Update On The Photo Contest!!

I am very proud to say that 2 of my pictures I entered in the Fair's Photo Contest back in July/ August won ribbons. I included the two pictures at the top of this post.

One (Top Photo) is of my Grandmother, and my little second cousin. He was about 2 at the time, and they were sitting on the back deck at my grandparent's house. It took 2nd place in it's category. The other picture (Bottom) was of an old horse trailer that my grandparents have had behind their barn for years!! I think that old trailer hasn't been moved since I was a little boy. It took 3rd place in it's category.

I'm very excited that I got two ribbons, but all the more so since this was the very first photo contest I'd ever entered. A co-worker & friend of mine also entered some pictures. He won at least one 1st place ribbon, and I think a couple 2nd place ones. This really great picture he took of a friend of his at his families lake house got a Grand Champion Ribbon for it's division!! It was a really cool picture!!

I hope you enjoy my photos! :)

Aries Flies Today!!

Today at the 39b launch pad, part of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a test flight of the Aries 1-X Rocket was successful. The rockets engines fired for 2 minutes, and the flight lasted a total of 6 minutes before landing in the Atlantic Ocean 150 miles from where it took off. NASA officials said that the test flight will give them lots of knowledge about how to improve the Aries 1 rockets

The Aries 1 Rocket is planned to fill several holes in NASA's plans for the future of manned space flight. Firstly the rockets are to replace the aging fleet of Space Shuttles, which were designed & first built in the 1970's. The Aries 1, Orion Crew Capsule, and Aries 5 Heavy Payload Rockets will take crews & supplies between Earth & The International Space Station. Secondly the Aries 1 rocket, along with Orion & Aries 5, are to be the craft to take man back to the Moon. As part of The Constellation Programme, Aries 1 will also for the first time take man to our next closet neighbor in the Solar System, Mars.

With today's successful flight of the Aries 1-X Rocket, NASA is one step closer to ushering in the next era of space exploration.

(All back ground information on The Constellation Programme taken from the NASA website, and information on the Aries 1-X flight from NASA via it's iPhone app)

Just saying hi!

Just wanted to drop by real quick to say hi! I have some pretty exciting news, I'm going to get to enter 10 pictures in the local Fair's photo contest this year!! I'm not sure that they will win any prizes, though I think I have a couple that could be in contention, I'm mostly hoping for exposure!! There are separate categories for professional photographers, and I'm hoping one of them might notice my work. If they like it well enough, maybe they might try to contact me?? I hope so, I would really like to get a job in photography so I can leave my current one!

Above are 5 of the photos that I'm entering in the contest!! I hope you like them!!!! :) :)

My bad experience with the laptop Friday Night!

This is a blog post that I wrote Friday night while I was setting at a Panera Bread in town. I was actually hoping that when I went to refill my iced tea, someone would steal this laptop computer, I hated it so much at the time! I just hope a friend of mine may be able to works the kinks out of it!!

The Laptop From Hell!!

I totally hate this laptop I have bought! It sucks in every way I could possible imagine. I can’t add any programs to it even as an administrator, I can’t get the anything to work like it’s supposed to, and I only got the wireless Internet to work on it once for maybe 10 minutes. I want to throw it up against the wall so badly!!!! It won’t do anything that I bought it for, except write stuff. Even then it takes Microsoft Word 3-5minutes to start, because each time I start the program it has to re configure it’s self?? I don’t think it’s supposed to do that, or at least it doesn’t on my iMac.

Which leads me to another thing; my Internet at the house has been turned off! I’ll get it turned back on tomorrow, but it really pisses me off that I can’t just leave the Panera Bread I’m at, and go home to hop on the Internet!! I should have gone by the place to pay my bill today, but I thought one more day wouldn’t hurt. Well I guess it did?!! Will I never learn?

Back to this shit computer I’m writing on, I have been setting here wondering if I went to get a refill of tea, would some one do me the favor of stealing this damned thing??!! I started having my doubts about it the night mom picked it up for me, but I thought it might not be as bad as I thought. Well I’ve come to find out its much worse than I thought. What is up with it not allowing me to install programs?? I’ve never seen and Admin not be able to install programs before! I tried to make a new Admin account, but even that didn’t work. I’ll have a friend of mine look at it for me, but I’m considering it hopeless. I think I got swindled. He’s supposed to take a look at putting in a Wi-Fi card for me, something that up till about an hour ago (7:30 pm. CDT) I thought I might not have to do now. Well after tonight’s experiment, I know that I will probably have to get a new card any way. Have I said how much I HATE THIS THING????!!!!!

I wish I had never bought it, and I’ve thought about calling the woman I bought it from to get my money back. It’s been about 3 weeks now, and I bet she’ll say it worked fine when she had it. That’s what she said when I looked at it, and talked to her on the phone about it. Maybe she didn’t know that all this stuff was wrong with it, but I wonder?? I’ve had mostly nothing but trouble out of it every time I’ve used it. How could she have used it much, and not known there was all these problems??

And to make matters worse, I have another friend that just bought a really nice brand new Acer Laptop! It’s so much nicer than this piece of crap; it would insult the Acer to compare the two. My friends computer has 4GB of ram, mine has 512MB; his has a 2.0 or 2.1GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, mine is a 1GHz Pentium 3m; he has a 15 or 16in LCD screen, mine’s only maybe 12-13in; his has a CD/DVD burner, I got an external CD drive with mine; His screen is just a screen, mine turns into a tablet computer with a touch screen that doesn’t work as a touch screen!. He paid a little over $600 for his; I paid $240 for mine. I think considering how much better my friends computer is, I shouldn’t have paid almost a third what he paid for his, and there’s a lot of things I can’t do with mine right now because it says I don’t have access??

I really wish I could take a hammer to this computer right now! Instead of writing this on my blogs on MySpace & Blogger, I have to write it in Microsoft Word. Normally I’d take it home, put the file on my USB Flash Drive, and use my iMac to copy it to those blogs. But I can’t since my Internet service has been cut off till tomorrow!!

It’s getting close to closing time for Panera Bread, about 15 minutes. As they will soon be asking me to leave, and this post is oh so long, I will bring it to an end soon. I just so wish I had not bought this computer, it’s turning into another Metz Handle Flash experience. If your one of my close friends from the last few years, you know what I’m talking about. But since no one reads my bogs, not even my close friends of the last few years; everyone should be on the same page here.

Can a computer really drive you crazy??

I recently bought an used laptop computer. I had hoped to have one to access the internet, e-mail, & to write away from home. This "experience" has not been what I had bargined for!!

I wrote a huge post about the laptop, actualy on it, but my Internet is our till tomorow!! :-( :-( I'm posting this on my iPhone, & will not torture myself by trying to retype my complaint about this laptop from "Hell" on it's little touch screen. I will post it tomorow after my home Internet is back up!

A rather hot day.

Well I have had a very hot, & tiring day so far. I got to work, not feeling great to begin with! Then I found out that one of my co-wokers was sick, & may not be in for work. I later found he's actualy in the hospital tonight. I got so hot setting up for tonight's truck, I felt like throwing up at least twice.

I hope my friend is all right! Our lead told us he's going to have to stay over night, & take some tests in the morning. Another co-woker friend asked for his room number, but our lead wouldn't give it out. P.H. was just I think going to call, or maybe send flowers. I don't think he was going up there, at least not tonight! I would havecliked to send some flowers, but I guess that will have to wait till he goes home? I doubt that the hospital will just tell me his room number??!!

I feel decent right now, but still not the best. I like the clouds that have settled over the city now, but can't stand 90 degree heat!! I like it in the 60's to upper 50's. Can you wonder why Fall is my favorite season?!!

I just wish things were a little easier!!!!

Hey there!

Sorry it's been a really long time, about 6 months. I have been doing different things with my life. I never did get those photos together for the articuels I was going to post. I guess I just let a guy at work talk me out of it. He questioned why anyone would be interested in seeing, & hearing about old amussement parks?

I'm still not going to college, which really upsets me. What really makes me mad is that I think I'm starting to accept that I'll never go back. I'm planning a vacation in the next couple of years to Europe, Australia, or some place really nice in the U.S. I've even said my next two tax returns were all going towards it. I should be using that money to pay for college classes, not taking trips!

I find myself going Back & forth between feeling really good, and feeling really bad all the time. I really don't know what to do about that?? I think that talking to a theropist would help, but that costsbso much money!!

And finaly, I have been thinking about grandma & grandpa lately. I had a dream a couple of weka ago that grandma came back as a ghost to talk to me. I went to get mom, but when we returned, my grandma was gone. I started crying in the dream, and then I woke up crying my head off. Thankfully mom had went some where, or I would have to explain why I woke up crying. I think I'm a little too old to say it was a scary dream! A couple days before Memorial Day, I went out to the cemitary after work. I was amazed how dark it was there, and how well you could see the stars!! The head stone looked great as usual, grandma did puck out a wonderful one! I just stood there, someone had put flowers on the stone, and in the vases. I was certain it had been family, but no one had called to see if I wanted to put money in on flowers. The flood gates of tears, and emotion just broke down. I stood there, and cried for close to ten minutes. I miss them so much, particularly my grandma!! She helped me so much, particularly in those first couple of years after my parents seperated. I know that not all of what she set in motion for me has come to pass, but she tried to make sure I had money to go to college, even when another close family member stood back & did nothing about it! They will one day regret the desicion that they made, or at least I hope they will.

I will try to write more often, and not wait 6 months next time. Part of it is that my mom is living with me now, and some stuff I just don't like to write when she's around. Not that I don't really want her to know, just some of it might make her feel bad, and I knownit makes me feel really bad. She worries enough that I'm not happy, and I really just don't feel like explaining why I'm crying/in a sad mood.
Again, I'd really like if you read any of my posts, if you would leave a comment. Even if it's just to say, "Hi, I'm reading your blog.". I'd like to knownthat someone is at least taking the time to read my writings.