A song for Graham....

I was working with my iPod running and it started to play "You Ruined Everything" by Jonathan Coulton.

I've always liked this song and how he wrote it for his daughter when she was born but it never had that big of an impact to me emotionally outside of being a very touching and beautiful song.

Surprisingly since Graham has been born I have thought about this song once or twice but I don't recall listening to or hearing it in the last 7 months.

When it came up today though it became a completely different song for me. I had to stop and listen to the lyrics and it really hit me how much everything has changed in my life. I mean the minute I saw him I "knew" it changed and it's been a wild ride so far but I think today that song really woke me up to the fact of it and drove home that this little person and his Mom mean more to me than anything else in the world.

So here is the song (with lyrics below it).

I was fine
I pulled myself together
Just in time
To throw myself away
Once my perfect world was gone I knew
You ruined everything
In the nicest way

You should know
How great things were before you
Even so
They're better still today
I can't think of who I was before
You ruined everything
In the nicest way

Bumps in the road remind us
The worst of the best behind us
Only good things will find us
Me and you

Days will be clear and sunny
We're gonna need more money
Baby you know it's funny
All those stories
Coming true

Despite my better efforts
It's all for you
The worst kind of cliché
I'll be with you till the day you leave
You ruined everything
In the nicest way

Extreme Sheep LED Art

This is actually pretty awesome!

What Kind of D&D Character Would You Be?

My old geeky D&D side in me go curious. :) The only real surprise is I like technology so being placed as Druid seemed odd.

I Am A: Chaotic Neutral Human Druid (6th Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength-10
Dexterity-12
Constitution-10
Intelligence-13
Wisdom-12
Charisma-12

Alignment:
Chaotic Neutral A chaotic neutral character follows his whims. He is an individualist first and last. He values his own liberty but doesn't strive to protect others' freedom. He avoids authority, resents restrictions, and challenges traditions. A chaotic neutral character does not intentionally disrupt organizations as part of a campaign of anarchy. To do so, he would have to be motivated either by good (and a desire to liberate others) or evil (and a desire to make those different from himself suffer). A chaotic neutral character may be unpredictable, but his behavior is not totally random. He is not as likely to jump off a bridge as to cross it. Chaotic neutral is the best alignment you can be because it represents true freedom from both society's restrictions and a do-gooder's zeal. However, chaotic neutral can be a dangerous alignment when it seeks to eliminate all authority, harmony, and order in society.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:
Druids gain power not by ruling nature but by being at one with it. They hate the unnatural, including aberrations or undead, and destroy them where possible. Druids receive divine spells from nature, not the gods, and can gain an array of powers as they gain experience, including the ability to take the shapes of animals. The weapons and armor of a druid are restricted by their traditional oaths, not simply training. A druid's Wisdom score should be high, as this determines the maximum spell level that they can cast.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

iOS 7

Put it on the work phone and actually like most of the look and feel of it. Still getting use to the new stuff as I updated last night after work gave the to ahead.

I honestly did my best to not follow all the news about it on the net as most of the time it was people bitching about how they hated it.

I think the only thing I have not liked in it is the new "egg timer" graphic for apps that are updating. I'd rather have the thermometer back as I group my apps in collections and the new "egg timer" block the whole collection and is not very visable. 

Memories from Youth

I am sitting here at work and have my iPod going on shuffle when "Treason" by Naked Raygun comes on.

Now I have not heard this song in years (thank you iPod Shuffle for not being truly random and plying the same 20 songs over and over out of the 3500+ in my collection....but I digress) and it reminded me when I was younger on how I joined a church because of a girl*.

Now the song did not remind me of the girl specifically and there was no "treason" done by her or me.

What makes this song special is that at this church there was a festival week where they asked some of us youth to perform on stage for people visiting the festival on youth night. My friend Justin (who was already in a band at the time) and I agreed to do sing two songs for the festival with a "house" band. We both did "edited" Naked Raygun songs. By edited I mean I tweaked a line or two in the lyrics to make them more Christian because the church was a small "Born Again" Evangelical church. Justin sung the edited version of "Treason" and I sung the edited version of "Understand?". It was fun and the the people like what we did.

I think that was the only time outside of Teaching Japanese and Basic Web Development for work where I wasn't paralyzingly frightened of being in front of people.

Just thought I'd share.

Thanks for reading
Jason


*We never dated she liked someone else and I was always "friend-zoned".... story of my High School Dating career LOL.

Nokia 1020

First impressions (vs iPhone):

Pros

Great Camera (still learning to use it and all the options --more to come later with that)

HUGE Size

I like the live tiles, but still getting use to them.

Sound quality is great on  calls

Cons

iOS default email does a better job integrating with hotmail than MS does. It appears if there is a email sub-folder you need to keep track of you need to push it to a live tile to get notified that a new message was pushed into it.

Single volume control. I miss at least a separate volume control for music.

No DND setting other than putting phone face down (then it just mutes everything). I still need my phone to ring between 2200 & 0600 but I do not need to hear every email alert or text message at the same time.

Can not link my dropbox folders as an album in the default picture manager.

Not really a Pro or Con:

Lack of apps but we will see what I miss and can't live without as time goes on.

Arranging the tiles is a bit fidgety but I like that you can re-size them as needed.

The WP Mac App is nice.

Calls on the phone sound better than my GS2 ever was and reception has been better as well (especially with having LTE now).

Work pays for my iPhone 4S and it can be used for personal calls as well but I still wanted a separate cell for calls that I do not want tracked on my work phones (i.e. photography, legal, and medical calls).

I really like the iPhone (and will probably upgrade to what ever the next version is when my renewal hits for work) but am trying to separate work and home life as I've been overly burnt on being "off work" and being too assessable especially on the weekends when I try to take care of my son so my wife can have a break.

More to come as I use it.

Babies have two settings

You know they say babies show signs of hunger before going into a full blow cry. Why is it unless you watch them like a hawk you miss it and they go into full blow siren shrieking mode for food?

Why can't they have three modes? Like a grunt or something that comes just before the howling cry? That would be awesome!! At least then I'd have a chance to appease my little guy before my ears ring in pain.

I love my little Graham but man... it would be nice to have a medium setting between the calm cute side and the howling blood curtling needy side.