Be Nice To Me; I Gave Blood Today

It takes about an hour altogether to give blood.  That one hour you spend donating blood can save up to three lives.  THREE.  You personally could responsible for three random people surviving surgery, bouts with neurological damage, and serious accidents.  Nothing makes me feel better.

There are also many misconceptions as to who can give blood or not.  For example, it used to be a rule that if you visited the UK for more than three months, you could not give blood.  The rule still applies if you visited the UK more than three months during the time the rule was in effect (January 1, 1980, to December 31, 1996), but if you visited the UK after that, that is no longer the case.  Now, you have to have spent at least five years in Europe total before you can be ineligible for donation.

Military members and their families can have spent up to three months in the UK, or up to six months at other bases in Europe, before 1996.  Otherwise, it is the regular five year limitation.  (I mention this because I was a military dependent—and knew others—for my entire childhood.)

If you lived in or were born in West Africa since 1977 you cannot donate blood, due to the risk of Type O HIV, which so far is undetectable in blood testing.

The full list of actual criteria—including drug use, sexuality, cancer, diabetes, aspirin, birth control, you name it—are available at http://www.redcrossblood.org/donating-blood/eligibility-requirements/eligibility-criteria-alphabetical-listing. 

I implore you, if you are eligible to give blood, please take an hour and do it.  Go to www.redcrossblood.org and sign up online for a place near you; I found a drive online three blocks away I didn’t know about, and made a reservation online.

My New Glasses

My glasses from ZenniOptical.com got here today.  I have to say, the entire process went pretty well.  So well, in fact, that I’m going to give a small piece of free advertising right here.

I originally was in need of new glasses, and so went off to the cheapest place I knew to buy them: Wal-Mart.  I’m pretty basic on frames, so the $9 frames were good for me.  However, I have a -5.00 prescription in both eyes; I can’t get the regular $29 glass lenses.  Well, I could, but the optional-for-most-people polycarbonate lenses keep their thinness at stronger prescriptions unlike glass ones.

Coke bottles anyone?  No seriously, coke bottles would be thinner than -5.00 glass lenses.

No-scratch coating is a must.  Fortunately Wal-Mart throws that one in.  I would like the Anti-UV coating, and I require the no-glare coating; night driving is a bitch at my level of prescription.  After all the charges for all of that, the estimate was about $159.  Not including the $60 eye exam.

Yeah, sure, you see, I’m a full-time student working freelance work.  Let me pull that out of my–

After my moaning about it on Twitter, enter Elimeny to the rescue.¹  She recommended to me that I locate my glasses at this website called ZenniOptical.com, saying she had been a po-girl like me, and knew where to get deals on anti-blindness devices.

Except, I was a po-boy.  As in, not a girl.  Not the sandwich.  Stop looking at me like that.

Finding the site—and after having paid the $60 for an eye exam, you need that, either way—I browsed the site, and found excellent titanium frames similar to the ones I had for $12.  Then, the lenses: For the anti-scratch, anti-uv, and no-glare coatings, clip-on sunglasses, along with a free hard case and one of those soft cloth thingies: $17.  Srsly.  OMG.  $29 for all of that.  I shit you not.  I was so stoked, I bought TWO pairs.  $5 shipping.  Suck-it, Wal-Mart.

Within the first day I received the following e-mail, which, I thought was VERY bonus-point-earning in the customer service scale:

Dear Ms. / Mr. Hughes,
 
Before processing your order further, we would like to remind you that both of your Spherical values -5.00 might be -0.50 for your two pairs of glasses. In this case, would you please double check the Sph entries with your optometrist and confirm the information with us?
 
Please email your confirmation to us so that we can proceed with your order.
 
Thank you for selecting Zenni Optical for your vision needs.

 

At first, I laughed.  I’m so blind that the company was like “-5.00?  WTF?!”  But it struck me that this means it isn’t some blind (excuse the pun) automated system that sends out the orders, and if you typed in something egregiously wrong, your bad. 

Well, I suppose there COULD be an automatic email that goes out if it’s above a certain prescription.  Even if that’s the case, the fact that they thought of this fail-safe is a win in my book.

I replied in the affirmative, at which point they replied back to me—lending some credibility to the not-completely-automated theory—letting me know that my original order would go on as planned.

Cheap glasses, cheap shipping, I was prepared for a decent wait time.  Sure enough, I got mine in 12 days time—ordered on Wednesday, October 20, and received them today, Monday, November 1st.  Not a bad turnaround, if you consider a week to make the two pairs of glasses and a few days shipping.  Wal-Mart said my glasses would be ready in a minimum of 2 weeks. 

The glasses arrived in perfect condition, wrapped within wrapping within their hardcases within the bubble-wrap envelope thingy.  I put them on immediately, and they were perfect.  Fortunately I had gotten the measurements right (you have to pick out all the millimeter sizes for your eye distance, bridge, head, arms, etc).  I put my second pair away for backup later on down the road, and I’m wearing an awesome pair of titanium glasses that I paid $30 bucks for.

Woot.

¹ Elimeny is the one person who gives me hope each time I attempt to play World of Warcraft before the quite literally millions of losers and haters out there give me a hard time for not “healing right” and making me swear I’ll never play that game again.  ‘Til the next time I play, of course.  Visit her awesome blog at http://missmedicina.blogspot.com. 

Peer Reviews

Quick preview: Peer reviews suck, connotation can be both swell and insidious, Word is not omniscient, and stupidity is contagious.

I have this one instructor who requires his students to bring in their finished draft to do a peer review session, where everyone looks at everyone else’s essays.  For a while, I was frustrated with this process.  Not at the peer review itself—it’s a great idea, really—but at the quality of my “critics.”  Being a more experienced writer, I tend to use more advanced techniques in my essays than those starting out.

I use the term “advanced” lightly here.  Things like brackets within quotes when changing part of a quotation, subheadings, knowing the difference between using quotes and italicizing for emphasis, the appropriate times to use first-person pronouns in an academic paper, et cetera.

Unfortunately, since they’ve never seen these kinds of things before, they mark them all up on my paper.  That’s not really a huge deal, I just ignore them as wrong.  Where we start getting into trouble is when I want some feedback.  Usually, I don’t want feedback on grammar.  I proofread several times, and I know the rules.  I want feedback on more stylistic aspects of writing.  How does it flow?  Does it make sense?  Do you believe the arguments are strong or too weak?  Wordiness?  I know I’m guilty of wordiness from time to time, but the students in this class can only be impressed by the “big”, “intelligent” words I chose to use, and are not able to tell whether they’re the right words or not: connotation is lost on them.

Connotation: the unspoken, secondary meaning of a word.  Dictionary.com gives the example: “A possible connotation of ‘home’ is ‘a place of warmth, comfort, and affection.’

The other side of that coin is the things that I’m reviewing.  For the longest time, I could not get through the first paragraph or two of these kids’ essays without my head going into total shut-down mode.  It’s disgusting the lack of care these students put into their essay. 

And my personal pet peeve: Word is not omniscient.  If you fuck a word up badly enough, it’ll suggest something not even remotely close to what you were saying.  If I see: “He wanted to see what activates he could do today,” I know for a fact that you were too stupid to spell “activities”, and then let Word attempt spellcheck for you, in which you screwed it up so horrendously that “activates” was the closest thing it could find, and you did the click click click on the accept button thing  without looking at what Word was doing because I’ll bet you had two hundred other equally-as-stupid misspellings that you couldn’t be bothered to stop and check.

Stupidity is contagious, and you didn’t take any vitamins today.  My guess is, you got it at home.

Also, I was finding that albeit my hard work red-inking the hell out of others’ papers, that nobody took it seriously, and then got bad grades anyways.  I just do not get it.  Then they whine and complain at how difficult this guy’s class is because he marks off for every “stupid thing like not using punctuation right.”  WHAT?!

I went to my professor and complained.  I told him these classes benefit me naught, and I don’t really feel the need to sit there for an hour and fifteen minutes and educate his students for him.  Fortunately, he agreed.  He’s a great guy, really.  Now, in exchange for continuing to help other students in the class, I can let him take a look at my essay, and point out things for me.  I was slightly less frustrated after that.

What really amazed me though was finally, one student actually asked for my help.  I was ecstatic.  Someone wanted to learn!  Just that simple thing lifted my heart so much that I spent the entire class with this one person—no one else cared I didn’t look at anyone else’s paper—going over flow and suggestions for improvement, and why it is “He is better than I” and not “He is better than me.”  I felt useful.  That gave me just a bit of hope.

Being a Writer Sucks; I Love Being a Writer!

Wow, it has been a while.  I’ve been so thoroughly swamped lately that I’ve totally neglected this AND my novel.  Which is kind of contradictory, if you think about it, considering I quit my years of IT service to pursue a writing career.  You know, where people, uh, write?

–So why does being a writer suck?

Because there’s so much damn WRITING!  UGH!  First, I’ve enrolled at the local community college here, and although I’ve placed past all the basic writing courses, there’s still two semesters of required composition.  There’s nothing more horrid than writing about writing.  Rhetorical analysis is one of the most BORING things in the world to do. 

–rhetorical analysis – n. the process of breaking down a text into the sum of its parts to determine what the writer is trying to achieve, and what strategies are being employed to achieve it

It is so dry, lacking emotion and clarity, exactly the opposite of what I want to write about.

Besides that, I have to write for my other classes as well, obviously.  But, that’s the way it is: before they’ll let me go and write about whatever I want, I have to prove to everyone that I indeed know how to write.  Which is no problem, I understand it.

–Though, I have to say, I feel sorry for the other kids in my class.  (Yes, kids.) I’ve yet to see proof of academic literacy in any of them.  I’d be embarrassed to be their parents.

Outside of that, I’m struggling to make money as a writer in the outside world too.  No one wants to pay me for my opinion.

–Really?  No shit.

I do have a couple of paying writing jobs right now.  One is for a search engine optimization company, writing articles with keywords to boost search engine hits for various websites.  I was writing on and off for GearLive.com, I should really start doing that full time, if Andru Edwards still remembers who I am.  It’s been a little while.  (EDIT: I checked my old GearLive account, it’s been locked down.)  That’s fine.  I also write tech articles for a couple sites.  I used to write for a few more places than I do now, but I had to scale back all of my non-paying jobs for now.  It is not cheap being a full-time student!

–Blah, blah, blah.

The bottom line here, is that unfortunately, it takes a long time writing before you get to write about what YOU want to write about.  If you truly have the passion, however, you’ll stick with it.  I will.  I want to get my novel out.  I’m going to try and continue the storyline sometime soon.  We’ll see.

I hope to try this more regularly.  See you next time, people.

There’s an App For That

Well, I have my Motorola Droid, and for the most part, I love it. I have a few gripes about it, but I’ll go into detail about that in my secondary review to be posted on GearLive.com.

What I’m really psyched about is this app I found called WPtoGo. It allows you to post to WordPress blogs like this one. I can view and edit older posts, view and review comments, and it even has some basic formatting tools.

So maybe I can post just a little more often on the personal blog, eh? We’ll see. Maybe write some more of my idle thoughts. I’ve worked very hard to tone the emo down, and it has become easier as I work through my divorce and find out who I really am. I believe I’ve made some great strides. I am a much different person than the man who struggled with self-hate and loathing, blaming himself for his cheating wife, unable to truly put the blame where it truly lied and wash his hands of it.

I lost a lot of friends along the way: those who hate me for who I was, and those who drop my various social network friendships for being tired of hearing my depressed rants and avoid me in person. It is unlikely I’ll get either group of people back, but in the end, I can only rely on myself.

So, we’ll see.

My Wedding Ring

This is a piece I wrote over a year ago.  I found it, and realized it is not posted publicly.  So, here it is, just as I wrote it back then.

When I was growing up, I was subjected to the usually comical routine of the Wedding Ring Dropped Down the Drain. The ring would be dropped or put or misplaced somewhere ridiculously difficult to get to, and the rest of the show/episode/story would play out the mishappenings of whoever was supposed to retrieve it, usually before Significant Other found out it was lost.

I was never understanding of why the wedding ring was a big deal. Then I learned how much they can cost… and “realized” that losing a wedding ring was the equivalent of accidentally dropping thousands of dollars into the sewer, never to be seen again. And that, to me, was the justification for said attempts at retrieval of said item.

I had been thinking recently, looking at the wedding ring on my left hand, thinking of my wife, gone thousands of miles away. I find it interesting to note that until now, I never ever considered the emotional attachment of a wedding ring.

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Great Weekend!

Although lack of sleep is the prominent issue at the moment, this weekend was a lot of fun.

Friday night was me and Ken and Edna staying up late to clean the house so that we could have guests over.  We had some music playing, and everyone worked together.  We got a whole lot accomplished, and were rather proud of ourselves.  I got to bed at 4 A.M.

Waking up at 10 A.M. (which, for me, six hours is not good for sleep ), I headed out to New Jersey to pick up my two youngest brothers, who were hanging out with me for the day.  Back in Pennsylvania, we gamed for a while until it was time for the Ravens-Titans game.  We broke out all the snacks, and our friends showed up.  Jacob and Johanna came, and so did Edwin, along with a friend of his who I thought was pretty awesome and got on well with everyone there.

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Legend of the Seeker

A new show on Hulu from ABC, called “Legend of the Seeker” is your typical medieval-with-magic with EVERY cliché you can think of: a witty and comical wizard, a beautiful magic-wielding damsel, the old blind witch-doctor, the faithful fighter companion, dark evil preparing for its ruling of the world, dark mystery, good and evil, friendship and betrayal, love and hatred, protection and sacrifice, and of course the courageous hero who, armed with a book of secrets and his trusty magic sword inherits his previously-unknown heritage and destiny to save the world, single-handedly.

And I love it.

Devil, the Rivercat

I spoke to my coworker who took my cats into his family for me when I moved a few months back.  It really made me feel good, that they are all getting along and loving the cats.  I walked up and asked how they were doing, and he looks at me and says “Are you sure Devil isn’t a rivercat?”

I was not sure how to answer, so he explained.  He and his wife apparently went to the zoo and saw a rivercat, who apparently enjoys water, and they said it bore some resemblance to Devil.

But the physical resemblance was not all: Devil loves to play in the water!  I had mentioned this when I gave the cats to them, but I guess it is really coming to light now.  Devil apparently “mops the floor” with the water dish, splashing water everywhere, and is absolutely enthralled with the running water in the shower.  He said that sometimes it seems like Devil’s just gonna jump in the shower!

It brought back a lot of good memories.  I miss them, and I miss being a real family, with my wife.  Good times.

First Day of Work in the New Year

…is incredibly slow.  But who would have said otherwise?

I spent the majority of today finishing the new designs on the websites.  I found two new themes that I was absolutely enthralled with, and have been tweaking non-stop.  Made some internal changes, ditched the guestbook over at Spheric which was just collecting dust, and rolled out the new designs today.  Comment, give me your opinions!

Throughout that time, just thinking about life in general.  I wrote a goodbye letter to Dewi.  People may hate me, but I did literally everything I could to save my marriage.  Unfortunately, she simply didn’t want the same thing since the day we were married, and lied and cheated the whole time.  Well, she finally gave me an explanation on Christmas Eve.  She said, and I quote.  “Cheating is in my nature.  It is who I am.  YOU wouldn’t let me sleep with anyone else.  There are men out there who are okay with that.”

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Goodbye, Jack Thompson

THANK YOU.

After all of the horrible attacks on video games as the source of children’s misbehavior, this nutcase has finally been taken down.  It always amazed me how he could spout such nonsense.

If children play very violent video games, can they themselves have some kind of outward effect on society?  Absolutely!  But the solution was never to ban the games themselves.  No!  There are MANY types of available media that can cause these types of things: gory and sexual movies, books, music, television, AND video games.  It is up to the PARENTS to decide what their children do!

Do you think my dad was gonna let me buy BMX XXX because it was a video game?  (Bad example: that game sucked, even for softcore porn.)

Unfortunately, it seems he’s not “done” yet.  He’s not allowed in the courts, but he still has a big mouth.  We’ll see what he does with his supposed fame.

~Dan

7 years ago…

This was posted by one of my coworkers this morning, and I fully and wholeheartedly support the brave men and women of the time, both those who were going about their day, and those who sprang into action afterwards.

The time of the posting of this message is approx. 08:46:53, on September 11, 2008.

It was at this very moment 7 years ago that an event which would forever change the lives of us as Americans would begin to unfold.  At that very moment, FDNY battalion chief 1 Joe Pfeiffer transmitted an alarm to Manhattan Fire Alarm Dispatch relating what had happened in front of his eyes 15 seconds earlier.  This event would lead to the eventual death of 2,974 people, some members of various agencies in New York and at the Pentagon, but a majority of which were civilians who were just going about their business and were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, or happened to pick the wrong flight to get on.

Let us take a moment on this day to remember these events and those who lost their lives during them.

Cleveland: Tuesday Night

Tuesday night was more interesting!!!  The roommate and I went to “Harry Buffalo,” this bar down the road that has bison burgers.  Pretty good.  (Though it was funny when he pointed at the stuffed buffalo head on the wall and said I was making him angry for eating one of his friends.)

Today, I had my first Bacardi and Coke .  Then, I learned what a Buttery Nipple was… those were good!

We left there, and met up with a few of our friends, and went to Zocalo’s, a tequila bar… I kind of wussed out with the tequila though… I did get some Jack Daniel though, was good stuff.

But we weren’t wasted enough yet!  So we went to a third place after that one closed, where I had some more Jack and tried to play pool.  Somehow after like 5 shots I sank the eight ball… then my roommate’s alcohol really kicked in and he started antagonizing the folks playing the pool table after us.

Was fun!

~Dan

Cleveland Ho!

This week, I’m coming to you from Cleveland, Ohio, as I’m working out of the office my company has located here.  Needless to say, between the rough patch in my life recently and then this trip, not much writing has occurred.  But, I decided to keep myself occupied, I need to write more, and if not on the story, then to start making this a part personal blog as well.

We flew into the Pittsburgh airport, and left there at 6pm.  Got the rental car, and we drove all the way to Cleveland.  Took about two hours.  We were starving at that point, so we decided to go out into the city.

We started at the House of Blues.  Really nice place on 4th Street.  Now, we each get $40 a day for food, so we were all deciding what we wanted.  Everyone got like a $10 entree, mostly so they could drink .  I don’t drink that much, so I went for the $25 steak.  The others made fun of me a bit, but that was okay.  One guy had like 3 long islands, another was drinking Rum and Coke, and another coworker got the Jack and Coke.  I thought I was being funny asking for a Coke and Coke, but no one seemed to think it was so funny.

After too long, they were closing, and said we had to go somewhere else to drink (coincidentally right down the street, at the Blinking Lizard).  So we went there, and I watched some of the Colts game (they lost!), while everyone else had some more to drink… all the same stuff.

Then they said THEY were closing, and said we had to go somewhere else to drink (coincidentally right down the street, at Nick’s Sports Bar).  So we went there.  At this point, everyone was pretty toasty, and started making fun of me for not drinking.

Naturally, I give in to peer pressure!

I had a Long Island, mostly because I don’t really know any drink names, and it sounded the lightest out of what they were drinking.  Then one of my coworkers went and ordered another one…  so I had to drink that one.

Wooh, for someone that doesn’t drink, I got pretty toasty, my head hurt the next day… and I only had 2 long islands… we’re gonna practice this week drinking

That was Sunday.

Monday, I did not do a whole lot… was still feeling kind of tired from Sunday, lol.  Another friend from work came over and she cooked chocolate chip pancakes for me .  Honestly, i’ve never eaten chocolate chip pancakes on my own, and that was awesome, they were oozing chocolate.  Put the leftovers in the freezer for later.  Yum!

Then, I practically passed out and slept most of the night.  I woke up so we could order pizza, and that was it.

Today, we’re waiting to see if the girl who made the pancakes calls me back , and if not, me and and the coworker who is my roommate out here are gonna head out. 

More later!

~Dan