A Free Apple Computer For 30 Days

This is very exciting. Apple Computers is so certain that you will love their Mac mini that they're willing to let you use it for free for 30 days. I read the fine print and here's the deal. You go to the apple store website (the deal is for online purchases only). You purchase the mac mini. If you don't have a usb keyboard and or a usb mouse, you pick those up as well. They will ship the computer to you. From the day you get it, you have 30 days to use the Mac Mini. If on the 30th day, you decide you don't want the Mac mini, you call Apples toll free number and tell them you don't want it. You then have 14 days to return the Mac mini to their warehouse and you get a FULL REFUND. No restocking fees or anything.

Now just so you know, you will need to use your existing PC monitor or buy a new one as the mini does not come with a monitor. Apple designed the mini so that PC people could innexpensively switch to the Mac platform by switching out the cpu while keeping their keyboard, mouse and monitor.

As you know, I am an Apple love and while we are a three Mac household in a two bedroom apartment (Dual Processor G5, 17" Powerbook, and a 14" iBook), I'm still trying to find a reason why I need a mini in my house for a month. I haven't thought of one yet, but give me a little time. I usually good for that sort of thing.

The deal expires October 31, 2005.

ALSO IN THE NEWS...

As I am a big fan of the Apple, I am a huge fan of Apple Rumors. The big rumor this week is that on the 7th, Steve Jobs will announce the arrival of the Apple/Motorola iTunes phone available on Singular's cell phone service. This has been a long time coming and it's very exciting. Hopefully, this phone will be available thru Verizon in the near future as I will be the first one standing in line to get it.

The two sites I get my Apple rumors thru are thinksecret and macrumors. Both tend to have very accurate sources. Thinksecret's sources have been so acurate that Apple sued them. Their case is still pending.

CONCERTS

Kristine and I are going to two concerts in two days. Tonight, we're going to take Kristine's niece Justine and her friends to see The Used and four other bands at the Hammerstein Ballroom in NYC. Then tomorrow, we're taking Justines brother Eric and a friend of his to see Green Day at Giants Stadium. Should be very exciting. I'm really looking forward to Green Day but I'm curious about The Used show because it's general admission and will have a moshpit. The last moshpit I was in I think it was 1995 and it was the Rage Against The Machine/Wu Tang Clan show at the Meadows Theatre in Hartford. That was the thing of legends, and to be honest, when I learned that I really know longer had any business in a moshpit. Tonight should be fun.

VACATION

Next week, Kristine and I are going to Jamaica on vacation. It will be our first week long getaway together. I can't wait.

I'm telling you these things because I most likely won't be updating the blog during that time. I'm going to try and go the entire week without accessing the internet. That would be incredible if I pulled that off.

MY GODMOTHER

I im'd with my Godmother Lynn last night and she tells me that her next blog entry is in her head and that she'll be ready to create it on the page on September 16th. Boy, that's going to be tough. I mean, that's only what....over 2 weeks away. I don't know how she'll ever pull that off.
:-)

Seriously, I look forward to her new entry and wish her well with her continued online writing experience.

Talk 2 all of u l8r.
Dave

Some Interesting Listening

OK. Hopefully, this will work. My internet has been acting funny all day. In theory, you should be looking at the biggest evildoer our country has to offer OH WAIT!!! THERE HE IS. ok good. it's working. Anyway, just kidding about the evildoer thing. I know some people do think of him as that whereas I just think of W as a mistake our country made twice.

So why is our President in my blog? He's here for 2 reasons. First, I had an amazing realization the other day when I flipped to CMT to watch The Dukes of Hazzard for about fifteen minutes. Next time your watching the Dukes, close your eyes whenever Sherriff Rosco is talking. I'll be damned if he doesn't sound exactly like George W. Bush.

Second, I discovered that you can listen to the real George W via podcasting. As a result, I listened to about 10 of his weekly radio speeches. They're less than 4 minutes each. It's no wonder that if you're a Bush fan, that you feel things are going well in this country. Listening to him speak, it's hard to believe that anything in this country is for the worse.

There is one thing that is funny when you listen to the these weekly speeches all in a row. There's a lot of repitition. There were four or five times I thought I was listening to a podcast that I'd already heard when it turns out I had not. The Prez likes to drive his point home week by week by saying it again and again.

B4 I sign off, I let my out west friend Mr. Chair know that I was listening to the Prez. His response? "don't listen to that evil!" Maybe he is an evildoer. I hope I'm around in 20 years so that I can hear how historians define these times.

Chat wich l8r.
Dave

Norm MacDonald Stand Up!!!

Just wanted to let everyone know that Kristine and I are going to be up at the Mohegan Sun Casino on Saturday, September 17, 2005 to enjoy the comic musings of the very funny Norm MacDonald. Norm is one of the funniest guys I've ever heard do standup and I so miss the days he used to do the news on Saturday Night Live. Opening up for Norm is Victoria Jackson, another SNL alumni. Kristine and I are going to the 10pm show so we'll have time to grab a bite to eat at Michael Jordon's sports bar inside the casino as well as oh....I don't know....maybe make time for a little blackjack. It should be a fun evening and I believe tickets are still available. Feel free to join us. It's going to be awesome.

Phew! I'm still acceptable

It was nice to wake up this morning and find out I was still acceptable. Big Stock accepted my squirrel photo without comment. Good to know I've still got it. Still haven't got a sale yet, but I'm hopefull.

POW!!! Denied Again

I was waiting and waiting with such anticipation for Big Stock Photo to approve more of my photos and what happens? I received my second rejection for this photo of a nature preserve trail I discovered not far from my home. What made this denial worse was that the rejection had a little bite to it.

"General low interest subject - sorry - try shooting something a tad more interesting if possible :-) thanks"

A Tad More Intersting?...I uhh....I don't know...I'm trying to figure out the right way to feel about that. "Uhhh yeah. We're sorry Mr. Novak. We obviously weren't clear. We only want interesting photos. Please give us more of those. Oh, and not to say your photo was bad. It's just that your photo falls a tad short of interesting. If there was just a little more good in your photo, it would have been fine. Next time, just make sure you photo has that little more of good and a little less of the not good. That'd be great. Thanks."

Out of curiosity, I just did a search on Big Stock's website for the keyword "forest". I did in fact find a couple of photos that looked similar to my picture. In Big Stock's defense however, neither of those photos have been downloaded yet.

I currently have 6 more photos waiting approval. Hopefully, Big Stock will find THEM a tad more interesting.

Dave

NEW LINKS!

I woke up this morning at 5. It was one of those things where I was just immediately awake with no hope of going back to bed. Checking out some of my favorite blogs, I realized that both Tim and lilpuppy had links to my blog on their pages. I had expected the one on Tim's but lilpuppy's was a surprise and a very nice gesture. I still had one of those "edit-me" links left over in my links section so I decided to bite the bullet, go into the html section of building my blog, and figure out how to give lilpuppy a link on my page. It turns out it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be and then I just went link crazy.

Here's a quick rundown of my current links:

My Ant Sara is my Mother's younger sister and one of the coolest people I know. She lives in Vermont and is very into dying yarn.

I've known Tim Lynch since my senior year of high school. It amazes me how many people I saw every day during my school years and how few of them I talk to today. Tim is someone I'll talk to forever.

My Godmother Lynn started a blog YAY!!! Very exciting. She only has one entry at the moment but upon seeing this, I imagine she will write another. Lynn was my Mother's best friend and thus, she became my Godmother. Anyone who has heard Lynn speak knows that she has plenty to say and I'm certain she will have a fantastic blog. She could probably do three pages just talking about her thoughts on marriage. She's a wonderful person and I look forward to reading what she has to say.

Oh Shit! I skipped over lilpuppy. How funny is that? She's responsible for this whole link update thing and I almost missed her. Ooops. Sorry lilpuppy.

So who is lilpuppy? I only know what you yourself have access to in her blog. I've never met her but she's seems like a lot of fun. One day, I just happened upon her blog when she was starting out and I've never stopped reading. The links section of my blog consists of close friends and familiy but I'm here to tell you that if you haven't read lilpuppy's blog, click on that link now and start at the beginning. Her life is like no other that I know and I'm thrilled she's willing to share here thoughts and feeling with us.

Then you have my Godbrother Rob's blog. (Upon proofreading this, I remembered that Rob has a link to my blog as well. Thanx Rob. You Rock.) For more info on Rob, jump back about 7 entries for my little rap on him. Rob lives over an hour away from me so I don't see him as often as I like but I did see him twice in the last two weeks. The first, sadly was for his Grandmother's (Lynn's Mother) funeral. The second, was at his sister Laura's engagement party. Rob's a cool guy and because of his blog, I now know that Green Lantern isn't actually a guy but what the guy wore. Very cool. Go check him out.

My cousin Chuck is the son of my Ant Sara. I haven't seen Chuck in ages but because of his blog, I know he's doing well.

That brings us to Lara. Lara is one of the most unique people I know and she carries the distinction of being the first girl I ever went on a date with. Wow! I'm surprised I remember this. On my first date EVER, I took Lara to see Crazy People starring Dudley Moore at a theatre in Westport that is no longer there. Lara has lived in Florida for many years now and I can't tell you the last time I saw her. Every couple of years, we reconnect via email or the phone and it was just recently that I learned about her blogs. You may not always agree with what she has to say but she absolutely makes for an interesting read.

It's because of the make money with your photos blog that I'm now selling my photos on the internet and if you'd like to see those photos (right now, there's only 2 but I've got 5 more pending approval), you can click on the my photos 4 sale link.

Tadaaaaaa...YAY! All done with my links entry. Maybe I'll catch a few extra z's. See you next entry.

Dave

Is technology still moving forward?

One can find these signs in various locations throught Norwalk, CT. Every time I see one of these signs, I wonder who these kids are. My guess is that they're old enough to understand the concept of driving but are too young to have their drivers license. Once you get that little piece of identification in your hand, any protest you have against speeding goes right out the window.


Let's talk about Google Talk. Did we really need this? Is there not enough instant messaging service out there? Was there a demographic whose IMing needs were not being met by the likes of AIM and Yahoo Messenger? What ever happened to progress? Where's my Google jet pack? Now there would have been cause for celebration.

Don't get me wrong. I think Google is awesome. I LOVE my gmail. Hold on. Let me see how much memory I'm up to... 2.528 GIGS. Of that amount of space, I'm using 236 megs. I never knew the day would come when I would realize this but it turns out I'm a gluton for megabytes. Whoopi.

So google is wonderful but I think they're running out of ideas. We didn't need a new IM service. However, I must admit that I have used it now. My two mac geek buddies, Tim & Matt, both asked me if I was on it in the last 2 days so I connected to it.

First of all, you can only use google talk if you have a gmail account. If you're using a pc, you can go here and download the google talk program. If you're on a mac like me, you can't do this because google has not yet created their messenger program to work with the mac. However, you can use Mac's iChat program to connect to google's talk service using Jabber. For those of you wanting to know what Jabber is, feel free to google it. I don't know what Jabber is and as I'm a man of 32 years, I'm convinced it will never add any significant value to my life to make it worth finding out. What I will tell you is that because of Jabber, I was able to add another instant messaging service to my computer that I did not need. Whoopi. (I seem to be big on the "whoopis" today. Just to be clear, I'm pronouncing it Whoo - pi and not Whoop - i like you would say Whoopi Goldberg)

So anyway, I have used the Google Talk service using iChat and it seems to work fine. Your gmail account is your screen name. It's fairly seemless but it seems to be a little tricky when you add someone to your buddy list for the first time. Apparently, the person you want to add to your buddy list is required to authorize you. Just so you know, Matt and I did video chat using iChat and it worked just as well as if we were using AIMs service inside of iChat.

Now that I think about it, I guess this new google service serves a purpose. Should AOL's servers die tomorrow, I would still be able to video chat with a guy who lives 15 minutes away. For that, I say thank you google.

So that's it. I thought I had a couple other examples of how technology is not moving forward but I can't remember what they were. Me and the misses are off to play a little tennis. See you later.

Dave

Photos 4 Sale

Those of you who know me well, know that I tend to go through different phases in my life where I seem to constantly change focus. There is a circle to my madness though and I have returned to taking an interest in photography. The above photo was taken June of last year and it is of the Norwalk River in Norwalk, CT. Sadly, the photo is a reject.

A little over a week ago I began to wonder if there was any value to the tons of pictures I have sitting on my various hard drives that I've taken with somewhat pricy equipment. It turns out that there are a couple of different business models out there for this very thing. First, let me direct you to another blog from where I got much of my information. http://photomoney.blogspot.com/

Aparently, the author of that blog had a similar inkling and created a blog just so he can tell you what he's learned. To him, I say thank you.

So the deal is this. There are the so called respectable websites that work as agents for photographers and they give you a fair and reasonable commission for your talent. Then there are the lame ass bastard sites that give what's called a "micropayment" commission for your talent. At the moment, I am hanging out with the latter.

The way the lame ass sites work is that they charge subscription fees to people who want to buy photos. The subscription isn't very pricy and these people then have access to tons of photos that they can download each month.

My first experience was with shutterstock.com. From what I can tell, they are the lowest of the low on the food chain. For every photo they sell for you, you get a measely 20 cents. You would think they would be the easiest to break into. Not so. Shutterstock requires that you start off by uploading 10 photos to them and 7 of those 10 need to be approved before you continue. You know how many of my 10 passed? NONE!!! Here I am feeling like a sellout in the world of photography where I can never show my face because of the shame of submitting to a micropayment site and these bastards don't even want me. By the way, that Hibiscus flower from a couple entries ago was one of the 10 that were rejected.

Enter bigstockphoto.com. They are a step up from the bottom feeders that are shutterstock. For every one of your photos they sell...actually, I guess the term is license as you still own your photo and can do with it as you please...For every one of your photos they license, you start out by receiving a dollar. If the photo gets downloaded a lot, then your commision goes up.

Big Stock Photo doesn't require a minimum for you to submit so initially, I only uploaded a couple of photos. In addition to higher commissions, Big Stock also gives better feedback when they don't accept one of your photos. So far they have accepted two of my photos and rejected one. They rejected my Norwalk River picture (that's right. the one at the top of this entry) because of "Blurriness, sorry.. a little too blurry". I found that interesting as I had never noticed the leaves in the foreground are a little soft but the rest of the photo seems fine to me. It's good though because at least I have a better clue what they're looking for and will look for that when I submit in the future. For my approved photos, I believe you can see them here.

I must get on with my day now so that's all I can tell you for now. I'll update you as my photo selling progresses.

C U soon.
Dave

My Godsister's Engagement Party

This past Saturday, Kristine and I went up to South Windsor, CT for my Godsister Laura's engagement party. Here she is pictured with her fiance Mike at the party. Mike is one of the coolest guys I've ever met. In addition to being an all around fun guy, he also worked security in Boston at a show consisting of members of the Howard Stern show. Needless to say, upon hearing that, we hit it off fairly quickly (although ironicly, Mike does not listen to the Stern show).

The party was quite festive. They had two margarita machines going (one was strawberry and the other was regular) in addition to plenty of beer as well as some non alcoholic beverages. They also had a volleyball net set up in the backyard that allowed for some great competition and plenty of humor.

There was also a book that was being passed around that we were supposed to write words of advice in. Kristine and I remembered the book just as we were leaving and thus didn't write anything in it. It occurs to me, that as my relationship is still in a young phase, I don't know what kind of advice I could give them. Truth be told, I could probably use some. If you are engaged, married, divorced, or just full of advice, do me a favor and leave me and Kristine some words of wisdom in the coment section of this entry. I'd love to hear what you have to say. Also, I'll probably write your suggestions in Laura and Mike's book next time I see them.

Thanx Much
Dave

It's been a while

Hello World,

I feel like I've been on a little mental vacation for a few weeks. It's not like things haven't been business as usual. I think life has been pretty typical. And while I have had things on my mind, I haven't been feeling like the expressive type of person lately. I haven't been doing much writing and while I have had things on my mind, I didn't feel much like blogging. However, having woken up in the middle of the night, I somehow felt that this was the time to check in.

The picture above was taken from my new Canon Digital Rebel XT. Isn't it lovely? Before you think to yourself, "Jesus Christ! He bought another friggin camera?" just know that I did sell off my Canon Digital Rebel to my friend out west upon purchasing the new camera. Furthermore, let me tell you that it was worth it. In addition to the extra 2 megapixels I'm getting, the XT is both lighter and faster. I love it and I've taken lots of pictures with it.

Another thing that's eaten lot's of my time up is Madden 2006. As with every year, the game kicks ass and I could spend consecutive days playing it if it were not for needing to do things like eat, sleep, or talk to people. Thanx to all of you at EA sports who put the game together. It's great to know that after all these years that it's still "in the game".

Time to go back to sleep. Talk 2 u soon.
Dave

P.S. Hay lilpuppy. I'm doing fine. How r u?