Posted by Jared Barden on Mar 21, 2009 in Personal
Thanks to my Dad’s waiting in line last week early in the morning, this past Thursday we got to see David Cook, last season’s American Idol winner, live in concert at Straughn Hall at Mansfield University.
David seems like a very down to Earth guy. He and his crew played a prank on the opening act, Ryan Star, with an inflatable cow that emerged from the pit in front of the stage at the end of Ryan’s set. See the first embedded video for more.
Cook’s performance was great. He seemed to interact with the audience really well, and, like I said before, seemed like a nice, down to Earth guy. I shot his performance of Light On with my Sony Cybershot, and I think it turned out pretty well. It’s already gotten almost 1,500 views on YouTube, and it hasn’t even been up 2 whole days!
Posted by Jared Barden on Mar 17, 2009 in Politics
Does anyone else find it funny that President Obama is echoing John McCain’s September 2008 claims that, “the fundamentals of our economy our strong”?
See, back then, Obama wanted the economy to not be strong, to help him get elected. Now that he’s in, and the economy is in the tank, he needs to convince everyone that everything is just hunky dory.
Posted by Jared Barden on Mar 17, 2009 in Search Engines
If you use Gmail, and like me, you have an iPod Touch or an iPhone, then this trick might be useful for you.
Gmail on the iPod Touch uses the IMAP protocol. Fancy name. Basically boils down to the fact that you can sync your read and deleted messages across locations (delete it on your iPod, it’s deleted on the Gmail web interface). However, with IMAP Gmail adds this pesky [Gmail] folder which you can’t click to your list of folders. Any folders that show up on your iPod correspond to labels in your Gmail account, except, of course, for Inbox, Sent, Trash, etc.
To get rid of this [Gmail] folder, do the following.
1.) Rename all of your labels to “[Gmail]/LabelName” (i.e. [Gmail]/Danielle) MAKE SURE you put the “/” in between [Gmail] and the label name
2.) On your iPod go to Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Gmail Account -> Advanced. At the bottom of this screen, change the IMAP Path Prefix to “[Gmail]“.
3.) Reload your Account. I usually just turn it off in Settings and then turn it on again.
Voila! That pesky [Gmail] folder is gone! I know it’s not optimal, since in the web interface all your labels show up with longer names than normal, but for me it was worth it. If it helps someone else out, that’s cool too.
Posted by Jared Barden on Mar 17, 2009 in Personal
Now that things are settling down a bit, I figured I share with everyone the emotional roller coaster I’ve been on lately.
Earlier this year (or perhaps it was late last year) I was asked by one of my best friends, Zack, to be one of the best men in his wedding. I was honored he asked me, and super psyched since the wedding would be near Daytona Beach in the beginning of February. Needless to say, I was pretty excited.
The night before we left for Florida, Danielle decided to take a home pregnancy test, just to clear up any questions, since we had been trying for a couple of months. Surprise, Surprise! It came back positive…and the next one…and the next one! We were shocked at first, but so excited! What a great way to start our trip!
Our flight down was great, and we got to fly with Zack’s Mom & Dad as well as his Sister, Brother-in-Law, and their two kids. It was definitely nice to fly with friends.
The weekend of the wedding was some of the most fun I’ve ever had. It was so nice to be with Dave, Dan, and Zack…dear friends who I consider brothers, but I don’t get to see all too often since they’ve all relocated to Florida.
Fast forward to last week.
Danielle went to Sayre for her first Dr. appointment to see how everything was progressing. After some hemming and hawing, the Dr. informed Danielle that either the baby had stopped developing or the pregnancy was tubal. You can imagine the shock and grief that Danielle felt when learning the news. Danielle called me around 4:55 to let me know, and I don’t think I have ever been more devastated in my life.
This past week has been a series of emotions…anger, frustration, incredible sadness, comfort, questioning…and just about any other emotion you can throw in that list.
It’s funny, I tend to usually get mad at God first. I guess He’s an easy target, since he’s not “here” (at least in physical form). The great thing about God is that He can handle us being mad at Him. He can handle the outbursts. He can handle the questions. If He couldn’t…He wouldn’t be God.
This whole ordeal has really made me think about eternity also. It’s funny, I’ve always believed in Heaven and knew that I was going to Heaven, but now it HAS to exist…not so much for me, but for my son. I know He’s in the arms of the Father now.
Which brings me to another point. Even though I know Enoch (we named him Enoch because that is what Jared in the Bible names his son and because Enoch was taken by God) is in Heaven, that doesn’t fill this gaping hole in my heart. Yes it helps, but it doesn’t bring him back. I know that God works things together for our good, and that helps, but that doesn’t fix the hurt.
Also, please don’t tell me that a fetus is not a person. Tell that to my hurting wife. Tell that to the would be Grandma and Grandpas who now don’t have a grandson. Please don’t tell me that at all. How anyone can believe that is beyond me. I know that’s not very P.C. of me, but that’s how I feel.
I feel like I’ll never be the same, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I know that I need to move on, and that, yes, things will work out for good. For now I just want to work through these emotions and grieve the loss of my son, and get to moving on eventually.