Picture from here Some people of commented that I needed to jazz up my blog a little bit. I've resisted the urge for the longest time on making any major theme changes and I've just done tweaking here and there. Creeva.com now has a brand new theme based on "WP-Premium". There are still a few little bugs here and there I need to work out. I hope you all enjoy the new look. Original From: New Look For The Blog
- My Obsession With Capes: ..... Read MoreNo tags for this post. Related posts No related posts. http://tinyurl.com/62qgx4 # - @groovymarlin there isn't, but you can replicate alot of it - which features are you looking for specifically? # - @groovymarlin try plaxo for the contacts and calendar http://www.plaxo.com - maybe tonight I'll write up an article on replicating mobileme 4 googl # - @groovymarlin email me creeva-at-gmail-com so I can get some more specifics and recommend the best way to do it with google # Original From: Twitter Updates for 2008-08-20
- How I Changed The Channel At Grandpa's House: ..... Read MoreNo tags for this post. Related posts No rel.. http://tinyurl.com/6bngxu # - @evilpacket to bad when he woke up he changed the channel back # - I'm at work analyzing FDCC result reports. # - Competitive Training is Not an Excuse for Sending Kids to Public Schools: ..... Read MoreNo tags for this .. http://tinyurl.com/6zaflg # Original From: Twitter Updates for 2008-08-19
When I was young I loved capes. I don't know why. The first cape I can remember (I'm sure there were predecessors) was one I had at my grandmother's house. It was dark blue with red trim. I did the normal pretend I was Batman or Superman routines, but I just like wearing it. I don't know why. Following that for years I had inferior capes, normally the halloween vinyl capes. I hated those capes. They would tear within an hour and most the time you were left with the collar and no cape. Then I finally made it to working at the haunted school house (picture above though the cape is somehow behind my back enoguh you can't see it). I designed a character named "Vlad" who I played off an on for 3 years - note the costume all put together probably ran me 400.00. Since I stopped working at the school house I've only pulled out that cape on a couple occasions. I still have it and it's in the closet. Maybe sometimes I dance around naked only wrapped in my cape.....wouldn't you like to know. Original From: My Obsession With Capes
Picture from here Yesterday I wandered into a forum that contains random population members from my ex-hometown. There was a thread about the teacher strike going on in town. I don't really self promote by going and saying hey read my site here and there around the net, but I did leave a post in the thread stating: I rarely post here - rarely read it also - but today boredom struck - I agree with the parent of this thread - ironically a few weeks ago I actually wrote on my blog on this subject here: http://creeva.com/2008/07/28/teachers-on-strike-in-my-hometown/ That aside - I'll be very happen when teaching becomes a non-union position. Though it was in general to a thread a user named Homersazdoh wrote this: Where do you people get off thinking all the teachers are members of the peace corp.? They have every right to try and get more money just like everyone else. If you're so concerned with the quality of teacher, then you want the best package to draw the best talent. My next response was: The problem is under a contract scenario with unions or large groups of employees you need to pander to the lowest common denominator - this means that better teachers are going to make less because the large number of average or below average teachers will bring them down. But I've recently had siblings go through the vermilion school system (some still going, I graduated in '94) - over time the quality has only gotten worse, the education is not as werll rounded due to block scheduling, more and more restrictions on individuality, and the lack of money being poured into the system that has nothing to do with teacher wages. Oh well, I'll drop out of this conversation, my child is probably going to be home schooled. This is what I got from Scott: Quote: my child is probably going to be home schooled. Awesome. Raise a social misfit that will have a complete inability to function in a competitive work environment. Good job. You people in Vermilion are the cheapest most out of touch jerks ever. You dont want teachers to have good pay and then probably b1tch about the quality level of teaching. What a bunch of fools. What do you expect? WAKE UP VERMILION! WHETHER IT IS ROADS OR EDUCATION, IF YOU WANT A QUALITY PRODUCT, THEN YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR IT. CHEAPSKATES. Now of course I wasn't going to let that by, but I excused myself from the thread with this: Be careful - my wife is home schooled - I'm a college fail out/drop out - yet I'm in an extremely competitive white collar career. My child will always be challenged - the common misconctption that's I've always fought for public schooling is socialization - I never found it competitive nor strived to be more competive - I'm a member of a few social and group organizations. BUt believe what you want - and thank you for derailing the conversation any further - I apologize to everyone for my detour I helped on this thread - I'll drop out. BTW - I don't care either way the teachers strike and union goes -I'm not a vermilion resident - I moved out in 2001 - I won't move back but I have friends and family there - I'm friends wiht a couple teachers there, and I'm a member of vermilion community organizations. Now why did I give you this? I figured I would give you some back story to what inspired this post. Xie and I have had many disagreements about public schools versus home schooling, she wasn't always homeschooled so she has the advantage of first hand experience on both sides of the coin. She is also one of the most intelligent (and quiet) people I know. I had a good experience with public schools, she did not. However with the random inspections, school uniforms, the crushing of individuality, and the loss of personal liberties that kids go through today to "make them better citizens" and to "keep them safe", has made me think twice on sending my child to public schools. My argument in the past was the social aspect and the ability work with and meet people. The competiviness of school was never a selling point for me. Heck the overly competitive people were the ones that made my life hell in school and were the super jocks, the bullies that had something to prove, or the grade whores who thought straight A's would give them the good life when they graduated. I wasn't a straight A student, nor did I try to be. When I was in elementary school I was on the honor role and merit role all the time, so what? My parents then changed schools on me and I then almost failed fifth grade. My wife says I don't respond well to change and I'm better with routine. This is obvious when I went from good grades in a competitive private school moving to a sub par public school. I should have excelled from an academic perspective, but I didn't. I was a fish out of water. The same thing happened two years later when we moved to Vermilion. At one point my father stated the best thing he could at me to alleviate my stress and to ease his concern of his son failing a grade. He said that he would be fine if I was a C student. This was all I needed to alleviate the strain. I high school I only failed two classes, Spanish 1 and Algebra 2. I did maintain a C average throughout school. I was so much a C student that I graduated around 100th in a class of 250ish. This didn't stop me from going anywhere. I managed to get into a good private college (which I then proceeded to fail out, but that was from lack of wanting to go to class). Was I really a C student? Not really. I could have easily made honor roll, I just didn't like homework. I scored in the top 10% in the nation on my ACTs and in the top 1% on my PRE-SATs, I'm sure this helped me to get in college. I just wanted to take the tests to prove I knew what I was talking about, the busy work held no interest for me. The only competition I really participated in school was who could hit the highest trumpet note. Now I have a good job. There are articles kicking around the Internet about why going college is a waste of time and money these days. I don't feel I've lost out on an education. Life is about learning and loving to learn. To build upon what you have learned already and never stop growing. Why would I put my child in the bad aspects of that, pointing out that my child would not be competitive because he may not go to public school is moronic. Also when I saw the college valedictorian delivering pizzas when I was making 35k a year 9 years ago made a big impact on me. I think that traditional schooling leads to more socialization and more social activities then traditional schooling, however saying I need to send my kid to traditional schooling for him to remain competitive? That's moronic. Picture from here Original From: Competitive Training is Not an Excuse for Sending Kids to Public Schools
- Will Social Networks Lead to Political Revenge?: ..... Read MoreNo tags for this post. Related posts No .. http://tinyurl.com/5kdo4k # - @jc2k ping.fm is awesome # - @ghoulishcharm /comfort # Original From: Twitter Updates for 2008-08-18
Picture from here I'm annoyed. I am really and truly annoyed. I don't know what to write about (and I have only a vague notion of what I'm writing about in this post as I go word to word). I have five to six unique sites that I have to write on and go forward with, however I'm not aving much success. I've moved back to taking some of my writing out of the context of anything goes, which is still the point of creeva.com and everything else off site it crossposts/filters down to. Some topics however it's hard to write on topic and come with the subject matter. Journeytogetpaid.com - this was supposed to document how I make money online, well I haven't really been successful at the monetization side yet - so I don't have much to write up. Parentphobia.com - ok I have one story in the works, and I have to get a scan in so Xie can publish something - so part of that is just laziness - but there isn't a bunch of news on the pregnancy. Maybe I'll get on some of that tonight, since there is a doctor's appointment on Wednesday. Spoilershorts.com - this was supposed to be a group review site, I think this site will be going away though when the subscription runs up, I have better venues for this type of information. We shall see though. Unnamed Retro Project - I bought a retro domain and was going to write about my retro passion and different items - I'm a few articles in, but I want sixty days worth of material before I launch, that is taking a buttload of effort that I haven't had the time to put in yet. Unnamed Life Vaulting Project - Some people want to know more about my life caching, or life vaulting as I'm referring to it now. I have a domain registered, I want 30-45 articles first before I open this up to the public. I've already started future writing articles for Creeva.com so for another couple weeks you can be graced with a guaranteed one article per day, it just seems if I'm not on top of it writing gets pushed to the side. It's not that I don't want write, I truly do. It's not that I don't enjoy or fun writing - I do for that also. It's the coming up with the ideas and being able to generate enough content to make some of these other sites worthwhile. I do have help on a couple of these sites - Parent Phobia is also written by Xie and the retro project I'm supposed to be getting help on - I'm hoping for a late september launch on both of my unreleased projects. I'm backlogged on howto articles, but on the plus side in alot of my future writing I've done more personal growing up stories. I'm sorry you've had to read this big post about nothing that essentially has gone nowhere, it really hasn't help me deal with my frustration, but it has allowed ot get something out. Something new and something written. Thank you for patience and continual readership. Original From: Utter Frustration and Writers Block
Picture from here Yesterday I saw and article about Barack Obama being the new number one person on Twitter. If you don't know what Twitter is, I don't know how you managed to find my blog, but beyond that it's a micro blogging site. I've been on twitter for awhile now and I enjoy it, different people get different things out of it. I was thinking about it this morning though, at what point is there going to be repurcussions from social network friends and followers. I'm not talking about a senator tweeting "Out with the mistress for a hot time" and the press finding out about it (though in twenty years I can see that escaping the "Facebook Congress Edition" website. I'm tlaking about Barack getting number one. I know that NASA has multiple twitter accounts, do they follow Barack? If they don't what if Barack is really into Twitter, is he going to remember that NASA didn't follow him and adjust their budget accordingly. What about the Burea of Indian Affairs, are they his Facebook friend? While this is all seems kind of silly now, it won't necessarily be so in the future. In twenty to thirty years the kids and teenagers of today that live and die by their online social networks are going ot be running for office. Will their attention span be as short? Will they be ones that think social networks are social networking in general is so important that they will remember who their friends were before their the election and act accordingly. This is just pondering, but I am curious Original From: Will Social Networks Lead to Political Revenge?
Picture from here Traditionally (since I've been with Xie) we don't normally go to county fairs. Of course there have been brief dabbles, a single visit or so to the Lorain County Fair or visits to the Lane County Fair when we lived in Eugene, but nothing planned ahead of time, more of a whim of the moment. Somehow this year is different. Growing up the county fair was a yearly ritual. We would look forward to it, when we could make it down to Greenville we would go to the Darke County Fair, and visit the other county fairs around us. It was a family event where we would all do things together. I was never allowed to ride fair rides because, "They were death traps". I still managed to enjoy it anyways, I wasn't a fan of the animals or plants, but I enjoyed it somehow anyways. Why did Xie and I never go to the fair? I don't know. It wasn't cool enough. It cost too much for what we got out of it. It wasn't a high priority of ours. All of the above. Whenever we talked about going to the fair it was more of a meh kind of thing. So if the opportunity came up on a whim, we went. It was never ever something we planned out and said you know what we should do next month, we should go to the fair. To be fair (pun not intended) we do most of our stuff on a whim. I think we planned the Crater Lake trip we took 2-3 days before we went (since we needed reservations). Last weekend however we managed to make it to the Richland County Fair (man their website sucks goats). It was the first day, and none of the rides were setup and some other things were still be constructed when we visited. Being the first day and early afternoon we gave them some slack; that and it was only one dollar per person to get in. However, it was a Sunday, you would have thought they would have had everything setup the day before. Must be something in the Ohio water that breeds laziness. We did manage to eat some fair food, look at all of the animals, vegetables, and crafts. I can say I have a different eye when looking at photography now, though it's not the same eye as Xie - other wise we would have to trade through out the today to get anything done. We also managed to get to see another community band (I missed which one), and listened to some one else play some of the songs that I play with my band. Next on the agenda is next Thursday, I'll be playing at the Lorain County Fair with the VCMA. This will be my first trip back to the Lorain County Fair in at least eight years (maybe longer). There is a chance I'll run into my kindergarten teacher, my family always ran into her we went growing up. Yes she should know who I am, she only taught for one year. It should at least be interesting and I have free tickets. On September 16th I'll be playing with the Ashland Community Band at the Ashland County Fair. Now I can say that the last time I visited the Ashland County Fair was when I was in college, so that was back in 1994. It's been 14 years since I've been to this fair, and the first time I'll be playing with this group in this type of venue. It should be interesting to say the least. Band practices start on September 2nd, so we'll have a whopping two rehearsals before the fair. We'll see how it goes. Original From: County Fair, after County Fair, after County Fair
- Do You Know How Your Significant Other Will Vote?: ..... Read More Tags: flickr, Lawn, photos, Picture, Ra.. http://tinyurl.com/5kxb8a # - @gaarbacca you should ship me a crafty wook gift bag ;) # - @ghoulishcharm well your tubes could get clogged if you got all of your packets # - I think it should be criminal to force people to wake up before 10 AM # - Do twitter spammers automatically think I'm going to follow them back? # - @groovymarlin - lol # - @gaarbacca I'll send you the PM tomorrow # - I think I've future written blog articles to cover the next ten days # Original From: Twitter Updates for 2008-08-15