A Farmer in the Cities

Hello Blog

2010-08-11T14:16:00.000-07:00

Well here I am again writing in this thing. A lot has happened for sure since the last time I wrote on this thing so maybe I can start updating in more of a routine way. Anyway on with the show.

So a while back ago, my father, mother, and I went to go watch the Aquatennial parade in downtown Minneapolis. We always sit close to where the parade starts and it just so happens that the really annoying and loud K102 stand is right there... Anyway we sit down for a peaceful wait around 5 so we can claim our seats. I was bored so I made a little time lapse video of the cars and whatnot going by.

No sound or anything fun like that but a few of the people driving by would make faces and wave at my camera. I was meant to show the hoards of people walking down the street to start the race but wouldn't you know they didn't close the road until everyone already walked by us. You can catch a glimpse of the chaos on the very left side with the people walking down the side walk.

So back to my ranting. K102 sets up a booth with a "special person" seating area. After seeing who was sitting in it I will agree that it was the "special" group. Anyway back on track, they set up a platform so they can see everything pretty good and set up their speakers so loud you could probably hear them through the vibrations in your teeth if you were deaf. It is fine that they talk about the floats and sponsors driving by but honestly, do they have ramble on about everyone for 5 minutes? no. Do they really have to name every member of the marching bands and their parents when I am trying to listen to the band? they think so. It is a nice parade but K102 has to ruin it for about half the people watching. Ugh, anyway I will figure something else to put in a few minutes.

STOP THE PRESS!!!!!!

2010-07-21T12:14:00.000-07:00

STOP THE PRESS.. this just in.... LINDSAY LOHAN WENT TO JAIL..... OMG!!! everyone stop doing anything... our world is crashing because Lindsay went to jail........

WWWWOOOOOOWWWWW
Why couldn't they have just showed something useful on TV.. like I dunno.. maybe how to watch the grass grow...

Howdy Doody...

2010-07-21T11:54:00.001-07:00

Well I have decided the new look isn't working out because I don't have a sign in link so I am going to be trying a few new looks and getting this thing back up and running... Good luck to me :).

The spoils of Craigslist

2010-04-19T18:55:00.000-07:00

Well, after taking a break over two months long I figured it was about time to write a few more posts. The news today was there was a posting on Craigslist that said "free aquarium" so naturally I jumped at the opportunity to email a stranger and hope I get an aquarium.

I sent a message to the random email address and voila, six minutes later I get a response from a Dianne Cheney. After a few emails back and fourth for some reason she decided that I "won" the tank so I rushed out of the house to go pick it up. It ended up being a hexagonal tank and she said it is 30 gallons. As I pulled up to her house I noticed a girl standing there with a stomach that looked like she was 8 months and 3 weeks pregnant. Anyway, I go and pick up the tank from her garage and shove it in the car. It was filled with all sorts of weird and probably useless goodies.

Here is Myles checking out the extras

Here is a picture minus the cat

So I'm about to drive off and then she says "don't forget the stand". I walk up and make a horrible joke about how great it is to get a stand also, no laugh, sad day. Anyway, I shove that into the other side of the car and take off down the road back to school. Below I have a couple pictures of the stand.

Outside

Inside

Door open

It looks pretty sturdy and it happens to be the cleanest thing that came with the tank. I put the stand in my room and then fished the tank out of the car and took the goodies out. The goodies happen to consist of: a light, a cover, a filter that has a bio wheel but a filter bag that doesn't fit, a scrapper thing, and an interesting little scuba diver. After those are out, I put some paper down on the grass and tipped the tank over to get the nasty black rocks out of the bottom of it. The rocks are currently sitting in our yard and I'm really hoping I wake up tomorrow morning and they are magically gone. We don't have a hose or a razor blade which means no heavy cleaning of the tank, so I decided I would place it on the stand in my room. Again a few pictures.

View from my bed

View down from the top

A little closer to look at the mess on the glass

Now I have an empty tank in my room so naturally I want to fill it up. After thinking for about 20 seconds the decision was to do a leak test. I headed down to the tub with a blue Petco bucket and filled it up with water. Brought it back to my room and poured it into the tank.

Water in tank

It only took one bucket of those to realize that this was a ridiculous idea because 1. It happens to be a very dirty tank. 2. I will have to take it down to bring it home and clean it up. 3. I don't want to empty out a bunch of water. After figuring that out it will now sit with that four inches of water until Thursday when I will attempt to empty it. Will we be able to use the tank? I have no idea, but the price was right and it is actually kind of a cool tank. Anyway the Two and a Half Men and Big Bang re-runs are over so it is time to go.

3 Dimensions

2010-02-08T14:15:00.000-08:00

After waking up bright and early Sunday, my mother came bursting through my bedroom door yelling that we must go to the pancake breakfast held by the scout troop 167. After being frightened to death I got ready and we head out for some pancakes. We get to the church and all the little kids start making fun of me. Over last summer I signed up to be an assistant scout master so I could help out with their trip up to summer camp. Anyway now its kind of weird walking into eat pancakes and I have a bunch of middle and high school kids yelling my name or running over to talk to me. Anyway I eat my pancakes and every thing tasted amazing.

After pancakes we left the church to drive home and turns out my brother's car thought it would be funny to joke around a little bit. He put his key in the ignition but it just kept spinning in circles and would never catch on anything or start the car. After twisting the key hole around about 20 times it was looking pretty grim. Mom went to get us a ride, but a few minutes later as a group of people were gathered to talk about how they have never seen this happen before we received a tip on how to get it going. Turns out if your key keeps spinning you just have wiggle it around. After some wiggling it finally started up and homeward we go.

After getting home I rushed out of the house to the Carmike Cinema 20 in Oakdale MN to watch Avatar. I had low expectations for this movie because it is just blue people running through a little fantasy world. Well I was completely wrong. We saw it in 3D because everyone is saying you have to pay the extra $3 to get the silly glasses that don't fit on my huge nose. Anyway I am glad I did because looking back, that movie would be kinda ho-hum in regular viewing conditions.

It is a story about a company wanting to find a very rare mineral but the dilemma is 1. its on Pandora and 2. the Na'vi people have their home tree right above the largest supply. Anyway the company can make robot Na'vi people that they can control in a chamber and to make a long story short the Na'vi accept one of the people controlling a robot as one of their own and a battle breaks out over their land.

I highly suggest that you see it in 3D in the theater or if you don't make that you better buy the new 3D TV's hitting the shelves and see it that way.

After watching this movie it sparked my memory that once upon a time I actually made some 3D pictures. They are nothing great and they do require you to put on those silly blue and red glasses. Anyway two of them are of my shoe and one of them is of Kyle while he is sitting in my basement.

Little fuzzy balls

2010-02-06T20:15:00.000-08:00

Well, it has been quite some time before looking at this even though I have it placed in my bookmarks tab not 3 inches above where I am currently writing. Anyway a lot has happened recently. Lets start off with a little pregnant cat that is slowly trying to annoy me. Yes, the man who is allergic to cats had 2 cats living with him last semester and turns out they really liked my room. Anyway Mini (Minerva) has been pregnant and the babies were due sometime over J-term so I was thinking how great it would be to come back from break and then have not only two cats to worry about but also have a bunch of little fuzzy balls of sneezing and itchy eye to worry about. Well the day came where I looked on facebook and my roommates status was that the babies were born. Two days later the roommate had posted that none of the babies made it. I was a little shocked.

So now it is January 24th and I am all set to go back to school for my final semester as an undergrad. I drive back to school, get stuff out of the car, and walk up to the door. I open the door and what did I see? HORROR!! Not one... Not two... but FOUR little fuzzy balls of sneezing and itchy eye running around terrorizing the place. There were three roommates in the living room so I can only imagine the look on my face when I walked through the door.

Anyway after hiding in fear in my room for a couple days I finally open up the door and in fly these little kittens. One of them instantly had its attention pulled to the fish in my fish tank, another one was trying to suffocate the next one in a plastic bag, and the last one was in a trans while watching my TV. All this is going on and in strolls Mini who looks up at me, gives that little cat squeal sound and proceeds to lay on her back and stretch out on my carpet.

After a while it was getting a little ridiculous so I had to ask where they came from. Turns out Mini had 5 babies but 4 of them were still births and 1 of them lived to see 2 days. The cats that love to ruin my life came from her moms house and they were at ours to be "socialized". After a while,I have kind of warmed up to these little fuzzy things ruining my room, and all my sneezing, runny nose, and itchy eyes have completely stopped. Does this story have a moral? Yes, if you are stuck with little animals terrorizing your room, and drawing blood when they try to use you as a scratch post, you have to look at the bright side. I no longer have cat allergy symptoms!! YAY...

Random videos

2010-01-08T23:27:00.000-08:00

I think I would give up climbing if this ever happened.

Watch the guy at 1:40 and the two guys at 3:35.

This next one isn't for the squeamish people.

This video makes a lot of sense and I really can't figure out why America hasn't embraced this as the new national past time.

Last but not least a motivation to make a decent stop motion video.

I dunno how writer do it

2009-12-16T12:26:00.000-08:00

Well it should come to no surprise that this blog is not being worked on at a constant rate. Well part of the reason is finals (1 out of 5 done) coming and part of me forgetting to write and whatnot. Anyway to make up for it here is a little video to improve your spirits.

Emotional Week

2009-12-07T15:50:00.000-08:00

Well after an emotional Thanksgiving break I figure it is about time to start this thing back up again. To update you there is a new feature to the right called MapLoco. I came across this on a web page and was intrigued so it is on trial on my blog. The next technical update will hopefully be a new background or something other than just straight black.

As I happened to be looking for some good ammo to explain to you why I believe Dr. Phil is the biggest scam in America today, I happened to run across a funny video of David Letterman. It just shows that even though people in Edina pay a lot for their houses, gas, and the plants on the sides of the roads, they really are not the smartest bunch of people. You will see what I mean in the letter that Letterman reads in the video that probably happened 30 years ago judging on his looks.

Going off on the late night talk shows, I really wanted to find a video of the Canadians that proposed on Craig Ferguson the other night. Instead I found this interesting bit about him taking his test to become an American citizen.

If that is really all they do it doesn't seem that hard. Yes it would probably take about 10 minutes of studying, but still not that hard. I did a little searching and found out that they have a list of around 100 questions that can be studied, but the INS officer can pick and choose what they want to ask. There is a test here that you can take to get a sample of a few questions that might be asked. I ended up getting 75% correct.

My new project is figuring out how to pick a lock or make a key. This idea came to me as I was leaving my room. Turns out I finally figured out it would be nice to have a key for my door since it is so close to the house door, the problem is the land lord doesn't seem to want to give us any keys. Anyway I got a movie called Lockpicking For The New Millennium in hopes that I can learn something about making a key or picking my door so I can finally lock it. I have skimmed through and they have a tutorial of how to make a key, to do so, all I would need is a blank key and a file. Hopefully with a large amount of frustration and luck I will end up with a working key.

Crazy Friday Night

2009-11-23T16:01:00.000-08:00

Oh boy, where do I begin?

Well lets start off with Friday. After a few heated debates and arguments I finally convinced Sally to let me go up to camp work weekend instead of staying in town to drive her somewhere. So after classes I rush home only to find we aren't going to leave until around 6. I then proceeded to invite Sally and Kyle over for a couple of heated bouts of ps3 monopoly. We finished up monopoly at 5:45 but Sally started freaking out because I supposedly said I would help her with her microeconomics homework. Then I proceeded to lose my computer cable so to the upstairs computer she went. After talking about how much she hates typing on my dads light up rubber keyboard I find my computer cable sitting right next to the chair.

Upstairs I go only to find John, Michael, and Theresa waiting to hop in the car and take off. Little did they know I had to figure out two tests and was already running late. After much bickering from my siblings they finally decide to go pick up Matt and Robbie and then come back and pick me up. Well when they got back we were just finishing up the first one and they made sure we knew they weren't to happy. The time we finally finished the homework and actually headed out was 7 pm.

On the ride up Michael has a book of minute mysteries and stupid questions that he was asking us. One of the earlier ones was a mystery about why a girl is gluing leaves back onto a tree. After a few minutes of asking questions and guessing ridiculous answers I finally blurted out that the doctor told her she would die by the time the leaves have fallen so she is out there trying to make them not fall. Turns out that was pretty much the answer. A few minutes later he asked us what the presidents name was back in 1984. Well we start guessing every possible president we know, from Nixon to Reagan to Garfield and even to Lincoln but we had no idea. After about 20 embarrassing minutes he finally gave us a hint.

The hint was his first name started with a B and his last name started with an O. That didn't help anyone out and everyone started making up random names or just shouting B.O. Well after another 20 minutes or so he told us the answer was Barack Obama and we all felt like idiots...

We arrived in Duluth around 9:15ish so we decide to stop in at the villa and say hello. Turns out my parents didn't think we would stop so they were moping around town. Well back down the hill to the gas station and then over the bridge into Wisconsin. After a long boring trip through Superior we hit the open road and pull up to the dirt road to camp. Michael wanted to play with his green laser pen out the window but as luck would have it there was a car in front and behind us so the only place it could go was out the side. That got boring so he decided to shine it into the trees in front of the van that was ahead of us. The instant it got to the front of the van they hit the breaks and we all laughed pretty hard.

After that it was just another night at camp. Said hello to everyone and sat in the oven warm lodge. I know you all liked the time lapse of my room, and well, lucky you! I made a new one. It is kind of dark since we happened to drive up their at night but it gives you the general idea of our trip.

Speed Up Time

2009-11-18T13:01:00.000-08:00

Well I happen to love taking tests and lucky me, I have a: quiz today, test Friday, and two tests Monday. With that being said I put together my time lapse of my room and you can view that below.

That video was 424 pictures taken over a period of 21 minutes while I was writing up my previous post.

It would have been nice to know I could update my camera to do this when it was Halloween. Then we would have been able to do a video of our pumpkin carving journey, but I will have to wait 11 more months before I get that opportunity again. Unfortunately for you I am going to tell you of our pumpkin carving experience.

It was a normal Friday, except this Friday I was going to surprise Sally with a trip. I was planning on going up to PineHaven Farm in Wyoming, MN. I was planning on us giving blood (to get a free admission) and then going on their haunted hayride and the haunted houses and corn trail. Sounded fun at the time and giving blood is always a good thing, but that plan fell through because I was sick and it was cold and rainy. We then drove around trying to find some pumpkins and eventually landed at Cub Foods and picked up three pumpkins for the price of two. In preparation for our pumpkin carving event I printed off some where around 25 pumpkin carving patterns that ranged anywhere from the Cool-Aid Man to Mount Rushmore to Charlie Chaplin.

I chose to carve Albert Einstein into my pumpkin and Sally decided to carve a princess into hers. Sally made me cut out her pattern so she could trace it onto her pumpkin, and I just slapped my paper on with some tape and cut through the pumpkin and paper all at once. Sally's pumpkin looked neat and clean while she was in the process of etching her princess. My pumpkin looked like a war zone with paper shreds and pumpkin guts everywhere. In the middle of the chaos I realized I cut a little to close to my other cut and Einstein's eye fell out...... so now I had a one-eyed Pablo Picasso-esk looking pumpkin.

After an hour or so of wondering why my pumpkin looks nothing like the pattern, and wondering what kind of hideous mess it is going to look like, I finally finished. After wondering what on earth these pumpkins are going to look like I told Sally to cut the lights and I stuck my phone inside to see what they looked like when the were lit up. After carefully propping Einstein's eye the best I could, I realized our pumpkins didn't look half bad.

Now our dilemma. We had one more pumpkin to go, but neither of us wanted to do anything as intricate as the patterns I had printed. So we decided that I will cut the top open and carve the mouth, and she will gut it and carve the eyes. This pumpkin looked liked the pumpkins I would carve a few years ago so it brought back memories of being younger and not wanting to make an elaborate pumpkin.

Here is a picture of the individually carved pumpkins.

Here is our joint adventure.

Videos

2009-11-17T09:45:00.000-08:00

After a few long nights, and internet issues, I finally have the videos posted from the concert! Before we get to those, I spent pretty much all of last night in fascination as I figured out that my camera was capable of doing things I never thought possible. I was aimlessly Google-searching my way through the internet to try and find a power supply cord for my camera when I ran across a program called CHDK.

Don't ask me what that stands for, but I have figured out that it is amazing. It enhances the features of my camera (Canon A540 Powershot) by updating the firmware off of my SD card. Once the firmware is updated, my camera is capable of taking exposure pictures up to one minute. It also has setting for taking an exposure picture up to around 5 minutes but I haven't tried those because it really drains my batteries. I can also take pictures up to 1/10,000 of a second.

Right now I have my camera in the corner of my room taking pictures about every 2 seconds to try my hand for the first time at a time lapse photo video. I might post that later if it turns out decent. CHDK can enable my camera to save the pictures in RAW format also which allows me to have better control in the post processing and even try my hand in a few HDR photos. It can also run scripts which allow it to do pretty much whatever you can think of.

Before I post the concert videos, you should have a look at this flash slide show of some facts you might not have know before. If you happen to know all of them then congratulations.... but I highly doubt you will.
http://cbs2chicago.com/slideshows/bizarre.facts.20.1243030.html

The anticipation is over. Here are some videos of the concert. Our view was actually closer and better than the video looks, but for some reason cameras always have a way of making everything look tiny.

We start out with Christmas Eve / Sarajevo 12/14

Toccata - Carpimus Noctem

The Mountain

Moonlight And Madness

Wizards In Winter (note the different color flames on the sides)

And the Finale

A Day of Contrast

2009-11-14T23:14:00.000-08:00

Well, I woke up bright and early at 11 am this morning and then zapped two pieces of leftover pizza. I then hoped in the car and drove back into town for an interesting night. Sally and I took off to go see the Trans Siberian Orchestra and they were amazing as always. The first hour and a half to two hours they play their slower music that tells a story about Christmas. They play a few of the songs they are well known for every few songs but for the most part they are calm songs with very graceful light shows. Then they introduce the band and some of the crowd that hasn’t seen them perform before leaves. Little did they know, TSO just uses the first hour and a half for a warm up. They then play all their up beat and pretty much turn into a rock concert. Their lights start going crazy with lasers shooting out of everywhere imaginable. It is always worth seeing them and I would recommend their show to anyone that wanted to go to a concert. Even if you don’t like their music, you will be more than entertained with their over the top light and pyrotechnics show. Taking the videos I have filmed off of Sally’s camera has proven to be more difficult than anticipated so I will try to get those videos to work and post them tomorrow so I can share a little of the experience with you.

After TSO it was another battle to try and get onto 94 E. You would think they would put a few on ramps next to the on ramps for 94 W, but they don’t. We drove for about 20 minutes to find out how to get back onto 94 E when we had to make a 7 pm movie show time.

We finally figured it out and arrived at St. Catherine University to watch a Deaf movie titled Gerald. I had wondered for the past few days what a Deaf movie would be like or what they would make it about. Lucky me today was my day to find out. First thing I noticed at the movie was that none of the movie previews had sound. There wasn’t any: talking, music, background noises, nothing. After the first couple preview I realized the movie hasn’t even started yet and accepted the fact that this would probably be a really, really, really, long 2 hours.

Turns out I wasn’t completely correct on my assumption. Yes the movie was very silent but the audience on the other hand made up more than plenty for the sound the movie wasn’t making. There were people: crinkling pop cans, flicking pop tabs, laughing, and shuffling around. The heater would even make a strange hissing noise and then some loud clicks every time it turned on. Also the movie started out pretty slow but then we were introduced to Gerald. Gerald was an elderly deaf man with autism and was always ready to make the audience laugh. Once I got into reading the subtitles I started getting into the movie. I don’t want to say anything to spoil the movie, but if you ever want to see a deaf movie for the experience, I would recommend watching Gerald. Even though it is a very quiet hour and forty five minutes it is an interesting movie. I would give it 7 out of 10. Sorry but the trailer does not have subtitles.

Yay Weekend

2009-11-13T21:08:00.000-08:00

So finally the weekend is here and there are no tests until Wednesday.... So to fill you in since my last post: I have been busy with the test, I fixed my TV, and I had a weird dream about Michael Jackson. The big news is that I finally found out why the VCR I brought back to school was not working. It turns out that the TV needs to be on channel 4 (I am an idiot). Anyway I have the converter box and my ps2 hooked up through the VCR, which runs to my TV, and they are all hooked into the receiver that I received from someone off of Craigslist. Yup, living the good life.

Anyway, tomorrow seems like it's going to turn out to be an interesting day. The plan is to go see Trans Siberian Orchestra at 3 and then 'someone' is trying to force me to go to a Deaf movie so I would sit there for 2 hours having no idea what they were saying. Maybe a good time to take a nap. Sally and I went to see TSO like 3 years ago and it was a great show so hopefully this one will be as interesting as the last. I found a clip of them from last year on youtube so if you want to see a little bit of what they are capable of, play the clip below.

As a lot of people know I usually don't keep track of what is going on in the NBA (unless the Timberpuppies are actually winning) but I happened to check out NBA.com to see how the beloved Timberpuppies were doing (1-9). While I was looking around on the main page they had a link to a crazy dunk by Dwayne Wade.

Crazy? I think so.

Anyway enough videos. I am currently looking for some new pictures to mess with in Photoshop because the truth is I haven't taken any photos as of late to mess around with. Well if I think of anything else I will just have to make a new post.

If you want to comment under every post there is a little line that says "Posted by Steven Farmer at 9:13 PM 0 comments", Just click on the comments link and it will take you to a little box you can write what you want in. Also while you are here feel free to click on these random google links and maybe some day I will get a check for a few pennies :). That is all.

One down one to go.

2009-11-10T21:13:00.000-08:00

So I took my management test today and it went better than expected. Now I only have to make sure I know 5 chapters of marketing... Anyway Thats all I'm going to write about tonight due to being tired and a need to wake up early to study a little more before the test.

Here come the tests

2009-11-09T20:35:00.000-08:00

Well as the title says the next two days I will have two tests. My marketing class test is over 5 chapters and my organizational management is over only two. The big news of today is I happened to be browsing Craigslist right before heading to class and saw some good speakers and sent an email and went to class. After a hour and a half of class ticks by my pocket starts vibrating with a text message saying the speakers were mine. So after class I took off to Hudson to pick them up. Drove back to school attended class and started moving stuff into my room. It took a bit of tinkering with wires and settings and all that but I finally have it set up and working as I am watching the news. A picture of the final setup is below. I received the two big speakers, the woofer hiding behind the TV, and the receiver on top the left speaker.

Sally was talking to me on gmail and ran across a craigslist add for volunteer activities. I looked more into this opportunity and have found some great opportunities to help out that would be fun to participate in. You can check out their site at handsontwincities. Well I am going to watch some Letterman and study for my test tomorrow morning now and head to bed for a big day tomorrow.

One Random thought before I go. If you ever wondered how big the largest animal on earth is Click Here.

First missed chance to post...

2009-11-08T21:03:00.000-08:00

Well as you can tell I have already missed my first day of writing on here so off to a bad start. Yesterday was kind of a low key day. I woke up fiddled around the house and then the gopher game came on. It was a pretty good game and came down to the wire pretty much. Most people think that Eric Decker being hurt would hurt this team. He was on my team in the Minnesota high school basketball all star series so I have nothing against him. But what I will say is that sometimes when teams have a really good player they always try to go to that player instead of making some smarter plays. Anyway I thought they played an amazing second half and did really good distributing the ball amongst the team, just came up a little short. Then my father and I drove off down the road to drop off our beloved freezer. Then Sally came and picked me up and we went and talked to my aunt Carolyn for 45 minutes or so and then off to her dads place in Lake Elmo. We watched the movie 500 Days of Summer. I watched the previews and they looked funny. I read online that people thought it was a great movie. But when I watched it I didn't think it reached the point that it was hyped up to be. I found it to be slow, not nearly as funny as the commercials, and a little distracting as it was flipping through the days. Overall I would give it 6 out of 10 and definitely not on my list to watch again.

First Post Ever

2009-11-06T17:00:00.001-08:00

Hello, I was just wondering aimlessly around the internet one night and stumbled upon this site so I thought I would give it a try. This blog probably isn't going to specialize on any one topic. It will probably just be what I have done for the day or something I learned or found interesting. Basically it is going to be about whatever I decide to write about for the night. With all that being said as of now I am still trying to figure things out on here so it will be a little sketchy at first but should get better as time goes on. Hope you enjoy.