A Year in Reflection

10 Mar

admin |  March 10th,2012 | personal |  No Comments »

  • 11:16 PM CST, 2:16 PM JST At this point I had just gotten done cleaning up from painting and tweeted that I was done for the night.
  • 11:46 PM CST, 2:46 PM JST Earthquake struck
  • 11:52 PM CST, 2:52 PM JST Tweeted out to friends and family living in Japan to be safe
Screenshot

To horrible to believe

     So many emotions have gone through our minds and hearts that it is virtually impossible to classify and label them all. The purpose of this post is just a reflection of the moments that happened on my end of the world and how it affected me personally.
     The day started out like any other, trying to sleep in and getting a slow start. The day was overcast and my spring break was coming to an end. I had decided that I was going to work on the nursery during my break and I was just starting to see the end of the project. I began cleaning out the room on Sunday and was nearly done painting the murals and characters from My Neighbor Totoro. I sketched out Totoro on the wall and tweeted my progress as I went about cleaning up for bed.
     Sitting down to the computer, I checked on Facebook to see what everyone was up to before shutting everything down for the night. Not quite ready for bed yet, I grabbed my iPad and fell on the sofa to watch some TV. Firing up Twitter, I see that there’s an earthquake in Japan; nothing new. Then as I continue to read up the stream, I see some concern in the posts, bordering on fear. Apparently this was something different.
     Starting to worry, I start to tweet friends and family as to there whereabouts and safety. Thankfully everyone that I am able to get in touch with is ok, but there are still some unaccounted for. Thankfully by the next day all were found safe. Amazingly at this point there is no news coverage on CNN. Glued to my Twitter feed, I am adding and searching any news outlet and person of authority bringing me coverage and information and retweeting any useful information to friends that are not near any form of media. Oddly enough, here I was on the other side of the world informing people in their own country about what was occurring. The power of social media these days.
     Eventually CNN cut in with live coverage and the images are worse than I ever could have imagined. All I can think at this point is that there is not going to be a country to return to. Our future son (at the time) will never get to discover the country that his parents love so much. A worst case scenario is all that keeps playing through my mind. Family and friends are going to be lost and the ocean is going to reclaim the land that I have come to think of as a second home.
But there is hope. You just have to search it out.
     Somewhere online I came across an article that pointed me in the direction of a news app from NHK that would give me coverage of the disaster from Japan in English no less. Needless to say I was glued to my iPad for several days trying to wrap my mind around what had happened and trying to remind myself that it could have been much much worse. Seriously, it could have been. At the time I wish that I had the money to go there and do something, anything to help out, but all I could do was sit here and be an open ear for friends to talk to me about it and a conduit of news for my family to keep them posted. Perhaps that was what I NEEDED to do; to be an open ear for them to talk to and vent about their fear and frustrations. We all have our purposes I suppose.
     A year later and there are still issues arising from the disaster and still there are roughly 3,000 still unconfirmed missing. For many people this was a daunting time and suicide rates even increased afterwards. My family and I still love the country so much that we would move there if we could. People ask if we are afraid, and I reply that it is just as dangerous to live there than it is here. I for one, plan on visiting again and again as often as I am able so that we can tell our son about the great eastern earthquake of 3/11 and how the country persevered through it and came out stronger.
We love you Japan.

Cutting the cord, as well as expenses

10 Mar

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Cable Clutter

Image courtesy of meddygarnet

     Four months. That’s how long it’s been since we cut the cord and pitched the cable box out of the house. Did I ever think that day would come? No. Cable was my friend, confidant, stress reliever, entertainer, babysitter, etc. Why would I exile an important member of the family? A few months after the birth of my son, things began to come into perspective and I realized that someone had to go, and it wasn’t my wife or the baby.

     After the little guy got here, all I did on a daily basis was wake up and turn on ESPN and sit with him watching it. It was not only his babysitter but mine as well. Not making the money I used to (not that it was much to begin with), we started having to look at ways to cut back expenses.
  • Cancelled cable TV service.
    • Canceling this saved us roughly $100 a month. At one point we were spending around $300 a month for cable, phone and internet.
  • We canceled the local paper, which I really only read for the Sunday paper but was forced to get 2 other days as well.
    • I read all of my news on my iPad. Plus I only read the news that interests me.
  • We got rid of recycling pickup.
    • Honestly, I can drive 10 minutes and drop it off myself. Besides, curb side wouldn’t even take my glass so I had to make the trip anyways.
  • We reduced our Netflixservice.
    • We went from multiple DVD’s at a time to only one.

I think we ended up saving roughly a few hundred dollars at most, but every little bit helps. The next step we took after cutting the cord was wondering how we were going to bring content to our TV’s in the house. This seemed like an easy fix but proved to be a little more daunting than I had originally planned.

     The first step was to get local channels back in the house. Seems easy right? Wrong. When we cut the cord, it was in the middle of football season. The only channel that I wanted, neigh, NEEDED to have was the local CBS affiliate so that I could watch our local NFL team. So I went out and purchased an indoor antenna hooked it up and…..what?! I can’t get it?!  Many obscenities and other such phrases were muttered. Suffice to say, I had to purchase an outdoor antenna a few months later and now have my channel, albeit too late, but still happier than I was.
     We had AppleTV‘s in the bedroom and bonus room so that was easy to bring Netflix and all of our local content from iTunes into those rooms. All of our media is stored on 2 Drobo’s in the bonus room and are part of the decor now. They are connected to a MacMini which acts as a media server. While I was spring cleaning and looking for items to sell or donate, I came across 2 little USB sticks that I had purchased but never used. I’m glad I hadn’t sold them yet because now I have even more possibilities presented to me.
     I purchased an Elgato eyeTV a few years ago when I was trying to hook up an older TV to the internet. The plan didn’t work out, so it just sat in a flash drive holder. I also purchased a Turbo.264HD from the same company for video encoding but detected no real difference and shelved it as well. What I discovered was that if I installed the TV software on the Mac Mini and hooked up the eyeTV, I now had a makeshift DVR for my OTA HD channels. After more research, I learned that if I plugged up the Turbo.264 to the Mini as well, I could stream local TV(and it’s recorded shows) not only to my iDevices, but I could also do it from ANYWHERE that had WiFi or 3G.(with the accompanying iOS app) The Turbo.264 acts as a secondary processor to relieve the MacMini processor from having to deal with the streaming.
     Suffice to say, I am much happier without cable. I don’t feel like I HAVE to be watching TV all the time. The only thing I really miss is ESPN and NFL Network. If I absolutely HAVE to watch it, I can stream it online from various sources around the net. There are over various apps that I have downloaded that stream media to my TV’s but that’s a post for another time. Have you cut the cord or made efforts in reducing your cable addiction? We’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Spring Cleaning for the New Year

06 Mar

admin |  March 6th,2012 | personal |  No Comments »

MacBook Pro keyboardHappy New Year everyone!(3 months late) As this new year begins, I have the purge bug in my system again and feel it’s time to start spring cleaning a little early. What do we use on a daily basis and what is necessary? These are the questions that we should ask ourselves frequently to keep from acquiring too much clutter and junk in our lives, and what better time to start than the beginning of a new year.

-Last week I got to spend some creative time by myself without the little one with me. For well over 5 months, I have been a bit stifled in the creativity department. It’s not his fault, but it’s really hard to keep focused when a little one is demanding so much of your time as well as the time when you would normally be sleeping.
     -So what does this have to do with purging you might ask? While I was writing at my favorite coffee shop, I started to think how often I am able to sit at my desktop computer. I have a Mac Pro desktop and a MacBook Pro that I use sparingly these days. Lately I have been on my 1st Gen iPad for the bulk of my computing time. At this point in time, my son is starting to demand more and more of my attention, which means I can’t have my back to him while I’m working on the desktop. It got me thinking, what do I use my Mac Pro for and how necessary was it in my daily life. Could the laptop or iPad replace it?
     -The short answer is no. Being a freelance editor/producer at heart, the desktop can’t fully be done away with. However, on a daily basis, I think the laptop/iPad combo could replace it. There aren’t that many apps on the desktop that aren’t on the iPad or laptop in some shape or form. I have a Mac Mini being used as a media server in the house, so all of my entertainment needs are on that computer. In the long run, all the Mac Pro is to me is an editing workstation. If I didn’t do work that required such heavy processor workloads, I could most likely do away with the thing, sadly.
     -Since the beginning of the year, I have made 2 Goodwill trips and have three boxes in the dining room ready to be sent off to Amazon to make some side money. As I look around the bonus room, the room has probably less than half of the items it had in it when we moved here nearly 4 years ago. That’s saying something considering it now has a pack and play, exersaucer and swing in it. All of the kids toys are stored in a basket (out of site) as well as all the DVD/games that can’t be burned. Changing from a materialist to minimalist is an interesting journey and I can definitely see progress in this room the most.
    -What do you do when it comes to spring cleaning? Donate, sell or toss? We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Long Time No See- A Time to Reflect

30 Dec

admin |  December 30th,2011 | personal |  No Comments »


Sleeping Baby

You think about what you did

Wow, what a year this has been! I’m finally able to have a moment to myself to reflect on this amazing year. If the writing is a little ‘off’, I apologize. It’s been quite a while since I have done anything of consequence so I am giving it a shot.

This year began a little differently than others, being that we didn’t celebrate New Year’s Eve the night before. The wife was sick and we just stayed at home. Real exciting. Days. Weeks. Months. Time just seemed to fly by leading up to the first major event of the year. Graduation. This was a major milestone in my life as it is for so many others; my journey just took a little longer than most. After walking across that stage, a new job was imminent…or so I thought. Suffice to say I am still looking at this point, just not as hard lately.

And then my world turned upside down.

They say having a child changes you, and they would be correct. In the early days of the little guys life, our lives were tough. No sleep. Grumpiness. Arguing. Did I mention no sleep? Thankfully family was there to ease us into the transition of being responsible for a new life. Lots of screaming and crying is about all that can be said for the first few months and that is just on my part.

Fast forward to today where I am able to take some much needed “creative time” to sit and not worry about whether my son has pooped himself, spit up, or rolled off his playmat. Being creative is not something that comes easy when your child gets upset every time you turn your back on them. Not to mention that he is also the master of the power nap. Seriously, he goes all day after a couple 20 minute naps. If I could do that, I would be the most productive person in the world! I’ve tried to keep myself in the blogging/uploading spirit by working on a side blog called A Paci for Your Thoughts. I use that as a forum for anything random that might come to mind during the insanity filled days of being a stay at home dad. Mainly it has been used as a repository for images and audio updates via Soundcloud. Hopefully I will be doing more stuff with it (and this site) in the new year. Only time will tell.

As the year comes to a close tomorrow, I’ve started to look back on regrets. You can’t change the past so why worry about it? The only thing I want to do is to learn from my mistakes and not repeat them. After reading a post that Dave Delaney linked to, It really got me thinking about how I need to treasure every moment I have with my son. He’ll be driving next week and graduating college the week after, so I need to be mindful of the present and not let it slip away like I have let so many other things slip by in the past. I may be sleep deprived at 1AM in the morning feeding him a bottle, but the smile he gives me when he sees me makes it all worth it. Being able to cuddle as I rock him back to sleep; these are the moments I don’t want to miss out on. If I have learned anything this year, it’s not to take time for granted. Blink, and the moments gone.

If you take anything away from this, don’t take your time on this planet for granted. We are only here for a short amount of time in the grand scheme of things, so make something of it while you are here. See you in 2012.

One Device to Rule Them All

16 Aug

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Burned Out Room

Something Lost, Something Gained

On July 6, 2000 my parents house caught on fire. It was during construction of an addition being made to the house and was blamed on faulty wiring. The fire destroyed the bonus room and half of the new construction that had been built on top of it and to its sides. Not only destroying the contents of the bonus room, it began to sweep through the attic before it was brought under control on the hottest day of the year (so far at the time). The event was so prolific, that it even made it to the front page of the local paper that day. Looking back on that moment in my life, I have never been the same; both the good and the bad.

Way back in 2000, there were no such things as iPods and iPhones. All I had was a Palm Pilot V and a ‘brick’ Motorola cell phone. On that hot July day, I was no longer living at home, but away at college a mere 40 minutes away. At that point in time I was speaking with my parents nearly on a daily basis. To make a long story short, the phone had been busy at their house for hours and I was starting to get worried. After getting in touch with my grandmother, I learned of the terrible incident. My father who is legally blind (but by no means disabled) was the only one home at the time it started seeing as all the construction workers had left for lunch. Somehow he managed to get out safely and get the cats to safety as well as have enough foresight to go outside and film the disaster. (Proud of him for that.) Once I made it back to my parents I was just at a loss for words. My mother was working and hadn’t found out about it yet when she arrived back at the house, so I was going to be the brave one to tell her what had happened, but only managed to break down into tears as I told her.

A part of me burned up with that room in July. What was it? Have I managed to regain it? I don’t quite know. My wife has always said I was never the ‘same’ after it happened, so I’m not quite sure what burned up in there. Innocence? Childhood? However, I did gain something from this disaster; the sense for a need to backup my life.

In previous posts on this blog, here and here, I have discussed about living in one suitcase. The idea is that you can fit your life into one piece of luggage. After one loses something, they tend to have a greater appreciation for that which they have. We all have ‘stuff’, and lots of it. Things that we ‘need’ that wind up being thrown in a closet or room only to gather dust. That’s part of what this room was not only for myself but my parents as well. Trying to go through the debris and remember every little item that was in there is nearly impossible. What made matters worse was that the construction workers started shoveling stuff into the dumpsters before we even had a chance to go through it. Which brings us back to the point of this post. What good came from this disaster? I started making inventory lists of all my belongings, more importantly, I started converting my life over to a digital lifestyle. Remember, we’re talking about 2000, not 2011. I had account numbers, Quicken files, inventory lists, etc. all accessible on my Palm Pilot. I took pictures of my apartment and all its belongings so that if the unthinkable or something else were to happen…again, I would be ready, or at least better prepared. Pictures were scanned and saved to Zip disks. (Remember those?) It was a small feeling as if I was in control. Fast forward to 2011.

To be quite honest, I don’t know how I survived without my iPhone all this time. I’m sure that sounds pathetic, but it’s the way that I am and a lot of others are these days. My entire life in my pocket. No matter where I am, I can access crucial information on my device. As I mentioned, the fire brought the need to backup everything in my life and that’s just what I’ve done….maybe to an extreme. Let’s break this up into aspects of my life; how I’ve backed them up and how I can access them with an iDevice. Read the rest of this entry »

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