Shutterfly book

Yeah, I'm still unhappy about the passage of the healthcare bill and have little hope the lawsuits filed by several states will do much to stop it, but right now I'd just like to focus on something else. I could go on all day about the bill and the reactions it's been getting, not to mention the unbridled (and unrealistic) idealism that seems to be returning again just like when Obama was first elected and the whole "big brother" mentality that's running rampant. People really think a government bureaucracy will be friendlier, fairer, and more efficient than bureaucracy from insurance companies. Again, based on what?!? Sigh. If the mandate forcing people to get insurance wasn't there, I don't think I'd be so vehement about it. If it was the same bill minus the mandate I'd probably look at like I see the "stimulus": action that helps some people but is largely a waste of money that does little to actually solve the problems it was designed to. It crossed the line when it forced me and those like me to buy a product from a private company. This is NOT the same as the draft (which is not all the time anyway) or even paying taxes, which some have already compared it to. Never before has the federal government forced the entire country to buy a product from a private company in the name of "universal coverage". As another blogger pointed out, it's like eliminating poverty by making a law requiring poor people to make money.

On to happier things! Last Friday I received my latest creation, a book from the photo service Shutterfly. My sister Becky had recently opened an account on Shutterfly (my cousin Lindsay had also done the same thing a short time earlier), so I checked out her albums and saw that not only could I store all of my photos on Shutterfly for FREE but they also had several product choices for using photos. Being able to publish photos in a book really caught my eye. My brother and sister-in-law had their wedding album made into an actual published book and I really liked it. The book I made is a little history book of Kent using mostly pictures that I've taken over the past year, plus a few from my grandpa Derby, and two from a Wikipedia user (whom I only know as "Pacificboyksu") who posted them online in the public domain. I made the book for my sister Becky and brother-in-law David as a birthday present to have a little reminder of home (well, mostly Becky but David has some connections to Kent too!) to share with their friends in Utah. I was a little worried how it would turn out given my camera. Not that it takes bad pictures, but it doesn't exactly take the best pictures either being a basic point-and-shoot camera. Well, let me tell you I was TOTALLY happy how it turned out. The pictures look WAY better in print than they did on the computer! The only problems were from my typing the text portions: there are some grammatical errors. The wizard to make the book has a spell-check, but it just says there "may" be spelling errors, so any word it doesn't recognize is counted in that. There are tons of background, text, photo border, and layout choices, so you can be really creative and make it pretty personal. About the only thing I didn't like was the inflexibility of the text boxes. You can't adjust how big they are, so your only options are to try a different layout, lower the font size, or trim the actual text. I wish I could've just adjusted the size of the box; it would've made things a lot easier.

Oh, in case you're wondering, I DID let Becky know I was going to blog about--and thus spoil--her and David's birthday present which I will bring with me when I visit in LESS THAN TWO WEEKS!!!! I also let her know about the grammatical errors since she has a degree in English and WILL notice them!