TrevorCarpenter.com

Watching American Idol tonight, waiting to see who the final two will be, and I’m blown away at how weird and odd Fantasia looks. Clown-like hair. Clown-like eye make up. And the comedic dancing.

Wow.

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I’m just chillin’, watching Disney’s Enchanted with The Wookiee, and The Padawan keeps jumping up and down on the toy box.

I hollered at him a couple of times, “Stop doing that. It’s loud, and you could hurt your little brother.” You see, The Joker was playing right next to the toy box.

Moments later, I hear nothing but a sucking wind. You know the sound? It’s the sound of a one year old, hurt so much that he can’t cry. He’s trying to suck in enough air, so that he can let out the most horrible cry of his life. Yes, The Padawan had jumped again, and crushed The Joker’s little right hand under the lid of the toy box. I was angry, but I didn’t have the time to punish him. The Joker was in a lot of pain. The lid had come down on his little hand, right where his fingers join his hand. There was a nice dark red line across his knuckles and a purple spot on his ring finger. Poor baby.

As I tried hard to get control of the situation, many things raced through my mind. First, Deanna was off with The Princess in the family car, with the car seats. Ah! There was no way I was going to drive my three boys to the hospital, not in car seats. Luckily, we live 3 blocks from the hospital. I called Deanna as we prepared to leave.

I scooped up the boys and we raced out the door, walking/running to the ER. As we entered the parking lot, the screaming stopped. I looked down and also saw that The Joker was actually grasping his blanket with his injured hand.

I gave him a little assessment, and he did not wince or cry when I touched his injured area. Hmmm. So I called Deanna to see where she was. She was driving into the parking lot. Once she found us, she also checked out his hand, and agreed. The Joker would survive.

We drove home.

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So, there I was IM’ing with one Kristopher Tate. Sparing you all the details of our conversation, I’ll share this one thing. Nearing the end he states, “email is too lethargic”.

I have decided that indeed that is the quote of the day, if not the year.

“Email is too lethargic.”

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…it must be in the genes!

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I just upgraded my blog’s app, Wordpress, to the latest version, 2.3.1. Cool. That didn’t hurt at all.

Another thing, I’m toying with my theme. So, bear with me as I find a good working theme for me.

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Real quick. Colin McRae, the great World Rally Cross champion is dead. He died in the UK, while piloting his personal helicopter. See the BBC’s own article. McRae was the first Rally star I remember  when I was first introduced to WRC, as a teenager.

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OK, you’ve read me talking a bunch about Ubuntu, and my desire to get a nice install up and running at home. Some time back, I mentioned that I wanted to build a simple machine, dedicated to serving up my family’s media, printing, and files. Well, the budget always trumps ideas like that. Some day, I’ll get that going again. In the mean time, we had the chance to get a couple of Mac mini’s. Sweet, now the old family computer, the first rev LCD iMac, is going to be dedicated for use as a kid’s computer. Right now they mostly play a few online educational games. As they progress in school, I know they’ll be doing more work with it. So now we don’t have to share. Now, if only Adobe made a Linux(PPC) flash plugin, I’d dump OSX on that machine and run Ubuntu there. I know that it would run faster, but without flash, there’s no way the kids could play those online games. They’re all flash.

So, back to the Mac minis. Mine is an Intel 1.66, duo core, 1gig ram. It’s used for my photo processing, eventually podcasting again, and the random processor heavy app.

The family Mac is the same machine with only 512mg ram. MISTAKE! OSX needs more than that to run smoothly. Since we can’t budget to double the ram right now, I’m considering dumping OSX entirely there and running Ubuntu exclusively. It’s Intel, so no flash issues. I’ve been thinking this through for weeks now, and the only deal breaker has been our massive iTunes Store purchases. There are no tools around for converting, (read, dropping DRM), on the most recent iTunes version. So, I’m left with burning each album to  CD, and reconverting to MP3. I’ll keep a back data-DVD of all the files, and I know I’m loosing some quality, but I really have no choice.

For future music purchases, we now have the DRM-free Wal-Mart online store. And since DRM-free music is catching on, I think that we’ll see more options birthed soon.

So, what do you think?

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I must say, I have gathered up quite a quiver of camera gear lately. I’m not bragging. Actually, I’m realizing that I have much on hand for photographic opportunities.

The most recent addition, a Sigma ultra wide angle, has opened up more creative potential than I can even imagine, yet. You see, I got the lens so that I could photograph the portfolio of one interior designer. This interior designer is my mother. The only problem was that I didn’t have the right equipment, nor the experience.

So, I got the lens. Now what? Luckily, I have a few photo-buddies who do know what to do. I’ve recieved some direction and tips to get me started. Now it’s up to me. So, tonight I was running an errand and thought I’d stop downtown and take a few shots. Not bad, a wide angle is a whole new animal. I think I’m going to like it.

I did, however, make one of my first photographer’s mistakes. I had one wrong setting on the camera. Which one, you ask? I was set on JPEG, (not RAW), and low quality. No biggy for you, seeing my shots online, but I can’t get any prints made, cause they’d look horrible.

Oh well, at least I learned it, while NOT getting paid.

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Let me tell you that anything you do or say within seconds of being woke up you are not responsible for.

What do I mean? Well, let’s just say that your spouse is not fealing well. Let’s continue to say that during the night they awake with the need for care. Let’s also say that they make an attempt to solicit you providing them with assistance.

Continuing…

Let’s also say that you some how offend your spouse. Bummer.

I herby state that you are free from guilt and consequence for anything you say and/or do after having been waked from sleep, for the first 60 seconds.

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In case you hadn’t found her blog before, Megan has moved her blog. She’s now on Wordpress! Yeah, we love Wordpress.

So, now it’s even easier…

http://www.hamlinfamily.org

Oh yeah, and this pic is her son, Wyatt. He’s adorable, and my nephew. It’s in the genes.

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I’m sure ya’ll know about Rosie and her pansy attack on Elisabeth Hasselbeck, so I won’t go into it here. However, ABC announced that Rosie won’t be back on The View. Either they canned her, as they should have a long time ago. Or…

Rosie is the coward she accused Hasselbeck of being.

I shot over to Rosie’s blog looking to comment and I noticed that she has comments turned off. I don’t know if the two are connected, but it sure is interesting. So, comments will be turned ON here Rosie, if you’re not too cowardly to join the conversation.

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OK, let me tell you that when you’re wired to yell at inmates all day, you pray for a wife who’s wired to provide the care your children need. I have that wife. She’s gifted and skilled at being a great mother. Being a corrections officer, I know that there are plenty of parents who are NOT gifted at caring for and raising children. I am blessed.

So when she gets sick or overworked, I am reminded of my giftedness, and hers. Yesterday, she became ill on our way home from our outing. I knew that the weekend was now over. As the evening came to a close, she had a fever and a killer headache. Today was no different. Sick and in bed all day. So I had to reach down within and mutate into the best version of a mom I could generate. I think I did all right. Hey, it could have been worse. There were just a few things that showed I was unravelling. The limited supply of wipes didn’t help too much. Nor did it help when I brushed by one of the favorite rooster plates mounted to the wall. Yup, it fell. Yup, I didn’t catch it. Yup, it broke.

Please God, make her better!

At least the Nascar Nextel Cup is on tonight, in HD. Praise the Lord for Nascar.

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