luminary blur

Oh, life. How you make things difficult. No, not really. I’m just being hyperbolic. But there is a bit going on…

• Work continues. Banking is interesting right now. At least loans are picking up a little bit…
• School starts up again. My third (or fourth if you count the introductory survey) class begins tomorrow. I have some pre-work to finish up which I’ll do after publishing this post.
• Travel plans continue. I’ll hopefully be heading back out to Iowa in late July/early August for the State Fair. Then Dallas and Norman, OK in early October for U2 at the Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium.

Quick update, I know. I have some long-form post ideas but those will have to wait….

written by Ben \\ tags: School, Travel, Work

Had a great time today geocaching with Tim (aka stealth711). We stayed in Thornton but that’s okay—there were five caches hidden in our immediate area. We only went after three of them due to iPhone battery charge issues and of those three found two. The highlight of my day was crossing a creek and sinking into about a foot of mud leaving my shoes behind. I have never been so dirty. But…it was fun. Maybe being dirty isn’t so bad. For the uninitiated, I highly recommend checking out the world of geocaching. There’s even some out there that you don’t have to get dirty to find. My sparse stat bar is embedded below.

In other news that excites me, the White Sox won today and swept the Royals in Kansas City. This makes me even more excited for my trip to U.S. Cellular Field on June 6. Hopefully the “good guys” will have a very successful home stand and move up a tick or two in the AL Central.

written by Ben

I responded to the following “update” on Facebook…

Here is the response:

Even so, it saddens me that equality must be forced onto people. Desire to be equal should come from within, not be rained down from above. I think you know as well as I that—if an amendment to the state constitution were put to the people of Iowa that reversed this decision—it would pass with a generous majority. (Heck, people voted against “equality” in California—California!) All this will do is allow for a lot of people to flock to Iowa in a few weeks to be “married” only to have that union invalidated when the decision is ultimately overturned. It’s actually kind of sad.

That’s all I’ll say about this for now.

written by Ben \\ tags: Equality, Facebook, Iowa, Response

Apparently there was an update to the Wordpress app for the iPhone today and it finally works with my blog again!!! For some reason the previous version would crash every time I tried to acces this blog. Not any more!

written by Ben \\ tags: iPhone, Wordpress

I’ll be heading to the Fleetwood Mac concert at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, IL on Thursday night. I’m going to try to smuggle in my Flip Ultra and if I do and manage to get some videos I’ll post them here. Getting excited!

written by Ben \\ tags: Fleetwood Mac, Music

This is not a real post. It should be but it’s not. I’m writing a paper right now. That’s why.

written by Ben \\ tags: fake

No, not a blog post about Windows 7. Rather, a blog post from Windows 7 and more specifically Windows Live Writer running on Windows 7. I’ve always thought that Live Writer is a nice, easy way to compose blog posts. I especially like how it “previews” the post as you’re composing it—right now I’m staring at the green background of my blog as I type this.

But, I’m still at a loss as to how to edit previous posts or if that functionality is even available. I’d think that any well-thought-out blog publishing app would make a feature as essential as the editing of past posts integral to the interface but as I scan the pleasant-looking toolbars and sidebars of Live Writer I don’t see any apparent way to do this. While composing new posts is fun (and editing old posts should be kept to a minimum), I’d still like the ability to make tweaks here and there.

Besides my qualms about Live Writer, I’ve found my experience with Windows 7 thus far to be just fine. It’s faster and smoother than Vista and more robust and modern than XP (plus who wants to use such an ancient operating system). I’m still an OS X guy but 7 looks like it’ll present a reasonable alternative for a lot of folks.

written by Ben \\ tags: Live Writer, Tech, Windows 7, windows live

It’s been ten days and already a lot has happened in 2009. I’m now a graduate graduate student at Lewis University. I finally got all the photos from my October 2008 trip to Colorado onto Flickr (ok, actually that was late last year but still…). My employer has changed and now I work for “National City now a part of PNC”. And I finally upgraded this blog to Wordpress 2.7.

I plan on writing a longer post on my trip – maybe a bit of a narrative – and of course embed slideshows of the photos I took. I have a lot of raw video to go through as well but I’m waiting for iMovie ‘09 to get it all put together. I really want to use some of those cool new map transitions – Indiana Jones style!

written by Ben \\ tags: Apple, Colorado, iMovie, Indiana Jones, Lewis University, National City, Photos, PNC, Video, Wordpress

Just trying it out really – seeing what all the fuss is about. Well, not fuss really, just some decent buzz. Time to sleep now – another long day tomorrow!

written by Ben \\ tags: Blogo, Tech, Web

Picnickers

Originally uploaded by benhinc

The sixth photo from the sixth page of my Flickr photostream on December 4, 2008. What does it mean? I’m not quite sure.

written by Ben \\ tags: Colorado, Flickr, Photos