A Life Without Compunction Blog

Mike, one of the original SoCal bloggers, has bowed out of the blogging world. On the frontpage of his site he has posted a brief farewell citing the all elusive “they”:

They say a dead blog is worse than no blog at all and frankly, I agree with the ever-elusive “they”, just this once.

Around the time that Mike started his blog, there were only a handful of serious Family bloggers. Since then the number has grown exponentially.

Will this now mark an exodus of Family bloggers? I believe it will - prove me wrong.

Sitting straight ‘bad for backs’

I always had a funny feeling that this was the case — I prefer leaning back in my chair while I work. Now I have a good reason!

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

– George Bernard Shaw (Overruled (1912))

I was looking at CNN’s Special Report page where they have the pictures of those who were killed during the horrible shooting at Virginia Tech university. It got me thinking. The loss of life is so tragic because that person had a father, mother, husband or wife, brother/sister, friends, maybe even children. And in one second they are gone. I definitely feel for those who lost someone close that Monday morning, and my thoughts and prayers are with them.

Now while I have you thinking about that. Think what if that was your loved one, feel that pain? It hurts doesn’t it?

Now think of those who live in war and domestic conflict zones around the world, where people are being randomly killed from roadside bombs, stray fire or deliberate bombings. — Imagine if that was your loved one, your child.

No one should have to live in that kind of fear. The tragedies that befell Virginia Tech that fateful Monday are but a small taste at home of the real tragedy that is continuing worldwide. Places where when you kiss your kids before they go off to school, you live in fear they may not come back home alive.

“It’s not just one life, it’s somebody’s loved one.” - Listen to the rest of this great song sung by a good friend of mine, Marianna Buhring. It drives this point home.

Up till now I’ve been resizing any pictures my wife wants to send via email, this is both tedious and a waste of time. So I set out to find a simple solution so that she could do it herself without overwriting any original photos. I figured there must be a Thunderbird addon that did this, but after a few minutes I realized I wasn’t gonna find what I was looking for.

A few more searches later I struck gold: Shrink Pic by On The Go Soft.

This little program sits in your windows tray and watches anytime you attach a picture to an email or upload it to blog and resizes it to your preset configuration. Beautiful! And to top it off it doesn’t touch/change the original file, opting to do it all via a temporary folder.

So now when my wife wants to send a pic she just attaches it to an email like normal and the program automatically does the rest for her. The program is free and will work with any email program you use.