I need to not put so much importance on blog posts. They don’t have to be long or earth shattering…just there.

I’ve got a new band I’m digging called Valencia. Check them out over at purevolume.com. I highly recommend the two last songs on that list…”The Space Between” and “3000 Miles.” And no, it’s not a cover of the Proclaimers.

Looks like I finally need to update my theme. Been using the same once since around WordPress 1.5, and now something is broken over on the right side. I’m sure GeekyWeekly could fix it…but this thing needs a slight update anyways.

Luke has discovered the flashlight, and it’s COOL! You can point it all over, and it makes this circle of light appear! Oh my gosh! I should probably find something a little less dangerous than a maglite though. Yeah…we just hit the desk with it. haha. Pictures of him soon, I promise.

I’ve been enjoying summer so much that I forgot to blog! Now where to start…

The biggest thing we’re doing this summer is remodeling a bathroom. Originally I had dreams of remodeling it all by myself…but now we’re looking at maybe half the work. A friend’s dad will be tiling a new shower for us, and then I think I can do the rest. We went today to look at new vanities and countertops (oooh, quartz is pretty), and I might try my hand at tiling the floor. I had dreams of redoing both bathrooms this summer…but we might have to settle with one. We’re doing the bathroom in Luke’s room though, so once it’s all done we can start on our own. We’re doing that tile on the walls, a smaller 6×6 inch on the floor of the shower, and I’m going to try and put in an 18×18 on the floor. The glass/mosaic tile we’re going to use to make a stripe horizontally in the shower, and then also to make “diamonds” in the walls. Big thanks to Amanda and Kurtis for helping us pick it out!

Over the fourth of July we drove down to San Diego with Andrew and Sarah to see the Dodgers beat on the Padres. It was also the night Manny came back from his suspension, which was really interesting. Felt like we were witnessing a part of history. Every time he came up to bat the entire stadium was on its feet. It was half cheers, half boos. It was fun to spend a night away without the baby (thanks Grandparents!).

I’ve also been playing a game called Evony a lot. It’s an online, flash based game, but it’s far more advanced than you would think. You run a city (or multiple cities), collect resources, amass troops, and can attack other people. I’m in a great alliance with some other people, so it’s fun to protect each other and attack our enemies. If you want to sign-up, go here! I’m on world 5, in lower lorraine.

I have to put some Luke in here! We went a couple weeks ago for his 15.5 month check-up. He’s now 25.5 lbs, and 32 inches long. The kid eats like crazy…it’s like he’s never full. Our favorites are bananas, watermelon, strawberries, cheerios, goldfish, ritz crackers, cheese, and chicken. Come to think of it…he eats whatever we give him. He’s also letting us enjoy our summer mornings by sleeping in. The kid will go from 8pm when we put him to bed, and won’t wake up until 9am! Here’s some recent pictures.

Otherwise we’re taking it easy and enjoying summer. Stacie is headed to Las Vegas for two nights on Sunday, so it’ll be me and the boy! Should be fun, and tiring. Stacie’s going to put $20 on the Dodgers while she’s there, so Luke and I will watch the game and cheer them on.

In case you’re wondering, that caffeine counter is still accurate. Haven’t had any in two months now. Overall I wouldn’t say I have more energy…but I feel more balanced out. There are no highs and lows, just a nice normal all the time. I miss my friends Mountain Dew and Dr. Pepper, but they’ve been replaced by Sprite. But somedays I have a couple sodas and then I feel gassy all day, so I might give that up too, haha.

That’s all for now. I’m promising a super cute video of Luke very soon!

I despise facebook because it allows people to limit their thoughts to ONE sentence. And it’s oh so easy to put down one thing, without elaborating, and be done. BLOGS FOREVER!

I only have to see students for two more days. Heading to Knott’s Berry Farm on Wednesday. I plan on taking a DS to entertain myself. Very much looking forward to this summer. I have dreams of redoing a bathroom, but that’s on top of wanting to start a new book, convert old family negatives to digital, and I already have a small list of home repair projects. The upstairs screens have big holes in them. Remarkably, one of the holes spans the entire width of the screen, but is only about 4 inches high. That’s because a sparrow can’t reach any higher. Apparently ripping off pieces of screen is a favorite activity of the sparrows.

I’m almost 30 hours into Final Fantasy VII for the original Playstation. It’s fun, and I’m finally getting to parts of the game that I don’t remember from my first play through (I got far, but never beat it). I’m not speeding through it, but I don’t feel the urge to uncover every single secret and side quest. I have VIII, IX, X, X-2, and XII all lined up (in that order) to play through next, so I should be busy for a long time.

For father’s day we got our dads meat from Omahasteaks.com. We bought ourselves some too, and while we haven’t eaten any of it yet, I must say it’s super cool to get food in the mail. It comes in a styrofoam cooler with dry ice, and each meat is packaged in a separate box, and each piece of meat is separately vacuum sealed. Place it in the fridge the night before, and you’ve got thawed out meat to throw on the BBQ. The top sirloin looks awesome. I’ll be sure to report back on how it tastes.

And finally…I have a quick story that I think is pretty cool. On the way home from my parents we stopped behind a newer corvette at a red light. I remarked at how bright the 4 big tail/brake lights were, but a moment later the rear lights flashed briefly, and the tail lights dimmed. The man had put the car into park while waiting at a routine red light, and I could only think of one reason: he knew his brake lights were bright. I know, this seems minor, but the more I thought about it, the more impressed I was. Here was a guy who had gone to the bother of putting his corvette into park for a red light he knew wouldn’t last more than another 30 seconds or so, just because he didn’t want to blind us in the car behind him. How thoughtful is that? Most people would never even know they were bright, let alone go to any bother to look out for the people who would have to stare at them. Kudos to you Mr. Red Corvette guy. And even if that wasn’t why he did it, I’d like to think there are people out there who are thoughtful enough to do that for someone else.

I’ve got two new links for you. One is a new blog for Kevin M. The second is a brand new blogger named Andie. And the third is for Tommy’s blog, which he’s had for a bit, but he just made his first post the other day.

I know you’re not all on vacation, but I am, and it is sweet. Oh so sweet is the respite from crazy adolescents! Speaking of crazy Junior Highers, I rarely post about anything specific to work, but during this joyous time of vacation I shall choose a hilarious example of why I love my job. In one class I have a student who asks me the other day ,”Are you my friend?” Now maybe the hilarity of the situation won’t transfer over in a blog post, but my standard response to this question is “No, I’m your teacher.” You see, when you’ve been teaching a while, you develop these canned responses, sort of like a script. It’s like the words just flow out of me like they have countless times before. When the student inevitably replies “Why not?” I then say, “We don’t hang out. You didn’t invite me to your birthday party. We don’t text message each other. I don’t help you pass notes in class….” At this point the student usually gets it and leaves the subject alone, but not this particular student. He is in a state of denial and replies “No, I think you’re my friend.” Apparently despite proof of the opposite, he continues to press. I then reply “None of your teachers are your friends, they’re your teachers.” He says, “No, Mr. Smith is my friend.” I tell him to ask Mr. Smith later that day, and then let me know tomorrow what he said.

The next day he walks into my class and looks at me with sad eyes and says, “I asked Mr. Smith if he’s my friend, and he said no.” It was the most hilarious thing ever. Now the student tells me to say hi to my baby so my baby will be his friend. Gotta love it.

Anyways, my brother took me to the shooting range for the first time yesterday. We got to shoot a couple handguns and his new .22 pump-action rifle. I figure since he’s getting into it I should at least go and try it, and as a good conservative that believes strongly in gun rights, I should at least have shot one before. Overall it was really a lot of fun. I think there is a certain mystique that surrounds guns, and until you’ve actually held one, loaded it, and and shot it, you don’t realize how typical it really is. I’m not trying to demean the very dangerous power a gun can have, but it really reminded me of shooting a BB gun. Granted it’s much more powerful and you have to be more careful, but it’s a lot the same. Here’s my first target from shooting 12 rounds of my brother’s 357 Magnum (which I believe was .38 ammo?) It’s a bigger gun than his .22 handgun, and while the .22 is more economical and great for practicing your accuracy, there is definitely something cool about the bigger BOOM you get from the bigger ammo.

My first couple shots were off the mark, but once I got used to the action it wasn’t so bad! Thanks for taking me bro.

Otherwise we’re just gearing up for Christmas in a very low key way. Neither Stacie or I need much, and even the baby already has more than he needs, so I think appropriately this year the focus will be on family. We’re doing my sister’s in-laws on Christmas Eve, my parents and my in-laws on Christmas, and then my Grandmother/Aunt/Cousins on my Mom’s side up in Turlock the day after Christmas. This will be our first road trip with the boy, so it should be interesting. Hope everyone’s Christmas plans and gift buying are going well.

My daily posts on the propositions and the election must have worn me out. It’s been eight days since my last post! I probably could get away with blaming it on the baby, but I’ll give him a pass this time. I will list the contents of this post here, and it’s a doozy!

1) Baby Update
2) Picture Scanning
3) Little Big Planet
4) DVD Sales

Baby Update

The boy is 8 months old now! He was supposed to have his scheduled check-up this past week, but we ended up taking him a little early because of a weird cough. Turns out he has an ear infection! Overall we’re pretty happy it took this long for him to get his first real “illness.” According to my own mother, I had about an ear infection every month when I was a baby, and by 9 months I had tubes in my ears. Luke is doing much better than I did. We got some antibiotics, baby motrin, and saline drops, and we go back this coming week to see how he’s doing.

He was supposed to get his shots, but we’ll have to wait on that until he’s better (so maybe this week). They did weigh and measure him though, and he comes in at 29 1/4″ and 21lbs 13oz. He’s still in the 90th percentile for length, but he’s dropped down to the 80th percentile for weight. I had a feeling he was slowing down a little, but the length surprised me. He added 2″ in just over two months! He’s getting a lot more active, so I wonder how much that affects his weight, because he’s noticeably “leaner” than he used to be. We aren’t crawling yet, but we rollover and sit up like crazy. I think he would prefer to start walking first, but we’ll see what comes first. Right now he’s on the floor pulling the dog bed towards him.

And now what you really want…pictures!

Picture Scanning

Something I really enjoy is researching family history and preserving family memories. A few years back I put all our VHS home movies onto DVD (which I’m no longer happy with and want to redo), but another project I have is digitizing all of our family photos. I’ve scanned some negatives dating back to the 1930′s, but now I’m working on 35mm negatives from when I was a kid. To do that I use a special machine by Plustek called the OpticFilm 7500i SE. You load the negatives on a plastic tray, and then it scans them. I’ve upgraded to this model because it can take out dust and scratches on the negatives and give you a better scan. I finally had some prints done of my first test scans to see how they came out, and I was very pleased.

I went over to my parents and found the original prints to compare. Basically you have two options for digitizing family photos. Either you scan the negative, or you scan the original prints. The only major problem with scanning the negative is that over the last 30 or so years some of them can get scratched and deteriorate. The major drawback of scanning the original prints is that you lose a lot of detail, and 30 year old prints deteriorate also.

The top photo is a scan of the original print, and the bottom is a scan of the negative.

The color in the negative scan is slightly different, but the level of detail is just night and day. It feels like moving from regular TV to high-def! I’m about 6 months old in this picture, so you can compare me to Luke.

This print actually survived very well, but there are some from the day I was born that look terrible. Some of the paper that was used in the 70′s and 80′s turns yellow and gray and just ruins pictures. Thank goodness my parents kept all the negatives! Eventually when I’m done I can have all the photos preserved and easily shared between family members.

Little Big Planet

I’ve only posted about this game once or twice, but it’s my newest addiction. Little Big Planet is a really simple game. You can run side to side, jump, and grab on to certain materials. That’s all. There is a story mode where you can beat the game, and all the while you collect “prizes.” The really cool part though is that the prizes you collect are actually tools that allow you to make your own levels. You can makes ramps, creatures, scary pits, etc. with the in-game level maker. After you make a level, you can then let other people play your level! You can even play online with up to three other friends.

I already beat the game, but now I’m trying to beat every level without dying and collecting every single prize. I’ve published one level where you have to jump up a series of steps without dying, and so far almost 60 other people have played it. It’s a lot of fun!

DVD Sales Update

This weekend I finally sold my last DVD. Total I sold about 105 dvds, and grossed around $325-350. My original intent was to use that money to buy Blu-Rays of the movies I really like, but so far I haven’t bought any. I’ve come to realize that there are very few movies worth watching multiple times, so I’m not going to bother buying movies I don’t absolutely love.

In case you were wondering, the last DVD to sell was Die Hard 1. I sold 97 dvds in the first month, and then it took 3.5 months to sell the last 8.

Thanks for reading my gynormous post!

Obama is the President-Elect! Overall I can’t say I’m too surprised. I was holding out hope that the polls weren’t accurate, but overall they pretty much were. I think McCain just had too much to overcome. The combination of Bush being extremely unpopular and the financial crisis sending the entire country into the doldrums didn’t help. I think this was much more about people being unhappy with government than it was about a mandate for Obama’s politics.

There are two things I want to bring up about Obama’s impending Presidency. First, while I think it’s great we have our first black President, I’m over it already. Is this going to be the new benchmark to establish when a minority group is no longer opressed? Poor hispanics and asians are going to have to wait for a President that can affirm their ability to do whatever they want. That being said, I don’t think the cries of discrimination are going to stop anytime soon. The black community faces many unique challenges like high crime rates and out of wedlock births, and an Obama presidency will do little to change those problems. How long will it take before the black community turns on Obama for not fixing their problems?

Speaking of Obama and fixing problems…it will be interesting to see how he governs. He set the bar awfully high when he promised to change the world. He does realize he’s only in charge of one country right? With so much power in congress I fully expect the Democrats to embrace a leftist agenda. Don’t expect them to tackle the problems with social security or earmarks, but instead look for topics like healthcare and social spending. Clinton’s eight years were relatively mild because he was kept in check by a Republican congress. The last time the Democrats were in this position was when Carter was in office.

I’ve seen talk already of the Republican party realizing they need to get back to the basics of limited government. They screwed the pooch royally over the last eight years of Bush and the six years of their majority in congress. If Obama does govern to the left, and prolongs the economic troubles we face, Republicans will be in a good position to come back to the people and preach about limited government.

One thing I pledge to do over the next four years is to respect the office of the Presidency. I’m sure I will have many disagreements with Obama’s vision for our country, so don’t be surprised to find me critical of his politics. However, I promise to keep it on an even keel, which hopefully isn’t a surprise to most that read this blog.

Look for another post soon with baby pictures and Little Big Planet!

I wanted to get this post up before any real voting is done or there is any hint of how today will go. I want you to have my personally biased assessment before the fun begins tonight!

Here’s how I see things. McCain certainly has an uphill battle. There are some key states that he really needs to win like Florida and Ohio, and recent polls show him clearly in contention there. If Obama wins PA and NH (which recent polls show likely) then McCain really has his work cut out for him. There are a number of states he needs to win, like NV, NM, and CO to name a couple, and the polls in all of those are either very close or have Obama slightly ahead.

Speaking of polls though, I think the polls have overstated Obama’s lead for a while now. When pollsters come up with their polling numbers, they determine what percentage of the electorate will be Democrat and Republican. Many pollsters are giving Democrats a 6% advantage this year…but that hasn’t happened in the last 8 years! Over the last few election cycles the number of Republicans and Democrats that showed up were either tied, or Democrats showed up 2-4% more frequently, but never 6%. The last Presidential election was a tie, and to assume that four years later will be a huge Democrat turnout might be wishful thinking. Another promsing nugget is that several times in the primaries Obama was expected to win handily, sometimes by as much as double-digits, but he lost to Hillary in some of those states. Over and over Obama hasn’t been able to close the deal, and with some polls showing almost 10% of people unsure of whom they will vote for, that means McCain can still have a lot of votes in play. Since most of my readers are on the West coast, make sure you ignore any exit polling you hear because it consistently overstates support for the Democrat, and make sure you get out and vote. Here in California we’ve got other important things on our minds like Prop 8!

But either way, it should be interesting tonight. I’ve got some sausages to grill and some beers to drink, but whoever wins tonight wins. Obviously I think an Obama win would be bad for the country, but I’ve never had a blog while someone of the opposing party was in the White House. That might be fun, but I’ll certainly trade that for McCain and his supreme court nominees.

Here is my “guide” as requested by a couple people. Thanks to GeekyWeekly for doing the work on the Judicial nominees. Those are always a pain. Have fun tonight everyone!

Federal and Statewide
President/Vice President – John McCain/Sarah Palin
House and Senate Seats – Republican

Judicial
Office #72 – Hilleri Grossman Merritt
Office #82 – Thomas Rubinson
Office #84 – Pat Connolly
Office #94 – Michael J. O’Gara
Office #154 – Michael Jesic

Propositions
Prop 1A – No
Prop 2 – No
Prop 3 – No
Prop 4 – Yes
Prop 5 – No
Prop 6 – No
Prop 7 – No
Prop 8 – Yes
Prop 9 – Yes
Prop 10 – No
Prop 11 – Yes
Prop 12 – Yes
Measure R – No