once an Apple product has been purchased, it’s up to the people themselves to determine if things are appreciative or not. People who run Microsoft Zune is out there watching what people have to say and are up to the minute in their activities.

We need more companies out there to give products a personal touch. It’s only when things get personal, even through Twitter, that people express appreciation and allow companies to shine.

[originally posted on defectivekit.com]

From Vegetarian to Meat Eater

This vegetarian adventure has ended. I spent a good 47-some odd days avoiding meat all together. I keep looking for a moral of this story, but I can’t say I have one. I do have a few things i have learned from this adventure that I will share.

1) When you are not eating meat, you don’t get the midday comas. You know, the comas where in the middle of the afternoon you get really tired. This may be from the fact that you body doesn’t work hard to process meat. Whatever the case is, you don’t get them.

2) It’s important to take your vitamins. When you are not eating meat, you have to ensure you take them. It’s probably the most important thing I can suggest if anyone ever thinks of becoming a vegetarian.  Meat contains vitamins and minerals you don’t usually find in plants.  When I did not take vitamins the first week, I felt like crap. It was only after taking vitamins did I realize what my body was missing. Vitamins are the most important suggestion I can give.

3) When you eat a vegetarian diet, the amount of food you eat tends to change. To me, it seemed that when I switched to a vegetarian diet, I ate a little more than normal. It seemed that my body tried to compensate for the missing meat and/or protein. I’m not surprised this happened, but it was unexpected.

4) Did I mention taking your vitamins?

5) I had to pay attention to my iron intake. This may fall in the vitamin category but this is important. Meat has lots or iron. When you stop eating meat, you need to find a substitute. A great resource to substitute iron is spinach. I was eating a lot of raw spinach salads during this time. You can really tell when your body is missing iron, especially when you forget to take your vitamins or you haven’t eaten spinach in a while.

As of this writing, it is my second day eating meat again. I have noticed a few things since switching back…

1) When I consumed meat for the first time, my body got tired a few hours after eating it. It was expected, however my concentration was really affected. I found I had a hard time thinking and concentrating on the events around me. I could not focus too much on one thing, but I was still able to function quite well. This occurred only the first day back from eating meat.  The days after were not impacted as bad as the first day.

2) My body had a feeling of being recharged. It’s similar to the feeling I had when I took a vitamins the first week of being a vegetarian, only it felt more complete (I can’t think of a better way to say it). It’s like my body was thirsty and I had a big glass of water.

3) I found myself getting hungry earlier in the day than expected. I don’t know what this could be caused from.  All I know is I find myself getting hungry earlier in the day than I expect. I combat this with big cups of water and little snacks like almonds, yogurt, and salads (if they’re available).

4) The midday comas have returned, however they are stronger than I remember.  I get really exhausted during the day to the point where it almost becomes intrusive.  This reason alone almost makes me want to go back to being a vegetarian, however my love of meat is too strong. I am sure coffee can combat this, but I need my body to return to it’s equilibrium.

There are many other things I am sure I haven’t experienced yet since switching back.  In my opinion, it’s too early to tell. When I returned to eating meat, I found myself very conscious of what I am eating.  I know what is going inside my body, and when I eat meat now, I am very aware of it.  More aware than I was before this adventure started. When I eat bacon in the morning, it’s seems like a big deal to me.  It’s not as out of the ordinary as previously.  I want to keep this aspect, because it keeps me conscious of what I am eating.

This experience has made me appreciate vegetarians on a new level. I have been aware of what they consume to get the health benefits, however I have never ‘walked the walk’ until now.  This has definitely been a good experience.  I can’t say I won’t do it again, but I am more aware of what I eat.  In the future, I can say I will endeavor to make more healthy decisions.

Birthdays

This past weekend was Anika’s Birthday party.  It was actually the week prior but we celebrated it on the 27th of March (My Dad’s actual Birthday).

The night of her birthday, we all went and celebrated it as a family.  It’s pretty rare that you can get all of us together for any occasion.  During the occasion, we celebrated Anika’s, my Dad’s and Annette’s Birthday. All of them are within a week.

The weekend of her birthday, we got together a bunch of kids that Anika is friends wtih.  It was the first year that she did not want a jumpie.  Instead, we organized games and prizes for all the kids.  We even had some old friends come out and enjoy the party (and chili). I remember when I used to have the kid style birthday party.  I think it’s amazing and humbling to be planning my daughter’s.

She had a great birthday.  I am glad we were able to produce something that she will be able to remember.  It’s mostly thanks to my Mom and Sister.  They did a huge chunk of the planning.  They always ensure that the kids have great birthdays (even if the kids don’t know they do).

As for my Dad, his birthday was on that Saturday, but we focused on Anika’s party instead.  I think he had a good birthday none-the-less.  At the end of the day, we all got together and cleaned up the party so he had very little to do. We also celebrated during the dinner so he had his focus.

Annette had her birthday too.  We also went out to eat as a family the night of.  We went to ‘Fresh Choice’ per her request and roamed around ‘TJ Maxx’ afterward.  The kids had a great time hanging out with us.  We ended up finding a copy of ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ for $5.  Anika’s review of it was summed up in a sentence. “It was really ackward because the plant started eating people and I did not expect that at all”. Overall I think Anika or Kyra really cared about the movie.

So that’s about it really for the Birthdays.

Pic of the Day

This is a picture of Anika swinging on the swings this weekend.  The weekend weather was quite nice, however it was the weather where it was sunny and windy at the same time.  It didn’t bother Anika obviously.  She found time to swing and listen to her music too.

Why I Won’t be Purchasing an iPad

Apple has really taken the march into innovative gadgets that people seem to flock their hard earned cash into.  Maybe it’s my conservative nature pounded into me by my Dad.  Maybe it’s my tilt towards non-Apple products and saving on the “Apple Tax”.  Whatever the case may be,  I am not purchasing an iPad let along pre-ordering anything from Apple. Even with an estimated 90,000 preorders the first day, I don’t think the iPad is all that, let alone any sort of sliced bread. Here are my reasons…

1) There is nothing innovative with the iPad.

To broaden in this statement, let me just say that the iPad is an oversized iPod touch.  Yep.  That’s it.  Even at it’s starting price of $499, why would I want to purchase this thing that doesn’t even handle any flash based web applications or multitasking?  The iPad does not bring anything new to the table.  If anything, it has kept the important things off.  If anything, it’s an item with more surface area.  I don’t need bigger things in my life to deal with.

2) It helps me with absolutely nothing in my life

My iPhone right now does the following…
a) Point and Shoot camera
b) Video Recorder / Live Streaming Recorder
c) Sync’s my email for both work and home
d) Address / Phone book
e) Games for off time
f) Organizes my calendar (in the offshoot that I actually have something to keep track of).
g) Alarm Clock

The list, as you can see, just goes on and on. the iPad replaces NOTHING.  It’s actually a step backward if you think about it.  With all the innovation Apple has demonstrated, this device brings nothing new.  My iPhone does all (and MORE) than the iPad can do.

This is a simple list of reasons I will not be purchasing an iPad.  It still baffles me why people are rushing out to pre-order this device that doesn’t bring anything new to the table and is just as capable of doing what the iPhone does. Until a new device comes around (or the Windows 7 Mobile gets into my hot little hands), I will stick to my iPad Nano.

Minimalist

I saw a blog post from a friend of mine. He was posting his Macbook Air on eBay since he received a new laptop from his new job.  In his blog post, he talks about how he moved to his new home in the Twin Peaks area outside of San Francisco. He carried everything over in 6 boxes saying…

“The only thing left to move is stuff in my apartment over the weekend like computers, clothes, a bicycle and food. I live a very minimal lifestyle so everything fits in 6 boxes. My life philosophy is to only own things that you use at least once a week so I never go overboard and only buy what I need.”

That got me thinking…

I have a lot of stuff.  I am a steadfast pack rat of various things.  I have old clothes, CDs, Books, you name it!  I have had data CDs dating back to 1995-present. There’s a lot of stuff and data that I haven’t looked at for years. I figured it was time to clean the stuff out.  I suppose you could call it “spring cleaning”.

Early on during this week, I started thinning my clothes out.  I removed the shirts that I don’t wear anymore.  I removed the collared shirts, the long sleeved shirts and thinned out the ones I didn’t like either.  I also cleaned out the sweatshirts that I don’t wear anymore.  Effectively I removed about 1/3 of my clothes that I don’t wear anymore.  I also threw out old white t-shirts that were tattered and worn out.  I also threw out socks that I don’t wear or never wear anymore.  I kept a few colored socks with lookout on future use (never know when you need to go to a wedding).

Yesterday, I cleaned out my CD collection.  I am not complete with it.  I effectively removed a whole drawer full of CDs and threw them away.  I checked a few of them and copied off the data of anything I wanted to keep to the hard drive of my computer.  I will sort / delete as necessary. Some of the videos and audio files I have are priceless and I opted to save them as necessary.  I also threw away old hard drives I don’t need anymore.  They were functional, however I have a flash drive that are bigger than some of the drives.  Most of the drives were defunct 13GB-40GB drives that serve no purpose.  After clearing the drawers, I consolidated the drawer itself to another and effectively cleared 2 drawers of junk I had.

I will be continuing this process for a couple of weeks.  I will be throwing out junk that I don’t need in hopes to at least liberate myself from unnecessary things.  I don’t wish to accumulate more things.  I am trying to clear away from it and make space for myself to live. I will clearing out more boxes I have in other rooms and diving into storage to get rid of other things I have locked away.

Week Two and More!

I was taking macro shots today when I found this barely noticeable flower.  It was so small, I had to get a macro lens to focus on it, which left the depth of field very shallow.  I did my best to keep it focused within reason.  I also took the image and played a little bit with it in Photoshop.  @NYTrees suggested that I crop the picture a certain way.  I did so to see how it looks.  Needless to say, I have a lot to learn about composition still.  Thank you for the creative suggestion!  I really appreciate it.

This is the second week I have been on my non-meat diet.  After taking various vitamins everyday, I think I have passed the meat-craving stage.  I have been more conscious about things that have meat like it’s second nature.  I am always weary about certain foods and always triple check to ensure they don’t have meat. I can’t say I have felt healthier though.  I half expected myself to feel more energized.  I don’t think I am because it’s not like I am exercising or anything.  I know you get out what you put in.  Working out is something I am definitely not putting in.

Next week is SXSW (South by South West).  I expected to go this year, however there were some snags that prevented me from going.  I had everything planned until late last year when I re-evaluated finances.  I opted out of the trip after having unexpected financial hits and decided to wait and see how things turned out for next year. It’s not like it’s going anywhere.  I still think I am going to miss out this year, but there is always next year.

Lately I have been watching downtime i’ve had at home. Usually I put myself in situations where I am constantly busy with projects of some sort whether they are productive or not.  I’ve toned them down to the following.

• More time with the family (obviously)
• Photography
• Ideas for writing
• Cleaning

More time with the family is obvious.  I can’t say I have anymore more to add to it because it’s been an evolving thing lately.  I’ve been playing more Uno, checkers, and pretend than I think I have ever played in my own childhood (at least it feels that way).  I’ve had evil ‘My Little Ponies’ take over the world while Cinderella comes and saves the day with some penguins. I can’t say I get enough of it, because I do.

I have been working on taking more pictures.  The upcoming daylight savings will make it easier to come home and do some picture work during the week.  With the wintertime, it was difficult because when I got home, it would be dark.  Couldn’t really do much during that time.  Also the end of the school year is coming up.  That will allow the kids to stay up and we will have extra time at the park.  Makes for good practice.

Ideas for writing.  I have a lot of ideas and the urge to write from time to time.  I can never find the motivation to do so. I am using my photography as a window to allow me to write more.  Consider it more of blog writing about my photography.  Excuses mostly.

The time to clean is upon me.  I have an O.C.D. for cleaning every now and then.  I had a bug this weekend to clean and I did. I think I am going to start the deep cleaning part this week.  I am going to throw out basically anything I haven’t seen/used in a while.  I have a lot of clutter sitting around and I think it’s time for a cleansing.  I think it will be a slow process, but in the end, I will end up with less stuff than I care to have.

I was also considering moving the blog for a while.  I opted not to move it at this time because I don’t write enough to warrant a change.  I was looking at Square space to move my blog to.  After evaluating it, I think the only advantage it has was the reliability over this GoDaddy service i’m using.  I know GoDaddy isn’t the best when it comes to hosting WordPress, however it is working for the time being. Square Space requires the minimum of $8 a month.  I don’t need it right now.  Wordpress is just fine (at least until I get really annoyed by the service at a later time).

I think that’s about it for now.  I didn’t expect the post to go this long, but I guess I had more to talk about than normal.

Luck of the Draw

Yes It’s Real.

I will start at the beginning…

On Sunday Morning I was making breakfast. I had finished cooking when I started buttering the toast that had just popped out.  While buttering the toast, I had become careless at the way I was handling it.  Needless to say I dropped it on the floor. When it landed though, something miraculous happened.  It landed butter side up.  WTF!  That isn’t supposed to happen..but it did!  Talk about luck of the draw.

Breakfast was short lived.  I watched the Canada vs USA Hockey game on the Olympics website. After the game had ended, Annette, the kids and I went to the park.  We had a great time playing in the park and swinging on the swings.  Near the end of the visit, we started drawing on the sidewalk with some chalk.  We drew murals of various things and drew a little but of attention with our drawings of castles, Super Mario and Pea Shooters from Plants vs Zombies. Evening came upon us and we started our walk back.  On the way back, we stumbled upon a clover patch in which we started searching.  Sure enough, we found luck!  Four-leaf clovers were there.  Annette and I then started talking about the day so far… first, you have toast landing butter side up and you find a patch with four-leaf clovers.

With a stroke of luck like that, there is only one thing left to do.

Yep, we bought Lotto tickets.

Though my life, I have been lucky with a great many things.  I have won countless radio contests, I have seen Third-Eye Blind backstage because I submitted a paper to a random drawing.  I’ve had a wonderful family that I have lived with and life is good.  I can’t really complain about anything.  Fortune has been with us one way or another.  I have a wonderful artistic Daughter who is drawing better than I ever did at her age.  I have another daughter who is charming and wonderful with her sense of adventure, imagination and wonder. What else do I need?

The rest of the day couldn’t have ended any better.  We ate, watched some TV and the kids got ready for bed.  I do have to say though, even if we don’t win the Lottery, two out of three ain’t bad.