Seth Hoisington

But there is a solution.  If you are like me and you can’t stand people who download these annoying layouts for their myspace, because somehow they think making every image blur or reverse or having a dizzzying background is teh kewl, they are wrong.  It’s annoying and makes me want to click off of your page even sooner.  But now there is a solution for Firefox users.  Goto http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/3316 and download their greasemonkey script.  You will need Greasemonkey first which is available here http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/
Now browse through Myspace minus all the CSS junk.  It’s not perfect, but does make the entire experience of Myspace better.

Also, here is an interesting article I read last week about Myspace, http://www.valleywag.com/tech/myspace/myspace-the-business-of-spam-20-exhaustive-edition-199924.php  I encourage all myspace users to read it.  Below is an excerpt from the article written by Trent Lapinski.  (When he references the name “Anderson” below, that is Tom, the friend everyone gets when they sign up.  Tom Anderson is his full name)

“Most users believe that MySpace started as some kind of fluke–a happy accident that began in Anderson’s bedroom or garage–and many still don’t wonder, know, or care about the site’s real business history and model. Heralded as a haven of DIY self-expression, MySpace was actually created by executives whose backgrounds are anchored in spam and mass marketing, and who are tied to investment scandals. With his almost alternateen good looks, Tom Anderson has served as an exceptionally convincing distraction. The PR campaign is one of MySpace’s two strokes of genius, brilliant, but not groundbreaking.”

I don’t think anyone likes being sick, but uggh.  I had my first experience of Ethan getting his parents sick.  Welcome to the world of parenthood has been the general concensous from friends.  To make matters worse.  Ethan was feeling 100% yesterday and Jessica and I were at -100%.  So here we were, confined to the couch and floor, while Ethan ran around all crazy like.  I felt bad, but we let the TV raise Ethan yesterday.  We usually restrict TV watching to a minimum, but yesterday was an exception.  Of course we had to watch some Backyardigans, no day would be complete without them.  We also tried to read some books with him, but trying to focus on something for more than 5 minutes was difficult.  Every single joint and muscle in my body ached.  Luckily, Jessica had heard about this stuff called Zicam, so we mustered up some energy and made a trip to the store to get out of the house for a little while.  That was the hardest shopping trip I have ever made.  I felt bad when random people would stop us to say Hi to Ethan (common occurence when we go out) Here we were potentially infecting them.  Anyways, back to the reason we went out (plus the fact that the fridge was empty).  The Zicam Cold and Flu medicine worked great.  Within 10-20 minutes after taking it, the soreness started to subside and my head got clearer.  Now we bought the spoon verison of the medicine which is pretty gross.  It’s like pouring a thick syrup into your drink and it doesn’t difuse well.  So you have to slam your drink to not get sick with the consistency of the syrup.  It might work better in a hot drink.  But grossness aside, the stuff works awesome.  Luckily Ethan took a 3 hour nap after our shopping and lunch break in the day, So I was able to get some much needed rest.  Through out the day I kept changing from pants to shorts and back to pants.  For about an hour I would be freezing and then I would shift to burning up.  It sucked.  Thankfully, when the alarm went off this morning, I felt much better.  I would write more, but since the time I started to write this entry, I have had to reply to about 20 emails, 5 IMs and 3 phone calls.

Well, if your an advid watcher of Noggin, then the title and picture today will most likely get a certain song stuck in your head.  I have to admit, children’s show writers write some pretty infectious songs.  I, like everyone else in Dallas, is extremly excited about the current shift in weather.  I know it’s a signal that summer is winding down, but after the long stretch of tripple digit days, I am excited to be able to go outside again.  Yesterday, Ethan and I went to the park behind our house and played for over an hour.  We met a nice couple with a 13 month old named Daniel and a golden retriever named Molson.  Ethan spent the whole hour informing me that there was a “Doggie!!!” in the park.  The weather was in the mid 80’s so we made use of it and did everything the park had to offer at our skill set.  Slides, steps, swings, volley ball court (aka, giant sandbox), walk around the 1/3rd mile track, back to more slides, and swinging again.  A boy who was waiting for soccer practice to start, even let Ethan run around with his soccer ball.  Needless to say, it was so much fun.

    The other great thing about the weather turning, is that it always subconciously pushes me to change myself and surroundings as well.  Just as God has nature changing all around us, I think it’s impossible to not want to change as a person as well.  It breaks the cycle of wake up, work, eat, sleep, etc…  

To kick the season of change off, Jessica and I spent Labor day cleaning and purging our house of stuff that has been packed up since we moved into the house.  Obviously these items were so important, that they could sit in boxes for the last couple of years.  80% of the stuff was trash.  We filled our “green monster” (our curb side trashcan) and the back of my van as well (see Jessica’s blog for a pic)  The sad thing is, there is still so much more to go through and purge.  Evenutally we will get through it all.  Two boxes we through away, were DVD movie cases and CD’s.  We catalog our movies into binders and I do the same for my music, because it is more space efficient.  The liner notes are worthless to me, so whats the point in keeping them.  As we move more towards a digital life style, It’s amazing how much it reduces how much we store in the realm of physical media.  Now my fear is, backing it all up.  As hard drives become larger and cheaper, I think we will see people just having a closet shelf somewhere with a stack of Drives labled Movies, Photos, Music….  With Apple starting to sell movies this month in digital form, I see us moving away from store bought DVD’s.  I also unburied some of my college text books covering Networks and such, So I have decided to dig into the nitty gritty of how networks specifically work, instead of just understanding the general ideals and concepts.  We also have a gym membership now, that I hope to start using more.

Sorry if today was random, after feeling that first cool breeze and having a full day of rain, I had to post my thoughts about seasonal change.

Well last night I had my first experience of panic, chaos and fear as a father, related to the well being of my son.  When ever Ethan and I come home together, it is a ritual.  He lets Lacey out of her Kennel and runs to the back door to let them out and go with them.  But it was warm and I wanted to be wearing shorts so I got him to follow me to the bathroom.  As I was changing, Ethan found Jessica’s razor on the counter top.  He quickly picked it up to show it to me as I ran to stop him.  Unluckily, he pick it up with his thumb on the razor and it was new, so his smile of “Look dad, look what I got for you” turned into a frown and scared look of “owww, what just happened”  My heart sank.  I panicked more than he did, which only frightened him more.  I quickly put him in our bath tub with the water running, since Ethan LOVES water.  If there is water running anywhere, he wants to put his hands in the stream, so i used that to my benefit.  What made me panic so much, was the flow of blood.  It wasn’t slowing down and I couldn’t get a bandaid on it.  Darrell, a friend at work, explained that children bleed a lot due to the child’s blood ability to clot.  I found this on the internet today: “Most wounds in healthy children bleed a lot because the vessels supplying blood flow to the area are very healthy…..Even wounds as small as 2 mm on the scalp can nearly cover a shirt with blood. ” source  To make matters worse, I couldn’t get a cel phone signal, so I had to go grab the home phone.  On the way to get the phone, I kicked the dog bowl over (Shattering it) since my dog had pushed it out into the middle of the kitchen.  I called Jessica, who got me to calm down and scrub my plan to goto the ER.  My fear was that if I cut my thumb with a razor, my thumb is pretty large, so the blade can only go so deep.  Well, Ethan’s thumb is much smaller, so the ratio of depth is greater.  I hate needles, knifes, and blood, so this only worsened the experience.  Well, I got him cleaned up and wrapped his hand in a towel to apply pressure, which is really difficult to do with a 19 month old.  Jessica gave me the idea to just watch some TV to get him to sit still, so we went up stairs with a cup of milk, sat in the game room and watched Sagwa and named items in a learning book (Apple, Boat, Cat, Dog, Egg, Flowers, …)  He looked pretty tired, so I picked him up and put him in his crib.  I was so shaken by the whole experience that I just wanted to climb into his crib and hold him all night, but I think I am over the weight limit for that crib (or any crib for that matter).  I kissed him goodnight, and turned off the light. 

I watched him on the crib cam for about 10 minutes before I switched over to the VMA’s which were horrible BTW.  I could write about how bad they were, but anyone who watched, already knows.   The only highlight of the show was the lighting production teams use of high powered video projection to create really interesting scenes.  If it wasn’t for Tivo, the whole show would have been unbareable.  I blooped through the commericals, intros, outtros, thank you speeches, and “the nominees are video montages”.