th@talldude

Tattoos, Right Or Wrong?

Tattoos are all the rage amongst my age bracket, the under 30 group, and it can be a very sensitive subject.  Personally, I think some tattoos are 'cool.'  However, what I think doesn't matter, even though I will NEVER get one.  I gave it a lot of thought a few years ago when I got back from Iraq, it's kind of the thing to do amongst veterans, get a tattoo to commemorate your time overseas, but there was always something in the back of my head telling me it was wrong.  If you have one, I won't condemn you for it, that's not my place.  I might even compliment you on it.  However, even if I don't tell you to your face, and I know that you should know better, I will be very disappointed, because Biblically speaking, it's a sin, whether we want to admit it or not.

Do You Ever Wish You Could Punch The Planet?

Today has been one of those days.  Maybe it's because of the Church picnic we had this weekend, which involved a delicious potluck, lots of amazing tubing on the lake, lots of relaxation, and camping out with our 'Young Singles' group.  And by camping, I mean setting up tents, then staying up all night while talking around the campfire, then starting a grease fire while trying to cook bacon on tin foil for breakfast.  Or maybe it's because I had this sudden realization that I have a lot of stuff I need to do, and taking 4 Gb of pictures and videos this weekend didn't help that cause.

Elgin Days, Small Town North Dakota

On June 6-8, Elgin, ND had their annual celebration.  It wasn't anything spectacular, in fact I've been told it was actually hamstrung this year, as they're trying to skimp on things in anticipation of the 2010 celebration, when the town turns 100.  Nevertheless, I still managed to get some good pictures of some of the events.  I'm not a rodeo fan, so I stuck around main street most of the day.

When I was younger, events like this always seemed more fun.  I don't know if it was because I was still a kid and absolutely thrilled by a parade with candy, or if it was because events were targeted at me.  Now that I'm older, and trying to figure out how I can help revitalize these towns in my area, I can clearly see that kids up to about 12 years old have stuff to do, and people older than 35 or interested in rodeos have stuff to do, but high school to those in their early 30s have nothing to do virtually all day.  I filled the time gap by taking pictures, but not everyone has an interest in photography.

Rural North Dakota, A Blast From My Past

My dad went to run some errands this weekend, and while I normally wouldn't go with, he said he was going to go out to the farm, so I grabbed my camera.  It's been years since I've been out there, despite only being 19 miles away.  Nearly 2 years ago, my parents decided to sell the farm, so while it isn't actually ours anymore, there are still a few things that haven't changed, even though many things have.

First we stopped at the first farm we lived at.  It wasn't much of a farm, it was really just an old yard that we lived at.  The actual farm was where grandma and grandpa still lived, but it was only about a mile away.  The house was sold and moved years ago, but the old shed is still there.  Way back in the day, my aunt went to school in that shed.  I only remember it being a 'shop' of sorts, and somehow dad managed to put a full size, regular cab pickup in there.

There were some intriguing finds inside too, as we discovered what I am told was my first bed.

I've Been Busy

I know a bunch of people have suddenly started dropping emails and DMs/@s on Twitter, asking where I've been.  Well, I'm still around, I've just been busy.  Right about the time Twitter decided to start redoing stuff, I got busy.  It kind of works out, because I have yet to find a Twitter client that I like, Witty doesn't work on my computer, and Twhirl is way too difficult to scan.  Obviously, I need to put more effort into it than trying 2 clients.  Twitter, please bring back GTalk, NOW.

Anyways, I've been working on lining up a job, which is part time for now, but could lead to full time soon, and I'm really excited about that.  We also had VBS, which is put on by about 6 Churches, working together.  In Small Town, USA, with populations dwindling, you do a lot of working together, so you can do things better, perhaps exemplified the most around here with the community Youth Group and community VBS.

The neighboring town of Elgin also just had their summer celebration, Elgin Days, which isn't what it used to be, but the rodeo is still a big attraction.  Their 100th anniversary is coming up soon though, and that should be a big event.

Anyways, maybe I'll go into things with a bit more detail later on, but for now, drop by Flickr to check out the pics from VBS and Elgin Days, I had a lot of fun taking the pictures, I hope everyone had a great time at the events too!

Actively Inactive, Reluctant To Change

I'm on a bit of a downer today, after the Lakers dealt my Spurs a heartbreaking loss last night.  So that may be part of the reason this post is happening.  It's a bit of a rant, but it's also something that's plaguing me.  This is going to hit on a few different, yet intertwined areas, before you reach the end.

Being without a steady job, I have a lot of time to think.  Having a lot of time to think, gives me a lot of time to network and explore new ideas more thoroughly.  Much of this networking has led me to new goals, like revitalizing my hometown and the area around it.  Many of those ideas have led me into discussions with a variety of people, to do a variety of things.  With a little more time on my hands, I've begun doing a lot of volunteer things, as well as more odd jobs than I would typically do.  Being a geek, and being heavily into all things on the web, I've discussed doing several different projects with people, most of which would have resulted in a little bit of cash for me.  However, to do these projects, I need these people to be actively active, as opposed to actively inactive.  I hope that people in the Small Town, USA you're from aren't like this.

Rural America's Mobile Coverage Is Pathetic

The Wall Street Journal has a new article by Amy Schatz, Exclusive Phone Deals Assailed.  While it's nice to see somebody going on the offensive to help more people get the phones they want, the 'cool' phones, it is only scraping on the issue that plagues us outside of the city.

I make no secret about it, I am a geek.  I am very demanding of my gadgets, my internet connection, and my phone service.  When the iPhone came out, I was ecstatic, thinking that has so much of what I am looking for!  However I live in North Dakota, which at the time had no AT&T coverage.  There was some GSM roaming provided along the interstate, so I thought about getting one anyways, for the 3 days a month I'd be able to use it as a phone (yeah, I'm that geeky).  However, there was some wording in the iPhone agreement, that if you used X amount of data in a roaming area over X amount of time, they could cut off your service.  Your billing address also had to be in an AT&T service area.  So I was out of luck.

My Room is Clean! Now Comes The Hard Part.

Today, after many hours, and possibly days, of procrastination, I finally cleaned my room.  For those of you who don't know, I'm currently living back at home, and if you must know, it's because I got financially stupid for awhile, and am recovering from my mistakes.  Anyways, my brother is graduating this weekend, and Mom thinks everything NEEDS to be spotless whenever people are here.  I don't think spotless is really necessary, people do know we live here, but like a good boy, I cleaned up my room, on the off chance that a bunch of people decide to come downstairs.  Yes, you can make these pictures bigger, and yes, some of them are VERY blurry.  No tripod. :(

Is Doritos Giving Up?

I found this package of Doritos laying on the kitchen table today.  I had never seen a bag of Doritos that was black before, so naturally, always interested in new food, I had to find out what delicious new flavor this might be.  I would be disappointed though, as this bag of chips has no flavor described on it.  Doritos, known for great flavors like Cooler Ranch, and my personal favorite, Jablanero, declined to bother with this new kind.  As opposed to any kind of a name at all, any description to give us any sort of a clue, we merely get the caption on the bag, which states:

The Quest - Guessing The Flavor Is Just The Beginning

Yeah, that's right, "guessing" the flavor.  Apparently somebody in marketing got a new kind of chip to market, was having a bad day, or maybe just had a bad cold and couldn't taste anything, and just decided that I don't care, I give up.  I'll let the customer tell me what it is.  Doritos is not the first company to do this though.  A very popular candy bar has been baffling people for a long time.

50 Bloggers in 50 States

I'm finally posting this, which is long overdue.  When you bookmark something, it's important to go back to it again, but things came up, and I got distracted.  Better late than never I suppose!

Fellow Tweeter Patrick Curl is planning a road trip to all 50 states.  He is currently in fund raising mode, and is taking donations in the form of cash and hardware.  He wants to interview a blogger in all 50 states, which can be a great traffic boost for your blog.  The interview will be in the form of text/audio/video, and will be spread throughout the internet through whatever means he can.  I hope you all swing over to his American Bloggers page and give him some support.  This will surely be a fun trip to keep our eyes on, and we'll all be certain to learn something new, as well as find some great new blogs to read!

Take Pictures of Models With Taco Bell and Sports Illustrated

Taco Bell has created a gold mine for viral marketing.  Combine two of the typical American male's favorite things, food and a hot girl, and put them together online.  Voila!  An online photo shoot.  I am sure they are going to get tons of traffic off of this.

Is Small Town USA Ready For Expensive Gas?

I wasn't on Twitter long today, when TWalk posed this question.

I immediately thought of Small Town, USA (see recent post, Would You Live There?), and my own shopping habits.  There is no shortage of talk about our country's economic conditions.  Watch CNN, search Google, or read a newspaper, and somebody will be either proclaiming a recession, or that it's not so bad.  In the big city, while you use gas, everything is nearby, even though it may take you a bit to get through town.  Outside of the city, however, you often must travel long distances.  When agriculture is your economy, when everything in town, be it the hospital, school, or cafe, is made possible by the number of farmers in the area, every dollar counts.  When you must often drive long distances to get that ONE thing that your local town businesses don't provide, the fuel expenses quickly add up.

My TweetWheel

I finally got TweetWheel to load for me today.  I haven been hearing interesting things about it, but their server has always been so busy, and even today, I had to refresh several times before it got all the way through.  TweetWheel is very similar to the Facebook app, FriendWheel.  It collects the data about you and your friends and who you're following, then gives you a visual display to show you how you are all connected.  You can find my original TweetWheel here, but I also took a screenshot of it, so you can glance at it on the blog before reading my other posts (wink wink). It obviously doesn't have all of my Tweeps on it, there's far too many for TweetWheel's current capabilities, but it still gives a nice representation.  You can follow me on Twitter @thattalldude.

Small Town USA, Would You Live There?

I've had a lot of thinking time this week, as I had to spend a large amount of time away from the internet and my friends on Twitter.  As I pondered many topics, I kept circling back to a passion of mine, my hometown.

I understand completely why people move away, and leave North Dakota (my home state) completely for that matter.  But as much as it may benefit me to move away, and be around more people with the same mindset as me, technology wise, I would rather be the guy who turns things around, and gets people to move here.

Why Can't I Find Anything?

I am a geek, living in a world of social media, where EVERYTHING gets tagged, archived, and indexed.  EVERYTHING.  So why is it, that I can never seem to find what I'm looking for?  This morning I was looking for an address, which I still haven't found, which made me start thinking about blogging this, which brought even more looking.  I don't have a digital camera, so I had to use my phone to take the picture of my 'desk.'  I haven't figured out how to send files from my phone to computer via bluetooth yet, so I popped the MicroSD card out to copy the pic to the computer, but then I couldn't find my SD adapter card.  All the more frustrating, is that it wasn't but a month ago that I 'organized' and cleaned up around here!  So why is this so hard for me?

We Buried Another Veteran Today

We buried another veteran today.  Otto Stern, age 86, of New Leipzig, ND.  It is unfortunate that we're family, he was my dad's uncle through marriage, and I still didn't realize so many of the things he did.  He was active in Church, a community promoter, and a volunteer fireman.  He was from another generation, perhaps our greatest generation, as Tom Brokaw famously wrote.  His generation worked hard, survived the depression, won wars, and were humble about it.  It was a very patriotic time, when our nation's young men were signing up in droves to go and 'fight the Germans.'  They came back heroes, and Otto was no exception, fighting in France and Germany, earning the Purple Heart in the process.  He was a real American hero, working hard, fighting for freedom, raising a family, and standing strong in his beliefs.

The Military Option

I just saw this piece on Yahoo News, talking about how the states are facing budget deficits, and one of the options they are looking at, is freeing inmates early.  Despite knowing that it is a risky proposition, the states are considering releasing thousands of drug pushers and violent criminals back to the streets, although some states are considering rehabilitation centers.

At least eight states are considering freeing inmates or sending some convicts to rehabilitation programs instead of prison, according to an Associated Press analysis of legislative proposals. If adopted, the early release programs could save an estimated $450 million in California and Kentucky alone.  ~Ray Henry, AP

While I acknowledge that some rehabilitation centers achieve tremendous success rates, many don't.  Which is why I present to you, 'The Military Option.'

We're Long Overdue to See Food Prices Rise

Today I came across this link on Truemors, 'Food Prices Are Rising Worldwide.'  I can understand everyone's disappointment at having to spend more money, but they should be thankful.  Thankful that this didn't happen sooner, thankful that despite farmers going broke across the country, they're saving money, thankful that week after week, for years on end, they don't have to look at dozens of farmers on their last legs, just hoping to make it another year, because with their endless optimism, "Next year will be better."  Out here in southwest North Dakota, I see what these farmers go through every day.