Christmas...

Let me start this by saying Merry Christmas to everyone. Me personally, I have mixed feelings about Christmas. I am not Christian and I do not believe in the Christian part of the holiday. To all of my Christian people out there, I love you and keep doing your thing. I celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday focusing on spending time with family, as well as gift giving. But as mentioned I have mixed feelings about how the holiday is perceived and conducted, especially here in America. We have been conditioned to think we have to "break the bank" in order to make our Christmas's happy and successful. Television, advertising, and retailers put a lot of pressure on consumers, all while raising expectations of children. These expectations are hard to meet by your average, hard working person. Children lose touch with the true meaning of the holiday. As parents and consumers we cannot succumb to the to these pressures. We have to educate our children that it is the thought and the intent of the gift giving that counts, and not the quantity and price of the items received. Too many people stress themselves out at this time of year, and never really get a chance to fully enjoy the entire season. Hopefully we all can keep things in perspective and focus on what is really important this time of year. Merry Christmas!

Ok that's all for now... thank you for visiting and stay tuned...

Appreciated...

Anyone who is over the age of 25 and is currently employed at McDonalds or any other fast food restaurant for that matter, I have the ultimate respect for you.

Me and Koi were doing some Christmas shopping on Sunday, and we decided to go to McDonalds. We get in line and a man who was about 30 or so took our order. I was impressed with his professionalism, politeness, and courtesy. He double checked our order to make sure everything was there, and he told us to have a good day and a happy holiday.

Who knows what has happened in that man's life that led him to an entry level position at McDonalds at the age of 30. All I know is while everyone else is out shopping with their families or watching football, this 30 year old man wearing a McDonalds hat and a bow tie is making sure my son's PLAIN double cheeseburger, fries, and chicken nuggets were just right... all for probably little over minimum wage.

Now I know everyone has gotten that same old speech when they were younger that went kind of like this:

"You better do well in school and not get into any trouble, or you are going to end up working at McDonalds!!!"

Public perception has always associated working at McDonalds when you get older with failure. Well I don't. Now I am sure working at McDonalds was not this man's career choice as a child, but him not meeting his expectations in life up until now does not make him a failure. Every single day I look in the newspaper and I see multiple articles about people committing home invasions, burglaries, and robberies. Those people are failures in my eyes. Anyone can rob and steal from others, but it takes a real man with real character to show up for work at McDonalds to earn an honest living.

I salute that man, and the many others men who are in similar situations. Hopefully the situation is temporary, and they will all find higher paying jobs soon. For right now, I hope they can keep their heads up and understand their efforts are really appreciated. Thank you.

Ok that's all for now... thank you for visiting and stay tuned...

When was the last time you rasterbated?

I know the term "rasterbate" sounds funny, but it is a really cool activity that some people may enjoy. Basically what you do is take any picture you have saved to your computer, upload it to the rasterbator program, and it breaks the picture down into dots on individual pieces of paper that collectively make one big picture of your original image.

Here is an example of a rasterbation I did...

As you can see, the final collective image is made up of 12 pieces of 8x10 paper, which makes a nice sized picture that can be put on a wall (You can see my foot in the bottom of the picture which will give you an idea of how big the picture is). You can select I think up to 100 pages and as little as 2. You can change the quality of the picture by making the size of the dots smaller(It is an option in the program). The smaller the size of the dot's, the better quality of the picture. There are two versions of the program. One that is web based, and one that you can download to your pc. I recommend the one you download to your pc because you can make the dots smaller than on the web based version. The program is very easy to use and is very user friendly, and the whole process takes no more than five minutes. The best part about it... IT"S FREE! The only thing you have to pay for is printing the paper. I recommend saving the images to like a memory stick and taking them to a Kinko's or any printing shop. You can have the pictures printed on regular paper, glossy paper, or whatever other kind of paper you are willing to pay for. You can mount just the paper on the wall but for better results people put the paper on thin foam and then mount that to the wall. Since it is around Christmas maybe someone will want to take advantage of this and make one of these for someone as a gift.

The program can be found at...

http://homokaasu.org/rasterbator/

There is a tutorial, FAQ, a forum on how to mount the pictures on a wall, as well as a collection of other rasterbations. Here are a few that I like...

Ok that's all for now... thank you for visiting and stay tuned...

And so it begins...

I really don't know why I came up with the idea of creating a blog, but now that I have typed a few words I am glad that I did. As for the title, it is pretty random, as will the material I post on here. I am a naturally introverted person and I feel like this is a way of maybe opening up while talking to myself, if that makes any sense to anyone. I really don't know what I am going to talk about, but I feel like I have come across a lot of interesting things in my life, and maybe if I share my thoughts and discoveries some people may benefit from them, or at the least be entertained. I will try to update this at least once a day or night with something new and interesting so keep checking back.

As for me... I am just a regular person, who is all about humanity and the prosperity of man. If that sounds corny... so what. Going through life I used to be so consumed with being cool, being admired, and maintaining a certain "image"(damn was I stupid) that I kind of lost touch with who I really was. The moment I realized I didn't have to live by societies standards (or anyone else's for that matter) was a very enlightening and liberating moment for me. I am not a religious person at all, but I have morals and I feel like I am a positive contribution to the world. Hopefully people will not think any less of me due to my religious beliefs or lack thereof, but if they do that's ok too. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.

Ok that's all for now... thank you for visiting and stay tuned...