Android vs. Iphone: side by side comparison

I liked this side-by-side comparison.

You need to watch this (ALL OF YOU)

Whether you believe in God or not, you should watch this.

Thanks Kat for sharing it with me.

[VIDEOS] Santa visits the Fords

The links below are videos taken with my Droid3 at my Family Christmas party. Santa showed up and he was absolutely amazing. I am not usually a big Christmas lover, and most times when I see Santa out there ringing the bell, I want to slug him. This time, I was absolutely amazed, awed and maybe even more enchanted than the children he came to visit.
After that visit from Santa, I have a newfound respect for him. He may be fat, may be a little too jolly, but that boy has some mad skills!

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

As a side note, Santa has a company that helps make it possible to have him come visit your family, business or party. Jared at http://partyandlawnservice.com can help make it happen.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Hardware+more makes me feel good...

This Hardware comparison made me feel good to read. I already knew my decision was a good one (what with the freedom and customization and all that) but i figured I'd share. http://bit.ly/rGDIXO

The Story: "How I Got My New Teeth"

Long Long Ago, in January of 2009, I was living happily with my newly wed wife and two stepchildren in a little condo off State Street. We were tight on cash because my job wasn't giving me any hours, but I'd just received a promotion and had been on a special Dell Minuteman team for a week when I got a terrible stomach flu. We All did actually, but I got it and good because the rest of my family wasn't stuck in the rest room the majority of three days straight.

I got better however, and returned to work. That morning my back was just killing me, hurting terribly but I said to myself "It's just because of the stomach flu, sitting on the porcelain throne for three days straight and not enough sleep." As the day moved on, my back started hurting more and more and the strangest weakness in my legs and arms started showing up, it felt like my legs were being sapped of strength. By lunch time I could barely stand and knew I needed to go home before I couldn't stand or drive. So I talked to my supervisor and left.

 

I spent the rest of the day at home and it went from bad to worse. Over the next 10 days, I lost most of my fine coordination motor skills, couldn't type, could barely talk, could barely walk and was extremely sensitive to tactile sensation, light, sound and my sense of smell was up there too. I went from a healthy, strong 30-something year old to a weakling and a gimp. My wife, parents and friends were all concerned, and I had to take a medical leave of absence from my work due to the issue. On February 10th, 2009 I went into the E.R., they did several MRI's and gave me 1 gram of solu-medrol (a steroid IV they use to treat MS attacks). They thought maybe I had M.S. or some other neurological disorder, and I was sent home, high on Steroids and with a follow-up with a neurologist. The Steroids improved but didn't cure my symptoms, and after a few visits with Dr. Foley, he determined it wasn't M.S..

 

I then started a long, pointless search through the neurologist Dr. Elena James (Whom I'll never recommend to anyone) whom after two visits had decided that all the symptoms I was suffering from were "normal" and that the problem must be psychological in nature (she didn't recommend this the first visit because she hadn't seen the psych history from my teenage years). I tried getting a second opinion but he performed the same examination my Primary care physician had performed and decided that it was all in my head. So I was trying Physical Therapy and later started seeing a LCSW to verify/discredit the psychological cause and my wife was saying "Well, it might be your teeth - they're terrible." So we went to a dentist and he agreed my teeth were junk and dentures would probably be in order. I had the first three teeth extracted by the dentist but due to the structure of nerves in my mouth, felt every single thing (which put me into bad shock) - and it perforated my sinus. Shortly after, we had a tragedy in the family and I ended up really messing up my mouth in the process.

 

Once it was all healed, in May I had the rest of the teeth knocked out of my head by an oral surgeon. Low and behold, four hours after my teeth were gone, so were the majority of my symptoms. Apparently, my teeth were the cause of all the high-end pain, weakness, etc that's been plaguing me for the last 2+ years. Sadly, none of those M.D.'s ever considered that my mouth could be the cause. 

 

So, I'm left with a ruined job history, our family is broke, we lost our condo, and I'm currently trying to get myself back to work. I've got pretty new whites which I'm still adjusting to, and a new lease on life. My wife probably saved my life with her suggestions, and the doctors were freaking useless. 

The End

This was all posted by request - Hope you enjoyed Katia, and anyone else who was wondering.

 

:)

 

-Andy-

It's a beautiful morning

At least that's my opinion.

Reminds me of grandma

Taken with vignette for android, used a velvia filter.

Best quote ever

I need the luck, I have a crucifix up there too.

Regarding world peace

World Peace.

What a concept, what a great thing to strive for.

Unfortunately, the reality of the world makes it easier to use as a goal, something to say proudly to your parents. Church members or teachers.

We all have one, some dynamic statement that we want to see happen, want to believe in. Some pick god, others politics, and many pick the concept of world peace.

At the core of my perception belief system, the way I've come to analyze and cope with the problems life offers humanity, is the conflict engine.

The conflict engine deftly explains why religion works, politics always fail, religions become corrupt, bad guys win and miracles and angels exist.

It explains more than any one limited imagination or logical mind can generate. But I was discussing world peace.

The conflict engine works like this. No matter how hard evil or good, the greedy or selfless try to change the world, opposition will always rise up and threaten the success of their ventures. Progress only is made in relation to the opposition, or conflict against the pursued goal.

The conflict engine speaks of balance through imbalance, evolution through decay, good through evil and war through peace.

This makes it sound like no real progress is ever achieved. This is not the case. Great accomplishments are made in life. For example, electricity has been essential in science, medicine and technology and industry. It has saved lives and changed the face of the world. It also made possible such things as nuclear weapons, genetic engineering and biochemical warfare. As humans we are exultant in our electrical world, but casually ignore the devastating results that were born from the same seed.

World Peace. Is it possible? Yes. Is it what we want? Maybe. What is the price we pay for it? Not the trail leading up to it, but the cost that comes because of its birth.

I personally don't think world peace is really what we want. Our species is another kind of animal, one just like any other. We will do whatever we can do to survive, no matter how cruel. Some believe that Love is the key, like some harry potter film. I am a believer in love, and like all other forms of progress and achievement, I see the conflict and hardships we face to find it, and hold onto it. I don't think love will bring about world peace because I don't think as a species we love ourselves enough to see ourselves truly for what and who we are. We look at the terrible Things others do, then pat ourselves on the back for being so different than the monsters in the news, in the dark places. The amusing thing is that those monsters and the rest of us share many similarities. For example. They were doing the same thing before you ever heard of them and shivered.

Love battles deceit, and hatred battles against honesty. We are neither sacred nor profane. We are all animals, beasts whose sense of survival has grown to include a great deal of blind pursuit, and an even larger talent for modifying the way we look at life to keep up the illusion that there is anything but an exchange of advantage and loss all our lives and all around us.

Conflict - The Required Element

People want to believe that their lives are going to get better, that they will overcome their trials and challenges or that someday they will no longer be faced with challenges. This believe/desire is absent of practicality or reason in the sense that it would highly improbable to eradicate any opposition in one's life. The reason they want to believe this, their hope that their lives will be better is because even though they'll most likely always be faced with challenges and trials, working to get through them using this hope makes overcoming their trials easier. They fool themselves into believing that by overcoming the trials they endure that it will give them a definitive end to hardship. We all know that you will always be faced with hardships, trials, challenges and problems. This isn't bad, it's actually a good thing, and very much worth it. Yes, hope isn't truth, it's actually an illusion we voluntarily submit to, but that illusion has a strong beneficial purpose. Enduring hardship is unpleasant to say the least but also serves a great purpose.

 

Conflict is what drives Existence. It defines our Existence. Definition is a word we use to reference understanding. So by defining something we show how it differs, how it conflicts with another thing. Our perspective, our view of the world, our view of ourselves is essentially a form of conflict - we substantiate qualities that are in contrast to qualities that we don't have or don't perceive. We only understand the words Good and Evil because the definitions we give them conflict with each other to provide us with difference that gives us our perception of what they are.

 

Troy, Chantelle and I had a rather excellent evening, and were discussing/debating a great many things, one of them is religion and government/democracy. Troy is anti-religion and pro-government/democracy. I don't really discriminate or put faith in either, but as the night progressed on topics indirectly related to those subjects Mr. Marlowe emphasized with fervor his anti-religious views, which made me smile and also added serious delays to the topics we were currently exploring. I found it interesting that he was quite vocal in his perceptions of Religion, which aren't uncommon or without merit. To my estimation Government/Democracy and Religion are quite similar in nature as they both are methods of social organization and both pursue the definition of people collected together through belief in the unseen or geographic location. His position on religion was that people were "nuts" to believe in that which is unseen, yet is a quite politically active individual. 

 

I'm not disagreeing that in some, perhaps most cases, believing in that which has not been scientifically proven might be foolish, but took the abstract position that The unseen (God, Satan, etc) functions as a focal point of religion and also functions as a symbolic representation of a system of beliefs regarding personal conduct, what is socially acceptable, what is right and what is wrong. A nation's flag is largely the same thing - a symbolic representation. I respect Troy's opinion regarding this (His belief that religion is wrong and is a negative influence on the world) and am glad he has it. I also think that, while many would disagree with him, the reality that there are two sides to that perspective ensures the growth and progress of humankind. My reason for this is that if we didn't have conflicting opinions, we all thought and acted the same, there would be no progress (a byproduct of conflict) and our world would fail under a blanket of stagnancy.

 

Essentially I believe that conflict is the most essential factor in the continuance of existence (by existence I not only mean individual life, but the very fabric of time, space, our solar system, all of it). Many people may argue this as the word "conflict" can be uncomfortable - people don't like the word conflict because it's been "defined" as a hardship, and people relate it to unpleasant experiences, pain, heartache, etc. Truthfully conflict is a word representing diversity. I'm a white boy, and because the pigmentation of my skin is lighter than other races, the recognition of that difference creates diversity, or conflict. In other words, we create every aspect of our perception of life by qualifying all the things that aren't the same as to what is.

 

I really enjoy stating that I DON'T want world peace. I then usually follow it up by saying that I'm glad many do want and pursue world peace. The ideal of world peace is a great thing to motivate one to pursue positive changes in their lives and the lives of others in this civilization. The achievement of world peace would deny the world all the great things that come through the progress towards accomplishing it. I could say that I really WANT world peace, but by becoming the antagonist and stating that I do not, it helps motivate those who do to push harder for it. It creates a simple conflict system that allows for us to move forward and keep fighting to overcome our trials in life.

 

Ultimately, what my point is: Conflict is what defines our existence - without it we wouldn't exist. Difference is the foundation for every science, belief, political system, fashion line, computer program, and prepared dish.

 

The greatest trial I've overcame is acknowledging that conflict is a good thing and that everything I endure in life serves some beneficial purpose, even when it really stinks to have to go through it. Many define hope through God or Country or Love, I define hope through conflict - As long as my life has challenges I know I'm going somewhere, and I want to go somewhere. If I hadn't acknowledged difficulty as a good thing, you can bet I sure wouldn't be here right now. The 'hard to experience' things would have defeated me.

 

Having a great set of friends, family and more sure helps too! :)

 

Feel free to comment on this rambling if you like. Hope this finds you all well.

 

-Andy-