sjamesho.v3

memorial day came and went and i am to be reminded of what exactly? just before blogging this entry i googled “memorial day” and found this website www.usmemorialday.org and found this in the “How to Observe” section:

The “Memorial” in Memorial Day has been ignored by too many of us who are beneficiaries of those who have given the ultimate sacrifice. Often we do not observe the day as it should be, a day where we actively remember our ancestors, our family members, our loved ones, our neighbors, and our friends who have given the ultimate sacrifice:

• by visiting cemeteries and placing flags or flowers on the graves of our fallen heroes.
• by visiting memorials.
• by flying the U.S. Flag at half-staff until noon.
• by flying the ‘POW/MIA Flag’ as well (Section 1082 of the 1998 Defense Authorization Act).
• by participating in a “National Moment of Remembrance”: at 3 p.m. to pause and think upon the true meaning of the day, and for Taps to be played.
• by renewing a pledge to aid the widows, widowers, and orphans of our falled dead, and to aid the disabled veterans.

Continue reading

today i received a very interesting fortune that i think its translation was lost somewhere along the line. after opening the fortune cookie, i took out the slip of paper and read these words:

“Catch on fire with enthusiam and people will come for miles to…”

ok, everything up till now seems pretty copacetic. there’s my enthusiam, there are people that will come so i’m guessing that my enthusiam is a drawing power of sorts. but lets finish up the sentence, shall we?

“Catch on fire with enthusiam and people will come for miles to watch you burn.”

“WATCH ME BURN”?what kind of fortune is that? is having enthusiam a crime that warrants something cruel and unusual? is my enthusiam limited to just myself so that i’m burning alone and no one else is catching the spark?

i have three responses to my fortune: 1) if there is something lost in the translation, then this is one of the more amusing fortunes i’ve received from a cookie, 2) if there is nothing lost in the translation, then i may be an enthusiastic heretic just waiting for my crowd to show up, or 3) regardless the accuracy of the translation, this fortune is a hoot and blog-worthy.

what is a professional? a hired assassin? someone who is paid in exchange for their rendered skills? someone who manages chaos with grace and charm? what does it take to be a profesional? education? experience? education and experience? i had the opportunity to make a housecall to a local Bay Area photographer. after entering the gated community and parking at her driveway i was welcomed by a very large house that seemed very impressive as well as detached bungalo which served as the photographer’s office and studio. after an exchange of pleasantries, i proceeded to exorise the spyware that had possessed her computer delivering pop-ups galore. fortunately, the spyware wasn’t deeply embedded and was easily removed without hacking into the registry, or worse, a complete rebuild. computer troubleshooting has become very elementary to me which has made me a professional in other people’s eyes. and the elementary nature of it makes me feel a little guilty for taking their money. however, the guilt quickly wore off as i observed how her profession enabled her to be successful. anybody can take pictures, but a photographer has the eye to make magic happen through the lens. and like myself, photography has become easy and natural over her 20+ year career to where she is now living in a very nice neighborhood. her property was in a seculded woodsy area and i was admiring the view and thinking to myself how nice it would be to have my own big house with a detached studio for my work. and then i remembered a beautiful promise that there’s a mansion built just for me. how awesome is that?!

the pictures of my fog light installation and window tinting treatment is now available for viewing by clicking here.

the past couple of days has been an interesting experience for my blogging and photo gallery activities. i have enough pictures for a gallery set. however, the subject of said gallery set is something which i would like to put into my blog. so do i throw one of the pictures up for the day in question and then work on getting the gallery done for later viewing? or should i retroactively post a blog when i have all the pictures processed so that when you read my blog, you can view the rest of the gallery set for that day? argh! well, i have a new gallery set almost done and i suppose i should just throw a little teaser picture for now. i hope to have the gallery set up later today.

yesterday, i took my car for a window tinting treatment. after it was done and while i was driving home, i was immediately impressed with its ability to reflect heat. one could immediately sense the difference when you move your hand from the untinted winshield area to tinted area. it probably isn’t much of a surprise for those of you who already have your cars tinted. but being that i’m the first of my family to have one’s windows tinted, it is quite the little thrill. another little thrill is the vacuous sound my credit card made as gave myself a bigger bill to look forward to at the end of my billing period. since i’m always hot all the time, this should be well worth the price to ride in comfort.

there are times when you think something shouldn’t take too long. you’ve assessed what needs to be done and overall you determine that if you follow certain steps you can get through the task in a methodical, straight-forward manner. then you anticipate a certain amount of time that will be devoted to troubleshooting or in the event that things don’t go as smoothly as you had thought and estimated. however, even though you assess all the various factors of a task there will always be something that screws up that initial time allotment. so… even though the installation instructions was pretty much straight-forward, my fog light project took longer than i had initially expected – both externally and internally. being that this is the first time i’ve installed fog lights, i wanted to be sure i did all the steps right. and if given the chance to install fog lights in a 2006 civic, i think i will be able to do it much faster. so here is a picture of my fog lights in all its lighted-glory!