The Truth in Our Hearts...

Norbert, my friend, my rat...

2010-01-05T03:07:43Z

I miss you my Burton. You left me so suddenly today and I still can not believe you are gone. We spent every day together and suddenly you are no longer here. I am saddened beyond words. Such a little guy, you were always affectionate and sweet. Happy to hang out on my shoulders or in my hoody. Ever curious and always on the lookout for a delicious snack. You will always be in my heart my dearest Norbert. I love you.

Norbert passed away thus morning at ~6:30am. He rang his toy bell and I heard him cough/hack ( a nasty sound ) and he was half out of his hammock when I came and got him out and held him in my hands seconds later. I knew he was dying, I don't know why but I could tell he was going fast. He had just stopped breathing and I just held him petting him and letting my tears fall. At some point I lay him back in his bed until I could come to grips with what just happened and then make his funerary arrangements ( he will be cremated and his ashes returned to me ).... The day has been long and sad and I fear I am not done shedding tears for him. But he knows he was loved and is loved still. A rat among rats among humans.. he was a Good Boy!

The sad state of Christmas and Commercialism... thanks for keeping it cheap and sleazy ABC.

2009-12-11T16:23:42Z

While this practice has been worsening for years, I am glad this post brought it to my attention.

Sadly ABC seems to have lost its soul and sense of, well, much of anything compassionately human. It just reminds me how our corporations and "big business" are really all about $$$ for a few really wealthy at the top. Otherwise, why wouldn't they do something GIVING and THOUGHTFUL like playing such classics commercial FREE and uncut as a sign of Good Will and Christmas Spirit? Don't tell me you can't afford it. And don't do anything to increase the quality of our lives if it costs You anything... like no trip to Paris for a long weekend over Christmas. Heaven forbid.

Sorry for my rant. ABC is certainly not the only corporate entity at fault. They are in good company. But couldn't the people 'at the top', who have the ability to effect change and help out the state of the world, stop being selfish pricks and actually do something? Set some examples for the rest of us besides, "look Ma, I got the most material goods and fucked over the most people, I win!"

People are WAY TOO PARANOID. It makes them CRAZY.

2009-02-08T17:51:48Z

This is just one sad sad example of a) how people are way too paranoid and take no responsibility for their own actions and b) how even the police fall prey to actions that only a MOMENT of THOUGHT could avoid - like realizing the complaints are unfounded and show an innate stupidity in the complainer.

How to get $8,000 for taking a photo of a woman "laying on her stomach with her skirt pulled up over her butt."

A similar thing happened to me this past fall when I was taking pictures at the Croton Dam in Northern Westchester County, NY, not far from the house where I grew up and my parents still live. While doing so I was approached by a very friendly Police Officer who said he had been asked to investigate reports of a "suspicious looking blond woman taking photos of the dam". What? "Do you mean Me?" I asked. Yes, he did. I laughed in disbelief. He then asked for my license which I told him was in my car. I was becoming concerned and one of my 'accomplices' (translate as 'fellow recreational photographer") stopped himself from interfering so that he wouldn't 'get me arrested' I later learned. The officer then asked if I would write down my name and address instead, which being in a good mood and KNOWING I was innocent of any sort of crime, I did. I now regret doing so as it WAS a violation of my own privacy and rights, but at the time I was just too surprised to react properly. It helped that one of my fellow photographers used to be a trial lawyer so I felt safe in the long run.

That was it. Sorry. Once I wrote my info down, which I could have made up but didn't, he went on his way and we parted with pleasantries. He was very nice and cordial the entire time, but it does not excuse the fact that some "paranoid idiot" thought to call the cops on me! Admittedly I was climbing around the dam to get decent angles and points of view, but I do not look like a terrorist unless 40 year old caucasian ladies with long blond hair and a Nikon camera look dangerous to you.

Here is one of the photos that got me in "trouble":

I couldn't have said it better...

2009-02-04T00:02:05Z

so I won't try.

"Reefer Madness".

Philosophical Pondering

2008-12-30T05:56:46Z

We are the Eyes of God.

My Christmas Tree - part 4

2008-12-19T23:02:37Z

Well, tomorrow was not quite right. I didn't get most of the ornaments on until Sunday and the last trickled onto it Monday. Sadly my Tie Fighter and Defiant (Star Trek) ornaments do not fit in the new light sockets and I have yet to see about jury-rigging them. Otherwise the decorations and ornaments were a success!

The lack of tinsel, which I love, is due to our cats adoring all things glittery and we have enough trouble keeping Lana from knocking all the balls off the lower branches without enticing her to go higher on the tree.

Now if the slushy freezing rain will just change to snow, it might be a white Christmas. At least my parents home in NY seems to be getting a seanal coating of fluffy white :-).

Merry Pre-Christmas to ALL!!!!!

My Christmas Tree - part 3

2008-12-13T02:03:48Z

Finally!! It has several days since we put up our tree and set the star atop it. But the lights are always more problematic with bad bulbs and colors that don't light, etc. But tonight the deed is Done! I may tweak the light placement here and there and replace a few more bulbs though.

Tomorrow it is on to the decorations!!! Hooray! :-)

My Christmas Tree - part 2b

2008-12-12T04:18:41Z

Well it has been a long and tiring week and I did not get the lights up on the tree yet :-( but that should happen torrow evening for Sure! (positive look) For now here is a pic of our very Bright Star!

My Christmas Tree - part 2

2008-12-08T02:35:45Z

O K. Well both WCRS and I somehow allowed ourselves to get a tree that is just too big for the space it is supposed to go. Sure we have loads of headroom, but getting in and out of the door is like coming through the wardrobe into Narnia.

Ah, but it is a beautiful and full tree and our house smells like a forest! :-)

It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

My Christmas Tree - part 1

2008-12-06T17:41:55Z

It is That time of year again :-). Christmas is only a few weeks away, it is the beginning of December, and we are out to get our tree.

This year, as we do every year, we will get our Christmas Tree at Pine Run Corners Nusery. Sadly I am told it may be the last year we can get our tree here, ending a decades long tradition for our house. Apparently the town has plans to tear all the buildings down and redevelope the lot, but this is new news to me...we'll see.

In any case, here is the tree we picked for Christmas 2008.

My first Tone-Mapped Photograph

2008-12-05T22:30:56Z

DSC_0037_8_tonemapped, originally uploaded by Athtart.

A night shot of the Southeast Lighthouse on Block Island. It was a 30 sec exposure to get the star detail and we "light painted" the building itself to get the illuminated effect. Unlike my other photographs that night, I combine two using HDR (Photomatix) and then tone-mapped the result to get what you see here.

Interesting! ;-)

P.S. My Flickr Gallery seems to be my most current source of photographs these days, so check it often! :-)

Congratulations Barack!

2008-11-05T18:31:36Z

Yes, congratulations are in order for Senator Obama! His victory in yesterday's election has restored My faith in the electoral system, my Country and it's people. The American Dream has been given new life and hope..

If only we all can keep up the fervor and enthusiasm for the Changes we need to accomplish....but we now have the Chance!

Congratulations to our next President, Barack Obama!!!!! We have faith in you!

I Love/Hate my iPhone 3G

2008-08-16T21:45:29Z

I have been doing anyone who reads this blog a disservice. I don't post regularly with new cool and interesting things, as surely they must happen in RT (Real Life - not on the Net).

That is especially true for anything iPhone related, as I am a self professed iPhone Guru and have hacked, jailbroken, restored, erased, copied, and basically tried ALL the cool things you can do with an iPhone. I had third party apps running as soon as a command line jailbreak was available and have used/tried every utility that jailbreaks iPhones ever since it could be done. On all firmware versions... you get the picture.

In any case, while I do adore my glossy white iPhone 3G, since iTunes 7.7.1 and firmware 2.0.1, I have been PLAGUED with mysterious freezes and startups that suddenly cause all my App Store applications to suddenly stop working and for my iPod to suddenly say it is empty of content! Please note that all the default iPhone apps still work fine, as do any apps installed via Cydia. Heck, at one point I checked out some of the hacked store apps and even They continued to work, but not my Hundreds of $ worth of paid-for apps and all my music and video content. Interestingly enough, the music and video content still showed in iTunes on my Macbook Pro and could even be played by the computer. The only solution so far has been a complete Restore and then a clean install of all my applications again. HOURS worth of work, just to be repeated again within 24 hours.

Here is a link to some discussions at Apple:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1644828&tstart=0

After having tried all the "quick fixes" and all the other "solutions", I finally found one that has seemed to WORK! At least for me it does. I downgraded my iTunes from 7.7.1 to 7.7 and have had all my problems above DISAPPEAR! Hooray! (does Snoopy Dance for those that remember what it is). While I am certainly happy that it seems to have solved my spontaneous crash and "lose all my apps" issue, I am disturbed that I had to revert to an older version of iTunes. That is Severely disappointing to me. Certainly a "downgrade" should never be an acceptable solution and it irks me to have done so. But I am a Happy iPhone user again! :-)

I would also like to note, as rumor has it, that Steve Jobs commented internally at Apple regarding my issues above and stated that the "bugs" (apps crash and media disappears from ipod on iphone) are known and should be addressed in an upcoming September firmware update. FINALLY! But that means the 2.0.2 firmware update will not help me :-(. I guess I will be staying at iTunes 7.7 until September then.

Crossover and the Orange Box

2008-06-19T02:57:42Z

Ok. I have been testing out Crossover Games 7.0 with my newly purchased Orange Box from Valve. The problem is/was that I don't have enough space on my main drive to install more than one game and still have any useful space left. I am on a MacbookPro with a partitioned 120G drive (a small c drive for boot camp, but I digress).

So what to do? I searched and search but found no direct answer in third party forums or Codeweaver's site (they make Crossover for Mac and Crossover Games). What I wanted to do was use my external USB drive for the install, but the program defaults to your main drive. You can use "hooks" I think to make some startup scripts but that seemed too involved and I was looking for a quicker fix ;-).

What I finally figured out from bits of other solutions, was this: The program does not like aliases to directories when created in the Finder. I had tried this and by linking several directories to folders on my external drive but all failed at some point. (more after the break, as they say at TUAW, my favorite blog)

]]> However, the answer lay in Terminal. I just opened Terminal became root and made a sym-link/hard-link to my "Crossover Games" folder in ~/Library/Application Support/ that pointed to my actual preferred "Crossover Games" folder on the external USB drive using the ln -s command and Voila! It worked! The system sees this form of "alias" as viable and allowed me to install the entire suite of Orange Box games without further problems.

External drive spaces abound! Hooray! :-0

Blog meet Twitter :-)

2008-05-19T22:46:41Z

Well, in an effort to get myself posting more often and interfacing my life with the web, I have added a "Tweets" section on the side that displays my most recent twitter posts or "tweets" as they are called.

Now that I have been testing/trying Twinkle (a Twitter client) on my iPhone for a bit, I think I am ready to add it to my blog. AT least that way there will be more "new" content, if brief, and it should also inspire me to write more lengthy posts such as this one.

I know, I know... so WTF does anyone want to hear More form Me? Well maybe they don't, but I am not here for the 'nay sayers' :-). My true purpose? Well now, that is yet to be determined I think....