Couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day and night for Annie’s wedding. I tried to not take many pictures as to not annoy or get in the photographer’s way, but during the formal shots, I couldn’t help but snag a couple. They were always off angle and they weren’t looking at me, but this one worked, so I figured I’d post it to summarize the event.

After the meeting and pictures at the Monona Terrace, we headed out on a Betty Lou cruise where the ceremony, mingling and food took place. We witnessed a beautiful sunset and moonrise from the middle of Lake Monona before heading back into dock. After that it was off to Restaurant Magnus until about 11:30. It was all very pleasant and frankly, I couldn’t help but be shocked all night long at how gorgeous Annie looked. Congrats to both of them.

Well, I finally decided somewhere around December or January and was waiting on some stronger signals from her to know that it was ok to move on. In the meantime I went on a slow shopping hunt. Finally, during March it dawned on me that waiting around is rather pointless. We both know where we’re going and to me delaying offers no benefit, and neither does rushing into it. So why not just pop the question and then we can take our time in finalizing any details because to me, the larger and most important part of the whole process was the proposal. That’s what solidifies it. A marriage just legally binds you to death and gives you some random benefits in the eyes of society. That is unless you hire a lawyer at some point to undo your apparently poor decision.

Well, to me it wasn’t going to be a poor decision. So, on March 31, I devised a clever and innocuous setup, popped a ring, proposed and she said yes.

Le sigh…

And on that related note, when the hell did all the old original prints of just about any RPG game pre PS2-era suddenly become worth its weight in gold? I’m wishing I had never gotten rid of anything I used to own as it appears the only semi valuable game I have left is the original Final Fantasy Tactics.

And also on that note, over the weekend I picked up an on sale 8 gig Memory Stick Pro Duo ($35 at Office Max or $39 at Best Buy) and proceeded to realize how cool a hacked PSP can be. I ripped all my PSP games to the memory card and played them from there. Talk about friggin’ sweet! Practically zero load time. Wipeout is truly a pick up and play game now, Crisis Core is no longer the bore of load screens and I still have over a gig left on the card. And then of course there’s the longer battery life as a result. Way too cool. So then I looked into emulators….

For those not in the know and would like to in case this is on your RSS, Annie had her second baby today. 3 more pics by clicking through.

Parker Nolan English
3/26/09 @ 12:09am
7lb 10oz, 20in

Ok, so last night I tried to go capture Comet Lulin, and frankly I chickened out from the cold and lack of a tall tripod. However, I did manage to catch it in a few shots and I thought it looked good on the lcd, but upon getting them into Aperture, they looked like utter crap. Noise galore. So I remembered reading about some pro who decided to give the native (it was either Nikon or Canon) software a whirl that comes with the camera and lo an behold, he got less noise on RAW images.

So, time to find those CDs and install. Not much later and I couldn’t believe the difference. Here we have the untouched RAW files merely being interpreted by each program with Aperture on the left and Canon’s RAW Image Task on the right.

I think I found my new software to convert RAW. I think I’ll just dump them out into Aperture after adjusting any details available on a RAW shot as a TIFF for further editing from now on.

I has girlfriend.

Yes, the guy that’s been perpetually single for no good reason for all these years has finally met fate and just couldn’t turn it down. Is that why I haven’t shown up to parties or potential nights out? Yes. Is that why I disappeared from the online world, and not even the Lich King could draw me back? Yes. Is it why I’m seemingly never home? Yes. Did I just totally submit and my life is over like so many others who disappear into relationships? Hell no. I’ll be back seeing you all both online and off, and possibly soon, but this mad rush of a past few months has been absolutely amazing and I didn’t really care what I missed out on because it’s all been the building blocks of things to come.

One of which has come to pass just earlier tonight. We’ve decided to move in together and it is I who is packing up shop and moving in. That right there was pretty much the impetus for me telling everyone else about this. I can’t really hide that fact anymore. Not that I was trying to, it’s just that I didn’t care if anyone knew or not. My life took a wild, yet very excellent turn, and with time I knew I would catch back up with others.

So, about me moving. Well, it only makes sense. She just bought a house here in Stoughton within the last year, and me, well, I can’t top that. Besides, I work here now so that works out pretty well for my commute. For those who would like to know where, incidentally if it wasn’t for the Yahara River this would be a case of Everybody Loves Raymond as my parents live right across the river from this house. Well, across the river and across the street, but I’m sure if I yelled loud enough, they could hear me, which means it’s pretty darn close.

So who is this woman? Well, her name is Alison and if you’re local friends and family, you’ll definitely be seeing her around these upcoming holidays so we can all catch up then. If we don’t, fear not. It’s not like me being in my 30′s I’m looking for a fling. We both know we’re going to be around for a long time to come.

As an aside, it should be evident that if I’m moving, the server this runs on will be down for a while. I can’t say when it will happen, but I’m going to try and make it short. So if one day soon it just doesn’t appear on the first attempt, try back the next day. I figure I’d say that here as more people would probably notice it than if I put it in the forum or front page.

I mean really, pictures of cats in my photo stream? You should have known something was up.

Which as an additional aside, is really something amazing and telling of this relationship; I am completely not allergic to cats anymore. I have no idea when it happened, but it would have killed this relationship dead within the first couple weeks, heck, probably the first “date”. But in a nervous and tense moment, I gave it a go visiting for an extended time one day and realized nothing happened. A couple more times and nothing. Nothing continues to happen and it amazes me. There will probably be much more said on the cat topic in the future since Alison is very involved with them locally.

It’s odd, I was listening to the radio the other day and a caller reiterated that race issues really are environmental and therefore taught by stating that within certain generations and/or regions it either totally matters or it didn’t even ring a bell. Frankly for me, Obama was never black. He was just another guy with a different point of view and set of plans and it was of little consequence that he was also running for the presidency. It wasn’t until the last month or so that people were finally breaching the issue of race and I realized that it just might be a bigger problem for the nation as a whole than I had thought. However, the results tonight are showing different results. Seeing this image it’s really hit me how great of a change this is. Not just for the United States, but the world as a whole. I’m very eager for the next few years.

Zelda Klouda
Rommel Lightning
Maverick Crowder
Ellsworth “Elzy” Swingen
Knute Knutson
Hans Hanson Jr.

And then there’s the joke ones from submitting bogus sign ups:

Rich Loincloth
Phuck Ewe

The O’Blog.

Granted, that was what I was calling the “software”, but really it was just me using it. I never quite connected that I was The O’Blog until for some reason, just now, when I stepped back and looked at it all in retrospect. So, I’ve changed my title again, probably for the last time.