Happy Hallowe'en

HAPPY HALLOWE'EN

(image found through Google)

Generating Fun

I have been playing Facebook games lately and find the above image rather amusing. While loading the Roller Coaster time management game on Facebook, a loading bar comes up titled Generating Fun. Now, I am pretty used to semi-amusingly titled loading bars from Sims 1 through 3, but found this one to be a bit of a stretch. Is the generation of fun really something that can be loaded and measured?

Quotable Thursdays #8

"And Man created the plastic bag, and the tin and aluminum cans and the cellophane wrapper and the paper plate, and this was good because Man could then take his automobile and buy all his food in one place and He could save that which was good to eat in the refrigerator and throw away that which he had no further use. And soon earth was covered with plastic bags and aluminum cans and paper plates and disposable bottles and there was nowhere to sit down or walk, and Man shook his head and cried: 'Look at the Godawful mess.'" - Art Buchwald, 1970.

The Start and End of a Blog

I feel the starting and ending of a blog's life are pretty much standard. There is always the beginning post where you talk about what you want to accomplish with the blog - ie. what you want to post about. You perhaps say a little bit about yourself and how you came to the idea of starting a blog.

In the end, you will have long periods between posts, and most of the last ones will be an apology for not posting. (comic from xkcd - only the third panel is applicable).

It is the in between bits that differ from blog to blog. Some blogs are incredibly specific in what they post about, while others are just the general lives of the author (like this one for example). Some are really interesting while others are quite mundane. But in my opinion, most blogs start and end in the same general manner.

One Minute Writer #45

Write the story of why you were given your name. (If you don't know, write about how you feel about your name.)

This is a story I have told many people before - as far as I know it, it is a true story. When I was born, my parents had different ideas of what they wanted to name me. My mom wanted to name me Stephanie while my dad thought my name should be Jennifer. My dad thought of the very clever idea of having my older brother, then 3 years old, Tyler make the final decision. I say this was a clever idea since he was certain that his little boy would side with him and I would be named Jennifer. In fact, as hard as he tried, Tyler couldn't say Jennifer, I believe the J sound was stumping him, and as such, I was given the name Stephanie. Cute huh?
I do not know how I got my middle name, Marla, and despite how much I hated it while I was growing up, I no longer mind it. Unfortunately it means "bitter one" and when combined with my first name, which means "crowned one", my name gives me the impression of a bitter, possibly spoiled, royal child. But all of that is made up by my last name, which is awesome and essentially means "place where water meets sand".

A Cappella Nintendo

This group is called Redefined and the are an A Cappella group from the University of Wisconsin. Dave found and downloaded this video of them ages ago and we refound it the other day while he was cleaning out and backing up his computer. I figured I would find it on Youtube and share it all with you as it is just so great - especially if like us, you played a fair bit of the original Nintendo games growing up.

How to Wrap a Baby Gift

At the end of the month my childhood best friend Madison will be having her first child, a little baby boy. She had two baby showers, neither of which I could attend so instead, I mailed their present to them via Canada Post. But first, I had to wrap the adorable little clothes. My mom and I have a tradition when it comes to wrapping baby gifts and I have decided to share it.
Step 1: Purchase adorable little clothing, toys and/or baby necessities AND a baby's receiving blanket and diaper pins.
Step 2: Fold the clothing and arrange items in the middle of the receiving blanket (you may have to fold the blanket to make it a more manageable size). Step 3: Fold in corners of the blanket and secure with diaper pins.
Step 4: Finish folding in all the corners of the blanket and securing with pins until the package is all wrapped up!This is easier to do with items in boxes or individual items, rather than groups of items like here. I think this is a really cute way to present baby gifts - it also gives the mother another blanket which, from what I understand, you can never have enough of. It also happens to be a green alternative to wrapping paper, though my mom and I have been doing this for as long as I can remember, which happens to be before green was cool.

Post Secret Math

Every Monday morning I read Post Secret. When I have gone through all the new secrets and I get to the bottom of the screen I check the visitor counter. I then refresh the screen to see the new count number. I do the math and determine how many people were reading the secrets at the same time. I do it not to feel less lonely or anything like that - I just find it really interesting. This week there were 595 other people reading secrets with me.

One Minute Writer #44

Have you ever been a little obsessed with a celebrity (even as a kid)? If not, why do you think you've escaped celebrity obsessions?

When I was a preteen I collected images of Devon Sawa, Jonathan Taylor Thomas (JTT), Andrew Keegan and other such teen hunks and had them on my bedrooms walls. I think I even had a laminated picture of Devon Sawa in my back pocket for a little while (as did a couple of my friends). I have since grown out of the obsessed fan stage and moved on to the healthier version. I find that I now admire good actors, who also happen to be good looking.
Neil Patrick Harris (NPH) is a good example of this. He is in a really funny show and has been part of some great little movies recently of which I am a fan. He is not only a good actor but also cute and non-threatening to Dave since NPH is gay. Other attractive good looking actors I enjoy are Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Hugh Grant (his characters tend to be very sarcastic, which is my favourite form of humour - plus he's British) and Johnny Depp. I don't want to know really anything about these people's personal lives, I just want to watch their movies. Though I do want to be friends with NPH, Nathan Fillion and Joss Whedon - because all the behind the scene footage makes them look like really awesome friends - the kind that would take a bullet for you and you can never have enough of those. Plus, Joss puts his friends in his shows and wouldn't that just be cool?

Quotable Thursdays #7

"To succeed in life you need two things: ignorance and confidence." - Mark Twain.

Estimated Time Left

It is so true.

This fact is most evident to me when I am transferring photos from my memory card to my computer. It will go from 2 hours to 5 minutes to 30 minutes and then be done.

comic from XKCD.

25 Random Things About Me

The idea for this post was taken from TwinspirationalRunner - thanks.
I thought I would do a little post about me. It is completely random stuff that you may or may not already know, and hopefully it will be fun to compile.

1. I get anxious when I have to make a phone call. (even moreso when it is work related);
2. I love being good at 'domestic' tasks like cooking, baking and sewing;
3. Fall is my favourite season;
4. I wait until the last minute to do any sort of cleaning;
5. I know how to spell most words, and when I am wrong, my guess was usually pretty close;
6. I absolutely love spreadsheets. If I can put some information into a spreadsheet I will. If I get to design a spreadsheet (and yes it is a design) then my day will be a good one.
7. I have been to many funerals in my life, but the hardest death I ever had to deal with was my family pet - Eddy (Eddy's death made me pose a lot of questions to myself which were very difficult to answer);
8. My weight is a very touchy topic. I want to lose it, but like most overweight people, do not want to put the effort in;
9. As mentioned in a previous post, I love very odd combinations of food like salt and vinegar ships and grapes;
10. I think of myself as an artistic engineer. It is an odd combination, but I am relatively good at math and engineering in general, but also quite good at the arts (photography, general painting and sketching, etc) and I enjoy them both;
11. I like to go into Danier (and other leather stores) and smell the wonderful leather smells;
12. I rarely ever win anything;
13. I am a perpetual learner;
14. I am really good at organizing things. From events to items - if it has to be sorted or organized, I am really good at getting it done;
15. I love buying or getting new stuff - even if I have little to no use for it;
16. I love children's movies - especially Pixar movies;
17. I can handle extremely stressful situations (like a job get screwed up at work), but get extremely flustered and frustrated with the simplest of tasks (like finding my keys);
18. I love answering surveys;
19. Car rides make me sleepy;
20. I have an eye for photography and love most everything about photography in general;
21. I am a very jealous person. I can get jealous about the stupidest and most pointless of things;
22. I have few friends (though the ones I have are good ones) and for the most part, I like it that way;
23. Photography makes me happy;
24. I am almost always early when I need to be someplace new;
25. I think lists are fun.

Out of Town Again

Once again Dave has been sent out of town for work. He is going to be doing three waste audits and asbestos update surveys in Peterborough, Lindsay and Cobourg all of this upcoming week. While he is doing all these site visits he will be staying with his parents in Peterborough, which saves the company some money since we don't have to get a hotel room for the week (he will also get to pocket a few bucks as an incentive for doing this).
Unlike previous out of town work Dave has done for DST, it is not one of our bosses that has scheduled all this work for him - it was me. The waste audits he will be completing are part of my job for the ORC. The asbestos update surveys, also for the ORC, are not my project, but were kind of left under my watch while my boss is on paternity leave - well, at least the scheduling of this site visit was.
So, long story short, Dave will be out of town for a week leaving me to figure stuff out on my own. What will I do you ask? Well I have costumes to sew and a house to clean. I also have some free time for friends and catching up with the girls as Dave will be night work for the majority of the week and therefore will not really be available to talk that much either. All in all, not much will be different from when he is here, except I will be a little less happy, and lot more lonely.

Yay I'm a Llama Again!

Dave and I enjoy movies in general, but have a rather large collection of children's movies (especially considering we have no children and no prospects of children in the near future). One we watch a fair bit is the Empire's New Groove. It is a Disney movie (their 40th in fact) and stars David Spade, John Goodman, Eartha Kitt and Patrick Wartburton.
Until I started dating Dave, I don't know if I had even seen this movie, let alone would have enjoyed it. That being said, since Dave and I watch it semi-regularly, perhaps every two months or so, I seem to have grown to like it, or at least grown accustomed to it.
*spoiler alert* (It is Disney and we all know how it goes, so I feel no shame it summarizing the story a little)
The story is simple, as all Disney movies are. The young, self-involved Emperor is going to destroy a local village so that he can build a summer retreat for himself. His long-time, and exceptionally old, advisor plots to kill him for having fired her but due to a clumsy and rather brainless lackey, potions get mixed up and rather than being killed, the Emperor is instead turned into a llama. The llama Emperor ends up in the small village he was going to destroy and the head of the village and he try to get him back to the castle. Long story short, llama Emperor and village leader become friends while the advisor and her lackey chase after them. There is a pretty funny chase scene and some great lines while they try to find the right potion to return him to his human form, including "Yay, I'm a llama again!". The Emperor eventually returns to his human self, lets the village leader know he is not going to use his village for his resort and instead builds it on the hill next to it.
All in all, the movie is very good and has quite a few jokes and lines in general that adults can enjoy - even if they don't have any children around when they watch it. And for all my squirrel readers out there, Squeak, squeaker, squeak, squeaking.

Time Management Games

Like Chris, I too love the Time Management games. From Diner Dash to Farm Frenzy, I love them all. I ordered a few time management games from Big Fish Games the other week and asked for a backup CD in case I need to wipe my computer or put them on a different computer for whatever reason. It eventually came in the mail and when I put it into the computer to verify that it worked I found that there was a free game on it. Sadly though, it is not a time management game. In fact, it is basically like the games on the back of the cereal box where you have to circle the listed items as you find them in some cluttered picture. I am not a fan to say the least. I did however finish the Farm Frenzy game and am now going to get started on the Diner Dash line of games I ordered. Gotta love Flo!

Fall Foliage

As Dave and I are driving around the neighbourhood I keep thinking how pretty the trees are and how I wish I could remember to bring my camera along with me when we are going to our normal, everyday places. Now I might just try putting the summer photos I have taken into Photoshop, masking the leaves and changing the saturation levels. Thanks XKCD.

Comic from XKCD.

Quotable Thursdays #6

"Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness" - Yousuf Karsh

Distant Relatives - Hostess and Just for Laughs

I know Hostess chips aren't really that big anymore - at least not with anyone I know, but as Dave and I were filling the car up with gas this past weekend, I saw an advertisement for them on the pit stop store window. I sat there looking at the little Munchies (the cartoon characters used for their ads) and thought that they looked a little like the Just for Laughs cartoon character. And now that I am writing this post and have their images here on the same screen, I realize that the Hostess Munchies are red, yellow and orange - there is no green Munchie. Perhaps these four guys are related somehow in cartoon-world! The Hostess Munchies are probably brothers and as the Just For Laughs guy has a pointy nose rather than a bulbous one, he is likely a cousin or something along those lines, but related nonetheless.
I know I am crazy - but you have to admit they look pretty similar.
(images found through Google)

Linked Within - Review

So I have decided to keep Linked Within on my main blog, and have got it up and running on my weight loss blog as well, but have left it off of my photography blog for now. I want to see how well it works on my weight loss blog first, as almost every post have the weight loss label (whereas in my photography blog, almost every post has the photography label). I want to see how it handles this and if it still relates to relevant posts.
On to the review of the add-on. I am really happy with how it has been working so far. At first, I thought it would only link back to old posts that had images in them, but after a little while saw that it listed ones with no pictures as well. I found this to be very handy as a lot of my related posts, for example my Quotable Thursday posts, have no images but I still wanted Linked Within to notice them.
It does take a while for Linked Within to start linking back to relevant posts. For example, when I posted the article in the work newsletter, it took a few hours for Linked Within to start referring readers back to posts about DST or work in general. It did eventually kick in, but the delay means that if someone comes across the site as I am publishing new posts, they may not stay long as what they is recommended to them won't necessarily be of interest to them (this of course assumes that they liked the new post and want to read more like it).
I have also found that if there are not enough posts with related topics, Linked Within will recommend different posts each time the page is loaded. This can be good and bad in that it could send people to other links, but could tick them off a little as the articles are completely unrelated.
Overall, I am happy with how Linked Within is working, and am pretty pleased with how seamlessly it merges into my existing blog. I am pretty sure the program has evolved and adapted to users' comments since it was first released some time ago, and am happy that I am starting to use it once all these suggestions have been put in place. I recommend fellow bloggers (who use labels and post about similar topics now and again) to get this add-on for their blogs.

Like a Pregnant Woman

Lately I have been eating more than my fair share of salt and vinegar chips, Miss Vickie's and/or Lays are my preferred brands. The thing that makes this post-able material (as No One Cares What I Had for Lunch) is that I eat them with grapes, red grapes to be more precise. They are yummy and delicious and definitely seem like food a pregnant woman would crave. It got me thinking and I have decided to start a list of the crazy combinations of food that I eat on occasion that make me seem like a pregnant woman. I am sure to miss some, as I usually don't think twice about them, but surely the main odd-balls will get included.

• salt and vinegar chips with grapes (this is also really good with a big glass of orange juice);
• Dairy Queen strawberry blizzard with Dairy Queen french fries;
• cucumbers with shredded chicken (mixed with a little butter to make it stick together - kind of like mayo I guess);
• apples and peanut butter;
• carrot and lettuce sandwiches (on white bread, with butter/margarine);
• sweet gherkin pickles (this isn't a combination I know, but I am told that it is a pregnant woman craving);
• tuna and pickles (no mayo);
• anything with chocolate (all hail the creator of the chocolate fountain); and
• home-made chinese fried rice. Included in the sauce is soy sauce, plum sauce and tomato sauce and/or ketchup.

In my mind, I am not the only non-pregnant person who eats odd combinations of food. Please confirm this by commenting on the crazy combinations of food you eat, I know you have at least one.

Thanksgiving 2009 - #1

Today marks the beginning of the Thanksgiving the weekends (officially) as well as the beginning of our Thanksgiving roadtrip (I am trying to put a positive spin on all the driving we have ahead of us). Unlike last year, we do not have Thanksgiving with both families in one weekend. My parents have decided to move their Thanksgiving dinner to next weekdn to allow for everyone to have a more relaxing Thanksgiving, and for more time with them. This weekend we are off to the Konings - well actually the Mantels as it is Dave's mom's side of the family we are eating dinner with. We will be travelling to Peterborough today and then tomorrow heading with his immediate family, to Newmarket for the actual meal. We will likely be spending the night in Peterborough and driving back to Ottawa Monday.
The Beach Family Thanksgiving celebrations are always the last to get scheduled as Tyler and Lynn have to go all the way out to Wilno and we have to go all the way to Peterborough and Newmarket. Both Dave and Lynn's families also tend to be a bit less flexible when it comes to planning holiday festivities as well. I don't mean to be offensive, just stating facts. They get told when hers is and we get told when the Konings are and so far they have both been on the same day which enables the Beach one to be nicely planned around those. As previously mentioned, Mom and Dad decided to move theirs to decrease the stress and troubles on both Tyler and Lynn and Dave and I. It also allows for more time with them that will be really nice.
Anyway, I am looking forward to some good food and photography (I tend to be the unofficial photographer for the Koning/Mantel events). And of course - leftovers!!

One Minute Writer #43

What makes you feel comforted when you are sick?

I feel this question is pretty appropriate considering I was sick all of last week, and have the lingering cough to prove it. Dave is now sick (this tends to happen with the two of us - and really any couple), and I am now trying to do things to comfort him that helped me last week. When I am sick I enjoy comfort foods, like mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese as long as my stomach can handle them. I also like warm, comfy blankets and hot drinks. Last week all I wanted was junk food but I think that had more to do with my growing desire to pig out than my sickness. But most of all, I like to not work - sick days are actually enjoyable because you don't have to feel guilty about not going.

Quotable Thursday #5

"The more you look around at things, the more you see. The more you photograph, the more you realize what can be photographed and what can't be photographed." - Eliot Porter.

Persistent Cough

Ever since I was little, whenever I get sick I get a really nasty, persistent cough. It would and still will last for weeks sometimes and always long after the actual cold is gone. The coughs are loud, and sometimes painful as they can lead to headaches and sore chests after a long night of coughing in my sleep. My mom says it sounds like I am barking. Cough syrup doesn't seem to do much for the cough, though it can decrease it ever so slightly. I have gotten used to them and the people around them seem to be getting used to them too.
Yesterday at work I was called into my boss' office and told that he had received a complaint about my coughs and asked me if there was work I could do from home. The complainer, lets call him Bob, is higher up in the company and his opinion matters so if there was any way to appease him, it would be done. Though I am no longer sick and will not be 'infecting' anyone in the office - I was sent home. I have several projects that can be done from home and as such I worked from home yesterday afternoon and will be doing the same all day today.
You may be thinking that this is not fair. The complaints of one person cannot send another one home. But this is awesome! Never has my persistent cough ever paid off so wonderfully! Working from home is so fun. I am going to get paid for writing my reports and databases from the comfort of my bed or couch while watching movies and TV in general. As long as there are no emergencies in terms of my other projects, it is going to be a great day.

Bounce Rate

Chris and I were going over Google Analytics the other day as she recently got the add-on going on her blog, and got thinking about Bounce Rates. She thought that it was the percentage of visitors who upon coming to the site, left in a certain amount of time realizing that it was not what they wanted at all. I had looked it up before, but had since forgotten what I had learned so I decided to look it up again this morning.
Bounce rate represents the percentage of initial visitors who bounce away to a different site rather than staying within the website (go to other pages within the same site). According to Wikipedia, there is a formula to calculate your bounce rate:
Bounce Rate = Total Number of Visits Viewing One Page / Total Number of Visits
A visitor can bounce in a number of ways including; clicking on a link that sends them to another website, closing the window or tab, typing in a new URL, using the back button (to send them to a site other than your own) and/or session timeout (which is usually about 30 minutes).
According to Google.com analytics specialist Avinash Kaushik, "It is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying". This statement may be true for actual websites, but in my opinion, when it comes to blogs and other informative sites, the percentages should be higher. I think blogs are much more of a daily read sort of site than one you would come to and go from post to post. The Wikipedia entry on Bounce Rate seemed to agree with me and stated that metrics such as returning visitors vs. new visitors might be more informative.
This being said, I am no longer going to care to much about my 70% Bounce Rate here on the Great Abyss, but rather focus on my 72:28 returning to new visitors ratio. I think it is a good ratio where most of my readers are returning (I must be doing something right) but I still have a decent percentage of new visitors coming in. This statistic is better used over time, where your returning would increase ever so slightly...right?

Blog of Note (October): Letters of Note

I was wandering around Blogger today and stumbled across a blog they consider to be of note: Letters of Note. It is an interesting idea for a blog, and in many ways is similar to Post Secret and other collection type blogs.
According to the sites, "Letters of Note is an attempt to gather and sort fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos." It is updated every weekday with some sort of interesting note that was either collected by the creator or (assumed) submitted by readers.
My favourite recent post is this Call for Equality where many children wrote a letter to President Ford sometime between 1974 and 1977 to have a Kid's Day instated in similar fashion to Mother's and Father's Day. Their rational was that both parents have birthdays and these special days, so why shouldn't kids have both as well. To be honest, this was a thought I had when I was young too, though I never wrote any letters on the matter.

Monthly Feature: Blog of Note

I have spent most of the morning searching for random, interesting blogs and have decided to start yet another new feature here on The Great Abyss. It will be called Blog of Note and will be a monthly feature as I do not believe it would be something I could keep up at a higher frequency rate. I am planning on having it post on the first Monday of the month, but knowing me, if a month starts on a Tuesday I won't be able to restrain myself from posting earlier.

Published

A while back DST was part of a project to get an award for one of our clients. I was part of the project and later on inherited it as project manager. We got word last week that the building had won the award and I was asked by my boss to write up and article for our in house newsletter, the Mini Drill Press (MDP).
I whipped up an article, got Dave to review it, and after some editing by my boss, it was published in the MDP. It got displayed in the middle of the newsletter in a pretty significant way, with a bold background and distinctly different header. I am pretty happy with it, though it is more report-like than fluffy news article - but it is a newsletter for an engineering consulting firm.

One Minute Writer #42

If you were a professional photographer, what type of photography would you want to do?

My dream is to do wildlife photography. I am also interested in portrait photography but the gap between the two dreams is quite large.

Linked Within

So you may have noticed a new feature of my blog - Linked Within. After each post is a little section where readers are referenced to other posts that may interest them based on the labels and content of the posts. So far I am pretty happy with the feature though it does require me to label all of my posts which I don't always do. What do you think?

One Minute Writer #41

Is there a part of your life that's a mess? Describe it.

My house! Dave and I are currently living in a pig pen. Seriously, our house is so absolutely disgusting right now. Luckily, a friend may be coming to stay with us for a little while and we will need to clean it up before then. I wish we weren't both so lazy when it comes to cleaning.

Quotable Thursday #4

"Chance favours the prepared mind" - Louis Pasteur.