Happy birthday to one of the sweetest people I know. Throughout my years at X-Systems, there was only one other woman at the office that I felt at ease with and felt that I could sincerely call ‘my friend’, and that’s Amy.
She rocks.
I hope you have a great birthday, you really deserve it. If your husband doesn’t treat you well today, email me and I’ll make sure to hide fish and rotting eggs somewhere in his desk so he can’t find it, but smell it.
I love you, my friend!
Haven’t posted up a ‘Tip & Trick’ in a while.
Unfortunately, this is just for you all that have Photoshop - I’m using 7, but it may be available in the earlier versions as well.
Have you ever taken a picture and after you see it on screen, realize that it’s not
straight? You could use Photoshop’s rotate to fix it, but it will be a
little trial and error as to whether or not it’s truly straight.
Here’s my original picture - you can see that the bottom line of the shadow isn’t
straight (we’re standing on the ledge).
Here’s the steps I would take to straighten out the picture a bit:
| 1) Open up the picture in Photoshop | |
| 2) On the side toolbar, click and hold on the eyedropper icon, and you’ll be able to choose the ruler tool |  -hold and choose ruler  |
| 3) Oh your photo, find a line that you can use as a reference for the program to straighten. In my photograph, it’s the line of the ledge we’re sitting on - I want that line to be horizontal. That’s really the only line I could use. If it was a photo of a house or something with a horizon, there would be more references to choose from. |
|
| 4) Using the ruler tool, click on one end of your reference line, then click on another part of that reference line. This will create a line that traces your reference line - if the photo is crooked, you’ll see that the line is crooked, too. |
 |
| 5) Once the reference line has been marked, go to Image->Rotate Canvas->Arbitrary. This will come up with a window called ‘Rotate Canvas’ that will have an angle in there - this is the amount of rotation needed to straighten the line you created in #4. Click OK. |
  |
| 6) You’ll see that your picture has been rotated, but the reference line that you had specified is now straight. All you need to do is select the portion of the picture you want to keep by choosing the Marquee or Crop tool. Select the part of the picture that you want cropped out - unfortunately, this process usually crops out part of the picture. |
 |
| 7) Crop the picture, and you’ll see that it has been straightened! |
 |
Here is the finished product, next to the original:
Before
After
Not ‘cooler’ as in The Fonz cool, ‘cooler’ as in temperature. Though that’s really not too much of a feat.
I’m sitting here in a different hotel room, since the other hotel was booked. I was worried I wouldn’t have internet here since I thought this hotel would be a bit shady, but it isn’t too bad. It even has shampoo, conditioner, and iron and hair dryer. It passes my test of being a decent place to stay.
And the internet is FREE!
Though I don’t have my concierge lounge where I can get free munchies and bottled water anytime of the day.
The trip here was ok, with aa couple slight delays, but nothing horrific. My layover was through Dallas/Ft. Worth which I have hated ever since my birthday fiasco last year. It wasn’t too bad, other than having to take a special shuttle to some special gates that were awat from the rest of the terminal.
There was this REALLY tall guy that was standing by me in line for the shuttle, and it turns out (as I overheard him talking to the gate person) that he’s a basketball player - for the Dallas Mavericks. Hold on a moment while I look up his name.
Never heard of him. Then again, when the Bulls started sucking I stopped watching basketball. Anyway, he looks nothing like the picture that the NBA has for him - he’s 30 but looks about 25. And he’s listed at 6′11”, which doesn’t surprise me. We had a tiny airplane to Jackson from Dallas, and although the rest of us could stand up and move around with no problem, he was hunched over like an adult in a child’s treehouse. This guy was TALL! I had to stop myself from laughing out loud as he tried to maneuver his way to his seat, hunched over but trying to read the seat numbers. Poor guy!
I was talking with my taxi driver about him after I had landed, and it turns out he’s from Jackson, and he played for Mississippi State. Kinda like a hometown hero. My taxi driver was all proud like a father talking about his son.
He seemed like a nice enough guy, happy to talk with the gate guy as he asked a ton of questions about the team. I was standing next to him as we were looking at the departures (at the time I didn’t know he was on my flight) and since I come to his waist, he didn’t see me as I was standing there and ran me over as he was walking to the gate. I let out a little squeak and he apologized and asked if I was ok. I said yeah, and he walked away.
Yep, that’s my brush with fame for today.
Hey, guess what? I get to go somewhere exciting next week - NEW YORK CITY!!!
WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!
Today it’s about 100 degrees in Chicago, they’ve got advisories out there that people should stay outside because it’s so hot. Of course, I’m a rebel. I had to go to Best Buy to buy a new scanner since it was on sale this weekend and I’m leaving for Jackson again in a bit, so I had to go out and do it today.
It’s not that hot. There’s a really strong breeze. Then again, it’s not a cool breeze. It’s more like the feeling you would get if you take one of those hand dryers in the public bathrooms and aimed it in your face. Yeah. Like that.
So actually, it’s really hot.
With the summer comes my summer makeover. I always need a change in the summertime. I got highlights done, though not as light as I wanted them. It’s my fault though, because I got all adventurous and started coloring my hair on my own, so my hair guy would have had to bleach my hair to strip it of the color, and he would have had time to do that if I hadn’t forgotten about my hair appointment. I got a call at work, and he was like, ‘Um, Christine, did you know you had an appointment at 10?’ It was 10:10 when he called. I felt like my dad was reprimanding me.
But I’ve got my new ‘do, and I love it - he created more layers around my face and did highlights all around the top. Don’t think it looks too different, but then again, I haven’t done much with it. He cleaned up a lot of the razored edges that were left over from my Long Beach cuts, so my hair’s a lot healthier now.
Off again to Jackson….hopefully it’s cooler out there than it is here!
Yesterday we hung out with my friends Jen and Mike, and their little baby Sam at Manny and Rachel’s place. They’ve just come back from a year and China, though it feels like they’ve been gone forever.
It was great to see them again, it’s weird for one of your closest friends to move away for a year, then come back with a little baby! We played with little Sam, who is the cutest baby and was so well behaved. They told us of how it was living in China, how Sam was born, how they were adjusting to life back in the States. We filled them in on the latest gossip - who was engaged, who’s having a baby, etc.
I’ve missed them so much, so much has changed in all of our lives since she’s been gone. We had a good time catching up, laughing and giggling like how we used to. Except with a baby in between all of us, so we had to whisper a bit.
Good times!
Have you ever looked at a name on your AIM buddylist and wondered, “hmm, I wonder if I could beat that person in a no-holds-barred cage match involving pieces of glass and nails stuck to my fists with honey?” Of course, that would take a lot of setup, and maybe some training, and definitely a cage.
But AIM Fight is just as good!
OK. Not as good. Not even close. But hell, it’s still interesting. Put your AIM screen name in and put in a friend’s - or enemy’s. Then see how you match up.
Fun? A little. Unless you’re going up with a certain person I know who has like ten million gazillion people on her AIM list. Bitch. 
My flight back to Chicago was supposed to leave at 3:44pm from Jackson, landing in Atlanta at 6pm. My flight to Chicago didn’t leave from there until 7:59 - two hours later.
Of course, Mother Nature has a way of testing my capacity for stress. There were thunderstorms and rain in Jackson. My flight from Jackson boarded at around 4:15, and we stayed on the runway until 5:10. We landed in Atlanta at 7:15, half an hour before my flight was supposed to leave - and of course, when we landed there was no gate open, so we stayed in the plane until 7:35.
I ran through the airport, got on the shuttle to the next terminal, and found out my connecting flight was delayed as well - an hour.
We finally got into the Chicago area, and I was excited that all I had to do was get out of the terminal area and my car was one of the first ones in the parking lot at Midway. I was so excited to go home I couldn’t wait to get off the plane.
Once I finally got off, I was a little confused. “Where the hell am I?!?”
Shit.
I’m at O’Hare Airport.
My car is at Midway.
Remember how I mentioned before that I got a flight leaving from Midway because I would have missed my connection when I was going to Jackson? I never rescheduled my returning flight to go BACK to Midway.
So what’s a girl to do when she’s stuck at an airport and her car is at another airport 25 mimles away?
She calls her daddy.
So I called my dad, told him of the situation, and he said he’d come pick me up (Dave’s on call tonight). My childhood home is only about 10 minutes away from the airport, so he got there in good time. I told him he could just drop me off at the train station and I could take that to Midway, but he told me he’d feel safer if he just dropped me off.
Isn’t he the best dad ever?
So after that whole ordeal, I was on my way home….HOME! Yes! Home! I was so excited.
So excited I didn’t realize how fast I was going on Lake street and got pulled over about 2 blocks away from my house for speeding.
FUCK!
So close, yet so far.
On the bright side, he said that he wouldn’t bust me for the tinted windows.
Now I’ve gotta cough up the cash.
But you know what?
That’s not gonna get me down.
I’M HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOME!!!!
Due to some sort of strange referrer spam script or something (I swear it wasn’t me!), I am the #1 click on Dave K’s site. Which means that I’m the #1 link that has been clicked on his site. I think.
I admit to clicking on my site link a couple times a month, though I usually barely reach the top 20, but this month I’m at the top, with 3569 hits coming from Dave’s site. Which means that someone, or something, has come to this site from his site 3569 times this month. Which is about 3480 more than the next site. Of course, that number is really a lie, since my stats don’t show anyone coming to my site 3000+ times from his site.
However, I will try and return the favor by directing all of you, my lovely readers, to go check out his site. Not that he needs any help since he just celebrated his one millionth hit mark today.
So check him out. He’s got a lot of cool things to see there. There are also some awesome blogs on his sidebar that you can check out. Or, you can just click on my site on his sidebar and add to my monstrous numbers as I crush the competition like Godzilla over Tokyo.
Is anyone else watching ‘So You Think You Can Dance?’? It’s not as entertaining as I thought it would be. I don’t understand how they can have breakdancers do ballroom and vice versa. Can it be done?
There was a point in time where I used to envision myself as a backup dancer for Janet Jackson. A backup dancer with no dance background, who can’t do the splits, hates working out and has a weakness for Krispy Kremes. But I love to dance, and I loved doing choreographed dances (I’m sure I’m not the only U of I PSA grad that misses doing fashion shows.)
There was also 20 minutes that I toyed with the idea of being a breakdancer. As I was trying to do a flare, my pants pocket got snagged on a nail on the floor and almost ripped off my pocket. My career ended there.
I’m only 20 minutes into the show, maybe it gets better later. I love watching dancing - ballroom, hiphop, breakdancing, tap, all of it. I’m sure the later episodes will be much better.
At 8pm I’m switching to ‘Brat Camp’.
