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ARCHIVES: December 15-22, 2003

 

December 22, 2003 - Monday

Our Church Choir Sings

It's a small choir, but they did a great job. I recorded it on my PDA -- nothing fancy but I find myself listening to this song over and over. It's a pretty blend of Canon D and The First Noel. Here's my very rough cut mp3 version of it. If you want to save a copy of this, right click on it and select "Save Target as..." (I know that works for Windows, at least.)

 

Weatherly Ward Choir

 

 

Another Quiz

J.C. sent this profiler test from MindMedia. In this quiz, there are no "right" answers. Pick whatever answer suits you. I don't completely believe these short quizes, but maybe there's a grain of useful information in them. My results:

 

Auditory : 61%  |  Visual : 38%  |  Left : 47%  |  Right : 52%

 

Your hemispheric dominance is equally divided between left and right brain, while you show a moderate preference for auditory versus visual learning, signs of a balanced and flexible person.

 

Your balance gives you the enviable capacity to be verbal and literate while retaining a certain "flair" and individuality. You are logical and compliant but only to a degree. You are organized without being compulsive, goal-directed without being driven, and a "thinking" individual without being excessively so.

 

The one problem you might have is that your learning might not be as efficient as you would like. At times you will work from the specific to the general, while at other times you'll work from the general to the specific. Sometimes you will be logical in your approach while at other times random. Since you cannot always control the choice, you may experience frustrations not normally felt by persons with a more defined and directed learning style.

 

You may also minimally experience conflicts associated with auditory processing. You will be systematic and sequential in your processing of information, you will most often focus on a single dimension of the problem or material, and you will be more reflective, i.e., "taking the data in" as opposed to "devouring" it.

 

Overall, you should feel content with your life and yourself. You are, perhaps, a little too critical of yourself - and of others - while maintaining an "openness" which is redeeming. Indecisiveness is a problem and your creativity is not in keeping with your potential. Being a pragmatist, you downplay this aspect of yourself and focus on the more immediate, the more obvious and the more functional.

 

December 21, 2003 - Sunday

Getting Ready for the Holidays

For Christmas morning, we have a traditional breakfast of homemade hash browns, eggs, and bacon. We figure that once a good meal is had, we can spend the rest of the day porking out on junk food. At lunch we are going to meet at my sister's where Mom and Dad will be serving ham and whatever side dishes everyone brings. It is a "help-yourself-whenever-you-get-hungry" type of buffet meal. If you fill up on junk food, it's the one time Mom won't complain.

 

Of course, food isn't the only fun aspect of Christmas. It's the talking, music, lights, children, laughing, church, and well, everything. I love this time of year.

 

Next week, we are going to see the newest Lord of the Rings. I am skipping lunch - we plan to get the largest barrel of popcorn and largest drinks and munch our way through the movie. (The largest sizes are refillable at our theater -- but after eating that much, who wants a refill? Anyway, we will try!)

 

December 20, 2003 - Saturday

Church Party

We attended our church Christmas Party last night. I love the large optical zoom on this Sony DSC F717. Digital cameras keep getting better. The new version of this camera, the Sony DSC F828 just came out, producing 8 megapixel images. I also like the Minolta DiMAGE A1 because it adjusts for small hand movements producing a very clear image -- but it is only 5 megapixels.

 

I thought about getting a movie camera but, so far I am happy with short video clips easily posted online. I wish I could learn how to convert MPG to MOV files , keeping sound and picture quality. QuickTime Pro does the conversion, but loses the sound.

 

Is there an editor for MPG files that could clip out unwanted sections?

 

December 19, 2003 - Friday

Photoblog Now Accepts Movies

Well, this is cute. The photoblog site that SeaDoc and I use now accepts movies (TextAmerica.com). I used Quicktime Pro to convert a short movie taken by my digital camera to a .3gpp file which some camera phones use. I like this -- will upload some more tomorrow. Here's one of my daughter's cat.

 

 

Photo Friday

I am so busy with the daily photo blog, that I am not entering pictures in other sites as much as I used to, but I could not resist the one announced today by Photo Friday. The topic for this week is Desire. Here's my entry:

 

 

December 18, 2003 - Thursday

Shopping Rage

According to Morons.org, the problem is growing and gets worse this time of year. Have you ever gone into a quick checkout line and counted the items in another person's cart? I admit I have gone into such lines with maybe 1 or 2 items over the limit. Sometimes I get embarrassed such as when the line is empty and I have a full cart. The clerk invites me to come over with my full cart since he/she has nobody else to check out. So there I am with a kazillion items over the limit and the line starts to fill up. Everyone of those folks behind me must think I cheated. Argh!

 

 

December 17, 2003 - Wednesday

Griping Today

Something keeps changing the date and time on my computer. I suppose it might be a wayward program's side effects. It usually moves the time back one hour and the date back one day and does this about once a day. I've checked my settings and they seem to be in order. Maybe this is the world's most subtle, yet annoying virus.

 

My browser stops popup ads, but how to do you stop popup sounds? One site I have to visit every day is now playing an ad for Tampax - just what I want to hear playing loudly on my computer. No image  is associated with it and I can not click on anything within the site for a few moments while their sound is going. I turn down the speaker -- but darn, I hope this is not a trend because I do not always remember to turn the speaker back up. I think popup sounds are more annoying than the images.

 

 

December 16, 2003 - Tuesday

Photoblog Down Temporarily

My photo host, TextAmerica.com, is moving to a new server. As a result, a million and one bugs have cropped up. The "Photo Blog" photos may be gone for a few days. If you can see the photos at all, they probably won't change for a time. Others will get an irrelevant error message about the $links token. When the site comes back on, I'll have work to do since I've sent recent photos three times before figuring out why they weren't appearing.

 

I have the blog backed up and even reinstating the backup did not help. Their message boards indicate that "all will be fixed soon." Hope that is true.

 

 

RadioParadise.com

(BTW, Wal-Mart was crowded on Monday. I drove past Target which had a nearly-full parking lot, too. I am glad I did much shopping via the Internet, but there's always a last-minute something or other to deal with.)

 

On TechTV's Call for Help, there was a discussion about Internet radio stations. One person said his favorite station is RadioParadise.com because of its eclectic list. I've been listening to it this morning -- the most recent music came from Robert Palmer, James McMurtry, Yo La Tengo and Pearl Jam.

 

RadioParadise.com offers gift ideas on their main page for the "person who has everything." Comments and additions can be posted there. Some ideas included:

 

Heifer International - your tax deductible purchase of a gift animal or tree seedling helps families around the world to become self-reliant.

Doctors Without Borders delivers independent emergency medical assistance to people in crisis in more than 80 countries around the world.

Seva builds partnerships to respond to locally defined problems with culturally sustainable solutions throughout the world.

Oxfam is a development advocacy and relief agency working to put an end to poverty world-wide.

Or if you'd rather help out closer to home, you can check with your local agencies like Meals on Wheels, Hospice, or Senior Gleaners, etc. In most cases, holiday cards will be sent out to your recipient telling them of the special gift that’s been given in their honor.

 

 

December 15, 2003 - Monday

Annual Family Newsletters

... saw an article about how some folks hate annual family newsletters. Others love them, especially the family genealogist. I send out a newsletter with our Christmas cards. I hope nobody is offended by this. They are welcome to throw the letter away without reading it. I could not believe there was such fury over the subject -- maybe that was the press playing it up for the article. I think getting a letter once a year, even if it is just boasting, is better than no news at all - at least regarding the people I care about. By getting a newsletter, I know they are still alive, if nothing else. Let them boast, complain, repeat themselves from last year ... whatever it is, I take it as a compliment to be remembered with an annual family newsletter.

 

I usually include our e-mail addresses so anyone can write during the year, if they wish. I also include some photos in the one-page letter. I think photos really are worth a thousand words.

 

 

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