this week’s theme for weblogit at daydreamz.net is our favourite photos. for me that photo changes over time depending on stuff but at the moment this is my favourite photo:

this was the last photo taken of my father before he died. a couple weeks before i believe. its kinda blurry because an elderly lady took it and she was shakey with the camera. i tried to fix it a bit in photoshop because my mom had it in her purse for a bit and it got wrinkled up.

most photos of my dad i could consider my favourite because looking at them just makes me smile and remember the wonderful i times i had with him. i feel weird looking at this though. he was fine when this was taken. the wheelchair was a precaution because when he was standing up for too long he got tired, but besides that he was fine. a couple weeks later he was gone. it reminds me how fragile life truely is.

sorry i haven’t really had much to blog about recently. i’ve been dealing with seasonal depression and just a complete lack of get up and go. i spend my day doing absolutely nothing. looking at websites and webhosting reviews out of boredom. i’m thinking of making a new blog layout again, but then when i get started i quit because i just really don’t have the energy.

this is the part of the seasons changing that i hate so much! on top of that, there’s also the fact that its officially autumn and i’m still sitting here sweating and have the air on full blast. why is it so hot?!?! i know i live in the south but i don’t live THAT FAR south. i wish the weather would go back to normal. its supposed to be chilly right now, not 91F!!!

i think i might start on that 30 day meme sometime soon. not sure when, need to get un-lazy, but it looks really cool and it will give me something to do when i can’t think of anything to blog. anyone else doing this meme? i know jenn is, but i haven’t seen anyone else doing it. i also need to get off my ass and remember to do the daydreamz weblogit post! i forgot to do last week’s D:

can you believe its already almost october? its still pretty warm here where i live, but once october hits its going to start getting super cold. i’m not really a fan of winter but i do like when it gets really cold a snows. someday i’d love to take a log cabin holiday with lucas and have it snow really heavy. its so beautiful when everything is covered in white and ice.

i wish it could snow without being cold! that’s the part i hate about winter. i hate being cold. most people hate being sweaty and hot but i hate being cold and having to bundle up. unfortunately for me, where i live it hardly ever snows. it gets really really cold, but no snow.

its crazy how fast this year has gone by! anniversaries, my birthday, everything has just gone by for me in a woosh. i’m really not sure if i’m looking forward to the coming months. december is never going to be a happy time of the year for me again, but maybe it will snow, and that will make it a little better. maybe i’ll go find out how much it costs to have one of those holidays

this strange game has been sweeping across the gamer scene for a while now. usually it costs 13$ for this game but recently the creator had to disable the majority of his site because the game just got too popular for his server to handle. he says the site should be back to normal tomorrow, tuesday the 21st, however until then its free for everyone to check out!

i’ve played with the minecraft client on the website, which is nothing like the game you purchase, but its really a lot of fun. i’ve been playing with the free download of minecraft for a day now and while i personally don’t see a reason to pay 13$ for something where i just mine all day and build things with pixel blocks, it does kinda get addicting and a lot of people are loving it. i’d probably pay for it if it was a little cheaper.

there is a multi-player option but its still in alpha stages, lots of people have started up private servers though, and you can get together with friends and build and mine and kill zombies

if you want to check out minecraft for yourself just follow this link to the website where the download links are available. please remember that this game will not be free for much longer, and you will have to buy an account to keep playing after the site comes back up and resumes normal operation.

i can’t really think of anything to write about today but i’ve been trying to push myself to go and pay attention to the blogging world around me and i’m visiting a lot of new sites.

when i visit a new blog i always look at the layout, then i read the blogger’s “about” section, then i read one or two blogs on their main page. that’s my normal routine when visiting a blog, as i mentioned before.

a lot of times i find things that really irk me about blogs. everyone has their own pet peeves about the web. most things don’t bug me, i’ll still read a blog even if there are ads or if the person blogs on blogger, but there are some things that just drive me nuts and i wish i could poke the blogger and say hey that’s just really annoying.

on daydreamz.net we had a thread about this but i thought i would share what bugs me with my blog as well.

• music that plays when you load the site. UGH! i’ve hated this sort of thing since i started using the internet. its cool that you want to share your music with us but ffs please make it so it does not play as soon as you enter the page. give us the option to turn it on if we want but keep it off otherwise. and PLEASE do not put the music player at the very bottom of the page. that is so completely annoying to first be blasted with music and then have to hunt around to find the player.

• those damn social bar things. why are you people putting these on your blog?? sure they are fine if you are on a social networking site and need to be able to im members or something but otherwise? not cool, and very annoying. i don’t even like those bars on social networking sites to be honest.

• tiny font, font almost the same colour as the background of the page, bolding and italicizing every other frigging word. these three things will keep me from reading even one sentence of your blog. also blinking text. who decided this was cool again?

• teen blogs that glorify drinking/partying/being a general dumb ass. the internet could use a bit more intelligence.

anyway i’m done bitching, but if you see me lurking around your blog or possibly commenting its because i’m trying to be more social. i tend to get all locked up in my little safe cubby hole and i never really branch out and interact with people.

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Aladdin. All opinions are 100% mine.

The earth is very precious, and some of us have taken that for granted.

• Seven million barrels of oil are used to produce the disposable bottles Americans go through in one year.
  
• In the United States, 50 billion disposable water bottles are consumed per year; 137,000 per day; 1,585 per second.
  
• It costs about $165 a year to make drip coffee at home versus $636 to buy drip coffee at your local cafe?.
  
• Unless we change our habits, 23 billion paper coffee cups will be thrown out in 2010.
  
• Nine dollars will generally cover a decent lunch out. If you buy rather than pack a lunch five days a week, you shell out about $2,350 a year.

My family is unfortunately guilty of some of these things, but we have been doing our best to cut down and "go green" where we can. I love finding new ways to help our earth and so I invite you to Do The Reuse Challenge!

- What’s the Do the Reuse Challenge?

This challenge is a 30 day commitment to give up disposable paper cups, water bottles, or food containers. Everyone is allowed to participate (the more the merrier!) and 9 families will be blogging their experiences on the Aladdin website.

- Why are they doing this challenge?

A few months ago Aladdin made the commitment to give up disposables. Quickly they realized the benefits: hot coffee in a favourite mug; a fresh lunch made to suit. The products they made, helped make it easy to reuse because they enjoyed using them, and on top of that, they were saving money!

- Who are the featured families?

They’re regular people just like us! They were asked to take the challenge and they said yes!

- What if you don’t have a reusable water bottle, or a decent coffee mug?

By accepting one of the Do the Reuse Challenges, you’ll be able to get discounts and free shipping on selected Aladdin products though the website. That makes it super easy to find a new mug, or a new container for your snacks.

My biggest problem is water bottles. I don’t like the tap water at home so I end up drinking bottled water. I do however realize that I am of course producing a lot of empty bottles. We recycle them here but I would love to do more. I think I might see about getting a water filter on the tap to try and make it taste better, and then check out the reusable water bottles on the site. Then I can take part in the challenge too!

If you are interested in this, please do go check out the website and accept the challenge! And don’t forget to follow Aladdin on Facebook while you’re at it.

this morning while digging around the kitchen for breakfast food, i came across a package of muffin mix that cheerfully proclaimed “Just Add Milk!” being that i am a failure at making anything major in the kitchen, i decided to take the challenge of just adding milk, and make muffins!

armed with an ipod and a muffin tin, i mixed and poured and preheated and felt like an awesome adult there for a few minutes.

i watched the muffins like a hawk. my first time baking something would NOT end in horrible flaming disaster! the ipod served as my timer and they came out beautiful.

a little messy in the pan (sorry for the blur, i suck at holding my camera steady)

but ultimately a complete success!

i placed one on a small plate (she can only have one due to her sugar allowances) and left it for my mom in her room where she was sleeping. she woke up, looked at it and looked at me like i had no head. then asked what i did with her daughter. these things tasted as good as they looked and smelled. all in all a great breakfast.

i’m pretty sure my dad would be grinning from ear to ear right now.

i wrote a few posts back about my frustration with this game not working as well as it should on my computer. i have spent a long time combing forum after forum for an answer and still i don’t really have one. i have noticed though, that after the innitial lagging stuttering mess when i exit the safe house, if i stand around and walk around and then drive around a little before i do anything, the lag and stutter disappear. why is this happening? i have no idea. my problem does not seem to match the other complaints about graphic stuttering, as most of those are related to ATI cards or stuttering after playing for a certain amount of time.

its almost like my game needs to warm up before i can actually begin playing it for real, and while that kinda sucks, it is playable after i get past that lagging at the beginning. i was able to play for about 3 hours this morning and finished quite a few missions without the awful stutter!

game wise i really love this game, so i’m still kinda disappointed in the trouble i’ve had with it, but now that its playable i am sure i’ll be playing the hell out of it!

what do you do when you buy a new tv or a new computer? do you simply throw out the old model? or do you keep it around for spare parts? in my family, because my dad fixed electronics, we always kept our old stuff incase we needed a part or if nothing else, as a backup. if you’re the type of person who does throw out your old electronics, you should look into electronic waste recycling.

honestly i see no reason to really throw away anything electronic, even if its broken. parts can always be used to repair other items and if its not broken, you could sell it or give it to someone else who might want it. a lot of my old electronics are hand me downs. my first nintendo was from my dad’s repair shop. the person who brought it in never came back to claim it, so after a few months he brought it home to me. it worked just fine and it never really mattered to me that it wasn’t new. i guess i was a bit lucky though because my dad could fix practically anything. i’ve salvaged quite a few items with his help and i learned how to fix a lot of stuff myself as well. still, i guess after a while, stuff just cannot be fixed anymore, and that’s when you should take it to be recycled and made into things for other people to use.

i’m curious because i look at my stats and i do notice that people show up and leave from my blog rather quickly (within seconds) sometimes. now granted this might be entrecard droppers or link crawlers or maybe spam bots, but it makes me wonder.

when you go to someone’s blog, via comments link, or forum post, or any other means. how long do you stay on that person’s site?

personally for me it depends on the site. if they have one of my hated blogging peeves, like bolding and italicizing every other word, or those damn tool bar things at the bottom of their page trying to connect me to a chat server, i usually don’t stick around very long. i do always try to read the most recent blog on their page, and if i have something to say, i do take time to comment.

if i like the blog, i generally will spend more time on the site. i’ll check out the about page and learn more about the writer, i’ll read a few more entries, and if i like the overall tone of their writing, and the subjects they write on, i’ll usually subscribe to them. then i’ll move on to another blog and repeat the process.

for me i think its only good manners to read at least one blog post, before shoving off, but that could just be me. what do you do when you visit a blog?