I ask myself this question more and more often these days. Why DID I go to college? I have a Bachelor of Science degree, but it's never done me any good. Any of the skills I've used to get and keep a job have been ones I taught myself. I'm still earning ridiculously low wages in my "real jobs, " and the only time I earn halfway decent money is when I freelance, again using skills that I, for the most part, taught myself (or learned in Continuing Education programs AFTER I graduated from college.) In fact, the only thing college ever did for me was rack up tens of thousands of dollars worth of debt, that I basically have to win the lottery or die to get rid of.
So why did I do it? Apparently there have been TV shows in recent years talking about how college is one of the "greatest scams" in history. Sure, there are the lucky few who go through college, get advanced degrees, and go on to hold prestigious jobs that pay six-figure incomes or more. Then there's the other 95-98% of the population.
If I could go back in time, and "do it all again," I really think I'd skip college, and just take certification courses for the skills I wanted to learn. That way, I wouldn't have wasted the majority of my youth, and I would be able to live a more enjoyable life, free from the majority of debt that I have since accrued thanks to my student loans.
Or, if I could regress back to the age of 18 or so, I'd go back to college with the current day offerings (since there was nothing really that interested me back when I was in college), and follow a course of study that I DO have an interest in, and that would hopefully earn me a position in the modern working world. A career, not just a job to pay the bills, which is all I seem to ever get.
Who knows, maybe we WILL win the lottery, and I'll be able to pay off my FA loans, and get back on an even keel. Maybe I'd even go BACK to college, and pursue a different course of study. One that actually has some sort of future...
April 29, 2009
April 28, 2009
Nature Slowed Down
Well, they're somewhat blurry and "painted looking" again, but here are 2 more pictures I took today of one of the Ruby Throated Humming Birds on the feeder at Clare and Josh's place. I used a different camera setting this time, and managed to capture a couple still images of it's wings; wings that beat anywhere from 50-80 times per second! Check them out. :-)
Also, if you look carefully at the pictures I took yesterday, in some of them you can see a small white protrusion from the hummingbird's beak. That's its tongue!
Also, if you look carefully at the pictures I took yesterday, in some of them you can see a small white protrusion from the hummingbird's beak. That's its tongue!
April 27, 2009
Nature In Motion
I went over to Clare and Josh's again for a little while this evening, and while I was there I took some pictures of a couple humming birds and a bee gathering pollen on some large, yellow irises. The pictures once again look like paintings when I crop them down so you can see the smaller details, but oh well. One of these days I'll get a nice dSLR camera with a high-powered zoom lens, and I won't have to worry so much about this. In the meantime, I take digital watercolors. :) Enjoy.
[Luna]cy
Monica asked me to bring her camera out onto the porch earlier tonight, because there was a Luna Moth on the wall. I used to take pictures of them all the time when I worked/lived up at the Len Foote Hike Inn, but it's been a while since I've seen one, so I grabbed my camera too, and went out to try and take some pictures.
Patches was in on the fun too (unfortunately trying to EAT said Luna Moth while I was trying to take pictures of it.) This did not make me (or the moth) very happy! After shoving Patches off the porch a few times, and picking him and and pulling him away from the moth that was frantically flapping around on the porch, looking for a means of escape, I told Monica to open the screen door and turn the porch light off. That was when the Luna Moth decided it was safer inside our house, which was ultimate correct, after a few close calls with the ceiling fan.
Anyway, here are a few pictures I took of the Luna Moth, while it was outside on the porch, and inside on our carpet. I hope you enjoy them. :)
Patches was in on the fun too (unfortunately trying to EAT said Luna Moth while I was trying to take pictures of it.) This did not make me (or the moth) very happy! After shoving Patches off the porch a few times, and picking him and and pulling him away from the moth that was frantically flapping around on the porch, looking for a means of escape, I told Monica to open the screen door and turn the porch light off. That was when the Luna Moth decided it was safer inside our house, which was ultimate correct, after a few close calls with the ceiling fan.
Anyway, here are a few pictures I took of the Luna Moth, while it was outside on the porch, and inside on our carpet. I hope you enjoy them. :)
April 23, 2009
A Night In With The Kids
While Clare and Josh were out on the town, having dinner and getting interviewed for a news article by some friends of theirs, Monica and I stayed at their house and kept an eye on the kids. Clare put Esme to bed right when we got there, and after 10 minutes or so of crying, she finally settled down and went to sleep. Jack stayed up with Monica and I, and over the course of the night we played with him, read to him, and eventually got him into bed after an hour or so of snuggling with Aunt Moe.
Here are a couple pictures from the night.
Here are a couple pictures from the night.
Such A Disappointment
I've been having a serious chocolate craving for the last couple days (possibly due to all of Clare's mentioning of YPPs.) At any rate, I raided my change jar today, and drove down to Bells grocery store to get my fix. Normally I would have driven to Wal-Mart, but the comparative distance between our house and Wal-Mart, and our house and Bells made the decision a no-brainer today.
In addition to some mini Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Hershey's Milk Chocolate Kisses, I also picked up the latest issue of the Oglethorpe Echo, the local paper for Oglethorpe County. And let me just say, I was fairly disappointed with ALL of my purchases! The chocolate, usually so delicious and satisfying, tastes somewhat old and stale. And the newspaper? Oh, where to begin?!?
Now I'm not a newspaper man myself, but I am a writer, and I was horrified at the number of typos in that newspaper that were allowed to slip past the copy-editor. Some of them I could possibly accept, because they were in the police blotter section, and the person responsible for the publication of that segment was most likely just copying and pasting from the police Web site, or some other similar source. So in that case the errors originated with the source of the information, the authors/posters of the particular entries. These could have been corrected, but I'm sure they were allowed into the paper "as is", without any copy editing, under the assumption that a) they were correct in the first place, and b) there probably wouldn't be time to go through and edit them all anyway. The rest of the errors in the newspaper, however, do not benefit from the same excuse!
Then there is the overall layout and organization of the paper itself. Talk about a nightmare! Stories are crammed in together, with no apparent consideration for a cohesive layout or structure. Some stories continue down the page, while others are continued across the page. Random stories seem to have been inserted anywhere there was an opening, with little to no regard for text flow or the use of negative space, yet alone whether or not they had anything to do with their surroundings. They also crammed 2 or 3 pages full of all sorts of boring legal notices that should have been listed in a separate legal brief or something, because only the involved parties and maybe a select few others are likely to be interested in what they have to say. Were they that desperate for filler material, or is this a weekly section? (I don't know, because this was the first time I purchased this paper. But I've got to admit, if this is the caliber of a typical issue, I am sorely disappointed.)
Now I know some of you out there are probably thinking, "Well, if YOU think you can do a better job, then why don't you?!?" And to that I say, "Perhaps I should." Perhaps I should apply for a position with the paper, either at their "real world" location, or with their allegedly soon to be online version, a site apparently hosted by Tripod.
I had a site hosted with Tripod once...back in the early 90s, when the Internet was just moving away from all grey backgrounds and linear text; when pictures took 5 minutes or more to load, and the "blink" tag was the latest and greatest programming trick! I mean, come on! I'm sure Tripod has improved exponentially since those days, but it's still more widely known for it's free, ad-supported Web sites that are developed by thousands of individuals with rudimentary design skills and unhealthy obsessions with whatever singers/bands are pimping themselves to masses.
Okay, sorry about that. I may have come across a little strongly there, but I was incensed by some of the Tripod "Top Sites," like this one dedicated to Britney Spears. THAT is a top site? My only response to that is "WHY?!?" The design is fairly ghastly; broken links abound throughout the site; text sizes range from fairly legible to ridiculously tiny; the pictures and videos offered are old, and many of them are blurry or of low quality; the "Private" members only section login link leads to an "Address not valid" page; and in addition to Windows Media Audio and RealAudio files, listed under the incorrect header of "MP3s", the site offers MIDI files. MIDI...the elevator music of the Internet, also popular back in the days of the infamous "blink" tag! And THIS is a "Top Site"? Sure, maybe the site was developed by an 11 year old girl (or boy) with more good intentions than talent, but if that's a "Top Site", then I wouldn't want to associate my business Web site, my potential livelihood, with such an organization!
Okay, once again, I apologize for the rant. Sure, I'm not a top-notch designer myself, by any means (and I too make typos and errors from time to time), AND that horrid Britney Spears site probably does see many more visitors than this humble blog of mine, but things like that just get under my skin.
Anyway, I'm going to wrap this thing up before I go off on another tirade for some inane reason. (Maybe it's just this old tasting chocolate that's got me all worked up. I was so looking forward to getting my chocolate fix, and now it's just ruined! *sigh*) As usual, thanks for stopping by, and I hope you all have a great weekend. I'm off to Clare's in a little while with Monica to "babysit" for a couple hours while Clare and Josh are out being interviewed for another newspaper article which I'm SURE will be much better than the ones I read today. Peace.
In addition to some mini Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Hershey's Milk Chocolate Kisses, I also picked up the latest issue of the Oglethorpe Echo, the local paper for Oglethorpe County. And let me just say, I was fairly disappointed with ALL of my purchases! The chocolate, usually so delicious and satisfying, tastes somewhat old and stale. And the newspaper? Oh, where to begin?!?
Now I'm not a newspaper man myself, but I am a writer, and I was horrified at the number of typos in that newspaper that were allowed to slip past the copy-editor. Some of them I could possibly accept, because they were in the police blotter section, and the person responsible for the publication of that segment was most likely just copying and pasting from the police Web site, or some other similar source. So in that case the errors originated with the source of the information, the authors/posters of the particular entries. These could have been corrected, but I'm sure they were allowed into the paper "as is", without any copy editing, under the assumption that a) they were correct in the first place, and b) there probably wouldn't be time to go through and edit them all anyway. The rest of the errors in the newspaper, however, do not benefit from the same excuse!
Then there is the overall layout and organization of the paper itself. Talk about a nightmare! Stories are crammed in together, with no apparent consideration for a cohesive layout or structure. Some stories continue down the page, while others are continued across the page. Random stories seem to have been inserted anywhere there was an opening, with little to no regard for text flow or the use of negative space, yet alone whether or not they had anything to do with their surroundings. They also crammed 2 or 3 pages full of all sorts of boring legal notices that should have been listed in a separate legal brief or something, because only the involved parties and maybe a select few others are likely to be interested in what they have to say. Were they that desperate for filler material, or is this a weekly section? (I don't know, because this was the first time I purchased this paper. But I've got to admit, if this is the caliber of a typical issue, I am sorely disappointed.)
Now I know some of you out there are probably thinking, "Well, if YOU think you can do a better job, then why don't you?!?" And to that I say, "Perhaps I should." Perhaps I should apply for a position with the paper, either at their "real world" location, or with their allegedly soon to be online version, a site apparently hosted by Tripod.
I had a site hosted with Tripod once...back in the early 90s, when the Internet was just moving away from all grey backgrounds and linear text; when pictures took 5 minutes or more to load, and the "blink" tag was the latest and greatest programming trick! I mean, come on! I'm sure Tripod has improved exponentially since those days, but it's still more widely known for it's free, ad-supported Web sites that are developed by thousands of individuals with rudimentary design skills and unhealthy obsessions with whatever singers/bands are pimping themselves to masses.
Okay, sorry about that. I may have come across a little strongly there, but I was incensed by some of the Tripod "Top Sites," like this one dedicated to Britney Spears. THAT is a top site? My only response to that is "WHY?!?" The design is fairly ghastly; broken links abound throughout the site; text sizes range from fairly legible to ridiculously tiny; the pictures and videos offered are old, and many of them are blurry or of low quality; the "Private" members only section login link leads to an "Address not valid" page; and in addition to Windows Media Audio and RealAudio files, listed under the incorrect header of "MP3s", the site offers MIDI files. MIDI...the elevator music of the Internet, also popular back in the days of the infamous "blink" tag! And THIS is a "Top Site"? Sure, maybe the site was developed by an 11 year old girl (or boy) with more good intentions than talent, but if that's a "Top Site", then I wouldn't want to associate my business Web site, my potential livelihood, with such an organization!
Okay, once again, I apologize for the rant. Sure, I'm not a top-notch designer myself, by any means (and I too make typos and errors from time to time), AND that horrid Britney Spears site probably does see many more visitors than this humble blog of mine, but things like that just get under my skin.
Anyway, I'm going to wrap this thing up before I go off on another tirade for some inane reason. (Maybe it's just this old tasting chocolate that's got me all worked up. I was so looking forward to getting my chocolate fix, and now it's just ruined! *sigh*) As usual, thanks for stopping by, and I hope you all have a great weekend. I'm off to Clare's in a little while with Monica to "babysit" for a couple hours while Clare and Josh are out being interviewed for another newspaper article which I'm SURE will be much better than the ones I read today. Peace.
April 22, 2009
April 21, 2009
A Few Family Photos
Ah yes, I love alliteration! :) Here are some pictures I took when I was over at Clare and Josh's place this morning/afternoon.
April 19, 2009
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