Posted by Jared Barden on Jun 21, 2009 in Personal
Today was a tough day for me. It seems that anything that brings little Enoch to mind makes for a tough day, although I know it will get easier with time.
Church is definitely the hardest place to be. Not sure why, but all the floods of emotions seem to happen there. We are blessed with a great churh family, and our friends Tim and Patsy gave me one if the Father’s Day gifts after the service.
My dad is the best dad in the whole world, as cliche as that sounds. I know that this time we are going through is difficult for him as well, but he has been so supportive and loving. He is the perfect example of what a dad should be. He has always been and will always be my hero.
Posted by Jared Barden on Jun 19, 2009 in Personal
I recently updated my iPod to the 3.0 OS. Now Google Maps has Street View support.
If you search for an address where Street View is available a box with an orange dot shows up. Clicking this dot takes you into Street View. It runs really well, and the touch controls work flawlessly.
A photo if downtown Wellsboro is included. Notice the little icon in the bottom denoting your current field if view – nice touch.
Just thought I’d give an update on my 2009 Goals post.
I finished the Obama Nation probably in either late January or early February. Scary stuff. A big part of means wants to say, “I told you so,” when it comes to Obama. It seems to the he wants us all to be completely dependent on the federal government, and that is a scary place to be, but I digress.
I would say that we are most of the way to goal #5 – successfully training Schrute. He’s learned sit, stay, lay down, up, and he can also give high fives. He still has his moments, but we keep reminding ourselves that he’s only a little over 6 months old. Although he looks like an adult dog, he’s far from it.
I beat COD: World at War probably two weeks ago now. It was a really fun game, until the last couple of levels. I got stuck on the last level more times than I can even remember, but it was still a great game.
I’ve been learning a lot more .NET at work recently. I helped out with the redesign of DeliveryMaps.com and MarketMaps.com over the last couple of months. Both sites use the .NET 3.5 framework. My friends Terry and Milton from work have been very patient in explaining the ins and outs of LINQ, handlers, master pages, and the like.
For those of you keeping score at home, that’s 5 goals down, 5 to go.
Basically, every Twitter message sent has a unique id. Once the id passes 2,147,483,647, there could be problems for some Twitter client apps. The id has already passed this value, and Twitter.com is still functioning properly.
However, at least one of my favorite apps for the iPod Touch (that is the correct name, by the way – there is NO SUCH THING as an “iTouch”), Twitteriffic appears to have been bitten by this issue. I hope they get it fixed soon, because it’s a pretty sweet little app.
Posted by Jared Barden on May 10, 2009 in Personal
After reading Aunt Lori’s blog the other day, I figured maybe it would help to get my thoughts/feeling out “on paper”.
Let me start by saying that my space bar is dying, but I digress.
“Up is Down” is how I feel right now. Right is Left, however you want to say it. Everything that I thought made sense, doesn’t seem to any more.
I feel like when we first found out about the miscarriage, yes, we were devastated, but we put on a pretty good face, and I felt “OK” about things. As time goes on, I feel this confidence rapidly fading.
Since I have no one to blame, I tend to blame God. It’s easy since He’s unseen, and can’t defend Himself (although He could if He so chose). I blame Him for not stopping this miscarriage. I blame Him for not letting me have a healthy baby. I blame Him for crushing Danielle’s heart’s desire.
Don’t get me wrong, I know He’s not to blame, but since there is no one else right now, He has become that target. And, you know what? I think He’s OK with that. If he can’t handle my hissy fit, then I would question His Godhood.
It’s the little day by day things that just seem to pile on top of each other. It’s like the Universe is just playing some cosmic hoax on us.
Miscarriage. iPod dies. Car needs to be fixed (again). And the list goes on and on.
I know that most of the things that are bothering me are not big things, certainly not when compared to a human life, but, taken together, they just add to the pile of emotions.
I feel like my heart has a gaping hole in it, and all the kind words and “just have faith”, “God knows what He’s doing”, etc. won’t fill that hole. I know that God is the only one who can fill that hole and heal that hurt, but quite frankly, I don’t trust Him all that much at the moment. I can’t tell you how much I prayed for my little guy, that he would grow up healthy, that he would be blessed, that he would know God, that he would develop the way he was supposed to, and so on.
I feel like those prayers fell on deaf ears. I know in my heart of hearts that they didn’t, but that is how I feel.
I need time to grieve. I need time to process. I wish that people would allow me that time. Allow me to be angry at the moment. Allow me to hurt. Just be there for me. You don’t even need to say anything. In fact, it probably would be better if you didn’t. Don’t act weird. Don’t feel like you have to have all the answers, because, let’s face it, you don’t. Just be a friend. Just go through this with me.
Just let me figure out how to get back to where Up is Up and Down is Down again…
Today we drove down to Penn Tech to hear Natalie Stovall play. Natalie put on an awesome show at Mansfield earlier this year, opening for Josh Gracin, and we’ve stayed in touch with her through Facebook and her blog.
Natalie and her husband, James, are the coolest. James chatted with us for a while after Natalie’s set, and we got to hang out with Natalie for a while also. Although, it’s pretty hard to carry on a conversation once the next band goes on stage.
Danielle took, oh, about 250 photos. And I took my “Dinner Party” script from The Office for the band to sign. I would have taken my iPod, but it’s still out in Utah…that’s another story.
I shot a couple more videos on my Cybershot. The first is a “Pop Culture” medley near the end of Natalie’s set. The second is the solo part of Freebird.
Natalie, James, Miguel and Joe, you guys are amazing, and have been a huge bright spot in what’s been a fairly dark period for us. We’re bummed you didn’t get to make it to Mansfield again tonight, but we hope to get to see one of your shows again soon. Look us up when your in our neck of the woods!
Posted by Jared Barden on Apr 12, 2009 in Personal
After viewing my friend Dave’s iPhone 3G, I was very impressed with his Zagg Invisible Shield, and I decided that once I got my iPod Touch, I would have to get one.
I believe the Shield actually came before my iPod did, and I was excited to apply it right away. For starters, the front side of the Shield DID NOT cover the entire front of the Touch. But it covered enough, and that was OK with me. The Shield is incredibly challenging to install, and installation requires quite a bit of patience. Long story short, I was able to get a replacement Shield after I had some problems with my original.
I installed the replacement Shield this past Wednesday. On Thursday I noticed some problems with the installation, so I decided to remove it and give it a last shot. I got everything lined up perfectly, and then my Touch decided to turn on for some reason. I turned it off, and didn’t think any more about it.
When I attempted to turn the Touch back on Thursday night, it refused. In fact, it refused all the way until Saturday evening.
On our way home from Toronto yesterday I stopped by the Apple Store at the Walden Galleria in Buffalo, where I was told I would have to wait almost 3 hours to see a Genius, but I was desperate, so I agreed. The Genius took about two looks at it and said, “your iPod got water on it, there’s nothing I can do.” Apparently this came from the installation of the Shield. The Touch has a water sensor inside the earbud connection. If ANY water gets in there, the little sensor turns half red. If this happens, you’re completely out of luck. Get caught in a rain storm? Out of luck. Live in an incredibly humid climate? Out of luck. Even if you buy the Apple Care plan for the Touch, you’re out of luck.
Piled on with all the other events of the last couple months, this was about the last straw. I even got so mad on the way out of the store that I slammed the Touch on the ground. I wish now that I hadn’t.
When we got home I tried one last ditch effort. I plugged it in to my PowerBook, and sure enough, it came back on! I couldn’t believe it!
However…
There is a huge “stain” on the screen from the application of the shield. Water must have seeped inside somehow. I figured I could live with that…
And now the sound is all garbled. It pretty much sounds like the worst radio connection ever. I’m hoping this goes away with time, since that is sort of the main purpose of the iPod.
Long story short….very upset with Zagg, and disappointed in Apple. I take incredibly good care of my products, and they wouldn’t even help at all with this $300+ products I’ve had for less than two months. I still love Apple, but it’s left an incredibly bad taste in my mouth.
This past Thursday was the Josh Gracin concert at M.U. Since Danielle is a diehard country fan, we HAD to go.
Let me just say that the opening act, Natalie Stovall, was AMAZING! She sings and plays a mean fiddle to boot.
This first video is of her and her guitarist playing a sweet riff during one of the songs.
Natalie also played Devil Went Down to Georgia, a favorite of ours from our many Emerson Drive concerts.
Josh Gracin was great also.
The Jedi Web Geek in me has to mention the amazing connectivity of this whole situation. Natalie has a Facebook page, as well as a Twitter account and a blog, which SHE updates. It’s so amazing how connected you can be to someone in this Facebook/Twitter era. The cool thing was that Natalie accepted both of our friend requests on Facebook, and she picked one of Danielle’s pictures as her profile pic! Plus she wrote a really sweet note to Danielle on her wall.
Natalie is an amazing artist, and seems like a really cool person as well. Hopefully she can make it back to Mansfield again really soon!
