Plastic and Stainless Steel Hypoallergenic Stud Earrings

plastic and stainless steel

Before I only had plastic, but now I have both plastic and stainless steel which is hypoallergenic.  I can say with certainty that they are hypoallergenic because I have worn them for weeks with no problems.  I always test the earrings on my own ears for a day, a few days or until I can’t wear them anymore due to my allergies and I haven’t had any reaction or symptoms of allergies from these metal stems.

The only issue with the hypoallergenic stainless steel studs that I have is that the rubber backings don’t stay on as well as they stay on the rubber stems. They came with rubber, not metal backings, so I don’t have metal backings to go with them. I have been looking for metal backings, but I don’t have any guarantee they will be hypoallergenic. The best bet for a customer is if you have a pair of earrings that you know the backings are hypoallergenic, use those. I love the stainless steel studs, I just don’t want to use them out of fear of losing them if the rubber backings come out. I always suggest to people to buy the plastic ones because the rubber backings hug the plastic stem, so there isn’t a risk of them falling off on their own.

My main reason for wanting to make these earrings was so I could make earrings for myself because earrings are expensive and I can’t always afford them.  Plus I wanted to wear something that I made.  I now have a huge selection of earrings and that is awesome for me lol.  If I get bored with what color I am wearing, I can always make myself another color.  Of course they aren’t sparkly, but I don’t really need them to be.

So if you happen to be looking for a pair of earrings, come to my shop on Etsy called GayNerd and I will hook you up with some at great prices.  Only $5 a pair for the studs. I do have some listings that offer a discount if you buy more than 1 pair, and I also have coupons every month. I love them, so I know you will too.

SD card unexpectedly removed…

SD card unexpectedly removed

Has anyone ever seen this issue before?  If you have an Android phone and a SanDisk memory card, you probably have.

So this is my problem today, well, last night anyway.  It was 8 p.m. and I was logging into The Sims FreePlay to send my 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. Sims to work.  As it was starting to load, it crashed to the home screen and I see this message “SD card unexpectedly removed.”  What the…?

I rebooted the phone and tried to load the game and got this message again, and again, and again.  I Googled the problem and read in a few forums that my microSD card is most likely no good and that I would need to buy a new one.  Well, I bought this card in January, how could it be bad after only 5 months?

One of my concerns was that I might have lost all of my pictures, because I never backed any of them up.  Some of them have automatically been privately synced onto Facebook, but not all of them, so if I lost all of my other images, I was going to be very disappointed.  I went into the pictures and they all had that triangle with the explanation point.  FRAK!  I rebooted the phone and they were all there, but then they disappeared… they came back and I was able to upload everything album by album onto Google Drive.  WHEW!

So another one of my concerns was that I haven’t backed up the Sims FreePlay in a few days, so all of the work that I have done will disappear and I will have to continue from where I left off the last time I backed it up to the cloud, which backs it up on Facebook.  Fortunately the game loaded last night and I was able to do a backup, but then this morning I got the “SD card unexpectedly removed” issue again, so I knew that I wasn’t out of the woods just yet.

This morning I went into the app management screen and saw that all of the apps on the microSD card were showing their icons, except for The Sims FreePlay.  Knowing that it was backed up on Facebook, I uninstalled the game and tried to reinstall it.  The first attempt wasn’t successful because it told me that it couldn’t install it, but then I tried it again and it worked.  I was able to send my 10 a.m. Sims to work on time.

I really don’t care if I have to buy a new microSD card, that is unimportant, what is most important to me is that I don’t lose my pictures, and I haven’t so I’m okay with it.  I only paid $20 for it which was a good price considering the Best Buy Mobile store at the mall was charging $35 for the PNY 32GB microSD card and $70 for the SanDisk 32GB microSD cards.  That is a lot of money.  Too much for my blood.

Last night after I backed up all of my pictures on Google Drive, I went through my apps and uninstalled a bunch that I never used that were on the microSD card.  I don’t know how many apps I uninstalled, but it was a lot.  I’ve been messing around with it after I reinstalled The Sims FreePlay today, and after rebooting it a couple of times found that one app is showing up weird in the App Management screen, so I uninstalled it.  I moved a lot of apps to the phone so that I don’t lose the data so those are fine.

Everything seems to be okay with The Sims FreePlay now after I have rebooted the phone and tried to go into the game.  I’m sure I don’t even have to buy a new card, but just in case I do, I will be very careful to back everything up.  Like if I take a picture, I will back it up with Google Drive and if I play The Sims FreePlay, I will upload my data to the cloud just to make sure I don’t lose any progress.  If I have to buy a new microSD card then no problem, but for now I don’t think I have to worry about it.

Have you had these same issues?  If so, what was your solution?  Enquiring minds want to know!

I’m not a one trick pony after all

circle brick and wall

I have been playing around with my lanyard (or gimp) material a lot over the last week.  I thought there were only 2 styles, the square and the round.  Well, a friend told me on Facebook to try the triangle pattern which uses 3 colors.  I never even knew it was possible to use not just 3 colors, but only 3 strands.  She sent me to “Laneyards” on YouTube and I’ve been watching a lot of his videos and have discovered so many different patterns that I never even knew existed until now.

So I put all of the images on my crafts page in the Lanyard Keychains section.  I made some keychains with the Mega Lace, I made a pretzel, I made a long wall stitch with the Mega Lace, there are some imperfections in it because I had to add more of the clear gimp because I didn’t have enough, but it doesn’t matter because it was just for practice.  Then today I just added the ones you see in this post.  The one on the bottom is the brick stitch in a circular pattern and the one above that is the wall stitch in a circular pattern.  Of course they were just practice.  They are small because I used scrap gimp to make them.  I’m out of all of my gimp now so if I want to make more, I’ll have to take a trip to Michael’s, which I will do tomorrow.

I never knew I had it in me.  I really think these are so cool.  Of course, I don’t know what I’m going to do with any of them lol.  My next trick will be a rainbow wall in a circular pattern.  I honestly don’t know how it’s going to turn out, but I’m going to try it anyway.

I am also going to make many awareness ribbons for many causes that I support.  There are too many to list, and most likely I will have a keychain of only cause ribbons that I won’t be able to keep on my keychain, because if I did, they’d never fit in my pocket lol.  Of course I can put one on my keychain at a time during that awareness month.  Either way, I’m going to be very busy making lots of ribbons with the simple circular stitch, bending it to make a circle, then attaching it to the other side to make it into a ribbon, then continuing with a few more stitches to finish it off.

My hands seem to be doing fine with the stretching and pulling of the gimp.  I had to stop crocheting after 20+ years because of my carpal tunnel syndrome, so perhaps if I can make these keychains, I might be able to crochet again.  Maybe… we’ll see.

My 50lb Weight Loss – Before and After Pictures

weight loss before and after 50lbs

So yesterday was what I consider to be a milestone.  I weighed in at 212.6lbs which brings my weight loss total down to 50.4lbs lost since January 5th 2013.  So yeah, I feel like bragging lol.

Last night we went to a local event where a woman named Erin Davies is driving cross-country to show her documentary called FagBug and talk about her experiences with vandalism and homophobia and to raise awareness on the subject with her car called the “fagbug.”  When I heard she was coming, I knew I had to go because I wanted to see the car and have my picture taken with it.  And since it would be the first picture of me with 50lbs weight loss, I thought it would work as a great sort of after picture, even though I’m not finished with my journey.

Anyway, so let me give you a rundown of the images you see above.  Top left was from Christmas 2004.  I am actually not positive what my weight was back then, but I’m pretty sure it was 230 give or take.

The second picture on the top is a picture that was taken at Hearst Castle in Colorado in 2005.  It is also the picture that I used as my author picture since it was the best picture I have ever taken.  I hate taking my picture as a fat guy, but love pictures when I’m skinny so perhaps I will be taking a lot more photos when I am finally down in weight.

The bottom left picture was taken last year in May at a PFLAG meeting with Robin Tyler.  I had no idea until after the picture was taken that my stomach was actually that big.  I was beyond mortified, but kept it because I didn’t want to delete the only picture of me with Robin Tyler.  I mean, she’s Robin Tyler!

The bottom right picture is my before picture.  That is the one I took at the IHOP that we went to on New Years Day just before I made the decision to go on this weight loss journey.

Finally, the picture on the right is how I look today.  You can certainly see the difference in my neck and my face.  You probably can’t tell with the black shirt, but believe me, it’s thinner than all those before pictures.  My stomach (waist) was 50” and now it is down to 43”.  So yeah, it’s thinner.  Also my thighs are really skinny now too.  I didn’t think to measure my thighs at the beginning or every week because the Noom app didn’t ask me to, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have still kept a record.  It doesn’t matter because they are thinner now.  Oh and thank you photographer (my partner) for taking the picture with me talking instead of smiling lol.  That was sarcasm of course.

My total weight loss since January 5th is 50.4lbs.  My goal is to lose 63lbs, so I only have 12.6lbs to go.  Although, once I meet my goal I will adjust the Noom app so that I will go down to 170 because 63lbs was just a small goal to get me started, my true goal is much higher than a measly 63lbs.  I was afraid that if I set too high of a goal, I wouldn’t have been able to do it.  I think that I have proven to myself that not only can I meet this goal, but I can keep going until all the fat is gone.

Look out world, here I come!  My next picture will be when I have lost 63lbs when I weigh 200lbs or less (if it’s like 199.8 or something).  See you then…

Facebook Timeline Fun

I have been having way too much fun in Facebook lately with their timeline images.  I play a game called EverQuest and EverQuest 2, well actually to be honest I play a lot of games lol.  I’ve been taking screen shots from the game so that I can make a banner and an icon that blends together perfectly.  It gives the illusion that the picture of me in the icon is floating on the banner, or at least I think so.  Take a look at this one of my half-elf from EverQuest 2 on one of my Facebook profile.  Of course last night I changed it so it’s my image, but doesn’t that blend together nicely?

I actually got the idea to do this from the Sears Facebook page.  I’m sure other pages are doing the same thing, but I haven’t seen a lot of them.

It took some trial and error, but I figured it out.  I have a template that I use where I put in the background image under the frame, then I select the banner and hide the frame then copy and paste the banner into a new image.  Then I show the frame again so I can copy the icon and I paste that into a new image and then add my character (or my real picture which I cropped out the background) and viola, icon that blends with the banner.

I think this is so cool, I wish my Blog had this feature lol.

R.I.P. Trolls and Cyberbullying on Facebook

I know you have heard of cyberbullying, but have you ever heard of R.I.P. Trolls?  I have never even heard of that until today.  Apparently there are people out there with hearts as cold as ice and as small as a grain of sand, no, even smaller than that, so they troll R.I.P. memorial pages and say something nasty to the deceased person.  As if things weren’t bad enough for them while they were alive, they are still being bullied after death.

I have three examples.  Naturally I had to pixelize all of the names and their images, not just to protect the innocent victims, but also to protect the bully.  Yes you heard me right, I wouldn’t want the bully to come after me for posting their name and then turn around and call me the bully for showing their name despite the fact that they are the bullies.

This “Stay at home dad” decided it would be funny to share a page called Zombie… (the person’s name has been in the news and her mother was not convicted of murder, you know who I mean) with an abortion survivor’s timeline.  Who would create a page calling someone a zombie after they were allegedly murdered by their mother who got acquitted?  What kind of person does such a thing?  Well, I went to click on that page to report it and it was already gone, so one down…

This was posted on a justice page for a child who was recently murdered while wearing a hoodie in Florida.  The message is “Taste the rainbow, (name omitted) I wonder what flavor of hollowpoints got dug out of his chest!”  What sick bastard would post this?  I reported that person for posting that image on that R.I.P. memorial page.  Take a look at some of the comments.  The first one says “that’s not funny bitch” and she replied, but the comment is gone now so apparently she thought twice about what she was saying and removed it, who knows.  The second person asked if this was supposed to be funny and the third person laughed.  What is this world coming to when people laugh at a picture like this?

This person was just downright disrespectful to many R.I.P. pages.  What kind of person does this?

I love computers and I love the internet, but when people sit in their house with total anonymity and post hateful things like this, there has to be some recourse.  You can’t just think that it’s OK to be an asshole and nothing will happen.  You can’t go up to a person and start calling them names without being slapped or punched in the face, so why would you go on the internet and type hurtful comments on their Facebook wall, especially after they died?  You wouldn’t like it if you died and someone typed “LOL u died” on your memorial page would you?  Think about other people’s feelings, put yourself in their shoes before you post negative comments like that, because someday that might be your R.I.P. page.

If you want to see who is posting these hateful things, join the Facebook page “United Against RIP Trolls and Cyberbullies.”  Click LIKE and scroll through their page and start reporting the bullies because that is the only way we are going to rid Facebook of all the hate.  When Facebook see’s that people are reporting them, their accounts will suddenly disappear.  Perhaps one day cyber bullies will be held accountable for their actions.

Check this article out.  It was written/posted on April 3rd 2012.  Anti-bully law could turn trolls into criminals.  I don’t believe in censorship because we all have a first amendment right to free speech, even if it’s hate speech, but where do we put our foot down and say that there is a huge difference between the two?  There needs to be a discussion about where we draw the line with hate speech because I just can’t see why the law would protect people who want to insult other people for shits and giggles.

Create a Holiday Browser Theme and Win an iPad 2.

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of BrandThunder for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

Holiday Browser Theme Contest

Would you believe me if I told you that you might win an iPad 2 for 5 minutes of work?  Of course you wouldn’t because it’s crazy.  How could you win something so expensive in 5 minutes?  It’s as simple as creating a browser theme with Brand Thunder, tweeting, emailing then waiting until December 23rd to see if you have won.  It’s 100% free to create your own browser theme with Brand Thunder’s BT: Engage.

I entered the Brand Thunder Holiday Theme Contest by making my own image in Gimp and creating a toolbar for Firefox and Internet Explorer.  I could have used one of the images that came provided but that was too easy, I wanted to create my own original design.

It wasn’t that long ago when I was searching for a way to create my own toolbar.  I wanted to make something that was personal to me instead of having to settle for what other people have made.  I never thought that I might be able to enter a contest to win an iPad 2.  What are the odds right?

The judges will announce the 5 best themes on December 17th and then I guess people can vote.  The winner will get the iPad 2, the others will win a $25 gift card for Amazon.  Hey, it’s something right?  If I am in the top 5, I will blog about it again so you can vote for me.

Visit Sponsor's Site

Bored with Copying Posts

I’ve been copying my old posts back over here from YouSayToo for almost a week now and at first I felt under a lot of pressure to get it all copied and was hoping it would go really fast but now I’m just so bored with it that I don’t care how long it will take. I mean on one hand it’s all old information, who cares anymore? But on the other hand, I can see people are still looking for certain posts about certain old news stories like the girl with the stars on her face and the Elvira posts.

I have over 200 posts copied and even though I want all 1700+ of my posts back here, I don’t really care anymore. I’m sure it will all build up again eventually, it’s just the principle, you know? I want them all back but at the same time… it’s soooo boring. You have no idea lol.

I woke up early yesterday so I could get as many done as I could and I got 30 done then X-Play came on and then Attack of the Show and next thing you knew I had stopped working and paying attention to my blog and focused on that. I needed that break.

I’ve been meditating every day after lunch before going back to work and that seems to help calm my mind down but it doesn’t get rid of the boredom lol.

I don’t mean to complain, I’m just venting. If I was that bored with it I would stop dead in my tracks but I really want to keep going and get everything back here where it belongs.

I found out that my xanapus.wordpress.com blog has blog posts too but all the images are gone. Well that’s probably because I deleted them from my directory here because I’m having to upload them all over again so I might as well save space. So when I’m finished with this blog then I’ll have to export the file and import it over there so everything matches up again.

Well, I just finished copying 10 posts, I guess I should do 10 more before lunch then hopefully get another 10 or 20 before Attack of the Show comes on. Maybe I should turn some music on and that will take some of the boredom away.  Probably not but you never know.

My Blog Progress

Things aren’t going as fast as I had hoped they would. My projection last night and this morning was that I would get at least 200 posts copied from YouSayToo but that just wasn’t the case.

Last night, in just maybe 4 hours, I had copied 18 posts so that is where I got my estimation. I figured it would be so much easier today and I would have gotten way more than last night. I have only gotten 27 copied over.

The thing is, it’s so boring lol. I mean, I have the YouSayToo website loaded in a tab and my blog in a tab so it’s not difficult switching tabs to copy from one site then paste to the other. It’s all the editing I have to do and adding tags and putting each post in a category and this and that and the other. Plus there are images that I have to use that I have to upload all over again because even though the images are all in my blog uploads folders, they don’t show up because it’s a new database. I could go on and on but no matter how long it takes I will keep at it until it is all done.

The problem is, people are still coming to my blog from the search engines with old posts that no longer exist. How do I tell the search engines that my old links don’t work anymore? I can’t. So all I can do is hope that people do a search for themselves on my blog to see if they can find what they are looking for and go from there.

My toolbar has a notification explaining what happened so if they see it great, if they don’t then there is nothing else I can do. Tomorrow is another day so we will see how many I can copy then. I already have all of January 2011 and December 2010 copied so maybe I can do 1 month per day. Yeah, that will make it easier. Let’s hope November 2010 was uneventful in the blogging department :p lol.

New DVD Burner

Well I finally did it. I finally bought a new DVD burner. I don’t know what happened to mine but it won’t even read discs let alone burn them anymore.

The DVD burner that I have is a Lite-on lightscribe DVD burner that I bought in January 2007. After only a couple of years it decided that it wasn’t going to open easily anymore. When you press the button it makes these clicking sounds but doesn’t open. You had to keep pressing the button until it would open.

Eventually it got so bad that you’d have to put a paperclip into the little hole that allows you to force the door to open. Now, that doesn’t even open it anymore.

I don’t care about burning music or whatever, I just want to back up my files so that I can reformat my hard drive. My computer is so slow because of all the crap that I download. I’ve deleted more than half of what I’ve downloaded only because I knew I wouldn’t be able to back it up but that doesn’t help me if I can’t burn the rest of the stuff onto discs.

My DVD burner that is in there now was $50 at TigerDirect.com back in 2007 and I checked the computer store in town and they sell the same one for $46 and I went to TigerDirect.com again and they sell the same one for $19.99 now. I thought, I’d much rather spend $25 (with shipping) and wait until the end of the week for it rather than spend double and get it today.

So hopefully by the weekend my computer won’t be so slow. I can finally burn the crap I’ve been downloading as well as all of my documents and images and start fresh with a new Windows installation.

About friggin time!