On the Subject Of Everyone Bitching About Battery Life
It seems that every time Apple updates its iOS, People With Very Important Opinions© start bitching about how iPhone battery life has taken a nosedive. I have to laugh because none of these very important people seem to realize that when a new OS comes out, people initially use their phones more to explore the new OS.
So of course your battery life is going to go down!
Winning Werking the Internet
Dreams of Home
Last night I dreamt my sister and I were back in the house where we lived during my high school and college years. I don't remember the circumstances, only the overwhelming feeling of "home" and "safety" that it elicited. I remember standing in my bedroom, running a finger down the blinds, watching the afternoon sun stream in. It was a little slice of heaven.
That poor bedroom received more coats of paint that I can count over the years. Sadly, I don't have photos from all its iterations. I think the blue phase was my favorite, even though it never was the exact blue I'd envisioned. I also forever regretted my choice of carpet when we first moved in because it never went with anything; a brown, white, and black shag that my father reluctantly agreed to on the condition there would be no more "girly" colors (lemon yellow, lime green—hey, it was the late 60s and early 70s!) like I'd had in my bedroom in our previous home.
My mom, being an interior decorator, indulged my nervous color twitching and I think on some level encouraged it.
I've dreamt of that house more often than usual over the past few years, and I'm starting to think that while my last apartment in Phoenix may be my current conscious mental "happy place" where I go to de-stress and cocoon, that house on Solano Drive North may in fact be my real, subconscious place of refuge.
If Only…
I think iStat's being overly optimistic.
I Needed a Good Laugh
Someone Make This Happen!
An Interesting Read
Is Microsoft shooting themselves in the foot?
Quote of the Day
Some Men Just Want to See the World Burn
Word.
Grrr…
Need Some Help With That? (NSFW)
Critters (NSFW)
A Little Late But Still Damn Funny
Especially after seeing that little douchebag's deposition…
I Long for the Day…
…when I can come home from work and not hear Judge Judy or Law&Order SVU blaring from that guest room.
Denver
As Good an Explanation as Any
Scenes from San Francisco, 1993
I still find it amazing that for all the years I lived in San Francisco—inarguably one the most photogenic cities in the United States—I have so few photos of The City itself. Again and again I used to say, "I really need to grab my camera and just start walking the neighborhoods," but like going to the Monterey Bay Aquarium—something else that kept getting put off "because it'll always be there"—one day I woke up and realized I no longer had the opportunity.
But every so often I did get out…
University of Arizona, 1976-77
The AIDS Memorial Quilt, 1988
Going through more photos…
Even though I'd been in San Francisco a couple years when the quilt was unveiled at Moscone Center in December of 1988, I was still semi-insulated from the ravages of the AIDS epidemic, having lost only two friends to the disease: Kent "Red" Kelly (who'd moved from Phoenix to San Francisco in 1979 and remarked shortly before his death in 1987 that, "Six years in San Francisco are better than sixty in Arizona," and Ben Walzer, a dear friend and "neighbor with benefits" from my time in Tucson who passed only a few days after Kent.
But like happened with so many others, the arrival of the horrible 90s changed all that.
Word.
Straight Guys are So Gay
Just Go With It
Dear iPhoto…
I want to like you. I want to use you. I really do. But I just don't understand you. Maybe it's because you're too easy, and after decades of manually sorting and renaming my photos into folders that are just so, I simply can't wrap my head around that simplicity.
Yeah, I get that that you're basically just one big database, and that anything I do inside you leaves my original images "on the outside" untouched. But if I want to use an altered photo from the database I have to export it, essentially creating a duplicate image. WTF? Other than from a safety standpoint of leaving all your original items untouched, what's the point? For me it's a bunch of extra steps that provides no benefit whatsoever.
I already have everything anal-retentively sorted and named inside [the admittedly huge steaming pile of shit that is] Adobe's Bridge, and all my editing is done either with Photoshop or a quick-n-dirty editor called Flare, so even your photo manipulation facilities leave me unmoved. And even if I did use them, we're back to the whole having-to-export thing.
My workflow is basically when I snag a new image off the internet it first goes into a "Downloads" folder to later get renamed and shuttled off to its respective folder. Importing photos from my camera works basically the same way. In that case, I used to have folders by year, with individual dated subfolders for each "event" as you like to call them, where I'd put the images, but I blew away that system—which became too anal even for me—a while back and now just dump everything into yearly folders. I figure since everything is time stamped already, I don't really need to break things down any further.
I suppose that if I'd started my photographic career off with you initially and had never been exposed to ThumbsPlus (that I curse on a daily basis for still not having a Mac version available) or Photoshop, we'd be having a marvelous love affair right now, but importing 80,000+ images (and no, that's not all porn!) after the fact and then basically recreating the folder structure I already have and use seems a huge waste of time.
I do understand a few of your benefits, most notably the ability to create virtual folders where disparate images can be grouped. I like being able to create a "Wallpaper" folder, and throw images from a dozen different albums into it. I find that useful. You're also great for making Photo Books. But other than that, I just don't see how you can fit into my workflow without doubling the number of steps I need to perform to get from Point A to Point B, and ain't nobody got time for that!
Gay Day at Big Surf, Part Deux
Since y'all seemed to like that previous post, here are some photos from the 1985 bash:
I Am So Ready to Move Back to Phoenix…
…or Tucson, or or any fucking place where it doesn't snow.
I'm ready to go back to 115 degree summer weather. At least in Phoenix you know when it begins and ends. In Denver, the weather is absolutely bipolar, and you never know when winter's going to end. Last year it lasted through May. It was 60℉ earlier this week. It will warm up again over the next couple days only to have snow again next Thursday. I'm sick of it.
Gay Day at Big Surf
Tempe, Arizona – August 1984
I had to laugh when I realized these photos had that "vintage" color, because I'M NOT THAT OLD!
Wash Yo Damn Nuts
Karma, She's a Bitch
Old news, but still delicious:
Five months ago when Bank of America filed foreclosure papers on the home of a couple, who didn't owe a dime on their home.
The couple said they paid cash for the house.
The case went to court and the homeowners were able to prove they didn't owe Bank of America anything on the house. In fact, it was proven that the couple never even had a mortgage bill to pay.
A Collier County Judge agreed and after the hearing, Bank of America was ordered, by the court to pay the legal fees of the homeowners', Maurenn Nyergers and her husband.
The Judge said the bank wrongfully tried to foreclose on the Nyergers' house.
So, how did it end with bank being foreclosed on? After more than 5 months of the judge's ruling, the bank still hadn't paid the legal fees, and the homeowner's attorney did exactly what the bank tried to do to the homeowners. He seized the bank's assets.
"They've ignored our calls, ignored our letters, legally this is the next step to get my clients compensated, " attorney Todd Allen told CBS.
Sheriff's deputies, movers, and the Nyergers' attorney went to the bank and foreclosed on it. The attorney gave instructions to to remove desks, computers, copiers, filing cabinets and any cash in the teller's drawers.
After about an hour of being locked out of the bank, the bank manager handed the attorney a check for the legal fees.
"As a foreclosure defense attorney this is sweet justice," said Allen.