Constant Nostalgia

Every year we seem to get a few warm days around this time.  Spring is still several weeks away, but we are teased by mild temps and sunshine, only to have freezing temps the next day.  These first warm days offer a gentle comfort but the air still has that distinct crispness of the lingering winter. That feeling is unmistakable. When I experience it I am transported vividly to a specific time in my life.  Autumn is my favorite season, but my favorite time of year will always be those first mild days when we got out on the course to start the high school golf season. I look back on those spring days with such fondness. In me is created this instant personal nostalgia that I want to be able to grab onto, but can never quite reach.

I could, and sometime will, write an entire entry on why I love golf so much. The sport played a big role in the most important of my formative years.  However, this entry is about something different. This entry is about my inability to enjoy things as they happen. This is about the frustration of being unable to live in the moment no matter how hard I try. I guess the irony of that is "living in the moment", almost by definition, means not making an effort. You live in the moment when you just let things be.

Beard-less

This weekend I got rid of the full beard and went with a goatee. Which disappointing celebrity or sports personality do I look like now?!

Nice Kicks!

I think it is so annoying when a parent thinks his child is just the most perfect/smart/wonderful thing and won't stop talking about it.  I vowed to not be "that guy" when baby Bidwell got here.  But holy crud, Amelia is pretty much the cutest baby ever.  She is so AMAZING! It's hard for me to believe I had anything to do with making such a beautiful little human.  Okay, I will stop now.  I'm sure a ton of parents like to think their child is the best baby in the entire world. It is nice to know that mine actually is.

New Passenger on the iPhone Bandwagon

I've been doing a pretty horrible job at keeping up with my blog. It isn't for lack of motivation or ideas, it is just lack of time.  I spend all day at work in front of a computer screen, the last thing I want to do when I get home is write blog posts. I'm having a ton of trouble keeping up with my movie blog also. I never wanted to have to put a lot of effort into my writing for either of my sites, and I am definitely struggling.  I've been doing this thing lately where I will start a post, but not have time to finish it.  When I come back later to complete my thought it seems totally stupid and I just scrap it.  I have been working on a post about The Social Network for almost 2 weeks now.  Every time I come back to it I end up deleting 80% of what I had.

My Girls!

I love Saturdays! My favorite day of the week by far. Had a great time spending the day with my girls! Just wanted to share a few pics. Have I mentioned that our new camera is awesome?! So happy with it.  The camera, along with the Panasonic 20mm pancake lens are the best purchases of 2010 for me.

From Russia With Malicious Intent

Over the past 24 hours both of my blogs have seen huge spikes in hits. All the hits have happened within a few minutes of one another, and they have all come from Russia. I don't know whether to be concerned about this or not. I happened to notice the anomaly right after it occurred on my film blog. I locked the site down so nobody could access it, but I am not sure what good that did. I have since opened it back up.

I checked this blog when I got up and had the same thing happen at 2am this morning, but to a lesser extent.  I have to assume these are not "real" hits. It is somehow a spammer fishing for something. I am not sure what.  Everything from blogger is hosted on google servers, so I trust their security is adequate and whatever robot was poking around wasn't able to get anything.  That is a big assumption I guess.

Blizzard 2011 - Round 2

The roads were finally becoming decent to drive on after our snow from last Tuesday. Several days ago they said there was another system headed our way. It could potentially be much larger than the one a week before.  In the last few days they down-graded it; said we would probably only get 2-4 inches and the worst part of the storm would be south of here.

We woke up this morning to a full 12 inches of snow, and it is still coming down. We might be up to 14 inches by now.  I didn't even attempt to drive into work today. I signed on from home and see that a few people did make it in.  Others tried and got stuck in the ditch.  

Are $300 headphones worth it?

I usually don't find much value in re-posting somebody else's blog. I mean, why can't I just throw the link up on facebook or twitter and be done with it?  This one specifically intrigued me. I've always been fascinated with the psychology of advertising.  It seemed appropriate to think about this subject the day after millions of people gathered around their television sets to watch the Super Bowl. For many of those people (a majority?) the highlight of the night was not athletics, but advertising.

Are $300 headphones worth it?:
A friend wanted to buy Dr. Dre headphones. They list for about $300.
Any audiophile can tell you that they sound like $39 headphones. Instead, consider these. We can prove they sound better!
But of course, that's not the question. It's not what sounds better, it's what's worth it.
The Dre headphones come with admiring glances at no extra charge. They come with self-esteem built in. You can argue that this is a worthless feature in a device designed to reproduce sound accurately, but you'd be wrong. After all, the whole reason you're listening to music in the first place is to feel good. To be happy. If the Dre's make you happy, and your happiness is worth $300, then they're worth it, no?
For others (put me in that category) I get more happiness knowing that I didn't fall for a clever marketing ploy, and I buy the ones that I believe sound better. Of course, that's a clever marketing ploy too--persuading me that better sound is worth this much. But don't tell anyone. That would make me feel manipulated."

I am much like Seth Godin in the fact that perceived value is almost completely dependent on how well a product is able to function at its intended purpose; or at least how well I perceive it to function.  I allow myself to believe I am able to make my own informed decisions and not be enticed (duped) by the marketing. I never consciously think about how something is advertised or how cool using a product might make me look. I am sure it enters into the equation without me even realizing it.

"No Comment"

I use, and really like, several google services. When I wanted to start a blog a few years ago it only made sense to use the free blogger platform that they offer.  I didn't know anything about it, but I wasn't sure what features I needed or what else was out there.  I have now created and designed several blogs on blogger.  I only post on this blog and my pretendcritic.com site.  I created my wife's blog design, and update that on a somewhat regular basis.  Blogger is great and easy to use. I love that they give me full access to the html code so I can tweak it however I want. They have made a lot of improvements over the past couple years. However, the one thing that is still severely lacking is the comment system.

From the beginning of my film blog I have had tons of issues with the blogger commenting system. I have been contacted via email more that once by a reader who wanted to leave a comment and it just wouldn't do it.  Who knows how often this has happened and they didn't bother to send me a message.  I don't get a ton of comments on my blog, and I was starting to think the blogger comment system had something to do with it. I do need to mention that I have custom domains on both of my blog. Basically I just don't have to use the ".blogspot". Most of the issues I've had with comments also comes from people not signed in with their google account to post.

Blizzard 2011

I wonder how many bloggers this week have dedicated a post to the snow storm. It is billed as the largest snow storm IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. I am not sure whether that is based on total snowfall of the massive area that it blanketed. Either way, it is by far the most snow I have seen since I've lived in Arkansas, and it has stuck around longer than any has before.

I drove my car to work this past Tuesday morning, then all this snow business started. I was afraid it was going to be stuck there all week. Luckily I was able to make it home, and eventually back up into the garage after some shoveling and salting.  The snow stuck around all week. We even got some more on Friday afternoon. Today I finally shoveled off the entire driveway. The worst part was the inch of ice underneath all that snow. I haven't had much exercise in the past several weeks. Shoveling almost killed me.