you already know Im going to FC, so I dont need to say that I am.
That makes sense, right?

YET!

Yeesh. Chinese new year happens on February 10, 2013. So year of the snake is still more than a month away! Come on!
Its not even the new year for me yet, and everyones all 'SNAKES ARE HERE TO RULE' and stuff... NO!
February 10!

So Ive had the Gunnar glasses for a little while now, and I have to say I really do like them. The amber tinting isnt too tough to get used to, and when I take the glasses off now, my three screens seem super bright. Incredibly bright! The colours dont get washed out by yellow or anything, either, so that issue isnt much to worry about. Sure, if you slip the glasses on and off you can see a difference, but just leaving the glasses on doesnt have that effect of course.
So yes, it does seem to reduce eye fatigue. But the greatest part, I find, is the slight magnification of the lenses. its just that much easier to read the screen, and I feel like my 24" monitor is more like a 27" or so instead, now, simply because things are bigger to me! Text is easier to read, SC2 is easier to watch and play, etc.
Not alll fun and games though. I mean,youre still going to be wearing glasses, the nose-pads and the arms of such can be annoying. I have a Razer Banshee headset, and wearing it and the glasses caused my ears to be a bit sore, the earpads pushing my ears against the arms of the glasses and such. My nose can get a bit uncomfortable too,but... not too bad, nothing a bit of a rub now and again doesnt fix.

So yes, I would recommend a pair of these glasses if you spend a few hours a day in front of a computer. Get them on sale, as they almost always are, and I think its totally worth the money. I would NOT,however, buy these at full price. Theyre far too expensive for that!

-> http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/4122145/ <-


ha, you thought I was drawing?!

A coworker says he has a girlfriend and thats why he moved here.
His car has a rainbow-striped sign that says 'So gay I cant even drive straight!' hanging from the rearview mirror.

Should I just ignore...? Im kind of curious about it. He said it was his car, after all, and hes not exactly hiding the sign in his car... But he says he has a girlfriend!

Yes, I went ahead and got them. I queried a good friend who has a pair, and searchde out reviews online, finally went ahead and bought a pair and just got them tonight. Expect a review of these in the near future. Now, keep in mind that I used to wear prescription glasses until I got laser surgery (best damned money Ive EVER spent!) so I do remember what its like to wear em, and I dont normally feel a lot of 'eye fatigue' as far as I know, so it will be very cool to try these out and see how I feel!
Cut back on headaches and give me a bit of eye relief? Even those two things will be more than worth the money! As I write this right now with the glasses on, I am happy with them, though it could be placebo effect here. X>

Anyone have any experience with these? Im pondering a pair of them myself, theres a deal on right now for them with the IPL5 tournament going on... So a pair for around $60 might be reasonable. Im just.. unconvinced, and in a time where I might need that money for other things, Im on the fence, so Im looking for some first hand reports. Lots of reviews online, but theyre largely up and down.

The City that rhymes with fun!

Except this province seems to be ridiculously lame. Half hour after crossing from Manitoba into Saskatchewan, there was snow. Then the roads started getting horribad, cracked and rough condition. But I get to Regina... and end up going through 6 hotels before I find one with a vacant room. A smoking room. Wheeee! Lame. So I check in anyways, go out for dinner to a nearby pub, and their draught taps are broken! Bah! No draught beer in a brew-pub! And the longer I sat in there, the more I worried I was going to be losing my braincells due to so many... rednecks, for lack of a better term.
So far, I rank Saskatchewan as my least liked Canadian province.... pffft, they dont even have any mountains! You cant have a province without a mountain!


Tomorrow, I should end up in Golden, BC. Then... a trip through the rockies! Hurrah! Just hope I can make it, so long as it doesnt snow too much... hrmnph!

Its sitting here, in front of me, all alone. I ate it's brother. Now its just taunting me, tempting me, being all delicious there without moving... But... full....
So tasty... I dont think I can resist much longer!

Im probably about halfway through Anor Lando, and one of the greatest lessons which Ive learned and will now pass to you all is...

DONT FORGET YOUR ARROWS!

I was footed (grabbed by talons) today by a red tail hawk. I am now missing a bunch of skin on my finger due to the puncture. The end.

Is this fandom perhaps too accepting? Things are starting to bug me nowadays about this, where people are allowed to be pricks and douches yet there will ALWAYS be someone to come up and support them for being such a way. People are always backed up by some 'friend' or other that blindly believes that their friend is in the right. Then, if you name names, you look like a jerk for doing so and could get actioned!

Like, what the deuce?! If someone is a pinhead, let it be known to everyone that theyre a pinhead! Maybe then they'll learn not to BE a pinhead! Stop protecting the pea-brained ninnies!

Yeesh! How do you teach anyone that what they're doing is not socially acceptable or just plain dumb if you dont give them a good smack once in a while? LESSONS MUST BE TAUGHT!

I have explained my current method of photography in a couple comments as 'shotgun style' where I just take a billion photos and hope for the best, maybe a couple turn out well? I was at the zoo again today, seeing the animals and the bird flight demonstration they have for the summer. in 4 hours, I took 418 photos....

This is gonna be fun to sort through, wheeeeee!

Ive had my nexus one for a couple years now, and its starting to break down. Slow, memory is full all the time (its not got much space...) and shutting off randomly, freezing up, etc. Not to mention its just plain old, old enough that its not supported for new android OS updates at all, so...

Im going to be looking for a new phone! Preferably NOT an iPhone, though that could happen due to other circumstances... But I really want another Android phone. So I'm looking for advice, or thoughts, on what good phones are out there. Or what is coming out that I should possibly wait for? I really REALLY want a physical keyboard, which means a slide phone most likely, but I wont say it MUST have a slide if there simply isnt any decent ones out there.

So, any advice? Android phones, go!

Anyone able to help here? Sometimes I upload a photo and it gives a full breakdown of the settings used on the camera to take the shot, such as http://www.furaffinity.net/view/8436027/

And sometimes I upload a photo and all the info is gone, such as here: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/8654554/



Anyone able to clue me in as to why this happens?

Yups, a friend, go figure! Hes going to help me learn and stuff....

http://www.livestream.com/firegryph/

For some reason it has died on me. I have no idea if its just me or what, but... yeah, mid stream, it crapped out. Wont load the actual page, though my in game HUD says its still streaming. Whatevs!


So yeah, stream over. Sorries! Maybe next time I can actually, you know, PLAY THE EFFING GAME!

First time ever playing it... gonna stream, yo. All by myself amidst the zombies. Also, with beer, and music. Maybe music, might need sound... who cares!

http://www.livestream.com/firegryph/

So what's really going on in the heads of developers nowadays? Is the almighty dollar getting to all of them, or is it just the producers that are really ruining things? Consoles are to blame, or just sheer laziness and some idiotic desire to be new and innovative in every game?

What Im talking about is the odd new trend in game series to throw away everything accomplished in previous iterations of a franchise and make something new, and fail at it. Not outright fail, usually, but lose a LOT of the knowledge and input that made the previous games great. Two games I would use as examples are Battlefield 3 and Diablo3.

Diablo3 is the one more people would likely have experience with, so I'll start there. Compared to Diablo 2, D3 is terribly lacking. TERRIBLY lacking. Its a fun game, dont get me wrong, and Im not here to review it or give my opinion of the game itself, but there are so many things going on in D2 that just aren't included in D3 that really should have been carried on. Items, for example, are ten steps back in D3 from where they were in D2. From the variety in set items and uniques, even just the differing base items and progression, to the way magical prefixes and suffixes work and the number of such, everything just seems... worse. They tried to simplify, it seems, and in doing so they lost the way the item hunt is actually interesting.
Now, you hunt for 4 specific stats, and thats it. There are no +skill items, there are no %chance on hit to cast a spell, there are no charges of abilities, nothing like that. Set items only show up at level 60, and the ranges for the affixes are so huge that you can get items that have 'worse' affixes but better +stats. THen, the actual level ranges... Socketed rings show up at around level 16ish, and you can get one with a level requirement of 16. Or, you can get one of level 53... its the EXACT same ring, a ring with a single socket, but vastly differing level requirements... explain that one!
Speaking of sockets, you have only about 4 colours of gemstones now in D3. No more diamonds, no more skulls, no more runes, no more jewels... All those items that added some manners of customization are gone, reduced to these 4 or 5 colours that have about 10 levels of quality. Why?
The game itself is different... multiplayer only, for example. You HAVE to be connected to the internet to play the game, even if you want to play solo. What was wrong with the way D2 worked, with offline and open b.net, and a closed b.net. Closed stored your characters on Blizz servers so as to prevent (or reduce, at least) hacked characters and items, but you could mess around all you wanted with your offline or open B.net characters. Then you have the way the whole world itself was set up. Waypoints could take you through the acts, to any area you wanted, that the host had unlocked. So players could be running around in act 3 after Mephisto, while you ran around in Act4 trying to kill butcher. Or, just clear one area, then the next, then the previous couple, etc. You could jump around. Now you need to start a new game for any new act you wanna play.

Okay, so that's diablo3 vs diablo2. Why so many steps back? They learned soooo much from D2, yet they threw that gathered knowledge out the window and restarted it all! WHY?! Even the money excuse doesn't seem to make a lot of sense... its all up to the developers. The game was in development for years, it wasn't exactly rushed out in a year.



Moving on to BF3 though. Compared to BF2... the physics engine is all wonky, getting killed by 'bad luck' happens frequently and you cant even tank surf or anything! The types of vehicles is way down from BF2, the maps are smaller, the UI is far worse, etc. They even dropped the commander role!

This is happening too regularly, seriously! But there is NO need for it. And it makes no sense! Youre supposed to BUILD your game on what you've learned previously, to make the series BETTER. Not just redo everything and hope for another classic game... you might as well rename the game if you want to restart and redo the entire systems established in those games.

So here's a question that has floated around in my mind for a while now, ever since I started RPing I suppose and really fleshed out my characters for use in RP and online interaction. I've answered it for myself, but I'm more curious on how others feel about it as well.

Your morals and ethics IRL, do they affect your character's behaviour much, or at all? Do your characters follow the same laws of guidance, and if so, how strictly? For example, I am a Christian and I fully believe in the 'no sex until marriage' thing. I am saving myself, and my characters do as well. One of those firm lines I draw (one of the very few) is that I will NOT have my characters mount and engage in 'mating' or sex with anyone. Now this may confuse many, since my characters have been seen doing sexual things, or being mounted, etc. They've been involved in sexual situations, but never the actual act of sex or mating.

Some other examples would be of religious beliefs or traditions towards food. If you're into vore, do you only eat 'kosher' foods still? If you don't eat pork IRL, are you willing to eat a porcine character online?

Curious, what are the thoughts of others? How closely does your online life reflect on your real life?

First, thank you all for the views and favorites! I do so love sharing the joy of being close to these raptors with as many people as I can, and they are incredibly gorgeous creatures. Im blessed by the fact I get to work with them and enjoy their company greatly!
But your favs and watches and comments are fantastic, I do love getting them all, and thank you for such! ^v^ I mean it, too!

However, I must say a couple things here, now. Almost a disclaimer, of sorts. These are still raptors in my photos, and they are carnivores, they eat meat. Sometimes, they get blood on them from that very meat that they eat. So... I apologize if people get a bit squeamish seeing such, but there's not much I can do, and its entirely the way the world works. Predators eat prey. surprise!
I have had a picture or two taken down by the admins in the past, and so Im a bit wary of what I upload now. Keep in mind, though, that we never, ever seek to be cruel to any animals, we don't feed our birds anything alive, and we do our job in the most humane ways possible. So if you see some red on their beaks or talons, just remember, its like us eating a juicy steak and getting some drippings on our chins, or gravy on our shirts!

On my dad's side of my family, my grandmother was raised and lived just south of Winnipeg in a Mennonite community, and my grandfather was born and raised in a little community in Saskatchewan. Ive never really taken a huge interest in all of this, in all honesty, and my family history and tree get so crazy when you go back to my great grandparents on that side, even my dad can't explain it to me. So today was a bit strange for me, considering my grandpa took a road trip out here with my aunt and uncle, in order to get his last sight-seeing road trip done.
My grandmother passed away a few weeks ago, and so I think it has spurred my grandfather into seeing relatives and old friends one last time before e settled in over in Vancouver for good. As such, they came out and visited me as well, and I ended up showing them some birds and whatnot (which I may get in trouble for, for technical reasons...) but it was entirely worth any trouble to give them the joy of seeing the hawks and falcons up close, get photos, etc.
And then we went for a drive in the afternoon, checking out where my grandmother was born, raised, went to church, went to school, even visited some old family friends on a farm out to the south of Winnipeg. It was... crazy. incredible. So much family out here, and I had no idea that the mennonites here were so close and friendly! All those names Ive heard through my childhood as being referred to, I never thought much about them... Until now, and I hear them all over again! Even visited an old family farm, now bought out by some Germans or such, and my grandfather was pointing out where the house used to be, which shed they kept their combine in, etc. It was really rather awesome, and he impressed me with his memory of the places, and how good his eyesight still is!

Wow... It was just an incredible experience. Today was a good day.

Heads up, uploading a bunch of photos in the next short while, I think! I hope!

I just got a new (my first) DSLR camera, a Canon Rebel T3i, so Im going to be having plenty of fun with it at work in the coming days and weeks. So, Im sorry if I fill up watchers lists with bird photos, but... hey, thats the nature of the site!

Not entirely pertaining to myself, and definitely not looking for any sympathy or pity here, but this is a subject that has now come up finally in my family and its a tough one to really answer. I think everyone has a different view of things, after all. But this actually concerns death, life, mercy, and the medical system.

My grandmother had a rather massive stroke a few years ago, about 5 or 6 now, and she lost control of nearly her entire right side, and some brain damage. Shortly after, about a year I would say, she had another and lost even more of her mentality, and she was in a coma for a while on life support. The topic came up of pulling the plug, so to speak, at that time and her husband, sons and daughters all got together (as much as is possible when theyre spread out around the world and all) to decide what to do. In the end, she was kept alive, and came out of the coma with absolutely no short term memory. For example, for the past 4 years she was surprised to find out that my sister has a daughter, and every time they would visit it would be for the 'first' time.
In a care home and all, requiring medications, and at one point she even vocally expressed the desire to be let go. But sure enough, she has survived this time with the help of the care home aides and nurses and whatnot, even though shes a fraction of the person she once was.
Now... she had another stroke just this past week. She has lost the ability to swallow, and shes so far gone that she basically has no feeling anywhere, no sensations, not even awake ever. Shes on IV and help and all that, drugs galore, etc. Again, it came time for the question of keep her on life support, or let her pass on.
Our whole family is Christian, we all believe she is going to a perfect place when she leaves our world. Still, it is hard to let go for some people. This would be a tough call... a very blurred line of what makes a person a person. Keeping someone alive only because you keep feeding them drugs and tending to their every need is borderline cruelty, in my eyes, and this is where modern medicine can come close to crossing the line of doing more harm than good. Should she have been let pass on 5 years ago after she lost most of her senses? Maybe. Its hard to say, she may have been able to make a full recovery. Just like now. Slim chance, though. And now... they COULD keep her alive even longer now, but should they? Is it right to maintain a life that is so far lost?
Shes not the same person as she was, that much is for sure. Parts of her died when the strokes occurred. It is so hard to let go, though, of the ones you love, and when you have to make those decisions...


So, honestly, I have a pretty narrow and poor view on life and death. Ive never had anyone close to me die, Ive never had good relationships with any of my relatives or grand parents. When I think of my own parents dying... sure, it will be sad and I will definitely miss them, I love them very much after all! But I dont want no stinking funeral or an urn on my shelf of their remains, I dont wanna do a eulogy or anything. Theyre dead, what do they care? Theyre making plans for themselves and each other, but I want no part of it. I agree with the idea of a wake, to get together and 'party' and remember the good times as you just celebrate their lives, and in the case of my parents, their passing. They are going to a better place, too! Why not be happy for them?
Such is my view, at least.


TL;DR, is it right for medical care actually cause cruelty and prolonged suffering at the behest of family members? How long should life support last when a family isnt willing to let go? How much of a chance of recovery is enough to keep life support going before you say 'enough is enough, time to let he/she pass on?'
I dont know, and I doubt there are true answers. Sorry, just had to get this out there. I am a human being, I do have feelings, I can get bothered by events that happen to people around me.