Work In Progress

Author: owenwbrown

  • A Blender and a Paperback Book

    I had a dream last month that I was back in college. In this dream I was hanging out with Jason Poenitske, my roommate for most of my college career at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green. In the dream, I was having trouble finding our room. Once I did, Jason already had things setup. He had two small tube televisions setup, one mounted on a stand hanging from the wall in a corner over his bed, and a bigger tube set shared more with the room. I came into the room, assessed it, and said to Jason that all I’d need was my desk.

    I’m not exactly sure which desk I was referring to. The desk I work on now is much bigger than the room; much bigger than the ones I had in any of the dorm rooms we lived in, be that Barnes-Campbell, or what was then named the New Coed Dorm. However, I also didn’t have all of the computer equipment I have now. No work laptop. No Mac. No monitors. No Printer. Not really even a phone, much less a cell phone. I did have a stereo boom-box with a cd player and a dozen or so CDs. Besides the small stereo boom-box, our room’s tech amounted to Jason’s small television, an original Nintendo game console, and two alarm clocks. In the dream I made the comment that there was a really big difference between technology back then, when we graduated, he in 1996 and me in 1997, as opposed to now. Not even flat screens.

    I guess my dream was about how much different life is in 2013. How technology has changed life in certain ways. How little we needed back then as opposed to what we think we can’t live without now. A few days ago my wife and I were talking about how little television either of us watched when we were in school. I remember watching maybe a few hours of tv a week, tops. Most of that was probably Star Trek, Golf, or music videos back when MTV actually played music videos.

    BLENDERANDAPAPERBACKBOOK

    Now that I think about it, that scenario is a lot like when we go on vacation. We put our gadgets in the room safe until we’re ready to leave and we never turn on the tv. The most high tech devices we see all week would probably be a blender and a paperback book.

    Owen

  • Baby Henrik, Forbes, and The Future of Photo Sharing

    I haven’t written in a few weeks. That’s not exactly out of the ordinary, but now that I have a new baby at home I have a new excuse. Anyway, speaking of baby Henrik, I took some time this morning to upload a few new pictures to his Henrik Flickr set.

    I then took a few minutes to browse my Flickr View Statistics. I’m up over 53,000 views? Cool. That was fun to see, but what was really cool, blew me away really, was the discovery that Forbes had used some of my work (picture) on there site!

    Depending on when you read this, you might still be able to catch the Forbes post here. If not, I just had to take a screenshot of the page, in case for some reason they decided to take it down.

    OWENWBROWN.COM on Forbes

    Some of you are asking, how can Forbes use my work and I not even know about it? Allow me to explain. I have just about all of my work under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic. All I ask for is a little something called Attribution. I have had it that way for some time but I recently watched a Chase Jarvis Live episode ‘The Future of Photo Sharing‘ that confirmed that decision. If you share photos anywhere on the internet, this is worth watching; especially if you might ever want to monetize.

    One last thing. Here’s another one, posted on http://www.reputation.com. It’s the thumbs up, or Facebook Like picture that’s been viewed almost 12,000 times, but you do have to look closer to the end of the post to see it.

    Thanks for indulging me and my ego. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

    Owen

  • Henrik Gets Swaddled – Video

    Linda and I stayed a few extra days at the hospital after Henrik was born. During this time we had nurses coming in at all times during the day and night. We asked each one to show us how to properly swaddle, as most of the videos I ran across on YouTube seemed to focus more on the person doing the swaddling as opposed to the actual swaddle technique itself.

    Henrik Walker Brown

    Funny thing was, not a single nurse showed us the same exact swaddle technique. As a result, I wasn’t able to perfectly recreate any of the swaddles. It seemed I was missing a few quick steps that the nurses would just do, without actually mentioning the step, because they’ve done this a thousand times a day for years. I finally asked one of the nurses if she would mind me taking a video so I could watch it over and over again. This is that video.

    Note: This was also a test. WordPress wants $60.00 a year to allow me to use their video host a share service. Plus I would likely need to also pay them to rent more space. As a Flickr Pro account holder, I can host and share without limits, at a fraction of the cost. This was a test to see what Flickr Video looks like when posted on a WordPress Blog. The videographer definitely isn’t a pro, but otherwise, not half bad.

    Owen

  • The Road to Henrik

    Baby Henrik was due to arrive on Saturday, June 22, 2013. In my experience, Swedes are very rarely ever late. That means we can either blame my Irish English roots, or more likely, on the fact that we just haven’t had the opportunity to teach Baby how to keep to a schedule. All in due time.

    As a result, we made an appointment at Chandler Regional Hospital for this past Thursday afternoon to induce labor. After a long process, including a lot of walking, Linda was diagnosed as being in ‘active labor’ and was officially admitted at midnight. The epidural was administered, other hoops were jumped, and by 2:00 AM on Friday morning we were able to get some rest. But not much. By 6:00 AM Linda and Baby were ready to take things to the next level.

    Fast forward a bit. After about five hours of intense physical toil, the doctor recommended a Cesarian as the safest way to proceed. Linda got to experience it all! Inducement, certain aspects of natural childbirth, and Cesarian. What a lucky gal! All kidding aside, the most important thing is that Baby was born healthy and safe. Mom and Baby are home, recovering, and doing very well.

    Henrik Walker Brown 36

    Stick’em up!

    Henrik Walker Brown

    Thinking deeply.

    Henrik Walker Brown

    Owen

  • Lease vs Buy

    I am not really much of a car guy. I like nice things but my car does not need to tell the world anything other than ‘I am practical’. I have owned some nice cars in my life. Like the Volvo S80 I drove a few years back, which is still by far my nicest.

    If your commute requires you to put a lot of miles on your car, in this economy, get a commuter like a Honda Civic with an extended warranty. If not, I suggest a lease. For often nothing down (depending on how ruthless a negotiator you are) you can drive just about anything you want, within reason, for a few hundred dollars a month. I appreciate driving a new car every few years, and not having to worry about maintenance or depreciation. I think ‘fixed cost’ and feel justified.

    313 for lease

    When it comes to lease vs buy I suppose that I have a somewhat unique opinion. To me, they are the same. Only the financing is different. What it means to own vs lease a thing is purely emotional. So, let me ask you, in a very real sense, do we really own anything in the way people who take pride in owning things think about owning those things? I don’t think so. Not to get too dark, but in the end, us, you and me, and all our stuff, is just on lease.