As If...

overhauling my genealogy database wasn't enough, (see The Oracle of OMcHodoy), my printer unit, which was also a scanner and copier, broke. Which translated into a new machine which translated into learning how to use that. Last night I downloaded a free trial of Photoshop Elements by Adobe and I spent part of this afternoon playing around with it. As if I had time to take on another major project.

Well, actually, I kind of do have time to take on another project, at least for now. I'm finishing up my last few days off work so I thought I'd try out this new photo editing program on a free trial basis. It will be a while before I can actually buy it if I decide to, but at least I'll have an idea on how use-able it is. After about 90 minutes of fussing with it, I think it's a great program. It doesn't look too incredibly user-friendly, but there is a lot you can do with it.

I do not like how it organizes photos it imports from your hard drive. It's rather Picasa-like and if you follow me at Facebook at all, you now know I hate Picasa's organization style. I do not, for the most part, like the "auto-fix" feature; it tends to change the original coloring of the photos as opposed to fine tune it. However, you'll see below a dramatic difference the auto-fix feature made on one photo, so it's not always bad.

Perhaps in a few months I'll splurge and buy this program. For now, I'll enjoy the 30 day trial and fight the impulse to buy now. Below, then are a few quick edits I'd made to two photos, the first using only the auto-fix feature on Adobe Photoshop Elements and the second using a touch of the "touch-up" tool and paintbrush.

When it Rains...

It pours. I've been a bit off-kilter the past few weeks. Seems like everything goes at once. My body, the microwave, the printer/scanner. At least I can say they've all been fixed. I think.

This morning I did something I shouldn't have and purchased a new four-in-one printer/scanner/copier/fax. I'd done a little research and asked around a bit and finally decided on a Lexmark 9575, mainly because it was on sale for a really, really good price and had more features than the HP I was looking at. But nothing in life, I have learned, is easy. Well, setting up the unit was very easy, but getting it to actually print, well, not so much.

However, after having to damp-clean the brand new black cartridge (after wasting ink on three machine-cleanings and three alignment attempts), the print seems fixed. Now I get to play around a bit with the scanning feature so I can be prepared for tomorrow's Scanfest.

I scanned some images from my collection; three to be exact. It is automatically set to scan at 300 dpi (which can be changed) and once the scan is complete it offers the opportunity for some minor editing, which is good since I want three individual images, not one conglomerate. So I scan the tree images on the same scan and hit "Crop". I crop one of the photos and save.

YAYAY. Well, not quite. I can't find my way back to the scan image to crop the other two images. Not an option to be found. Nor can I find and automatically saved copy of the overall scan. I never needed that on the HP but it was always there. Now I need it with the Lexmark and can't find it! But I haven't given up yet.

I proceeded to rescan the images, this time trying to crop all three images at once. No go. Soon as I click on image number two to crop that one, the field to crop in image number one disappears. So I do what any intelligent woman would do: I open the user's guide and search for "Scan Multiple Images". There is such an option, so I read the instructions and find that on the "Simple Scan" Screen (not the default screen to which the program opens) you can select "Multiple Photos". So I did and repeated the editing process above to crop.

Only I still can't crop more than one of the images at a time and once I crop one I cannot get back to the screen that has all the images to crop the next one. I will have to explore this more after dinner.

In the meantime, here is a comparison for me and for you (for me as I haven't looked at the two images side-by-side yet either). The photo on the left is the image I have from my old HP scanner. The image on the right is the same image from the new Lexmark scanner.


The bottom image is the same photo scanned on the Lexmark unit with "Sepia" added on the advanced editing screen. The first one, scanned from the HP, is the coloring of the actual photo, and, oddly, was scanned at a dpi of 200 since I didn't know when I originally scanned it that I could change that. The Lexmark scans at a default of 300 dpi. I'm not liking that scanned image off the Lexmark has different coloring than the original.

I haven't played around much with the editing on the second scan, and there are settings available to change the saturation, so maybe that will help. Just seems to me that the image should be scanned and portrayed as is and leave the editing to the person doing the scanning.

Does anyone in Blogville own this unit? Any ideas? I hope to play around with it a lot tomorrow, as I may be able to exchange it if I don't like it.

Blogging Prompt #13: Expertise

Several bloggers take advantage of common subjects to post about, known as a Blogging Prompt. This 13th edition asks one to talk about an area of expertise one might have. Well, my area is quite unique, I must say.

It's been said (by someone, I'm sure) that everyone is an expert on something. As luck and Murphy would have it, my area of expertise is on such an important topic as dog poop.

You heard me right. Dog poop.

When I adopted Izzie almost three years ago, he wound up being sick. On his second day home with me, he was pooping blood. I won't describe the rest of the poop's appearance; suffice it to say it wasn't what I expected to see even coming out the other end of this cutie pie. Over the course of the next six months we (me and his vet and the internist vet at the Specialty Center) poked, prodded and scoped my poor baby from both ends and determined that he had Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). We tried to manage it with diet. As many a child had said in a sick kind of game, "Diarrhea Diarrhea....". We tried managing it with low doses of metronidazole (basically, flagyl), which helped his poop. But he was still tossing food out his mouth, so we added prednisone. Two and a half years later, he's stable on the two meds and a Royal Canin hypoallergenic diet.

So, if any of you genealogists have any questions about dog poop, I urge you to ask me. Go ahead, make my day!

I'm B-A-A-A-A-C-C-K!

What better time to get back to blogging than a Randy Seaver Saturday Night Fun post? Okay, I know it's Sunday night, but I spent all day yesterday raking up the thatch in my back yard and all day today chasing down the perfect frame for my dog Izzie's portrait (Can be seen HERE). Not to mention that I had to re-arrange several photographs to accommodate Izzie's! So I'm exhausted, and quite sore from the raking to be honest. So I'm a day late.

Randy challenged GeneaBloggers to show off their genealogy working space. I challenged our group to do that quite some time ago, with the following results from my space:

I was very proud of my cleaning results.

Now, lest you think my work space is always so pristine, here's what it looks like today:
I am usually snacking when I'm at my computer. Tonight it's popcorn and water. My scanner is also used as a shelf for papers and light-weighted objects. Probably not a good idea. The door to the tower cabinet won't close because it was easier to plug in the speaker to the front USB port than the back so I can switch it with my Skype headset if need be. I forget I have that. To the left is a plastic storage unit for paper, scrapbook stuff that is wasting away (if I ever do scrapbook, it's digital anyway), and a gazillion USB & other computer related cords I no longer know to what they belong!

I love the windows in this room for aesthetic reasons and for a pleasant work environment. They look out onto the street. I had to put a towel over the top crescent-shaped window because it gets blasting hot in here when the sun hits it. It's too expensive to get custom drapes or shades for a rented house so a towel matching my color scheme suffices. Atop the TV is the outer packaging from one of the frames I bought today. Why is it there, you ask? To keep Izzie away from it. He loves cardboard.
And here's my beloved bookcase, of which I wish I'd purchased another. On the top shelf are my genealogy related magazines, my research binders, and my maternal digital scrapbook. Why the card table resting against the bottom? To keep Izzie away from the bottom two shelves that he can reach. He loves books.

Inside these closed closet doors is a filing cabinet, some winter clothes I just put away, lots of old textbooks, a piano/keyboard, and "stuff" to keep out of sight. Why the closed doors, given there are some genealogy-related things in there? To keep Izzie away from it. He loves "stuff".

Finally, you might ask why there was no chair in front of the computer desk? You got it: To keep Izzie away from the desk when I'm not sitting at it. He loves popcorn. And pencils. And paper...

Dear Arizona Legislature

I would like you to Meet Marianne McHugh.

Marianne was born 29 Nov 1930 in Nanticoke, Luzerne County, PA. She was the oldest surviving child of Joseph Dennis McHugh and Mary (Hodick) McHugh. She was born with Down Syndrome in a time when children born with Down Syndrome were quite often put in institutions to live their lives with little contact with the outside world. There wasn’t much hope for children born with Down Syndrome.

Marianne’s parents were told to lock her up, she’d never accomplish anything. They refused. They kept her home and raised her as their own. She didn’t go to school; that sort of thing didn’t happen to children with Down Syndrome in the 1930’s. But if there was a family gathering, she was there. Even if it was at the local park, or a store, or a restaurant. If the family was there, Marianne was too. If her younger brother and sister had friends over, they stopped to say hi to Marianne too. She was loved by everyone in the family-- a favorite of her elders and her peers alike. Marianne McHugh had a pretty good life for someone with Down Syndrome born in 1930.

Marianne McHugh died 28 April 1978 in West Seneca, Erie County, New York. She was 48 years old. A very good life span for someone with Down Syndrome born in 1930.

Marianne was my father’s oldest sister.

Though there are many ancestors I wish I’d known, she is the one I wish I’d known better. I was thirteen years old when she died. But I have thought of her many times since, especially in my adult years as I work with children with special needs. I often wonder what kind of life she would have had, had she been born in my era and not her own. She would have gone to school. She might have participated in Special Olympics. She might even have been able to live independently with supports to assist when needed. Children and adults with Down Syndrome today have so much more working for them than Marianne ever had.

Until 31 Jan 2009. That is the day that, with Jan Brewer at the helm, the Arizona Congress set people with Developmental Disabilities back with SB1001, which contain the following budget cuts to this population (From an email from the Arizona Governor’s Council on Developmental Disabilities [http://www.azgcdd.org/text.asp?REF=default.asp]):

Suspend Non-Residential State-Only Services
93 percent of the children and adults receiving state-only services - more than 4,000 individuals - will lose all of their services such as therapies, habilitation, employment supports, after school and summer programs, attendant care, respite and transportation.

Reduce Provider Rates
Effective March 1, the Department will reduce rates for 850 agency and 3,500 independent providers of home and community-based (HCBS), institutional, and acute services by 10 percent. Since fiscal year 2005, HCBS rates have increased by about 22 percent. In addition, the Department will to address group-home capacity issues and lower enhanced rates for specialized habilitation-communication, specialized habilitation-music, community protection, behavioral health, and day treatment and training.

To summarize, effective March 1, over 4,000 individuals with developmental disabilities will lose physical, speech and occupational therapy – therapies that help them overcome problems that they did not ask for, but that their disorders gave to them. Therapies that help them live as much like you and me as possible; something Marianne could never have aspired to, thanks to her being born in 1930.

Thank you, Congress, for wiping out 79 years of progress for people with developmental disabilities.

Colleen McHugh, LMSW

Note to my blogging friends and readers: Yes, I did send this to my legislators.

Kreativ-ity

Judy at Genealogy Traces awarded me the Kreativ Blogger Award! I'm always thrilled when people enjoy what I write, even when I'm not as consistent as I'd like to be!

Now I'm to nominate 7 blogs, linking them here and commenting on their blogs to let them know. Unfortunately my computer's so slow these days it takes a long time to do 7 so let's see if I can find a few new blogs tonight!

1. Apple's Tree (Okay, so this one's not new, but I oft forget to tell those whose work I enjoy that I enjoy their work. So tonight it's Apple's turn!)

2. Gayle Gresham at Colorado Reflections

3. Andrea Christman at Family Tales

4. Laura, a new blogger at Root Seek.

Keep up the great writing and researching!

I Interrupt This Program

I have a special announcement for all of my geneablogging friends, my non-blogging friends, my readers and anyone else who stumbles across this post. Most of you are aware that I am fanatical about my dog, Izzie. So fanatical, in fact, that he has his own blog. I’m a fan of dogs, and hate to see any animal suffering.

The economy of late has been, as we all know, rather tight lately. People are losing their jobs, their homes, and quite possibly, losing weight as they struggle to keep food on their tables. Thankfully, there are food programs to assist with the latter for many families.

The same is not always true of our pets. Dogs and cats are being abandoned or surrendered at alarming rates. Often, it’s foreclosures that do the pets in. Often, it’s simply the cost of providing for them. A 2007-08 survey by the American Pet Products Manufacturing Association estimated basic annual expenses for dog ownership run $1,425, and cat ownership $990. (Maryland Newsline Business, http://www.newsline.umd.edu/business/specialreports/foreclosures/foreclosurepets102408.htm).
Many, if not most, animal shelters try to provide struggling families with emergency supplies of food if it means the difference between one more pet "in custody" and maintaining a pet’s home. But many, if not most, animal shelters use donated food to feed the pets in their care and cannot meet every need for every family.

Tucson is lucky. There are a couple of food programs to assist with feeding pets when families are struggling. I am lucky, as well, to have an opportunity to help feed Tucson’s pets. The Hermitage Cat Shelter in Tucson has been around for over 30 years, and one of their programs is called Food For People’s Pets. Its aim is to provide some relief to families who struggle to feed their pets (cats and dogs), in hopes that the families will be able to keep the pets as opposed to surrendering, or worse, abandoning, them. This program is in need of some re-vamping, and I hope to work with the shelter’s staff to do just that.

There is now a blog dedicated to the Food For People’s Pets program. I hope to make it a place for people to learn about pet nutrition, the prevalence of animal hunger, solutions to the problem, events of the program, and spotlights of the program sponsors. While hunger in animals will be addressed, it will be done so in a respectful, family-friendly manner; no “shock and awe” tactics such as graphic photographs will be used.

Please, bookmark the blog at http://www.feedingpeoplespets.blogspot.com/ and visit often. It’s just getting off the ground, but I want to make it a true showcase for the good that people’s donations do. I also, admittedly, hope to make it an accessible way to donate to the program. Towards this end there is a link on the blog page to the “Network For Good” badge that is assigned to The Hermitage Cat Shelter. From this badge, one can designate donations to the Food For People’s Pets program. I also have this link on my other blogs and here, so please, if you can, donate $5 to the program. Or donate a bag of pet food to a program in your area if you have one. I would be crushed if I had to surrender Izzie for lack of food, and I hate to think of something so simple being so far out of reach for pet owners everywhere.

Thanks for listening. I now return you to your regular programming.