Non-profit Happiness

Busy at work, busy at home doing political graphics. I am feeling so good physically and mentally. When I had to do graphics and websites for money for some local businesses, I hated it. I slogged through the work but did enjoy using the money to make earlier payments on the house and not feel so guilty paying for cruises. But the work was never fun.

If you would like to view my graphics, look for a picture folder called "my photoshop".

Woweee

First up, a guy who comes in here and always has problems of one kind or another who reminds me of Cliff Barnes from Dallas had to go out and roll up his car windows because we just got rain from the tropical storm Isaac. I said "Naturally his windows would be down. It's not like we all haven't done that once in a while, it's that this guy does all the things all the time that we all just do once in a while."

Secondly, the Tomato Sandwich of Truth has a purpose. I can share a little truth. :) Last night I was looking at political graphics I have shared with a sort of distribution page. I am getting thousands of shares. Thousands and thousands of comments on those shares and I can, like, scroll down page after page of people who discussed my political thought! MY IDEA! 

 I'm on cloud 9. This is the Tomato Sandwich, either you like them, or you don't. So there. :)

Finally, My Morman Story

I've thought a long time about this and have concluded that I really must tell my story and and inside joke that I have battered like a dead horse for years around here. This is not an anti-Romney story but there is one odd coincidence. Anyway, I'll tell my story here where the truth will always out.

My colleague has the neatest desk imaginable while mine is filled with things I do not know what to do with and can't bear to part with in weak moments. I just put the undecided thing in my desk and say, well, at least I don't have to worry later about having thrown it away. It is small pack rat thing going on. But my colleagues desk is organized like the perfect office worker that she is.

We loan or give out pens, pencils, paperclips, staples, tape, white out, Kleenex, and sometimes scissors. Each of us have a few pair of scissors but my colleague, unbeknown to me had a pair she had purchased herself that were of a much higher quality and price.

Mormons come in to where I work to use the computers. I don't know about the unique rules they have to follow about transportation and media, but they often come in small groups. This had been happening for about 5 years and they were always men. They change out every so often, maybe every 6 months or so. Then we will meet a whole new group  dressed as meticulously as their predecessors.

One period of time was different. Mormon women came to the library. The event which has always haunted happened at the very end of their missionary cycle. A young Mormon woman, whom I had come to know fairly well, came to the desk to ask for a pair of scissors. I could not find my scissors among the mass of hoarded shiny objects in my desk and reached over to my colleagues desk to get a pair of her scissors to loan out.

She never came back with them. In fact none of this group of girls came back, and of course, yes, they were the expensive scissors that my colleague had purchased for herself. I tried to explaint the fact that I trusted the girl with these scissors precisely because she was a Mormon and Mormons were the most polite people we ever have in here.

"Because," I said, "If you can not trust a Mormon, who can you trust?" Well, this was an inside joke for years about me not letting Mormons borrow scissors. It took on many variations. I tend to like repetitive humor which drives other people crazy.

When Romney was running, I made a few scissor jokes but none that really were out of character. I honestly highly respect the LDL Church primarily because of all the creative  television commercials they used to do as a public service. No matter what their selfish intention might have been, they were using television to increase the community and personal character of everyone and improve the values of common Americans. Then....along came Paul Ryan. And there was a political cartoon with Romney running dangerously with a pair of Ryan's budget cutting scissors.

Now that is odd.

Truth About Hallmark

The days continue to meld together seamlessly. I am pretty much happy all of the time. I switch interests so fast as well. One day I'll be into Facebook, the next, not so much. I enjoy pretty much everything that comes along. Last night I fell asleep watching "When Worlds Collide." It varied from my usual installment of Dark Shadows but was just as interesting.

I contemplated the fact that sometimes I like new dramatic shows, sometimes old ones. I feel very much at home now watching almost anything, though reality shows grind a bit. When I say "pretty much anything," I mean anything except commercials. Also I mean shows that are in their original state and not chopped up for commercials and sped up for more commercials.

I taped a bunch of Perry Mason shows on the Hallmark Movie Channel. Now I have always associated Hallmark with good quality, but no more. First they didn't show the full opening credit sequence. It lasted about 5 seconds, chopped down to the title and a few bars of the song. Seriously, 5 seconds. I was ok with that if they just showed the entire episode after this but alas, they showed the beginning of the story chopped down to as little time as possible (though I did not notice any speeding up of the film). And during this short clip they also pasted a graphic at the bottom over a fourth of the screen. When this was gone they had a flashy animated "Hallmark" logo that grabbed one's attention.

In this particular opening clip of Perry Masson, a woman in a short skirt (meaning it showed her calves) was walking away from the viewer. The entire ambiance of the 50's was in that opening scene and in the bottom third of the screen, the part that was just unimportant to Hallmark Movie Channel.

I immediately erased all the Perry Mason shows that I had DVRed.

This is where providers like Netflix will find their best audience, people who are sick and tired of commercials that not only fill the space between the scenes, but now fill the scenes and shorten the scenes and speed up the scenes.

I read an article of how people are abandoning cable and satellite subscriptions in favor of Netflix and alternate sources of programing like Over-the-Air television. This will continue as long as the cable networks veer more towards wall to wall commercials rather than shows the view wants to watch AND is paying a fee for.

Yes!!!!

I think I finally have a way of uploading my old VHS tapes with a minimum of trouble (and expense) and a maximum video quality. It is not perfect, but we are talking about old VHS tapes. I am going with Vimeo for now. I posted something on Youtube and got one really ignorant comment so I will just post here on my blogs and Vimeo. My videos are on the link above marked "TV Blog."  I really didn't care much for a wide audience anyway. It's just a hobby.... and a proper hobby for a librarian. :)

All is well. This was my day off. My wife is working late unfortunately but I have had a nice quiet Monday. I think my off days of Sunday and Monday are going to work out.


Odd noise outside...  the mosquito bug spray pickup truck. :)  Gees, it is nice here with that being the only noise that I have heard all day except for the TREC man coming to take some voltage meter off the side of the house. I'm finished with those guys. They can do with me what they will. I will just continue my parody blog oblivious to their nonsense. :)

The Grand Old Party

"Well, you may take my word, that nine parts in ten of a man's sense or his nonsense, his successes and miscarriages in this world depend upon their motions and activities, and the different tracks and trains you put them into, so that when they are once set a-going, whether right or wrong, 'tis not a half-penny matter,--away they go cluttering like hey-go mad;and treading the same steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it, as plain and as smooth as a garden-walk, which, when they are once used to, the Devil himself sometimes shall not be able to drive them off it."  -- Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

Lost in Space

I was writing this rather longish post on here about a week ago when the electricity went out, and of course, being a geek, I just went on with life without complaint, not wanting to admit that I had not saved. :)

I was thinking that I  might have two options here. One, to just admit everywhere I go that I idiotically don't follow what I know is right, or kinda cover it up and pretend it never happened.

Then I started wondering if that was perhaps something someone who is steeped in any belief might wonder. Why was I speeding? Isn't that against the law? Why didn't I just give that guy a dollar who had his hand out and a homemade sign saying he was homeless?

But my antistress training kicks in somewhere here, and I just do not worry about things. I think that perhaps those who have problems with stress just don't know when to quit thinking about something too deeply. I know that my individual problem is worrying about not supplying what another needs, either in my personal life or in my job with its rather generous and broad job description.

I quit a Psychology major because of the same reason: the unspecified. I felt my courses of study to just be too broad and general to be of use in helping individual people. Later they went on to find drugs, so good for them. :)

Meanwhile I somehow ended up in a job that was really amazingly broad and general...

Oh, and on Saturdays.... it is even more out there in space... if this morning was any indication.

Update: it was a great indication.

In Which I Am Red Faced and Forgotten

This is a picture I took of myself in a mirror during the time when I was sick. It seems hard to believe I was so sick and the doctors had no clue. My stomach was the main problem but my face, as seen here, was very red. This was not sunburn. I don't know if there is a medical explanation for this. I had so many symptoms. Dizzyness (which turned out to be my inner ear) and all forms of odd things were happening. All I know is that most of these symptoms are gone now, my problem mainly being caused by the effects of anxiety on my stomach, acid reflux, IBS, etc. I took a number of photos trying to actually get a profile picture so I was actually trying to find a shot that demphasized the redness.

I just ran across this picture while weeding out some files. It is nice to have this momento of a time when I could find no answers and it seemed that all would just continue downhill. Although I am a fairly huge wimp when it comes to illness, I kind of admire the simple fact that I got through this time. I found the right doctor. And as time went by, I have forgotten what my tender to the touch red face even felt like.

The history of me is full of mysteries. My parents died when I was in my early 20's so it has been so long since I had their imput to my early history as a kid. People die all the time and we lose just a little of the history of us each time this happens.

I have taken on a project to put my videotapes on Youtube, indexed on one of my other blogs. Most of this stuff will be boring to all but a few, I suppose. A few things might be interesting to a lot of people. My picture above may be interesting to only me. But I did tape stuff from CNN backhaul feeds, shows that featured the Beatles, a few soap operas, and things that I thought woud be forgotten. I taped them for a reason, I knew that they might just never be saved by someone else.