« December 2005 | Main | February 2006 »
January 31, 2006
The Name is Bond
After much hand wringing and teeth gnashing I've decided to keep the black and gold logo. I'm going to play with it a bit more tonight, adjust the size and stuff and then put it up in the sidebar.
A couple of reasons have brought me to this decision.
First off, I like it. Yeah okay, it isn't brown or green like the rest of the blog but I like it. Besides, it jazzes up the place, gives it a bit of class, a bit of flair, if you know what I mean, like maybe every night I change into my black tux and get behind the wheel of my Aston Martin and go off and save the world, all while making love to ... my wife ! Just my wife. Because I'm married. Happily.
Secondly, this is one of my first graphics, I did it the day after I started playing with Fireworks and I think it turned out good for a first effort. Okay, it wasn't that hard to do, but a month ago I would have looked at a graphic like that and figured I could never do that, not in a million years. But I did. And I'm proud of it
So I'm going to put it up in the sidebar tomorrow, on my side of the page.
Just call me Bond, OG Bond.
Posted by OldGuy at 2:42 PM
January 29, 2006
Sunday Morning Musings
Anybody out there have daughters who play with Polly Pockets, the little tiny dolls with even tinier clothes ? You know how when you get new tires they have those little nibs on them that wear off as soon as you get down the street, they're just left over rubber ? A couple of those nibs is enough rubber to make a new wardrobe for a Polly Pocket. And if you're talking bikinis, heck, you can make a couple with just one nib.
Here's a typical conversation at the Polly Pocket factory:
"Hey Joe, we ran out of rubber for the bikini line."
"No problem Ed. I got new tires today and they threw the old ones in the trunk. Go get one, that should do us for a week."
Our vacuum cleaner stopped sucking yesterday. It's okay now though, it just had something stuck in the hose.
A cat.
My wife was making French Toast this morning and I noticed she was using Omega3 eggs. I know because it was written right on each egg. I didn't know chickens could write.
Actually Omega3 eggs contain more fatty acids, or maybe it's less, I'm not sure. Either way they're good for you and they're produced by chickens that listen to soft rock music 24 hours a day so they also have a calming effect.
Speaking of food, my wife is stocking up for the coming global catastrophe. I think it's supposed to be bird flu, maybe a giant comet, or global warming. Whatever it is, if we survive the initial wave of death and destruction we have enough food to last us at least a month, maybe more.
Now I just have to get working on that survival shelter.
One last thing, I managed to get the O and the G in the logo I created to link, kinda like the Olympic rings (see below). Still not my colours but cool anyway. I also created this. Graphics are so much fun.
Anyway, have a great week folks and watch out for falling rocks.
And I'll be dropping in on some of you this week, it's been a while since I went visiting.
4:12 p.m. I just noticed I posted the same thing twice, forgot to rebuild after making some changes.
Oh and hey, I wanted a snack this afternoon so I had one of those little pepproni sticks that come wrapped up and you get a bunch of them in a box. I've had them before but today I especially noticed how greasy and salty they taste so I checked the nutritional information on the box. No carbohydrates, no vitamins, no fibre, and a smidgen of protein. So basically these things are little grease sticks dipped in salt.
Posted by OldGuy at 2:20 PM | Comments (3)
January 27, 2006
Some People Are Just Good At It
I've talked of my love for reading before but I want to say a few words about it again this morning.
I love it when a book captivates me right from the start. Some do it, some take a little longer, and others, well, they never do, so I don't finish them.
This morning I started reading "Life Expentancy" by Dean Koontz. I'm on page ten and I'm hooked. Already I have discovered several gems in this book. I don't want to spoil it for you but I just have to include one.
The main character, Jimmy Tock, describes the night of his birth as an uncommonly stormy one, then says:
"If I had been born on a night of unremarkable weather, family legend would have transformed it into an eerie calm, every leaf motionles in breathless air, night birds silent with expectation. The Tock family has a proud history of self-dramatization."
That is a fantastic paragraph. Right away we know that Rudy will be a legend, if not to the rest of the world, at least to his family, because in his family everybody is a legend.
Just imagine the family reunions:
"So you're the one with the webbed feet, you swim like nobody's business ?"
"Yep, that's me. And you fell down the stairs when you were a kid and they put a metal plate in your head and now you can pick up every radio station for miles around ?"
"You got it. See that lady over there ? That's great-aunt Martha, she singlehandedly defeated the Japanese in WW II."
"How did she do that ?"
"She sent a box of cookies to her son who was imprisoned in a POW camp over there. The cookies were intercepted by the camp commander who tried one and liked it so much he sent the rest of the box to Emperor Hirohito. Hirohito refused to try them however, suspecting that some of them might be poisoned. He had the camp commander executed and sent the cookies to President Truman along with a nasty note telling him he was onto him and to keep his poisoned cookies. Truman got so mad he decided to drop the bomb, a decision he had been putting off until then."
Hey, it could have happened.
Anyway, I'm going to enjoy my book because I suspect Rudy's adventures will be equally, if not far more wacky.
One more thing. I have a few stories that have been on the back burner for quite some time so I guess I'd better get to them. Stay tuned.
Oh yeah, I'm still working on a logo/favicon too. I created a nifty graphic in Fireworks (yeah, I'm addicted PM ) and was going to use it until a friend pointed out that it wasn't really my colours so I'll have to redo it. Still, I think it's pretty cool so I just had to show it to you.
Posted by OldGuy at 8:46 AM | Comments (2)
January 25, 2006
A Tribute
We've been watching the program "Eight Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughters" for the last few months. We never saw it when it first aired but the family channel has the reruns every night and my daughter absolutely loves it, as we all do.
The last two nights they ran the episodes where the father dies. As you know, John Ritter, a wonderful actor who played the father, died in real life.
These were very tough episodes to watch because they so much reminded me of my father's death. Out of the blue. Totally unexpected. Same for my wife, in fact even more so because her father was in his forties when he died.
What I liked about the show was how the father was shown to be such an important part of the family. Here was a guy who was involved in every aspect of his children's lives and sometimes they loved him for it and sometimes they hated him for it but in the end they always loved him.
And he was just doing his best to raise his kids to be good, decent human beings because he loved them. Even when he got mad at them he loved them. And he always did what he had to do, no matter whether it made him happy or hurt him deeply.
Because he was dad and that's what dads do.
And yes, moms too.
Posted by OldGuy at 1:58 PM | Comments (1)
Transparency and the PNG format
I discovered this morning that IE doesn't support PNG alpha transparency ( I use Firefox). I should've tested this last night but I was so excited that I'd figured out how to do make an image transparent it that I just plain forgot. Also, I'm just learning graphics so there's lots I don't know yet.
So if you're using FF the images I posted yesterday have a transparent background but if you're using IE it's blue-grey.
Fortunately a fix exists, I just Googled for it. It's a bit complicated but not impossible.
The other option would be to change the background colour I suppose but I'll have to do it tonight when I get home.
Or maybe since I know how to do it now and it's not that important anyway I'll just move on and fix it next time I have to.
Question though. To those of you who make graphics, what do most of you use for the background. Transparency or matte ? Also, I'm still using trial versions of various programs so would like to know which one most of you prefer ?
Posted by OldGuy at 9:04 AM | Comments (4)
January 24, 2006
Playing with Fire
No, the title wasn't my idea, although I wish it was. I got it from a Fireworks tutorial site. You know, I love tutorials that teach you how to do neat stuff. I mean, it's good to learn what what's and what does what and what to do if you want to do whatnot or whatever (he ! he !) but it's especially motivating when they say "you wanna know how to make this way cool text, or draw this bitchin smilie ?" because it's instant gratification and I'm really into that.
I've been feeling creative again. Woo hoo !!
So today I give you two posts, this one which is a couple of fancy texts I did in Fireworks last night, and the poem below. I've already done Signs of Spring and Signs of Fall so this one makes three seasons down. One more to go.
Update = When I wrote this post yesterday I said I didn't make the background on the graphics transparent because I didn't know how. Well, I figured it out so I did it and now they look much better. It was easy too, I just had to press one little button. I love it when things are so easy.
BTW, in the poem I mention beaver tails. They're not real beaver tails, they're a deep fried pastry in the shape of a beaver tail and they're served hot with any topping you like (raspberry jam, garlic etc.). My favourite is cinammon and brown sugar.
Anyway, enjoy.
Posted by OldGuy at 9:59 AM | Comments (5)
Signs of Winter
The trees coated with a layer of white powder
As though God dusted them with sugar while we were sleeping
The mist rising off the cold river in the morning
Like steam from a stew pot, delicious with warm bread
Icicles hanging from the rooftops, taking on the colours of the Christmas lights
Like freezie pops awaiting a summer day to tempt the taste buds
The smell of the fireplace as you walk in the house at the end of the day
A good smell, an old and honest smell
People skating on the canal, getting cold and hungry
Hot chocolate and beaver tails are a welcome treat
Posted by OldGuy at 9:13 AM | Comments (4)
January 22, 2006
Sunday Morning Musings
I wasn't sure what category to put today's musings in as there's a bit of good and a bit of bad.
Moo.
No, I haven't turned into a cow. This is the name of the play my son's high school drama class presented this week. It was written by a lady named Sally Clark (if you Google it, it's there). It's quite different from the plays we used to present when I was in shool. This play examines the life of the main character, nicknamed Moo, as she descends into madness and senility. There's a bit of profanity, and it's very serious stuff. They worked very hard on it for a couple of months and presented it this week. The lad played a couple of different characters and he did pretty well, didn't flub any lines and came across as quite believable. I'm proud of him, he's definitely a chip off the old block.
In celebration of their success however the group had a party last night and the lad got quite drunk for the first and hopefully last time in his life. See, with his diabetes this can be quite dangerous. In fact when his friends brought him home last night his blood sugars had dropped drastically and kept dropping, alcohol does that, plus the fact that he kept getting sick so couldn't keep any food down, not that he wanted any. Anyway, long story short, his mother called the hospital and they suggested bringing him in. He spent the next few hours hooked up to an IV, came home around 4 a.m. and went to bed, and today he's hung over and he has to work this evening.
And there's a written record of the first time he got drunk because dad blogged about it.
I feel sorry for him. But just a little.
My guess is he definitely learned a lesson. For him getting drunk is a deadly serious business.
Other than that, I've been playing around with making a favicon this week, finally got one I like, gonna put it up in a few days. Also been experimenting with the trial version of Macromedia Fireworks I downloaded, so I hope to put up a new grasphic soon. Nothing fancy of course, but hey, you gotta start somewhere.
Anyway, it's been a very long day folks and my brain is tired so I'll just say cheers and have a good week.
Posted by OldGuy at 2:47 PM | Comments (4)
January 19, 2006
Afraid of the Dark
The princess has been going through a bit of a phase lately, she's afraid of the dark. She never used to be afraid of the dark but lately well, she gets scared. I think it may have something to do with stories she's heard at school, the kids talk lately about their school being haunted, and their houses too, etc.
We've been dealing with this for a while now and sometimes it can be a bit frustrating, like when she follows me around the house at night, going up and down the stairs right behind me because she's afraid to be left alone on any level of the house.
Anyway, I was thinking about our predicament this morning, and how every reassurance we've offered her that's there's nothing to be afraid of has fallen on deaf ears when I remembered something I read a few years ago, written by a father going through the same thing.
The fellow told his daughter that there was nothing in the dark to be afraid of and she calmly replied "You don't understand, I'm not afraid of your dark, I'm afraid of my dark."
It made me realize that she's going to be afraid for a while and nothing I can say will change that, because she's a kid, like I once was.
Posted by OldGuy at 3:02 PM | Comments (4)
January 18, 2006
Another Sad Bus Story
I was on the bus last night, half asleep as usual, when a couple of kids got on. Kids as in young teenagers, I could identify them as such by their voices and vocabulary. I didn't pay them much attention until I heard the girl say "it's so cool to be pregnant." At that point my eyes popped open and I got a good look at her as she was seated ditrectly across from me. She couldn't have been more than 14-15 years old. She was chatting with the two guys who got on with her, one of whom it turned out was her boyfriend, but not the guy who got her pregnant because supposedly he's a jerk. So the three of them are talking and her current boyfriend seems to be a jerk too, or maybe he's just immature. After all, he couldn't have been more than 16 years old himself.
There were a few older ladies sitting nearby (by older I mean older than 30 anyway) and the three of us glanced at each other once or twice and rolled our eyes at these kids and the sad predicament they were in and their total lack of understanding of the situation.
And as I got off the bus all I could think was "please God convice them to put the baby up for adoption or it won't survive."
Posted by OldGuy at 1:45 PM | Comments (6)
January 16, 2006
Yesterday and Today
Sorry for the lack of musings yesterday folks but it was busy day around the house and I was also trying to create a favicon (still trying) when I was able to get at the computer.
As for today, I'm at work right now so kinda busy and my son called a while ago to say the monitor on the home computer died so I won't be posting from there for a couple of days either.
See you soon.
Posted by OldGuy at 2:09 PM | Comments (1)
January 13, 2006
You Gotta Try This Stuff
I don't usually "advertise" products but I just have to tell you about the neat stuff I "discovered" this week
That first thing is called a pomelo. Apparently grapefruits are a cross between these things and oranges. It's about the size of a volleyball, maybe a little smaller, and looks like a white grapefruit inside. Not very juicy, but tastes great. My wife brought a couple home yesterday and the princess and I enjoyed them. Try one, you'll love it.
Mountain Dew Pitch Black ? You must be kidding right OldGuy ? Well, I'm a die-hard Pepsi fan, always have been, so it's a rare occasion when I actually try any other soft drink but the other night I looked in the fridge and noticed that the Pepsi was going to run out by the end of the week unless we got some more so I decided to ration myself. Yeah, I do that, what can I say ? Anyway, we had several cans of this stuff that my wife had bought quite some time ago. I asked my daughter if she'd tried it and she said yeah, it tasted yuck. Not much of a recommendation but what the hell, I tried it anyway. And I loved it ! This stuff is great, tastes like grape soda, the kind I used to drink as a kid. Granted it'll never replace Pepsi but it'll certainly do in a pinch. And the colours on the can are cool too, green and black, very hip. Does anybody still say hip BTW ?
I've saved the best for last. The other night my wife was in some store getting bargains as usual. She's great at that, she can smell a bargain a mile away.
Is that a woman thing BTW, because I don't do that. Not that I shop much anyway but when I do I almost always pay full price for something and when I get home I show it to my wife and she asks me how much I paid and I tell her and she says she could have got it cheaper.
But I digress.
So, my wife bought a couple of these shavers so I decided to try one last night.
Can you say pleasure ?
Guys, let's face it (ha, I did a funny !), shaving isn't fun, it ranks right up there with watching Desperate Housewives.
Anyway I lather up, turn the thing on and start to shave. And this thing is vibrating like a, well, vibrator. At first I'm going slow because I'm not used to having a vibrator on my face (ha, another funny !). But as I get going I'm feeling more confident, this is working, the whiskers are being clipped off and it feels good.
Then I notice that I'm not cutting myself as often as usual. Yeah, this thing is just gliding along the bumps like the Mars Rover. Up, down, all around, no problem, I'm built for that it says.
And this thing is getting really, really close, like it's teasing the hairs out from God knows how deep and clipping them off so precisely, well, take my word for it, it's getting em good.
The massaging is continuing of course, the little vibrator running all over my face, making me feel wonderful, happy, sexy, and I run my hands over my face and ... nothing, nothing else happened. I swear on my mother's grave.
And this morning my face is still as smooth as a baby's bottom. I know because I'm running my hands over it right now ...
Posted by OldGuy at 8:42 AM | Comments (4)
January 12, 2006
Fuddle Duddle, I Stepped in a Puddle
It's kinda warm today, the snow is actually melting outside and as I missed my regular bus this morning I decided to walk for a bit and enjoy the "balmy" weather.
It was nice not to be bundled up like an eskimo. Oh sure, I still had my gloves and coat on but I dispensed with the hat and I didn't have to walk with my head down to avoid the artic winds that sometimes blow around here.
Just one problem though. The melting snow caused huge, deep puddles on the sidewalks. I managed to detour through most of them but still had to walk through a few because there was no getting around them without walking right out into the street and risk being hit by a car, which would've been a lousy way to start the day.
Anyway, I made it through most of the puddles but I came to one that was more like a lake, and that one was scary. I could've sworn I saw an arc with animals and this old guy yelling "why me again ?"
Oh well, I guess I should be grateful for the warm weather while it lasts.
Posted by OldGuy at 12:56 PM | Comments (2)
January 10, 2006
Reminiscing Again
Bowties ? Does anybody even wear those anymore ? And look at those hair cuts, no respectable kid would be caught dead with hair like that these days.
Hey, wait a minute, I've seen those kids somewhere. It can't be. But it is !
Okay, that's me and my brother. I was 2 years old and he was 5 (I checked the back of the picture and my mom wrote our ages on it). In case you haven't guessed yet, I'm the chubby one with the short pants. I'm almost embarrased to admit that, but it's true.
Anyway, 46 years later, I've changed a little. Not much, but a little. I have a moustache now. And glasses. And my hair is darker. And there's less of it. On my head that is.
I wonder what we were thinking in that picture, we certainly look happy, that's for sure.
My family nicknamed me "doc" back then because I looked like a doctor who lived in our town, chubby, double chin and all that.
I remember years later running into a distant relative (he was my mom's cousin or something) in a bar, and he still looked the same except older but I'd grown up and I introduced myself and he got this puzzled look on his face like he kind of remembered me but couldn't quite place me, so I mentioned my parents and he still didn't quite remember. So then I said I was the "doc" and his face lit up and he got all excited and told me to sit down and have a beer.
It's been a lot of years.
Posted by OldGuy at 10:08 PM | Comments (11)
January 8, 2006
Sunday Morning Musings
Today's edition is not so light and fluffy, like they usually are.
The title of my last post was "Just One of Those Days." It has in fact been one of those weeks.
To start with I lost a significant amount of money this week. I, who almost never carry money around did so and it's gone. I don't know if I actually lost it or if it was stolen (the second is actually a distinct possibilty as I left my wallet unattended for a few minutes this week and I know I had the money before that).
Next, we got some disconcerting news from our son last night re: his plans for the future. Nothing we can't deal with of course, but disconcerting nonetheless.
And finally, lately I get the feeling that I'm swimming against the tide. No matter what I do it turns to hell, or at least it feels that way.
Oh well, maybe next week things will get better.
Have a good week folks, and sorry if I was a downer.
Posted by OldGuy at 4:48 PM | Comments (12)
January 5, 2006
Just one of Those Days
Well, it's been a very busy week so I haven't had time to get to the tree house before this.
I'm back at work after a nice long Christmas holiday so that sorta sucks. It's not so much the work part I don't care for, it's having to get up early every morning. I had just gotten used to sleeping in every day and now it's up and at em by 6 a.m. again.
We took down all the Christmas decorations on Monday. Too bad, I like Christmas decorations, they spruce the place up (no pun intended).
I guess the other news of the week is that my lad left a few essays until the last minute so now he's scrambling to get them done. We're not too happy about it but maybe he'll learn a lesson.
Ah well, hopefully he'll do okay but he's going to need a wee bit of help.
Anyway, it's been a crazy week so I haven't had much time to write anything. Hopefully things will settle down in a few days.
On a completely different note, I've been experimenting with the HTML book I got for Christmas at another site I share with a friend so I decided to do the same here. I added a backround to the sidebar titles, played with the borders, changed a few names and stuff.
What do you think ? Be honest !
One more thing, I have a few more visits to return later today.
Posted by OldGuy at 11:38 AM | Comments (5)