Sunspots through the haze and pall of the Simi Valley Fire, 2003

1. Finishing up processing on my last weddings. I have none scheduled for next year. I doubt I will get back into wedding photography, despite the fact that I will miss it a lot. I need to take care of these people, and I’m behind. Thanksgiving looms, and they don’t have their photos. Not cool. Any competent PhotoShoppers who’d like to earn a little bit of cash on quick-turn processing should contact me. Seriously.
2. A really hectic production cycle at work. This is the problem working for a rapid-cycle development group: we’re pushing builds to our Development environments several times per week, with several programs working concurrently. I haven’t had a work-week less than 50 hours since May.
3. My son and I test this weekend for Level 2 Instructor certification for ITA TaeKwonDo. At which point, we will HAVE to put in a minimum of 5 class-hours per week. This sounds arbitrary, but it’s not really. This directly relates to Commander Other’s retirement path.

I am hoping to re-join the land of the living bloggers by the inauguration of our new president, but I can’t make promises at this point. The bottom line is, I simply don’t have time to do this right now, and my inability to keep up, I think, is dishonorable to those who’ve been so gracious as to link to me.

and to make matters worse, i just discovered that i got another award, actually a considerable amount of time ago. Kate awarded me one of her very first Golden Primate Awards way back on July 15. Obviously, the several weeks of 60+ hours of work, plus wedding shoots, plus soccer refereeing and instruction, plus TaeKwonDo training and instruction, plus parenting, have been taking a toll on my ability to keep up with everything. Kate, I owe you an apology, as I believe I have let you down in your assessment of me. Yet another reason for me to get back on track here: not only am i letting myself down, i’m also lacking in the fair-and-equal exchange department.

At any rate, you’ll shortly see the theme change over, and then a relatively longish period while I restore the sidebar information in a semblance of comprehensibility under the new theme, which has a completely different layout, and no it’s not as easy as moving sidebar widgets between sidebars in wp-admin. would that it were!

I’ve considered pulling these blogs back together, a semi-ironic thing because long, long ago they were together, and I split them apart because I perceived different missions for them. I already had the domains, and the domains were just sitting uselessly, so I figured what the heck, why not use them? Well, that was a decision born out of the fact that even as a primary gig, my photography business at the time was floating somewhere part-time and three-quarters time even when the going got tough. Now that I’ve taken on a full-time job and am still juggling the photography gig alongside heavy involvement in local and state soccer, plus TaeKwonDo, it’s pretty obvious why I haven’t had time to blog much. But, ultimately, I still want to keep the domains separate, if for no other reason than the slightly higher technorati ratings I enjoy here, and a lack of desire to attempt to merge this database with the other one. It’s not huge, but Wordpress’s import/export doesn’t work on it because it’s too big.

And I’ve been thinking about what I’ve been doing over here, and I’ve come to feel pretty redundant. We already have wonderful quip-meisters snarking on the photos, and that’s exactly why I’ve been stepping away from that lately. And politics, while important to me, gets rather redundant. So, I’m coming up with some ideas that are going to incorporate the snarky side of my atheism as the primary focus, with secondary focus on stupidity in general (which no doubt means there will continue to be plenty of politically-oriented stuff). I will be trying to keep tabs on the anti-abortion movement here in South Dakota throughout this election cycle; they apparently have another coup de stupid planned. I kinda like my JESUS CRAP™ stuff, so I’ll probably keep that going, and I also want to offer this space to my friends over at Atheist Nexus. I like the idea of having roving guest-bloggers; it’s a great way for us to promote each other and enrich our readerships’ minds.

The other thing bugging me is the monicker of “commander other”. It came about because one of my blogging friends out here in South Dakota has a running inside joke with another friend, in which they call everyone commander [something]. Marlin applied a commander [something] label to me that i really didn’t like much; I retorted with “How about something other than that,” and “commander other” was born. Dubious circumstances, at best. Besides which, what the hell do I even command? My own destiny? Eh, maybe. My household? Hardly. My children? Rarely. This blog? Gah, not even effectively. Everywhere else in the world that I operate, I’m Synthaetica. I’m a little tired of wearing a name that has no meaning, so I’m going to quit doing it. It’s not a major thing, but I think it’ll help me feel a little less schizophrenic.

I also re-discovered a quotation from one of my favorite bands, And Also the Trees. It goes like this:

“They tell me all that they know is the obvious,
and if I stay with them, maybe I will learn it, too.”
~ Simon Huw Jones

That’s a hell of a lot more meaningful as a tagline than “where nothing is real, and everything else is sacred,” so I’m going to lift it, with attribution, of course.

Lastly, I’m working on changing the blog theme to something a bit more readable. I’ll naturally stick with a theme from milo317 because she does such wonderful work. The site will be choppy for a little bit while I’m getting all this sorted out. Hopefully, I won’t blow things up. The choppiness might last for a couple of days, though, because I’m seriously swamped with work, but it should be pretty obvious when it’s all done. The theme will be last, so when that’s changed, all the rest is changed. I’ll probably follow it up with updates to my blogrolls and one of those handy technorati-bumping posts for everyone.

Peace.

speaking of blogo-sexy, or internut-sexy, or what the hell ever, i mean, if you’re really just that damn curious about where i’ve managed to grab a bunk at least overnight, just hit my stupid facebook schmeez-page and check out the much-better-than-this-and-more-informative-stupid-blog-where-i’ve-been-dumbass-widget, which facebook handily hosts.

jeebus.

oh yeah, and if i know you, feel free to friend me while you’re there. i’ve got way too many normal people on my friends list, if you know what i’m sayin’.

(Wordpress released blog app in iTunes store yesterday. Works on any Wordpress blog. W00T!!!!!!!)

that is, i am honored to be bestowed, perhaps festooned, with the heretofore unbeknownst-to-me award entitled, “Arte y Pico”, which has nothing whatsoever to do with my (heretofore unmentioned-on-this-blog) dexterity in making home-made hot sauce, salsa picada, various varieties of chile con queso, and pico de gallo.

oh. i should probably point out that one of the more-frequently drunken bloggers, namely “fairlane”, over at Jonestown, saw fit to confer this award upon me, thus making me greater than Jeebus and holier than thou.

which i already was anyway, of course.

actually, I am quite humbled to receive this award, because my blogging has been significantly short of “stellar” recently. Thank you for the vote of confidence, fairlane.

at this point, however, it is time for me to confer this award upon five other ass-hats whom i love, admire, respect, and enjoy reading. yes, ass-hats is now a term of endearment. deal with it. actually the descriptor is quite appropriate, because, especially recently, i feel that i have been riding on the shoulders of their greatness, or at the very least have been carried by their greatness, or otherwise generally engreatened by simply knowing them. and riding on their shoulders for so long gets all slippery and stuff, and…well….you just probably got more of a mental picture than you ever wanted.

ew. did i really go there? yah, i guess i did. i have no idea why.

yah, anyway, TEH RULEZ:

Now, here are the rules and regulations, as well as my nominees for the next five deserving winners of the Arte y Pico Award:

yay! those upon whom i confer this Award!

1. Kate, over at The Radula
2. Mike, the tangled up one at Tangled Up in Blue Guy
3. The Omnipotent Poobah, who can be found at The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks
4. Corey Vilhauer at Black Marks on Wood Pulp
5. Jack, who is the Radical Atheist