If you’re looking for a smart, or otherwise insightfull 4th of July post, well, I thought about it, but so many of the bloggers on my bloggroll said it better than I ever could. Go read, I did.
Nothing Much
The Personalized TSA Experience
Over at MArooned there’s a report from a reader (blogger? I don’t read’em all so could be) about his experience going through the TSA security lines.
MrsSCI-FI announced that she has a medical implant, and must be scanned by hand. Not “Maybe.” Not “Scan her Anyway.” Not “Subject to TSA override.” Trail Boss, however, knew better. “We get passengers with implants all the time. Just go through.” Not a smiling, friendly comment; this was a variation on “Move your ass, you’re holding up my line.”She repeated her request for a pat-down, and Trail Boss repeated that she is going through the nudie-scanner. At about the start of the third round of this, I held up my “STOP” hand and repeated what the Mrs had said. Wife, however, was having no problems at this point: she just flat wasn’t going through, and the Trail Boss had had enough. He called for a female guard, and told my wife to stand to the side and wait………Doubling-down on trouble, I stated flatly: “Pat down. No scanner.” Trail Boss directed me to the “Get out of my way” line next to my wife, and called for a male guard…..It’s worth pointing out the following: after my wife had been paired off with her designated TSA groper, I saw a family get waved through with no scan. At least five people, one of them an infant, were waved past us all. No magnetometer, no nudie-scanner, no pat-down. I’m not even certain their carry-ons were x-rayed. I pressed the Trail Boss for an explanation: “Why are they just walking through?”
The answer was a load of crap: “We need to relieve congestion.”
So, what happened to the option to opt out for a pat down? Apparently thats a “bad thing” as far as the TSA is concerned, if you read the rest of the post you’ll discover that even the patdown was done rudely. And yet, at the same time, a family is passed by with no scanning whatsoever?? SRSLY?? And my family wonders why I have no wish to fly any more!
So, about that shirt…..
I was catching up over at Ambulance Driver‘s when I ran across the linked post. I read it with a great deal of amusement cause usually I’m the less than maternal woman who the kid beelines for. I don’t dislike kids (well, ok, as long as they’re well behaved, if they aren’t I can’t stand’em), but they aren’t generally my favorite people to hang out with, and I tend to be bad at figuring what makes them tick. However the picture of Labrat’s hands caught my eye, not cause of the nail polish, but because of the tshirt behind them. Then I hit Google and found this! Next time I have some spare change the husband and I are each getting one. My coworkers will love it, my boss will consider it a further sign that I’m a spawn of hell. Oh well.
Buying Photoshop
Brigid (sorry, spelled it wrong at first!) over at Home On the Range is asking her readers to help her decide if she should buy Photoshop, or not, to play around with. I put my two cents in the comments, but this really deserves a full post.
First off is the financial considerations. Photoshop is EXPENSIVE. Even with the student discount it cost me $200, last I checked the full version was something like $800 or $1000 and I doubt its gone down much. Thats alot of money to put into a piece of software that may not be what you want. Now, Photoshop Elements is cheaper, but doesn’t have all the fancy smancy features of the newer Photoshops, but even better are some of the free tools out there.
I know there are more less expensive sets availible, I’ve not much, if any, experience with most of them so I’ll let you do your own research, but one online freeware I have used is the Aviary set. The basics are free, though there is a subscription plan that I’ve never looked into. The photo editor has the large majority of the same tools as Photoshop for free, that you can plan around with and figure out if this is something you enjoy or not. After all it would really be annoying to spend all that money on Photoshop and then realize you don’t really enjoy working with it.
Something else to consider is just what exactly do you want to DO with this software:
If all you want to do is enhance your photos you may not NEED all the fancy stuff in Photoshop. Take a closer look at Aviary and some of the other less expensive softwares out there and you’ll likely find they’re all you need.
If you want to create ART out of your photos, well then maybe Photoshop is for you, but I still highly recommend playing around with the above mentioned other softwares first. For those of you who are wondering what I mean by “art” go HERE and browse for a bit, my current favorites are images one and two HERE. The things people can do with some skill, effort, and way to much time on their hands!
A third thing you may be considering doing is drawing, sketching, or creating art by hand using these softwares, and in this case Photoshop is probly NOT right for you. Oh, it’ll do it, sorta, but thats not what its designed for. Take a look at software such as Corel’s Painter suite. Much more designed for the artist in mind. You can modify photos with these softwares, but they’re designed for drawing instead.
If you’re asking what I use, well, I have both Photoshop CS4 and Corel Painter 11 and I use them both. As for what I do with them:
This photo was originially just of the barn. I painted the fairy on it using a combination of Photoshop and Painter. This image won Jurors Pick on Worth1000 (In a beginners contest).
This was a normal rose, till I started playing around in Photoshop.
This horse was done in Painter
Here’s a before and after (done in Photoshop) of a photo I posted previously of the puppy. Can you tell the difference?
last but not least, a water color “painting” done in the originial version of Painter (before Corel bought it).
Got my soap order.
I posted a while back about how a friend of mine had finally opened a webstore to sell her soaps and other skin care stuff. So a few weeks ago I put together some spare cash and placed an order.
I got a couple bars of the Guinness Beer Soap (cause it sounded too cool not to try). A bar of Dirty Dog Soap. Two tins of the Vanilla Bean Solid Lotions. I also ordered a custom soap log of spearmint & eucalyptus scent. And two bars of her coffee soap (which is not on the website because it requires lard and shes trying to cater to the vegi/vegan group, she’s trying to reformulate it to use a different oil, but hasn’t had any luck). She also (by prior agreement) sent me samples of the Sensitive skin Facial Mask, Peppermint Foot Butter, Yuzu Body Butter, Vanilla Cookie Lip Balm, Pink Sage Soap, Chocolate Mint Soap, and the Dead Sea Mud Soap.
Everything arrived today, and it smells awesome. The only one I’m likely to have an issue with is the Pink Sage because it contains lavender and I’m allergic, but its worth trying. The custom soaps (which I intend to use both for myself, and for gifts), smell just like I hoped they would, and the lip balm is heavenly. I’ll try to remember to post my thoughts and reactions on the rest as I use them.
Just a note, though she’s generally more than willing to do custom orders for soaps you’ll need to be prepared to buy the whole log, and remember that it’ll take longer to get since the soap has to set before its hard enough to ship out (ie: 2 to 4 weeks).
***Disclaimer: The owner of Beach Baby Bath & Body and I have known each other for a while, and she’s been sending me samples of various stuff for a long time because I have some odd allergies and she figured I was a good way to test things out. As stated above some of this order I paid for, and some she voluntarily included for me to try. I get no payment for trying those samples other than the enjoyment of the products themselves. Any review of these products, those I paid for and those I didn’t, will be as honest and complete as I can make it.
Michael Z Williamson
Writes sci-fi and military fiction, most, if not all, of which is published through Baen. On his website he sells a variety of things, including this tshirt:
I have to admit to wanting one, probly piss off my boss though….
Mobile format
So blogger decided to get on the “special format for mobile devices” bandwagon. I’m not in general a big fan of these, I hate WordPress’s for example, but I went ahead and turned it on to try. If you read this using a mobile device please let me know what you think.
They say to just lay there….
….don’t antagonize him, and he’ll leave. Don’t fight back. But every time we turn around we get more proof that doesn’t work.
Electric cars
While I’m on the subject, everyone goes on about how an electric car saves you money, and officially the .GOV is pushing companies to try to find a way to save oil (at least they keep saying they are), but there’s a side to getting rid of gas burning cars (or any kind of fuel burning vehicle) that I think the general public tends to forget about. The federal government, and most (if not all) states, make quite a bit of money off of gas taxes that are paid at the pump. So what happens when that source of income dries up?
Well, things like this. At first glance it makes sense. You use the roads you should pay a tax to help pay for repairs…..right? But how are they going to collect this information?
Most, if not all, new cars already have a black box of some sort that records a few seconds of data in the case of a crash, but in order to track your miles driven it would have to keep track of much more AND send that information off to the government periodically. You don’t even have to be paranoid to see ways for this to be abused, and thats just by the folks who would legally have a right to the info. What happens when some crook figures out how to access the data and uses it against you in some way?