Belated Congratulations

... to the Forever Young Foundation and Tuan for winning this year's Play for a Cause.

This year we raised $120 for the Forever Young Foundation (FYF), an organization that uses sports to provide opportunities and learning experiences to disadvantaged youth. Pretty cool idea, if you ask me. Also, it was started by Steve Young, the hall of fame quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, and one of my personal favorite NFL players.

Part of the reason for my tardiness was a delay in receiving all payments. Another is my busy life. I went to Vietnam during April, graduated in May, moved in June, started residency in July. By the time I got all the money together and donated it, June was ending and I was jumping into my residency. Hence no time to report back to you that, yes, it was done.

However, I want to say how proud I am of everyone. For three years now, we have all given a little to help others. The variation in winners - Heifer international, Diabetes Research and Wellness Foundation, Forever Young Foundation - belies are innately different likes and personalities, but each program achieves the same goal of helping our fellow, less fortunate, brothers and sisters.

Who will win next year? I can't wait to find out. Congrats again to Tuan and the Forever Young Foundation.

Congratulations!!

Congratulations to Dennis and the Diabetes Research & Wellness Foundation

Congratulations to Dennis and the Diabetes Research & Wellness Foundation (DRWF), winners of TBE Play For a Cause 2009!!

This year the carnage was fierce, and those who lead early saw their prospects sink as front-runners bowed out in the Sweet 16. It was then that Dennis soared to the top, thanks to near flawless picks in the Sweet 16 and Elite 8.

By the Final Four, only two remained. Fittingly, it was last year's winner, Sara, playing for Autism Speaks, against the newcomer -- the upstart -- Dennis and DRWF. Could this be likened to Sarah Palin vs Barack Obama? You make the call.

If UCONN won their final four game, the pressure would be on UNC to win. A UNC win guaranteed victory for Dennis. However, this year was meant for Change, and UCONN fell to a scrappy Michigan St. team before UNC ever took the floor. The win was Dennis and DRWF's, with the icing on the cake that UNC went on to claim the national championship and add points to the champ's total.

By the Final Four, only two remained

And, due to the idiosyncracies of March Madness (later rounds are worth more points), UCONN's loss and UNC's win not only took the win from Sara, but also vaulted four other players (including your's truly) over Sara. So sorry! Congrats also to Julie and the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance and Veronica and Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, who came in second and third, respectively (so close!).

To the right are the final results:

Now, FOR PAYMENT OPTIONS:

I think it's easier to pay the whole $90 to the Diabetes Research & Wellness Foundation, on behalf of The Bleeding Ear Pool, then try to donate multiple small donations. However, if you would like your donation individualized for tax purposes, I will comply as best I am able.

1. You can send me cash or check ($10) per bracket
2. You can send $10 using credit card or paypal by following the link in the sidebar
3. I will send invoices via email to every contestant so that you pay via Paypal if you wish (and do not want to click on the link above). These will also serve as reminders. Also, if you pay via paypal, you will automatically get a receipt.

I will send in the donation as soon as I receive all funds. Hurry and send them ASAP!

TBE Play for a Cause 2009 Group

For everyone who wants to join this year's "TBE Play for a Cause" March Madness pool, two announcements:

1. The pool at ESPN is created.

- go to http://games.espn.go.com/tcmen/frontpage to log in.
- if you have a previous screenname and password, you can enter them on the right

- otherwise, click "sign up for a free account."

- then fill in all the information to create an account. Remember! By doing this you are also entered (for free) in ESPN's $10,000 contest!

- once you sign in or sign up, click on the gold link to create a bracket.

- then name your bracket after the charity of your choice (this step is important!)

- after naming your bracket, click on the "My Groups" link in the middle of the page, and follow the drop down list to "Create or Join a Group"

- once you are at the Groups page, you should search for "TBE Play for a Cause 2009"


- click on the group, then you will see the group page. Enter "TBE" as the password, and join the group! You have entered the "TBE Play for a Cause" 2009 March Madness Pool!


2. Selection Sunday is this Sunday, March 15th, 2009.
- you can join the pool before then, but you cannot officially fill in your bracket (because all the teams haven't been set yet).
- therefore, REMEMBER TO FILL IN YOUR BRACKET THIS SUNDAY OR MONDAY!

That is all for now. If you have questions, drop me an email.

March Madness Pool 2009

I know this is a hard year, but we can still give

Everyone, it's that time of year again.

While I am busily learning medicine and working 12 hour days at the hospital, you will be watching all the action-packed basketball games that give truth to the monikor "March Madness."

As always, I'm rooting for BYU to NOT underperform, and make it out of the first round. I'm not saying they'll go all the way, but it'd be nice to see an 8 seed finally move to round 2.


Last year was the inagural "TBE Play for a Cause." Congrats again to Sara, the winner, and Heifer International, the charity for whom she played.

For those of you who did not enjoy the inaugural run, here's the background/rules. Every year for March Madness, people join pools. Every participant donates money to the pot, and the winner takes all the money. Last year, instead of just giving money to someone, I thought it would be wonderful to harness this economic power to do some social good.

Congrats again to Sara, the winner, and Heifer International

In "TBE Play for a Cause" each participant contributes $10 to the pot and chooses a charity to represent. Then he or she signs up at ESPN.com (doubling the pot, because you are defacto entered into ESPN's contest also) and joins my pool (for ease of keeping track of results daily). Each contestant receives points based on the number of games correctly picked -- using the same scoring rules that ESPN uses. At the end of the tournament, the pot will go to the charity of the winning player.

I know this is a hard year, the economy is a maelstrom around us, and Barack Obama wants to socialize healthcare, but we can still give. $10 is the price of one entre at a middle-of-the-road restaurant, or food for 2 at McDonalds. It's the price for 1 day of parking in the Texas Medical Center where I work. I know you guys can give up one day of driving into work for a worthy cause.

Here is the rallying call: Come one, come all, to the second annual TBE Play for a Cause! Choose a charity! Fill your bracket! Let us help the less fortunate! May the best contestant win!

Welcome, March Madness 2009. We are ready.

New Recent Comments JSON Widget

Since upgrading to TBE 3.0, The Bleeding Ear has sported a Recent Comments widget in the sidebar. I hope you find it useful, or at least not annoying.

A couple days ago, my comments feed was down. Currently, my Recent Comments widget is just a feed widget, pulling the comments feed from blogger and using the native support to show date and author.

Well, because the feed went down, I started to look into what other people had done for comment widgets, and I realized that blogger puts the feeds out via JSON now. Well, I didn't know heads from tails about JSON, except that it can be used in javascript (something else I know little about), but I read that it would make the comments widget more customizable.

So, I found the url for the JSON comments feed, and pulled it so I could read through it. Then, with the help of a javascript from Tips For New Bloggers, I set about creating a new widget. That javascript wasn't good enough, so I found a script at Beautiful Beta that addressed my date problems. A quick mishmash of both scripts, plus some style changes, and voila!

So, I hope you like the new widget. Tell me what you think. If you want the code, I have it for you below (but all credit should go to the two blogs I referenced above):

<ul><script style="text/javascript">
function showrecentcomments(json) {
for (var i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
var entry = json.feed.entry[i];
var ctlink;
var commentdate = entry.published.$t;
var cdyear = commentdate.substring(0,4);
var cdmonth = commentdate.substring(5,7);
var cdday = commentdate.substring(8,10);
var monthnames = new Array();
monthnames[1] = "Jan";
monthnames[2] = "Feb";
monthnames[3] = "Mar";
monthnames[4] = "Apr";
monthnames[5] = "May";
monthnames[6] = "Jun";
monthnames[7] = "Jul";
monthnames[8] = "Aug";
monthnames[9] = "Sep";
monthnames[10] = "Oct";
monthnames[11] = "Nov";
monthnames[12] = "Dec";


if (i == json.feed.entry.length) break;
for (var k = 0; k < entry.link.length; k++) {
if (entry.link[k].rel == 'alternate') {
ctlink = entry.link[k].href;
break;
}
}
ctlink = ctlink.replace("#", "#comment-");
var ptlink = ctlink.split("#");
ptlink = ptlink[0];
var txtlink = ptlink.split("/");
txtlink = txtlink[5];
txtlink = txtlink.split(".html");
txtlink = txtlink[0];
var pttitle = txtlink.replace(/-/g," ");
pttitle = pttitle.link(ptlink);
if ("content" in entry) {
var comment = entry.content.$t;}
else
if ("summary" in entry) {
var comment = entry.summary.$t;}
else var comment = "";
var re = /<\S[^>]*>/g;
comment = comment.replace(re, "");

document.write('<li>');
if (comment.length < 50) {
document.write('<div style="font-size:90%;background-color: #E8EEFA;border: #C3D9FF 1px dashed;margin-right:5px">' + monthnames[parseInt(cdmonth,10)] + ' ' + cdday);
document.write(' - ' + entry.author[0].name.$t + ' commented on');
document.write(' ' + pttitle + ':</div>');
document.write(comment);
}
else
{
comment = comment.substring(0, 50);
var quoteEnd = comment.lastIndexOf(" ");
comment = comment.substring(0, quoteEnd);
document.write('<div style="font-size:90%;background-color: #E8EEFA;border: #C3D9FF 1px dashed;margin-right:5px">' + monthnames[parseInt(cdmonth,10)] + ' ' + cdday);
document.write(' - ' + entry.author[0].name.$t + ' commented on');
document.write(' ' + pttitle + ':</div>');
document.write(comment + '...<a href="' + ctlink + '">(more)</a>');
}
}
document.write('</li>');
}
</script>
<script src="http://thebleedingear.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default?alt=json-in-script&callback=showrecentcomments">
</script></ul>
<noscript>You need to enable JavaScript to read this.</noscript>

[+/-] Click here for code

Lightbox Fix

Recently I upgraded from Lightbox 2.03.3 to 2.04. Lightbox is a little more work on my end when posting, but makes the pictures a little more snazzy on yours. I hope you like it.

However, it came to my attention that Internet Explorer (the bane of all the earth) would give an error message when people tried to view my page.

Well, that wouldn't do, since I have all of 5 readers (thank you!) and I don't want to lose them. Some lucky troubleshooting, and the culprit was found -- Lightbox!

For some reason, I could load specific post pages, but not the main page. No other webpage was affected. That meant it was specific to my webpage, and specific to my general rules. I remembered that the only two things of note I had done recently to my blog was add a Paypal button and upgrade Lightbox. So, I got rid of the Paypal button and nothing happened. I got rid of Lightbox, and "bam!" everything worked. I reinstalled Lightbox 2.03.3 and things seem to be working fine in both IE and Firefox.

So, please let me know if you're having issues viewing my webpage or images.

And here's a friendly word of advice: Go Firefox.

O Muse 2

Oh Muse, the best laid plans of Men are folly!

When I wrote my post, O Muse ..., I originally had it many pages long, but after reflection, truncated it. I feel the thoughts were best elucidated separately, although they do connect. As I pondered the (de-)evolution of blogging, I realized that I had seen this phenomenon before.

Blogging has changed like medicine. Once it too was a brotherhood. Physicians went through years of schooling to understand the mysteries of the body; heal people. The community respected them. If a physician got sick, he needn't worry about paying, for other physicians would treat him pro bono.

Then something happened. Physicians in California sold their souls to Kaiser Permanente, and their fellows in Dallas, TX sold theirs to Blue Cross/Blue Shield. In the name of the patient, these physicians sold their autonomy to HMOs. They thought,

"I can help my patient if I worry about the billing and not him/her."

The HMOs said,

"We will entice patients into preventative care if they know they have already paid for it monthly, instead of paying up front."

Oh Muse, the best laid plans of Men are folly! Gone went the direct payment to physicians, and the hidden became the cost of medical care. Instead of preventative medicine, patients demanded the "million dollar workup" for every disease, because, hey, they had paid for it. Physicians spent less and less time with patients, because they needed to see more and more to cover the overhead of their billing requirements.

And in the community's eyes, the physician became a well-read technician. Sure, more respected than a plumber, but in stature much like a nurse or a physician's assistant -- someone who looks at a patient, checks a set of boxes, and sends them to a machine (xray, MRI, blood test) that diagnoses the sickness. A glorified car mechanic.

Except that true medicine is so much more than that. Hence the crisis in Health Care today -- it is an identity crisis. Many talk today about the need to “fix” Health Care. Most propose some combination of patches that extend coverage, and change billing structure. However, the true solution will only come when physicians wake up from their self-imposed slumber, and throw off the dichotomy that afflicts them.

Health Care must be put back in the hands of the physicians. Patients must be in control of their own health. Blogging has followed much the same path, and similarly, bloggers must never relinquish their camaraderie. It is these bonds of friendship and acquaintance, although spawned first over the virtual web of cyberspace, that keeps the reader questioning reality. It keeps him aware of his surroundings; looking through others' eyes at things which may have been mundane before.

Only through our ever present desires to push how people view the world, to share insights into life, and to refute complacency, can blogging truly be constructive. It is for that end we must continually strive.

O Muse ...

Muse make the man thy theme, for shrewdness famed
And genius versatile, who far and wide
A Wand’rer, after Ilium overthrown, ...
[The Odyssey of Homer, trans. William Cowper (1791) Book 1, Page 1]

Today, after finishing my reading on the pituitary and adrenal medulla, I started blog surfing (blog-urfing? blurfing?) for the first time in many moons. Doug, at Virtual Doug, commented on his attack of the malaise that afflicts us all -- the lack of blogging.

He writes,

(It’s a record – a record I am not crazy about. This is easily the longest period of time of not writing s since I began blogging back in June, 2003. In 4 ½ years, I have never gone this long between posts. Even while living in Việt Nam, I usually posted twice each week.

Then, yesterday, he adds,

Too busy? No, though I am working 15-20 hours per week in addition to the 2-3 freelance photo shoots I do and in addition to seeing Mom almost every day.

Sick? Naw – I had a cold for a few days, but not a cold since December 26th.

No muse? Maybe I can blame her for not visiting me, but the truth is, I seem to have just stopped observing the world. (emphasis added)

How sad that Lady Muse has left us. I remember turning on my computer each morning and hopping over to Virtual Doug first, looking for -- wanting -- a post. There is something to blogging ... something different than what it used to be. A few short years ago to blog was to be part of a select crowd. It was a brotherhood. I felt a special bond with men I had never met, Vietpundit and Virtual Doug, and grew through reading their insights on this world.

It is a sad day if the Muse has stopped visiting Doug.

In their desire to ease the way people pontificate, platforms such as blogger have accelerated a divide among bloggers. Blogging has become mainly two sorts -- those who get paid to do it (the "blogs" on mainstream media news outlets, or those large "A list" blogs that make good money through advertising) and the diaries (those people who post their comings and goings for all to see with pictures).

Those "A List" blogs, like the Drudge Report, or Instapundit, have become mostly news aggregators. They offer little in the way of true personal insight into the things they post. The "Diaries" provide neat snapshots into the daily lives of people, but also rarely engender discussion and rumination.

It is a sad day if the Muse has stopped visiting Doug

The few blogs remaining, as descendants of those "think tanks," are truly a joy to read, and range from the well traversed (Volokh Conspiracy) to the sparsely traveled (Virtual Doug).

However, these blogs rarely make money, and often require lots of time to write posts. With the demands of life ever buffeting the bulkheads, sadly, tempus fugit and many, like Doug, stop observing life. Others fall into my category. We observe, but cannot write. Numerous blog posts are composed daily in our minds, but the demands of life limit the time we have in front of a computer. When that time comes, either it's not long enough to put the work on paper, or the post has slipped away into the ether from which it formed.

I will not retreat. Although my posts may be few, and sometimes they may be aggregatory or diary in nature, I will strive to keep this blog one that engenders conversation and debate, and education on life. That is, I hope, a noble cause.

The Bleeding Ear 3.0

Today I roll out The Bleeding Ear version 3.0.

Welcome!

For the few of you who have stuck with me as life has gotten crazy (med school and birth of child) resulting in fewer posts, you will realize that, yes, ngục giới has frozen over. I have commented time and time again how I am working on my blog ... trying to fix my blog ... trying to update my blog, etc.

what you see is TBE with a totally new engine

It has been my excuse for not posting for who knows how long. Most of you probably assumed long ago that I was a pathological liar (I'm sorry Susan, so so so so sorry. Will you ever forgive me? I haven't forgotten you, and I WILL respond to your email).

Well, it's finally here. Much work over Christmas break has finally put the finishing touches on my excuse. Yes, it still looks overtly similar to version 2.0. However, I promise you that it's different. If you still think I'm a pathological liar, visit my test website, trietstest.blogspot.com, or take version 3.0 for a test drive.

My journey started many moons ago when Blogger decided to move to layouts. "Blogger Beta" as it was called, put my "Classic layout" at a decided disadvantage. Sure, I could keep going as before, writing my own code, editing my javascript, piecing together hack after hack to get functionality written into Blogger layouts, all without support from Blogger if something went wrong, OR, I could make the perilous journey of learning the new blogger and entering Nirvana.

Some of you might ask, "what's the big deal?" I thought this too at first. I tried to just convert my layout over, but I had so many add-ons to my template, that it never read them right. Blogger sometimes thought I had more than one widget with the same name, my CSS never translated correctly, and eventually I was forced to accept the reality that my piecemeal blog was too complicated for a recreational HTML coder like myself to just "recreate."

And so, I treaded water for many moons, nibbling here or there, but never doing great things until I found firebug. It was introduced to me by Ecmanaut. Firebug allows you to look at a webpage, view its source code, and see exactly what goes where. As you scroll over code, it highlights that thing on the page. You can edit the HTML, javascript, or CSS and see immediately what the webpage would look like with your changes.

This lifesaver allowed me to pull up TBE side-by-side with my test blog, and see exactly what wasn't translating correctly from Classic Blogger to New Blogger. What had taken months, was finished in the two weeks of Christmas break (outside of when i was playing Guitar Hero III ... but that's another story).

yes, ngục giới has frozen over

So what you see is TBE with a totally new engine. Everything is in layouts, giving me greater flexibility. Freshtags is still around because many of my old posts are in that format, although I imagine eventually it will be phased out. There's lots of stuff in my sidebar, so everything "[+/-]" is expandable if you click on it.

I expect there will be a few bugs here and there. I haven't tackled comments at all, so you'll probably be wisked away to that ubiquitous, ugly blogger comment page if you wish to leave one. Otherwise, I expect it to drive well. Give it a test spin, and tell me what you think!

Where are my Pictures?

The other day I checked my photos on Yahoo photos and was greeted with this sight:

I'm not a fan of Yahoo!, to be honest, but I was bummed. I do like Yahoo! Photos. Among other things, it was the one free photo host I had that let me make as many albums as I wanted. As you can tell from the screenshot above, Yahoo wants me to move to Flickr (because it owns Flickr), and I almost did it reflexively, since I've had a Flickr account for years (at least 2 B.Y. -- before Yahoo). However, I stopped myself, since I had no clue what the other three suggested photo sites were, and this is my discovery.

Looking always to do things my own way, I immediately jumped to #2 and was horrified that I would have to download each photo one by one... I don't know how most people only have 20 photos or less, but I can assure you, I am NOT downloading my hundreds of photos one ... by ... one ... I'm stupid, but not that stupid.

So I moved to the automated services. I started with the least familiar -- Shutterfly.



The sign up was quick and painless. I was then greeted with the ability to start my own album or use Shutterfly's stock photos to make a demo album. They must understand that people like to test drive first. Already racking up the points. I picked the demo pictures, and was greeted with the first picture. Overall the layout is nice and crisp. Circle 1 shows your thumbnail options: small, medium, large. Large is the only option with names below. Small is REALLY small.

Working in Shutterfly allows quick movement between albums and pictures. You can see in circle 2, that you can fix red-eye and make a slideshow. Making another album was as simple as pushing a button (picture 2), and should you be inclined to buy prints of your photos through Shutterfly (the real reason why it exists), the ubiquitous "Cart" button is always at the top. The ordering is pretty straight forward -- you just use drop-down boxes to select the # of each size photo you want. You can either have the prints mailed to you, or you can pick them up at the nearest Target.

However, when looking at my photos, Shutterfly started to lose points. As you can see in the third picture, circle 1, Shutterfly has an easy to use system of doctoring photos. Good! But it doesn't allow you to look at your photos in any greater detail than you see the dog now. No zoom. No tagging of photos for searching. Limited metadata. Limited points in my book.

I left Shutterfly unimpressed. It failed at the most important of all functions--letting me see my photos. If I just want to upload and print them, I'll just go straight to Target's photo page.

Next on the list was Snapfish. Again, the sign up was easy, eerily similar to Shutterfly. In fact, almost everything was eerily similar.



As you can see from circle 1, its main purpose is also to make you print your photos. They did, however, put the slideshow button central to the webpage, which I think is better, seeing how most people using this service will want their stuff simple, and that's as simple as it gets. However, you really can't do anything with the thumbnails (circle 3), and viewing the photos is exactly the same as Shutterfly. Overall, I'd go with Shutterfly, but in reality I think they are just twins separated at birth.

Unimpressed with Snapfish, and compounded with previous experience of seeing Photobucket slideshows on Facebook pages, I entered Photobucket with very low expectations. Immediately I was hit with advertisements. Aaagghhh, busy webpage....my google-fied mindset cannot process such business. I like my webpages neat and uncluttered, definitely not filled with grinning faces and useless words that my eyes just skim over.

This, however, is the theme of Photobucket. Advertise everything. If these photo hosting sites were cars, Photobucket would be in Nascar. Definitely geared to the mindless preteen/myspace generation.



Immediately Photobucket lost more points by asking me for my cell phone number.



If I don't give this to every person I know, why would I give it to some random website? I seriously almost stopped there, and if it wasn't for my blogging mindset, I would have. However, I pressed on, and am happy to say, you can leave it blank (which I did).

After clearing that major hurdle, I was actually impressed with its service. Although it started with negative points after the cell phone fiasco, it quickly racked them up. Photobucket is a true photo hosting site. It lets you mess with your photos, share your photos, turn them into soup if you want to. Because of this, it deals with bandwidth and storage issues (picture), so it allows you to choose how you store your photos. It is also the first site I encounter with tiered access: free and paid.

I had to upload my own files (no gimme demos), so I used the demos that come with Windows XP. Immediately I noticed three things (picture):

1. The photos show up somewhat unnaturally at the bottom of the page.
2. It is quite easy to edit data (like titles) in the photos.
3. It gives you the url, img code, and embed link right up front -- a great boon for bloggers.

When you click on a photo, you have a nice clean desktop to work with (picture).

1. Photobucket allows you to see the full size (that you chose to save on their server) photo with a click of the button.
2. In addition to the REAL photo editing and hosting functionality, it still allows you to give them money by printing your photos.
3. Conveniently, the url, img, and embed code is situated unobtrusively in the bottom corner of the page while editing.
4. For true photography junkies, it gives you some metadata to work with.

Photobucket's coup de grace is it's ability to "Remix," or make a movie (picture). Partnering with Adobe, it allows users to drag video clips and photos to make a collage of sorts -- perfect for weddings where we all sigh at the pics and videos of the bride and groom when they're three. The system is easy to use (drag and drop), intuitive, and FREE. The only setback is the limited space given to movie hosting.

Finally, you can upgrade to Pro for $25 (picture), but more on that later.

Next came Flickr, the home team. Flickr's signup is doubly easy, because it's also Yahoo's sign up. If you have a Yahoo acct because of email, Yahoo360, etc., then you can use the same here. Upon entering, the front page is a little crowded, but not like Photobucket. It also has minimal advertising, while most of Photobucket's crowd was advertising.



Moving to my photos, you can see both the good and the bad right away. The good is the layout. Whereas Photobucket put the photos at the bottom of the page, Flickr has them right there for you to peruse. You can also change the layout if you want. The bad is that you only get three albums in the free version of Flickr. It too is a tiered service.

1. The slideshow button is clearly but unobtrusively placed (but no Remix!).
2. Albums are clearly labeled and easy to use, if you have enough.

Flickr's photo editing/viewing setup is great, mostly due to it's photographer base that made it popular before Yahoo dumbed it down. Looking at your photo (this is one I took of a noonday ceremony at the Cao Dai temple in Tay Ninh) you can see, (picture)

1. Flickr makes it easy to see all sizes, blog your photo, or order prints. If you order prints, you do it through a company called Qoop, which coincidentally, is the company used by Photobucket.
2. Tags make Flickr. By tagging your photo, you determine how people find it through searches.
3. Also due to its photographer background, Flickr gives you all the gory details of the pictures.

When you look at the other sizes of a photo, Flickr takes you to another page. This is kinda frustrating. I'm so used to javascript functionality that I'd like to see the page think, and then deliver it to me, instead of loading a whole new webpage. What Flickr does right is give you options. You can easily select sizes, and if you pay for the upgraded service you can have the "original" size option available (picture).

In addition, Flickr clearly gives you the url, img, and embed info necessary to be a good blogger. One issue I have with their "community guidelines" is that my use of lightbox 2.0 doesn't mesh perfectly with Flickr's rules. All of this is extra info I've gained over years of use.

Finally, Flickr's pro account also costs $25 a year (picture 1, picture 2).

With all this site hopping, I got thinking. Yahoo left off one other BIG photo hosting site, and coincidentally, it's biggest competitor: Picasaweb by Google.

So, I thought, why not try it out too? How does it compare to Photobucket and Flickr, which clearly cleaned the clocks of Snapfish and Shutterfly?

Like Flickr, Picasa's sign in is easy and linked. Everything in the google universe is accessible. Since I am blogging on Blogger, I already have an account with Picasa, because that is the default host for my blog's photos.



Looking at my blog's album, it is immediately apparent that Picasa follows Google's lust for all things minimalistic and pastel. The thumbnails' sizes are easily changed and laid out for you in a simple manner. Picasa also offers photo mapping and organization that other services do not -- basically you put a pin on a map where the pic is from so people can look at the map and browse photos from that area.

When looking at a photo, Picasa doesn't give you the size options that Flickr does, but it's pretty comparable to Photobucket. Even when you zoom, you might not always get the original size, if it's a big photo (picture).

1. It does give you all the photo metadata like Flickr does.
2. It also makes the url, img, and embed info easy to find and unobtrusive like both Flickr and Photobucket. In fact, maybe a little better, because you can change the size of the picture coded quickly through a drop down menu below the code.

Interestingly, if you choose to print your photo, Picasa gives you the option of using Shutterfly...so we come full circle! (picture)

Another thing Picasa offers is Picasa for your computer, which organizes all your photos and basically acts like a mini Adobe photoshop, streamlining your photo organization and uploading. Photobucket has something similar in beta. Flickr doesn't have that, but does have some neat, light-weight uploading tools for your computer (and if you use Firefox, you might like Flock--which is a Firefox based browser that streamlines multimedia use, and has built in Flickr uploading capability).

And of course, Picasaweb is a tiered service, offering a pro acct starting at $25 (picture).

"Wait, wait, wait!" you say. "$25!" Yes, Photobucket, Flickr, and Picasaweb all offer more bang for your buck. "How much," you ask? This much:

So in the end, what am I to do? Clearly, Snapfish and Shutterfly are inferior products. Photobucket is better than Flickr for the free tier because it gives me unlimited albums, but is worse than Flickr because it has those stupid ads. Picasaweb is probably the best for a free tier, but Yahoo didn't give me that option, so I'd have to download every photo one by one, and then upload them to Picasaweb. If I pay money, I think Flickr is hands down the best.

So, do I go with Picasaweb and downloading, so I stay free?
Or do I go with Photobucket because no downloading and free?
Or do I go with Flickr because no downloading, and $25/year gives me great stuff?

What do you think?

How News Travels About Periods

What have I done??

Honestly, I never expected this would happen. All I did was write a short comment on a post about the new birth control pill that stops menstruation, and I released a firestorm. If I had known my comment would be picked apart with a microscope, I might have elaborated my position more, clarified some sentences, etc. But now it's generally lost in the conflagration.

One post here, a comment there, causes another post somewhere else, and more comments

This is what happened, and I think it's incredibly interesting as a example of how the blogosphere undulates--if I can use that word--when something is added.

First, Apoorva Mandavilli wrote about the new pill, Lybrel, at Spoonful of Medicine.

This got me thinking about the issue, and I read the articles the post linked to. I thought that was the end of it.

Second, Ann Althouse heard the news and posted a short question on her blog.

Is there some deep psychological/sociological/feminist angle to this story or is it obvious that everyone should obviously want to avoid something that's so inconvenient and annoying and that the only serious question is whether the pill is safe?

Well, maybe it didn't start with me, it started with her assertion that "the only serious question is whether the pill is safe?" (emphasis added). One commenter disagreed with the absolute nature of her question, and replied,

menstruation, like childbirth, is just part of being a woman. If another woman would want to escape it, then sure, she should go for it. But, not being punny, it just wouldn't feel right to sidestep it.

This got Eugene posting on The Volokh Conspiracy. He said,

Again, concerns about long-term health effects are quite sensible. But I don't see any justification for the feeling that it's not "right to sidestep" something that's "part of being a woman." I suppose it could be some esthetic judgment that argument won't much drive; but setting aside esthetics, why on earth should we want to accept natural but painful or unpleasant things?

At this point I jumped in. The Volokh Conspiracy gets so many comments, that I didn't think much about mine--subconsciously figured it would be lost in the proverbial sea, so to speak. I said,

This is an example of how much medicine is an ART and a science. Ultimately, pills treat symptoms and change chemicals that produce a different state of being--but the ideal state of being differs from person to person.

It's been amazing seeing my wife and other women deal with her first pregnancy. Immediately upon announcing to the world she's pregnant, my wife was part of the "in crowd." Every mother--whether she knew my wife well or not--could smile and talk about morning sickness, or finding out the baby's gender, or feeling bloated, etc.

So, it is not aesthetic. Humanity derives meaning from shared experiences, and deleting one of the most universal and central of all female experiences can subtract perceived meaning from people's lives. In that regard it is very important.

As a soon-to-be-doctor, I would never recommend such birth control without bringing up and discussing the social and emotional ramifications in addition to the physiological ones.

Apoorva Mandavilli over at Nature's Spoonful of Medicine posted a little on it about two weeks ago.

The blog post links to Mandavilli's good article on pros and cons in Women's Health. Check it out too.

The other reason I felt this comment wouldn't be noticed, is because I didn't feel I said anything too inflammatory. It turns out I was wrong on two counts.

I figured people were being too literal and misunderstanding my point when a commenter, UVAgirl, wrote,

From the doctor, I get a condescending lecture that I'm missing out on the experience of being a woman if I choose to take this pill.

Then, Eugene Volokh posted a response post, quoting my analogy to pregnancy and saying,

Humanity does derive meaning from some shared experiences — but not all. Shared experience that you bond over: pregnancy. Shared experiences that you don't bond over: hangnails, nearsightedness, tooth decay.

...But let's hear from some people who actually menstruate, and have been pregnant. When you menstruate, do you feel that you're part of the "in crowd"? If you chose to stop -- not because of menopause, which is a marker of age and of lost fertility, but voluntarily and reversibly -- would you feel "out"? Do you smile and talk to your friends about the cramps, the mood swings, and the like? Do you feel you derive meaning from the fact that you share menstruation as an experience with other women? Would you feel meaning subtracted if you stopped menstruating, because menstruation is so "central" a "female experience[]"? Do you find menstruation to be similar to pregnancy in any emotionally positive way?

Eugene posted a comment later where he defended his second post by saying,

When someone says "menstruation and pregnancy are analogous, and pregnancy is A, B, and C," it seems sensible to explore the analogy by asking whether menstruation is A, B, and C, too.

Is it that people didn't connect that my questions were just quotes from Triet's comment, aimed at showing that Triet's analogy was unsound?

Well, obviously no analogy is perfect. And yes, you can sit and look at why the analogy might not work, but that's only half the issue--you should also look at why the analogy might work too. Some of the comments on the first post had basically agreed with me, but things changed. Taking just this quote, people became very polarized about whether or not you can derive meaning from a period. Now I sit here and wonder if the rapidity and severity of the response doesn't prove my point.

Có tật giật mình.

But that's not the end. Ann Bartow from Feminist Law Professors remarked on her blog that he needed to be educated. Someone defended him at Is That Legal? by saying,

Some guy said something kinda stupid, and Volokh replied: "Oh, really? Lets ask actual women about menstruation. So, women, how about it? Is it a life affirming shared cultural experience?"

That's an entirely reasonable response.

So now, I've said "stupid" things, according to someone I'll never know. But that's not all people said. In the comment section to the second post, many women agreed with me, like the first one that said

Is it a bonding experience? Sure; it can be. Especially if you live with the women in question, because then you all get cramps together.

and of course other's disagreed

A bonding experience? Puhleeze. Look men, would you want to spend five or six days every month with blood leaking from your body, sometimes coming on with little warning, and potentially putting a very embarrassing stain on your business suit?

All I did was write a short comment ...but now it's ... lost in the conflagration

Unfortunately, as often happens in comment threads (see Xanghe's post on Breeder's of Hate), the discourse tends towards the extremes instead of answering the question in a logical and amicable way. I noticed that people had now totally missed the point of Lybrel--to offer a way for women to take birth control without monthly periods, but that it still comes with it's own issues (one of which is random bleeding). Everyone is pontificating on how many periods are normal, etc. Another commenter, Falafalafocus, summed it up greatly, saying,

I must say, this topic is like an incredibly large automobile collision. I can do nothing to help it along and there are parts that make me want to run and hide, but I find myself strangly [sic] fascinated by the discussion nonetheless.

Since it was my comment that caused the "automobile collision," I felt obligated to respond and clarify. On the subject of bonding, I said,

I believe it does derive meaning from all shared experiences, good or bad. Some may play a larger and more central role in a person's life, and the composite of experiences that people share changes from relationship to relationship, but we bond over the bad and the good, the trivial and the important.

Haven't we all complained off the cuff about stubbing our toe or having a hang-nail and someone else said "yeah, that sucks." Such a small and arguably insignificant thing has demonstrated another level of understanding between the two people involved.

And shared bonds that we may not want to endure still provide meaning to our lives. When my lung collapsed spontaneously as a high school student, I was introduced serendipitously to a girl in Minnesota who had the same thing. We became pen-pals and friends, bonding on many levels including the pain we suffered dealing with a collapsed lung. In addition to the bonding, I also gained a little more "meaning" to my life by realizing that I would be dead if not for some modern machines.

And on my last sentence which caused such consternation, I said,

This is not because women should be persuaded out of this pill--no, not at all!--but that all women should be advised of the physiological changes and risks taking the pill entails, as well as the lifestyle changes (including possible absence of monthly menstruation), so that they can decide with their doctor if taking the pill is in their best interest for their health, lifestyle, and vision of who they are.

Another commenter, JM Hanes, totally misunderstood how humanity might derive meaning from common experiences and yet people can derive individually different meanings from experiences. Well, I'm going to use another analogy--which we all know are never perfect--that I think can illustrate the premise.

When you learn about bacteria, there are many kinds. One for example, is Escherichia coli. E. coli is familiar to us because we get sick from it, typically if we eat an undercooked hamburger. But not all E. coli's are the same. In fact, there are broad categories of E. coli--ones that cause watery diarrhea, ones that cause bloody diarrhea, etc. And when you look even closer at one type (say, Enterohemorrhagic E. Coli, or EHEC, that causes bloody diarrhea) you will see numerous variations in its genetic code that gives attributes, such as increased susceptibility or protection from antibiotics.

So also is humanity. We may gain meaning from shared experiences, but yet have differences. On a microscopic scale we may seem incredibly different from each other, espeically if just one issue, like menstruation, is looked at. But when we step back and look at the aggregate of our experiences, we start to have more and more in common.

JM Hanes also said this about my last assertion to talk with the patient about all the consequences of a pill:

I'll chalk up the unwitting condescension here to youth, and suggest that you pay your future patients the courtesy of keeping your ruminations on the subtractive nature and social raminfications of the decision at issue to yourself! There is simply no way you can inject questions about the symbolic, psychological, and social affects of womanliness without adding gratuitous, if not specious, judgmental freight to a decision which, per this discussion, women are perfectly capable of sorting out as they, themselves, see fit.

to which I responded,

And I'm sorry you groaned over my last comment, but you must have missed the point. How could I bring up any birth control pill without discussing the social and emotional ramifications with a patient? I have been taught repeatedly to do that in medical school and I believe it is a correct principle. If a woman came in wanting birth control, I am going to talk to her about ramifications such as:

1. Social -- do you know this birth control causes random spotting and bleeding? If your job or lifestyle puts you in situations where this might be inconvenient, then I might recommend a different pill.
2. Emotional -- do you feel a period is a part of being a woman you don't want to give up? If yes, then obviously I'm going to suggest a typical estrogen+progesterone pill. If no, then the new one might be right for her.
3. Physiological -- as with all progesterone+estrogen pills, this one carries with it an increased risk of blood clots, heart attacks and strokes. Typically estrogen+progesterone pills do not carry the increased risk of cancer that progesterone only pills carry.

Such a discourse in no way dictates condescendingly to a woman what pill she should take, but gives her the full knowledge so she can make an informed decision about what is best for her life.

Oh, but that's not the end. For the furvor caused not only my first post on menstruation, and this second post, but a third post on The Volokh Conspiracy, those posts on Feminist Law Professors and Is That Legal?, and a post on Conglomerate by Christine Hurt. It is refreshing for a couple reasons.

1. It is a real thoughtful response to his second post's questions, which the other commenters didn't do, and
2. It agrees with me, which is very nice since my first comment got picked apart.

She says, in part,

1. Yes, pregnancy and childbirth make women part of a very large club whose members have something very important in common. Consider it like sports for men, or Dungeons and Dragons. Female culture doesn't have a common theme that most girls' youth revolves around that joins generations of women together other than fertility and childbirth. I remember finally having something in common with my grandma when I got pregnant. Menstruation is similar. When girls begin to menstruate, they do join sort of a club, but it's much more underground. Once girls begin to menstruate at school, their other friends want to also. No one wants to be left out of this growing up thing, obviously.

2. Menstruation might be more of a bonding thing in this country if the culture were different. In the U.S., our culture is one of sanitizing and deodorizing must bodily functions. We shave a lot, bathe a lot, shampoo a lot, powder and perfume a lot, etc. Menstruation runs against that. So to some extent, especially among young girls, menstruation is embarrassing. The onset of menses also comes when girls are the most self-conscious they will ever be, adding to the secrecy and embarrassment. I'm not sure it has to be that way, though.

It is a great post, so please click on the link and read the whole thing.

Ultimately, I take you through this journey partly because I'm very interested in how YOU feel about the new pill and menstruation, but more because I'm fascinated by how discussion travels in waves around the blogosphere. One post here, a comment there, causes another post somewhere else, and more comments. Eventually people like me are reading blogs I would never have before (like Feminist Law Professors or Conglomerate) and different types of people are mingling. I'm sure some sociologists far smarter than I will or have already dissected this phenomenon and shed some light on it.

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The First Yahoo 360 Blog Highlight: Susan

While in Vietnam I met many people who touched my life forever. Many of my students taught me almost as much (or more) as I taught them. For good reason, this girl's blog is my first blog to highlight. She is one of the students I grew closest to, possibly because we have such similar dreams.

And, she's only 15. Man, I wish I was so forward thinking when I was 15.

Her post on February 25 highlights the direction I desire Vietnamese blogging to go. It's title: "Top 10. Good or Bad." In it she points out some very salient things. The blog is in Vietnamese, and I won't attempt to translate it, but I will paraphrase some things. She says

Viet Nam dung thu nhi the gioi ve san xuat lua gao. Dieu nay di nhien la tot, no chung to rang nuoc ta co nen nong nghiep vung chac.

...Viet Nam dung trong 10 nuoc tren the gioi ve viec an hoi lo nhieu nhat. Good or bad?"

She, like many of the youth in Vietnam, goes on to express displeasure in the bribery and corruption rampant in Vietnam because they have such pride and patriotism. Her blog is well written, and in her short time blogging, has covered a variety of topics personal to her.

My hope is that people -- especially China -- will stand up and take notice. These youth like Susan are proving that you don't have to keep your people in the dark. Vietnam has taken the lead in Southeast Asia by being open about corruption within and without the government, and trying to clean it up. It's also let people discuss it. The result is the realization that Vietnam has succeeded where China has failed. The Vietnamese youth can be incredibly patriotic and loyal to Vietnam, while expressing displeasure about something specific in the system. They are not mutually exclusive.

Her most recent post is called "Cay Tao." It's a Vietnamese translation of the parable of the child and the apple tree. I don't remember who first wrote it. You know the one--child eats apples, young man sells apples, adult cuts down tree, elderly man sits on stump--to teach us about serving. It's interesting to see her Vietnamese take on it's meaning.

Cay tao ay chinh la hien than cua cha me chung ta. ...

So, check out Susan's blog.

The New Generation of Viet Bloggers: Yahoo 360

Since the inception of the Bleeding Ear, we have joined with others in looking for Vietnamese blogs. Previously, I listed a couple blogs I found off of Noodlepie, and some reasons why I wished blogging among the Vietnamese would blossom.

How Yahoo became the exclusive purveyor of chatting in Vietnam, I don't know

My first foray into the "Vietblogosphere" found a wide variety of expat blogs but only a few blogs written by Viets.

Yet over the last year, things have started to change. I'm not sure how noticeable this is from America, but I have seen it personally. You see, Yahoo and Google get a lot of flak for bowing to communists and censoring search results--as well they should. But Vietnam is showing China that things can be done differently. The internet is slowly opening--not closing--in Vietnam, and the presence of Yahoo and Google, if neutered, has had profound blessings.

What blessings?? Well, Vietnamese youth waste hours a day chatting on Yahoo messenger. My first day as an English teacher in Vietnam was a lesson in the power of Yahoo. It was in Go Vap district, in Ho Chi Minh City, with VATC--Vietnamese American Training College. I arrived to the skinny, three-story concrete building as the sun was setting, and walked inside the front doors, found the manager, and received my lesson materials. After a quick planning session, I was escorted to my first class--PET3. PET classes are pre-teenage classes. My class was full of 25 boys and girls all about 12-14 years old, with moderate English skill.

These pages mix the allure of Myspace with the chatting of Yahoo Messenger

My teaching was nothing memorable that first day, with most of it spent answering personal questions from the students. But every class has a ten minute break, and when the bell rang, my class emptied so fast, I almost believed the previous 45 minutes had been a dream.

Eager to find out where my students were running to, I walked downstairs. I passed one or two talking on the staircase. Then I reached the first floor and found the computer room. Every VATC has a room for students' use that contains about 10 computers. This room was packed--standing room only--with about three students per computer. Every student was doing two things--playing flash games and chatting on Yahoo.

How Yahoo became the exclusive purveyor of chatting in Vietnam, I don't know. But unlike America, where everyone is broken into AIM, Yahoo, GoogleTalk, and MSN circles, there is only one large circle in Vietnam--Yahoo. Children and teenagers squeeze every minute they can chatting with friends--10 minutes here, 20 minutes there, an hour before school here, an hour at night before bed there. Internet cafes are chalk full of them at almost all hours of the day, and it has become a nearly unregulated way of mass communication and relationship building.

At that moment, seeing all those students chatting, I wondered if they would ever jump to blogging. They were so close--talking to friends about school, what to do the next day, the game they're playing--all over the internet. I shouldn't have wondered.

Thanks again to Yahoo comes the next generation of Vietnamese youth. Yahoo 360 has finally taken off. I have seen most of my chatting students set up personal Yahoo 360 pages within the last year. These pages mix the allure of Myspace with the chatting of Yahoo Messenger. You have a home page where you see new blog posts or messages from friends in your network, a blog page, and picture albums like Myspace.

My Yahoo 360 page

All of this thinking about Vietnamese blogging and Yahoo 360 happened when I read a student's post that came nearest to an American blog post that I have ever seen. Over the next couple weeks I hope to highlight her and some of my other students' pages because they are the next generation--no, the first true generation--of Vietnamese bloggers. As they get used to writing their feelings online, I think it will be wonderful to follow their maturity, and see how their discussions of weather and music turn to school and love and even politics.

It's an exciting time to be growing up in Vietnam. Yahoo 360 just adds another dimension to that statement.

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Engine Troubles ... Blogger Style

Now that I have a little free time, I'm trying to bring this blog into the 21st century. Or how should I say, bring this blog into the year 2007.

Blogger has gone and revamped everything, and while this is old news for most everybody, it's new to me because I've had my head stuck in a book for the last billion years (it feels like).

Now, I love my layout. TBE version 2.0. I worked long and hard with my meager HTML skills to put that together...and I mean meager skills. But I feel the need to be on the new platform--give in to the man, so to speak. I have some great additions to my blog, things under the hood, like my categories and such, that require user scripts through greasemonkey on firefox for optimal use.

I love greasemonkey, and everything about it, but there is one problem: my new life at medical school has me using many different computers throughout the day. Most are not my own (school labs and such), meaning they do not run greasemonkey, or often firefox at all. That leaves me a list of things to fix when I get home--provided I post at school--or not do at all.

A switch to the new blogger would smooth some of the multiple computer issues, but i fear I don't have the talent or time to transfer my design to the new system.

Grrrr...engine troubles again. Can anyone point me in the direction of a really good tutorial or to that explains the new layout system, writing for it, or transfering designs to it (not counting actual blogger pages, seeing as how I've read all them)? I could really use pics. Blogger gives code and some explanations, but i like to see pics to tie with the code.

Welcome

Today marks a new day in world history. After many moons of ruminating, I have a blog. It will only stop when I cease to hear about the actions of such a crazy and sad world. Until then, my ears bleed.

About The Bleeding Ear

last update: 19 June 2006

The Bleeding Ear (or TBE as we affectionately call it) is a blog that deals with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (thanks, John Locke). It is the ramblings, ruminations, ponderances, and pontifications by Triet on just about anything. Mainly, TBE covers politics and current events, both at home and abroad, with special attention paid to Vietnam and Southeast Asia. It also throws in a little sports, rye looks at society and its foibles, and personal stuff. Enjoy!

Who is Triet?

The always enigmatic author has this as his blogger profile:

I am a Texas boy with big aspirations (fitting?). I have a B.S. in Microbiology and History, with about 6 years of experience working in university research labs. Politically I consider myself an independent. I'm libertarian economically, with a conservative moral streak, but not enough to join the "religious right." I'm interested in morally sticky issues, tropical diseases, sports, and international affairs -- especially Southeast Asia. I speak English and Vietnamese.

Other pertinent posts about him can be found:

history:

• Who will win the RACE?
• Vietnamese English Class

wife:

• The Girl in the Library
• Valentines Day

Why "The Bleeding Ear"?

The history of the name, The Bleeding Ear, is a long and sordid tale. Actually, it's pretty short and boring. One day, two college students at Brigham Young University were blowing off steam before big exams in the library. Somehow, they both convinced their wives to let them put off studies and rant. So, being two highly intelligent young men, they decided to rebel against the conservative, myopic student body that roamed the campus like zombies and its representative, the school newspaper, The Daily Universe, by creating a competing newspaper. This newspaper was to be called "The Bleeding Ear," because all the stupid things that they had heard come out of BYU students mouths were so dumb, so stultifying, so "superlative" (thanks Steve) that it hurt.

The front page held a disclaimer and manifesto under the title which read this:

The Bleeding Ear
A military style journal for Zoobies

Disclaimer:

• if you are Abercrombie, or his gay buddy Fitch, this is not for you.
• If you own a clean flix membership, this is not for you.
• If you styled your hair, like you just took off a motorcycle helmet, this is not for you.
• Not very many animals have been hurt in the making of this journal (and they weren’t cute furry ones anyways).
• All persons, places, and events mentioned hereafter DO have direct reference to actual persons, places and events, and are intended as such.

The Bleeding Ear Manifesto:

We’re mad as HBLL and we’re not going to take it any more. When in the course of human history, we hold these truths to be self evident, that some mormons are freaking retarded and “Oh my Heck!” they deserve to be made fun of. We hereby proclaim ourselves judges, jury, biased liberal media moguls and verbal executioners of such social criminals. "Come on! ye prosecutors! ye false swearers! All hell, boil over! Ye burning mountains, roll down your lava! for I will come out on top at last.” –Joseph Smith, (History of the Church, Vol. 6, p. 408).

Although this bastion of liberal thought, social activism and sharp wit never made it to print, the beginning of this blog brought another, cheaper, easier avenue to vent, and there was only one logical choice for a name: The Bleeding Ear.

Why do you blog?

One day a friend of mine, MGO, (found at this blog) related something interesting he read on a blog.

"A blog?? What's a blog?" I asked.

"Actually, I spend about one or two hours a day reading blogs and keeping up with the news," he replied.

From there ensued a long conversation about the "blogosphere," Volokh Conspiracy, Instapundit, and monkeys. Well, maybe not the monkeys ... my memory is a bit fuzzy. However, the seed was planted. Slowly, my curiosity won me over, and I started to read them too. Since time immemorial I had stayed up late at night, had multi-hour conversations, debates, and general discussions with my friends about life, current events, politics, and all things interesting. It's just what my group of friends did for fun.

Eventually, the conversations started to be interjected with comments like "hey, you should start a blog" or "hey, i think this would be interesting as a blog." Pretty soon we were all entertaining ideas of blogging, and in January 2005, MGO and I entered the blogosphere, forever changing the course of human history.

Since then, it has become a convenient forum for learning from others, sharing thoughts and feelings, and generally relieving stress by ranting about the idiocies of the world. It has greatly improved my marriage, says my wife, because she doesn't have to hear it anymore! And, ultimately, I find it fun.

Categories:

• TheBleedingEar
• wife
• history
• blog
• Texas