Jamison has joined the ranks of Brew...

No, I am not going to China... but I am a BlogCritic now (blogcritics.org) which likely means nothing to you guys, but it means LOADS for my site and my name. BC gets thousands of hits per day and covers the gamut of topics. And since there are so few Science and Tech writers with BC, my articles typically make the front page. Kind of exciting...

My latest article is here

Stay tuned to the home page of BC for my latest rant on Microsoft playing catch up to Google.

The homophobic grocery shopper

Have you seen this guy? He is shopping at the grocery store, alone. Which, in and of itself is not strange. I do it often to avoid having to take the whole family to go grocery shopping, let the child finish a nap, get something off my weekly list, etc...

Apparently, though, there are some men that think that by pushing the grocery cart from the back, that this somehow makes them appear effeminate. So, rather than run the risk of total strangers whom he will never see again thinking that he is gay, he either pulls the cart from the front (And do his shopping as though he were a donkey pulling a wagon) or he will hold the side of the buggy and push it that way, as if his invisible wife is really pushing the cart and he is just "hanging there".

Men, there are handles on the back of grocery carts for a reason. Root word being "HAND". I don't know when or where men got the idea that walking behind the cart was effeminate. If anything, it is masculine in a sexual way that I will not type here.

However, I kind of sympathize with these men, I remember thinking one day, while shopping by myself (must have been in the early days of marriage?) that I felt strange pushing the cart. I have no idea why, but I felt weird, and I may even had succumbed to the art of pulling the cart, but I got over that pretty quickly.

Brewster's Comment
For whatever reason the carts around here have minds of their own. The wheels are super greased or something and they turn super easy. What I mean to say is that they turn around too easily so that I often find the handles of the cart slipping away and all there is to grab is the side or the front.

That doesn't make any sense, but its true. The carts move super fast and turn all over the place. Thus I become your 'homophobic' grocery shopper. For me it has nothing to do with manhood, but just where the cart winds up sometimes.

Red Raspberry

Go to any gas station and buy a slushy and you will likely see the flavor "Blue Raspberry" and "Red Raspberry". This makes sense. Of course, there is no such thing as blue raspberry, yet somehow we all think that the name makes it a good flavor, so we buy into it.

Look at fruit-based candy around your grocer's aisle. You will also likely see a flavor known as "Red Raspberry". Even "Jelly Belly" jelly beans have a "Red Raspberry."

But here is what gets me... Go down the jam and jelly aisle. You will rarely find a "Raspberry" flavored jam, it will most certainly be "RED raspberry"!

Did I miss something here? Did yellow raspberries enter the agricultural scene without me knowing? Is there REALLY such a fruit as "Blue raspberry"? Do raspberries come in purple? Why do we suddenly have to preface the word "raspberry" with red now? It makes no sense! There are no other colors of raspberries!

It makes sense in the apple kingdom. There are so many different kinds of apples, but even in that community they at least get CREATIVE with the colors; "Red Delicious" and "Golden Delicious". Heck, most have abandoned the colors altogether, have you see the "Jazz" apple, and of course the Granny Smith apple.

Why not start labeling all strawberry flavored foods as "Red Strawberry"? Or what's wrong with "Yellow Banana?". Would you care for an Orange Orange?

If it is all about marketing, then fine. Maybe some studies showed that the public does not like the word "Raspberry" and somehow, but prefacing it with the adjective "Red" we all start drooling.

Friends you just can't shake

We all have had friends from High School, for example, that while in HS, we all thought we would be friends forever. 14 or so years later, you either never speak to them or may not even know where they are located anymore. We even made friends in college that we kind of hung out with, but today haven't the slightest clue as to what they are up to, even in this day and age of MySpace and Facebook.

Then, of course we have those friends that we keep in touch with on an almost weekly basis. Friends we made in High School or College, that now live in Alabama and China and all points in between.

But then there are those friends we were great pals with at one point in our lives, then we all got radio silence, then suddenly the friendship is back! One of those friends, to me, is KellieJ.

This post is liken to that that I wrote almost a year ago to the week actually, titled "Sat on their park bench like bookends."

My wife and I had to go down to Tampa, FL to host a baby shower for my sister-in-law. As luck would have it, I found out from Kellie herself that she lived not but 1.5 hours from there and that the possibility of her coming up to see us was very much so a reality.

We got extremely lucky in that she was able to make it. She drove alone as her husband had to work. She even put up with me feeling like we had to go to some cool resturant in Tampa to eat dinner. God showed me how stupid I was by allowing me to get lost and miss an exit. I was so upset that I was wasting Kellie's time. We pulled off at a random exit and we ate and some pizzaria next to a Publix grocery store. And honestly, we could have eaten at a filthy Wal-Mart eatery and still enjoyed the time.

I sometimes tend to forget that with true friends, it doesn't matter where you eat, what you eat, or even tat you do eat together. Kellie, my wife and I had a ball catching up and just laughing. It was actually better than the good ole days of college because, while Kellie and I spoke in college and hung out and various events, I wouldn't say the two of us were inseperable buddies, but it seems that time, distance, life (And the internet) has brought us together as friends, albeit, friends that typically communicate via email, blog, or MySpace.

When Kellie and I started communicating with each other several years after college, she became a sort of celebrity to me. Everyone knew her, everyone liked her, andeveryone had good memories of her. She made several awesome YouTube videos (mostly of old school footage) that made everyone in our MySpace realm become so thankful for her. I began toying with YouTube and film and would always look to Kellie to approve my work. So us hanging out with Kellie was, in a way to me, like hanging out with a really famous person! I did, however, forget to get her autograph.

You all will be happy to know that Kellie is just as nice and geniue as ever, and still looks like the old KellieJ, only better! Kellie has always been one of those people who everyone likes, but in the back of your head you keep thinking "Can someone REALLY be this nice or is she a mean and hateful person behind closed doors?". I tend to think she is the real deal. :)

By the way, if anyone can explain to me what the relationship between aligator heads and windchimes are, I am all ears (See pic below)

New Years Fun

Well, another new year is upon us and I thought I would re-share with everyone a new years eve celebration I had 11 year ago almost to the day. It was in college and it was pretty wild, so be warned.

And back in 1996, it was considered cool to wear your tee shirt inside out, so don;t make fun of my 20 year old self. And we didn't have DVDs either.

Enjoy!

YouTube video of Thanksgiving trip up north.

A short 3 minute video of some shots of the beautiful state of West Virginia and Maryland.

A new bully is in town

Not sure how many of you even read this blog anymore. Hopefully, you are all lurkers, just not posters or commenters...

There is a different kind of bully at schools than the ones we were used to. And I have learned this from working at a school and it is kind of sad.

Gone are the days when a furrowed-brow bully would pick on a 'nerd' at school. At least in those days, the bully was 'brave' enough to confront someone face to face. Today's bully hides behind a keyboard and computer screen. Blogs, MySpace, Facebook, and the like are the new "playgrounds" where bullys pick fights. And why not? No parents, no teachers, no rules, and a host of other cowardly kids backing them up all the way.

No holds barred is the one rule on this playground. Language so harsh Jerry Springer would have to think twice before having them on as a guest on his show.

What happens these days is that one bully will decide one kid is fat for example), and say so on their page (whatever kind of page that may be). Parents are usually not as involved in their kids' lives as they once were, so parents don't see it (And some don't even care, as my experience has been), teachers and administrators only hear about it through other kids and parents (who wish to remain nameless as they prefer to fear a child bully rather than help a bullied child from being bombarded with self-confidence-destroying words), and so the cycle continues.

News stories abound about this kind of stuff. Just Google the words facebook bully school. You may find a story where some kids got expelled from posting horrible and horrific words and phrases of teachers and faculty members. The school felt justified as it was not only a private school, but in a round-about way, it violated their rules of conduct. However, many kids protested. Skipping class, pulling fire alarms to get more kids out of class and into the protest, and forcing the police to get involved.

So you have several ways to look at this. Protect children, or protect "Free Speech", But would my democratic friends consider "Hate Speech" to be "Free Speech"? It seems you can't say anything about homosexuals, African-Americans, or Latinos anymore in this country without losing your job. In essence, you are not allowed to be racists but more realistically, you are just not allowed to use certain words when refering to certain social groups... We are either confused about the phrase "free speech" or it no longer exists. I think it still exists, but there is a line. Kids ages 11 to 16 are venerable more than we remember ourselves being. Words DO hurt. It was one thing for us to be made fun of in class, or on the playground, but today, kids are being made fun on on the W O R L D wide web. And others who, in the past, would have stood idly by and let the bullying occur, now get into the act. Again, why not? No parents, no teachers, and they are hiding behind mask of, what they believe to be anonymity. I personally don;t think it is wrong for a school to get involved if students or faculty member are the target of hateful speech. Especially if the school is private.

Though, there is nothing anonymous about a private blog or networking site page. If ONE person can see it, it is no longer private. Printers can work miracles today, and so can pressing that handy little "Prt Scr" button on your keyboard. You know the one, the one you have probably never used?

On a related note, kids are just now starting to realize that employers and colleges that they seek to enter search the web for these applicants. In some cases before the first interview. See my latest articles on this subject here and here. Even if a kid wrote some "bully" type 5 years ago once they apply for a college, Google has this cool thing that can "cache" sites. I am afraid in the near future we will have a generation of hateful kids, many of which didn't get into the college they wanted to get into, or didn't get a job because they couldn't resist putting that video of them dancing drunk when they were 15 on YouTube.

Sorry for the downer, just raise your kids to be nice folks. Maybe we can beat this thing one family at a time.

Tech Tips for Parents

Boy oh boy, talk about a quiet midnight at the cafe!
Well, thought I would share with ya'll what I have been working on.
I do a weekly e-newsletter for the parents of the school I work for. It has some basic computer tips and occationally, some ways to protect your kids better from online dangers. I will also include a relavent news article sometimes and I always provide a Dell coupon or special link (Dell sends me coupon codes and such that are actually pretty good deals. I pass it on to the parents... and now, you).

To save myself some time (and try to earn a few Goggle bucks) I now own and operate www.techtipsforparents.org

There you will fine a rough idea of what I am trying to accomplish, along with the archives of my last 10 or 15 articles.

Soon I will have a few how-to videos posted up on there.

The parents rave about this and love it, yet I can't get ANY of them to send me questions and concerns that they would like addressed :(

It is using WordPress code if anyone was wondering or interested.

The Stubbs pay a visit

Our good friends the Stubbs paid a visit to central Alabama this long weekend. It was wonderful to see them and spend time with them. My only regret was that we were not able to spend MORE time with them. With the Sips having two boys, the Stubbs having a new boy, and us having a new boy, schedualing and visit times were limited. Plus, my in laws were in town staying at our home.

Even so, we were able to have dinner with them Friday night, cook out with them at the Sips Saturday night, and go to church and lunch with them Sunday.

Here are some videos made during the visit. The first video has a few greetings to our friends the Brews over in China...

Dr Katz does radio

Jonathon Katz does a podcast you can download here for free:

http://www.jonathankatz.com/wkatz/



The first bit is about a word dominatrix... it will give a giggle to you English majors...


It should be a monthly thing. It is well worth a listen for us who love dry, dry, dry, dry, dry humor.

eBay reminds me why i won't have 6 kids...

Here is a link to a real eBay item. The description is super entertaining. I think the price went so high just because she got so many hits. LOT OF POKEMON CARDS THAT MY KIDS TRIED TO SNEAK BY ME

Not the best post ever in teh blog, but good for a little laugh...

Me playing a trick on my son...

I was bored, work was slow, and he was awake and in a good mood... you would have done the same...

Crossing over

The wife, myself, and the boy went to Chattanooga this weekend. No problems that would be considered unusual for travels with a 6 week old occurred. In fact, the drive up took only 30 minutes more than usual. The drive back, however, took a good 3 hours longer.

Being that we were so close to Knoxville, I would have considered it a crime to not at least invite the Mullins family to have dinner with my wife and I Saturday night. Being that we had grandparents to babysit our son, we figured we would go on a date.

I won't lie that at first, I was hoping the Mullins' would find a sitter for their boys. I wanted a little adult time. However, plans didn't pan out like I had hoped. Thankfully!

They came to my folks' home and took a look at Tyler. But only after Issac had peed in my parents front yard. The boys were with them and on their best male-Mullins-behavior. Afterwards, we all went to the Chattanooga Choo Choo. Not much to do there but look at real life trains that are no longer in use. Some fun restaurants there, including one that had singing waiters. But entertainment aside, the menu looked like any Ryans Steakhouse menu and wasn't anything special.

So I asked a gift store employee of some local favorites and he pointed me towards the Aquarium where there was a fine assortment of restaurants, including the one we ate at; Easy Seafood (Chefs nick name is Easy). The wait was 15 minutes, so we walked a block to the aquarium where there is a wide assortment of fountains, pools, and waterfalls that kids typically play in. One look at this from the Mullins boys and that's all she wrote. With their mother saying "don't get your shorts wet!" it seemed to only dare each of them to see how close they could get without getting water on their shorts to the point where Caleb was simply running straight through the fountain.

10 or 15 minutes later we go back to Easy and are seated. The food was great. Not a place I will make a bee-line to go to each time I go to Chattanooga, but if I have kids with me, i will. VERY kid friendly. Chalkboards, goldfish snacks for the kids, etc...

Afterwards, we found this huge waterfall of steps that loads of kids and families were cooling themselves off in. My brother takes his daughter here often. The kids loved it, to the point where my wife was telling me to take off my shoes and run down the stair of water to get Caleb before he hurts himself as he ran down these stairs without fear.

The night ended appropriately... as Larissa and I were leaving the parking deck, we passed the Mullins only to see their youngest completely naked by the car and loving every minute of it.

All in all I was very happy to have had their boys with us. Caleb is a hoot. He purposely will not look at a camera when you take his photo, which had me laughing alot. I have crossed over I think... from a childless guy who prefers to be with my friends without their kids around, to a parent who doesn't mind it so much anymore.

Is it just me?

Something hit me the other day and it kind of made me sad...

This whole parent thing has turned my world upside down. More so than I expected. But one thing I didn't expect would be that my social life would plummet to a near-zero level.

I mean, I expected the first few weeks to not go hang with folks, but he is 6 weeks old now and still a part of me just wants to stick close to home base.

I mean, after the Sips had Noah (If I remember correctly) they were happy to have us over to their home! I keep thinking in my mind all the peoples homes I want to go to and take Tyler along, or to invite people over, but when Friday or Saturday come, and I see that dishes need washing, clothes need washing, the house is a wreck, and not to mention the baby needs feeding in a few hours, I give up the thought, slip into my pajama pants, and roll up my sleeves (Assuming I am wearing a shirt) to get to work. And if we get to eat our meal along the way, that's just a plus.

Believe me Sip, we want to come to yalls home. We want to go to several folk's home and we want to have people over. But when does the fear of leaving home base end? Am I a freak for feeling this way? I mean, I have never been Mr. Socialite, but I do like to hang with my closest friends from time to time and it frankly feels like ages since I have done so!

Travels abroad

With Brew leaving for a first-time traveling experience in literally hours, I thought I would post a blog being that I am in a somewhat similar "First time travel experience" situation as well...

My wife, child, and myself will all be going to my parents home in Tennessee this weekend. The idea is so that, of course, my mom and dad can spend time with thier grand son, and that my wife and I can go out that night.

Those without kids do not realize what a task this will be. Even as my wife and I decided yesterday that we would go take our son to visit them, the fullness of the situation didn't hit us immediately. And before I had this child, I would have just thought "Toss some diapers in a bag, a bottle, a jug of 1% milk and go". After having some dinner at home, we began to think it over. Thoughts turned to paper and pen, paper and pen turned into hands on head eyes widening.

Eventually my wife spoke up and said "Do you remember how Josh and Rachel had an entire suitcase for Luke when we went to Disney World and how we couldn't understand how a baby could need so much?" I agreed, and we both began to feel like the Sips actually packed light for their child on that trip...

So, rather than go in alone on this, I would take suggestions from the panel of experts at my disposal. I know there are a great many men my age with kids reading this. Those who frequent this blog, I expect nothing less than advice. Those lurkers out there, feel free to comment. Women, of course, are welcome to comment just as much as the men.

It is becoming all too clear in my mind that it will be alot more convenient for my parents to visit us for the next year or so than for us to visit them, though, the drive must be made, and often... adults can turn insane when they are turned into grand parents.

Research and Development gone lazy...

If you have seen any commercials for cleaning products these days, you know the buzz word is "Disposable". Everything is disposable and everything makes cleaning "Easier". Which is all well and good for me. However, we still live in the dark ages in my home. We have an up-right vacuum, a broom, and a dust pan. We took a huge leap and recently bought a dust mop.

Waste and environmental concerns aside, this is fine and good with me, but I saw one product on TV today that absolutely blew my mind...

Endust disposable dust cloths. Or, as I like to call them "Paper towels". I could understand if there was, like, Endust built into it, but there isn't. The commercial instructs you to "Spray on Endust, wipe with the disposable cloth, then, just throw it away!"... just like I do with paper towels.

Here is the claim:

For $5 you get 10 12x12 cloths that the company doesn't even pretend to claim are reusable... How many rolls of paper towels can you buy for $5? The marketing campaign is to "Hold on to your favorite tee shirt" assuming people dust with a tee shirt. I can;t tell you how many times I was found curled in the fetal position of my closet by my wife, hugging my favorite shirt, hoping that there would be someone to invent a way that I could dust without this shirt. And God forbid that we had to (gasp) throw the shirt in the washing machine after we were done! "Endust Dust Cloths eliminate the need to store and wash dirty rags for dusting" And we all know how much room a dust rag takes up, what with how contractors are making homes SO much smaller.

I mean, am I missing something? Do they do something that I am not aware of? Are paper towels damaging my bed side table? Is it no longer fashionable to dust with a washable rag, much less keep washable rags in the house at all?

I mean, how dumb can we get, people? If anyone has bought these, they must make themselves known.

My night with Hydrocodone

A few months ago, I had an ingrown toenail removed. The surgeon did not give the medicine enough time to fully numb my toe so I was screaming in pain through most of the surgery.

As a result, the doctor felt sorry for me and gave me a perscription for Hydrocodone; a stong pain killer that blocks the pain feeling from the brain. It turned out that my toe healed nicely and I never used any of the pills. It was interesting that at the pharmacy, they asked for my social security number because of the highly addictive nature of the pill.

I have kept the pills, since you never know when you may really hurt yourself, but have never used them. I gave some to some friends suffering from neck and back pain that their chiropractor was not able to fix, but mostly they have sat unused.

Saturday night, i decided to take half of one. They are easy to break in half. My justification was that we had driven to Birmingham that afternoon for someones baby shower. The drivers seat in my wifes car kills my back after an hour of sitting in it. In addition, holding a baby can stress ones muscles out more than you would think. I took hald of one at about 10pm and laid down to sleep. Here are some things I noticed about it...

Dreams; I remember NONE of my dreams that night. This is HIGHLY unusual for me. That is no sign of deep sleep for me. In fact, I woke up often hearing the baby cry. And when I got out of bed to walk, I was not dizzy or confusded or 'drunk' like I get with a muscle relaxer.

Thirst; I would wake up with the DRIEST mouth I have ever had. I could have drank a gallon of water if it was near me. My skin also felt very dry.

Dizziness: I wasn't dizzy at all. Nor did I feel "drugged" throughout this period.

Numbness; The interesting thing is that my body did NOT feel numb and it did NOT feel relaxed. As I woke up to pee around 2 or 3 am, I tested its effectiveness. I have a fever blister in my mouth. Always hurts to touch it with my tounge since it formed a few days ago. I touched it with my tounge as I walked to the potty and an immediate 'numb' feeling took the place of the normal pain. When I stopped pressing the sore, the numb feeling went away. I tried to pinch myself with my long index fingernail that I had yet to cut off. No pain, just a quick numb feeling.

It was kind of scary. Got up, went to church, and in church, I tried a few pain tricks again and the numbing thing still happened. This went on till about 10 or 11am Sunday.

So for about 12 hours, half a hydrocodone kept me from feeling any pain. I mean, I KNEW I was hurting myself (relatively) but the pain wasn't there.

So in case you care to take any Hydrocodone for pleasure, I am here to tell you that it really isn;t that fun. And not as relaxing as a muscle relaxer is. Or even an anti-inflamatory for that matter. And no, I don't have any left to give you. All trashed.

Let them eat cake

For my birthday, my wife surprised me with a strawberry cake... but not just any strawberry cake...

Back when my Granny was still alive and when I was much younger, she would bake me a homemade strawberry cake. Everything was homemade, right down to the strawberries that she grew herself (I fear memories like this will belong to fewer and fewer people as the years move on, but that's an entirely different blog.)

Granny never had a recipe for this cake. She never had a recipe for anything, but they always turned out wonderfully.

An aunt of mine managed to recreate Grannys strawberry cake and commit the recipe to paper. When I found this out, I asked for the recipe and we have had it for many years.
Larissa made said cake for me for my birthday. Sure, she didn't grow the strawberries, and the actual CAKE was from a box, but she did make the divinity icing from scratch.

Thought I would share the wonderful beauty of this cake!

Waiting on Harry Potter

Here is some footage of Sip and I as we waited to see the harry potter movie whos time got bumped up and left us waiting around doing nothing. But it was good to just sit, talk, and watch people for a while...

Look how they getcha! That's how they getcha!

This is one of my most favorite scenese from Dr Katz EVER. I just posted it on my YouTube channel. I know Brew will get a kick out of this, but to this day, Sip and I still will shoot out a few phrases from this bit and laugh, while others (ussually our wives) look on confused, or ignore us. Don't eat the bread!