August 31
[Taken 19 August 2005 | Some kind of decorative flowering grass | Dayton, OH]
I can't really think of anything to say today...
August 30
[Taken 28 August 2005 | Monarch butterfly | Dayton, OH]
I heard on NPR this morning that Cleveland no longer holds the title of the poorest city in America (they are now at number 12) and that rather dubious honor now belongs to Detroit. Which, frankly, I find unsurprising. I was more surprised before, when Cleveland was holding the title, because I honestly thought that it should have belonged to Detroit.
We have been getting rain all day here, courtesy of hurricane Katrina. Good for the lawn, since it was just a sweeping expanse of dead straw after the dry spell we had. It looks better already. Also, it looks like my assessment yesterday that New Orleans was going to be okay was pretty premature. Currently about 80% of the city is underwater. And I have seen some of the photos from there and other places along the coastline there... and they are pretty shocking. I heard (on NPR again) the mayor of some small coastal city in Mississippi (or was it Alabama? I can't remember...) say that it wasn't that his city had sustained a lot of damage so much as it was that his city basically wasn't there anymore. Just all swept away. Damn. Sometimes I think that the weather and the storms have been getting worse in recent years... but then I have to remind myself that it is only really in recent years (about 1999 onwards) that I started to really pay attention to and follow national and international news.
On a more cheerful note, I accompanied Sarah and Mike to work out at the YMCA after work. Nice place, very nice facilities and equipment. I am thinking of getting a membership there... it is pretty close to work, and would be really easy to go there after work a couple of days a week.
Then on the way home from the gym I had (1/10 of a tank left) to stop for gas. Ouch.
August 29
[Taken 28 August 2005 | Some kind of yellow butterfly | Dayton, OH]
And now for the news...
I got a replacement laptop at work this morning.
It seems that New Orleans is not totally destroyed. Not that New Orleans is in good shape, mind you. But at least there is something there still standing and worth rebuilding. Of course, there are looters already. There are always looters.
And oil prices will go up. Right now I am pretty damn glad that I have a commute to work of maybe 5 miles.
August 28
[Taken 28 August 2005 | Busy little bumblebee | Dayton, OH]
Another macro shot. I must be crazy to willingly put my face that close to something that can sting me. Fortunately for me, the bee was pretty focused on the flowers. There were a lot of cool bugs at the arboretum yesterday... butterflies, bees, unidentified bugs and beetles...
I have never been to New Orleans, though I always meant to go sometime... and now, well, given the class 5 hurricane currently heading right for the Big Easy, it looks like I may have missed that bus. According to a variety of sources (cnn.com, nytimes.com) when the hurricane makes landfall (unless it peters out or drastically or changes course) the city will lose all electric and water services to high winds and flooding, and may end up under about 30 feet of water since most of the city lies below sea level. Obviously, it would be nice if this worst-case scenario did not play out. But it really doesn't look good... I hate to think of all of the beautiful buildings, and heritage, and history lost, to say nothing of what all the people who live there will lose.
I am also not looking forward to yet higher gas prices, since most of the refineries in the gulf (about 1/4 of the US's national production) have been shut down and evacuated.
August 27
[Taken 25 August 2005 | Candye Kane | The Thirsty Ear Tavern, Columbus, OH]
The best of the shots I took at the Candye Kane performance are now up on my Flickr site.
John and I went to a matinee showing of The Brothers Grimm with Sarah and Mike this afternoon. It was a decent movie... very pretty to look at, very "cute", but kind of light on plot. I enjoyed all of the subtle (and some really not so subtle) references to various fairy tales that were used.
After the movie, John and I stopped by the Home Depot to pick up some plants for the front flower bed by the garage. The lambsear in that bed hasn't been doing well all summer (it was looking like it had just started to rot right there in the ground) and it was finally looking so bad that I just wanted to pull it out and be done with it. So we got some nice plants and ornamental grass, making sure that we got stuff that liked the shade, since that particular flowerbed doesn't get a lot of direct sunlight... which may have been the source of the problem with the lambsear. And now the lambsear is gone and the new stuff is planted in its place. The flower bed looks so much better already.
August 26
[Taken 25 August 2005 | Candye Kane | The Thirsty Ear Tavern, Columbus, OH]
A while ago, probably about a year and a half ago, John introduced me (and Sarah and Mike) to Candye Kane... a singer who does rockabilly blues in what I think of as a very classic 1940s style. Anyway, great music. We all borrowed and burned the one Candye Kane CD that he owned.
Then Sarah found out a couple of weeks ago that Candye Kane was going to be performing in Columbus, so we all got tickets, and yesterday we all headed out for Columbus right after work. (There was a little confusion about the start time for the concert... we thought that it was 7:00, but it turned out that 7:00 was when the doors opened. The performance didn't actually start until 9:30. Eh, such is life. Better too early then showing up late.)
Oh man. The show was AWESOME!
The opening act was a local (Columbus) blues band called Jack Neat. They were pretty darn good. The only criticism I have of them is their singer... while she had a good voice and was technically quite proficient, she just didn't have the whole stage presence thing down. It seemed like she was in the throes of stage fright, and was pretty stiff and a bit awkward throught their whole set. It took them a couple of songs to connect with the audience.
Now compare that to Candye Kane, who swept onto the stage with a big laugh and a huge smile that just let you know that she was having a great time and loved being there. Man, she has a great voice. Her musicians - basist, guitarist, keyboardist, and drummer were excellent as well. Especially the keyboardist. He could really play. Well... they could all really play. I need a thesaurus so I can look up more adjectives for "awesome" right about now.
Candye Kane joked and told stories about her life and the songs throughout the whole performance.
I think that this was probably the best concert I have ever been to.
I brought my camera (of course) and got a surprising number of really good shots, considering how dark the tavern was during the show. It was really dark in there... I al most didn't even bother taking the camera out. It was so dim that I thought that my chances of getting any halfway decent shots were somewhere between slim and none. And yet, despite the sub-optimal shooting conditions, I did get some gems. Ahh... gotta love shooting RAW format with the f-stop at 3.0, the shutter speed around 30, and the ISO at 1600. I will be posting more shots to my Flickr site over the weekend, as I have just barely begun to edit the shots I took.
It was a great night, a great time. Jack Neat was on stage for an hour, and then Candye Kane was on for just over two hours. I would certainly say that we got out money's worth. I would go see her perform again. For sure.
We got back from Columbus at about 2:30am. Getting up this morning was more then a little difficult.
August 24
[Taken 7 June 2005 | Sunset | Centerville, OH]
There are a million and one ways that I could describe the day I had, but probably the plain facts are best.
I got to work this morning and discovered that sometime last night, someone broke into the locked cabinet in my cubicle where I store my laptop when I go home (On the theory that it is safer locked in a cabinet then clamped to my desk with the security cable. Ha ha!) and stole said laptop. They also took the power cable for the laptop. I spent the morning talking to the building security and talking to the township police and filling out incident reports. I am currently using the "loaner laptop" for my group (actually a Toshiba tablet PC) which I was able to get loaded with the software that I need so that I can contiune doing my work while I wait for the replacement laptop that my supervisor ordered me to arrive. The new laptop could take anywhere from a couple of days to two weeks to come in.
All of the project work that I have been doing that existed only on my laptop? Gone. All of my saved document and archived emails and reports and background information and mapped drives to various prototypes and even my goddamn internet bookmarks? Gone. Granted, some of this might be able to be restored from the remote backup tapes, but I still won't get any of it until my replacement laptop comes in. This is going to take so long to recover from...
And I wasn't the only one... according to my supervisor, there were at least two other laptops stolen from our floor. How does someone get in here to steal stuff? I mean... it is not like there are no cameras (on every door) and it is not like they leave the doors wide open (you need passcards to get in and out, and I would imagine that all of the cardswipe activity is saved on some security server somewhere) so that people can come and go at will. Hell, the building security officer I talked to said that it had to be either someone who works there or someone from maintenance. Well, then since you have narrowed it down so easily, why on earth can't you go and look at the logs of who was where and when they left and check the security tapes for 'suspicious behavior'?!
Argh!
I lost so much work and it will take me so long to re-do everything...!
I would like to find the <expletives deleted> <expletives deleted> <expletives deleted> <expletives deleted> person who took my laptop and beat the <expletives deleted> <expletives deleted> <expletives deleted> <expletives deleted> out of him.
What a fucking jerk.
August 23
[Taken 9 April 2005 | Riverwalk | Minneapolis, MN]
Where did the summer go? I can't believe that August is almost over. Of course, a lot of my astonishment at how fast summer seemed to go by is a holdover from those days where summer actually meant something to me... back in the day when summer meant three months of freedom... no school, no responsibilities, no requirements... just do some chores and the rest of the time was your own. Ahh, nostalgia. Of course, summer probably wasn't actually that great, I just remember it as being great. I wonder what other bits of childhood I am selectively remembering as being better then I thought they were at the time?
Random (mostly) useless fact: Parmesian cheese tastes good on lentil soup. Blue cheese, however, does not work quite as well.
August 22
[Taken 19 August 2005 | Benches by the path | Dayton, OH]
This is a pretty simple image... two benches beside one of the paths in the Cox Arboretum at sunset. I took the shot with the lensbaby lens and worked on it quite a bit in Photoshop to bring out the grain and all of the textures in the gravel path, the grass, and the wood. I actually think that it is kind of an odd image... but an oddly appealing one.
August 21
[Taken 14 August 2005 | Magnolia, in color and in black and white | Dayton, OH]
I have mostly been fussing with my flickr site and the photos thereon over the last couple of days... as you can see by the new little dohicky on the right there.
A lot of the photos I have been taking lately, have been with black and white as the planned outcome, rather then color. Now, I know that since I shoot about 99.9% digital (I have to account for the occasional roll or re-spooled 120 film that I put in one of my antique cameras) that color is pretty much a given as far as the images I download from my camera to my computer go. There is no color/black-and-white toggle in the camera menu as far as I can tell. But when I get the images into Photoshop I turn the mode to greyscale, or, if I am feeling bold, use the channel mixer, and start to work on black and white versions. Could be because I started out with black and white in high school? Could be because I just really like the black and white aestetic? Dunno... just my latest kick is all.
I have also finally gotten about 90% of the images that I recovered from the external hard drive crash organized, if not renamed. And yes, I will be burning them all to a DVD so I can have them backed up in multiple places and hopefully never have to go through this kind of aggravation again.
If you recall my photo and post from the other day, where I said that I had no idea when the image was actually taken but could make a good guess... I had a reader make the useful suggestion of looking in the header information of the image to try and get the date/time information. Turns out that the date/time information was way off my guess of summer 2002 - actually, the date/time was trying to tell me that I took the photo on 3/14/2001, which is about a year before I even bought the camera. I checked all (or at least a lot) of the photos that I took what that particular camera (Kodak DX3600) and they all had date/time information for sometime in 2001. So... the only conclusion that I can make from all of this is that the date/time information in the camera menu is messed up somehow, and it just just started recording that information from some arbitrary date. *shrug* Such is life. At least I can make educated guesses about when the photos that I took with the Kodak DX3600 were taken. And, as far as I can tell, the date/time info in the headers of all of the photos that I took with the Canon Digital Rebel is spot on.
August 18
[Taken July 2003(?) | Sunset on the First National Building on Main Street | Ann Arbor, MI]
This is one of the recovered files. I know that I took it with the Kodak DX3600. I think that it was taken either in 2002 or 2003... couldn't have been earlier, since I didn't get the Kodak until the spring of 2002, shortly before I graduated from SI.
The odd thing is that although I cannot remember the year that I took this shot in, I can remember almost everything else surrounding the event. It was mid to late July, and John and I were having drinks at one of the sidewalk tables at Cafe Felix while we played cards. (We did that a lot... went to Cafe Felix and played game after game of cribbage while we drank martinis. I miss Cafe Felix. Thus far we have found no good jazz bars to hang out at while we play cribbage and drink. Now we have to do that sort of thing at home.)
That has to be the worst thing about the ToC crash of my external hard drive. I lost all of the context for my photographs, and I have to re-sort them as best as I can remember. I think the only good thing to come out of the whole mess is that I am being forced to go through all of my older photos, and I am finding some real gems. I really love the lighting in this one.
August 17
[Taken 30 June 2005 | Dinner | Philadelphia, PA]
It has been a long, hard day at work... heck, this week is a long, hard week, and never mind just the day. Which is why I am sitting here right now with a glass of chardonnay in front of me and the bottle at my elbow.
Yesterday evening I was itching to do something active, and decided to go out jogging for a little while. I don't know how my parents do it - jogging for miles and miles and running marathons. It didn't take very long before I started to hurt, and it wasn't a "I am all winded and tired" sort of hurt either. I bike and dance and fence, and like to think that I have decent stamina. No - my knees hurt, and my ankles hurt, and today my shins still hurt. I could always be doing it wrong... though it smarts to say that I could be doing something as fundamental as putting one foot in front of the other incorrectly. I think that the lesson here is to just take out the bike next time, instead of jogging.
Which brings me to my dance classes. There are some days where everything clicks, and I have a great time, and I feel like I am really learning. And then there are other days where I feel like I don't get anything, and I know that I am doing something wrong, but for the life of me can't tell why or how it is wrong and am therefor at a total loss as to how to do it right. Guess which kind of day I had at class today?
Yeah. Too bad that this is a glass of chardonnay, because if it was a red wine then at least I could say that red wine is supposed to be good for you.
August 16
[Taken 30 June 2005 | Liberty | Philadelphia, PA]
This weekend I finally achieved a small home-owning milestone. John and I put up curtains in the library and the dining room, so that there is something more on the windows then just the mini-blinds that the previous owners left. Well, okay, the previous owners had left their "window treatments" as the contract specified. It wasn't until John and I actually had a closer look at them after we took possession of the house that we realized that said "window treatments" were just un-hemmed lengths of fabric masquerading as curtains. I promptly pulled them down and threw them away.
My original (ambitious) plan was that I would go to a fabric store, pick out some nice fabric, and make proper curtains. The downside to this plan being that I hate sewing, which means that nothing much got done other then me occasionally thinking that I ought to do something. Eventually I decided that if I ever wanted anything on the windows other then blinds, then I would just have to go out and buy something ready-made.
Now there are floor length burgundy sheers on the two windows in the library, and floor length lace panels on the window in the dining room. I think that this is much better… the curtains make the rooms look more 'finished' now. Everywhere I lived after college (apartments) up until this summer came with some sort of blinds in the windows, and I never bothered to do anything different. These are the first curtains I have ever owned. Like I said... a real milestone here... a real "grown-up" moment.
August 14
[Taken 12 August 2005 | Dancing at the hafla | Dayton, OH]
Friday night was the monthly hafla (open dance) at the studio where I take lessons. Lots of fun as far as hanging out with people I am slowly becoming friends with and dancing. Not so great for photography, though. Even with the ISO up at 1600 and the f-stop open as far as it could go, I still had to set the shutter speed to about 30 in order to get a decent exposure. Normally, I dislike using a flash since I prefer natural light. However, in this case, I think that I will need to break down and brush up on my skills in that area.
Yesterday I accompanied John and Mike to the range to see what was so great about shooting at little bits of paper tacked to foam core boards a hundred yards away. I had actually been meaning to try it out for a while, as I have never been shooting, and since John was of the opinion that if I ever did try it, odds were that I would like it. I used John's 22 rifle. I don't know if I was much good or not... at least I managed to hit the targets most of the time. And I have to say that John was right... I did enjoy it. According to John, the next step is learning how to clean rifles. At this rate, I will be ready to join the Michigan Militia before much longer.
Also... If you want an idea for a good way to spend an hour or so on a Sunday afternoon, then try this... sitting on the back deck, drinking lemonade, reading, and eating fresh, homemade bread. It doesn't get a lot better then that.
August 12
[Taken 23 July 2005 | Cool Water | Dayton, OH]
It is so hot today... 97 degrees, humid, the heat index over 100.. I would like to just jump into those cool waters.
When I was picking through my pile of change at work this morning, gathering the $.89 necessary for my morning cup of coffee, I found a 10 cent piece from Aruba in the pile. It is kind of cool. What is the likelihood of finding a coin from Aruba in a handful of change in southwest Ohio? Pretty darn slim, I would say. A lot slimmer then finding Canadian coins. A lot slimmer even then finding a wheat-ear penny, one of which I came across last week.
Is it a sign? Maybe I should take it as some kind of cosmic omen that I should go to Aruba for my next vacation. I have never been there, and right now I feel like it would be nice to go somewhere, anywhere, where I can relax on a beach and swim in the Caribbean.
I also have a penny from the Bahamas on my desk at work. (I have no idea where I got it. I have had it for a long time.) Maybe I should plan on going there too.
Could be nice.
August 11
[Taken 22 July 2005 | Petals | Dayton, OH]
I realize that since I got myself my nifty little flickr account that I have more or less left it to languish after that first, brief, burst of activity. I was reminded of its existance today when a friend asked me when I was ever going to post more stuff on it. I shall have to make better use of it in the future....
August 10
[Taken 22 July 2005 | Pink | Dayton, OH]
It has been busy. Very busy. Work as well as non-work...
These photos were taken with my Lensbaby macro adaptor with the f-stop at 3, which is a very narrow range of focus. In each photo, there is only the very narrowest strip of the petals, right at the edge, that is actually in focus.
Now that the situation seems to be resolving itself, and I am less furious in general about it (amazing what a day or so to calm down will do for you!), I feel like I can talk about it here. I have been having problems with the mail delivery at my new house. Despite the fact that I had put in a change of address that was dated to start a month ago on July 11, stopped by the post office several times to talk to the front desk people, called the post office numerous times (and spoke to both the desk people and the driver of the mail route that covered my old apartment), and even put in a second change of address notice (just in case the first one had gotten lost somehow), I was still not recieving any forwarded mail. Please note that everyone I spoke to had been constantly reassuring me that everything was fine, my mail was being forwarded, and it should show up any day now. Tuesday I went by the old apartment just to check, just in case, and pried a huge wad of very not-forwarded mail out of the box for my old (fortunatly still vacant) apartment. Nice. Good thing that the post office was already closed by the time I had retrieved all that mail... Yesterday morning I was at the post office when it opened at 8am and asked to speak to the Postmaster. The Postmaster not being in, I spoke to the Delivery Superintendant (can't remember the guy's exact title) about my Little Problem. John also called the Postmaster that afternoon. Today, I recieved the very first piece of mail at the house with one of those little yellow forwarding stickers on it. Joy! However, I will still give this a few days... as the date on the piece of mail (an issue of Time magazine) was older (August 5) then some mail (another Time magazine, dated for August 15) that I had retrieved from my old address. Hmm... rather odd, that. Still, the situation seems to be hopeful...
August 6
[Taken 22 July 2005 | Bumblebee | Dayton, OH]
John and I watched the first two Thin Man movies last night. Tonight we will watch the next two and tomorrow we will watch the last two. There are worse things then spending much of the weekend with a classic movie marathon.
File recovery. I spent most of today in front of my computer going through the files that were recovered from my external hard drive. Just documents today... I am saving all of the image files for last. Here are the stats from today... I went through over 1050 Word documents. Of those, a number were corrupted and I was unable to open them. Of all of those I saved exactly 153. Even so, I know that I am missing files, mostly research papers I saved from Cornell. Granted, when will I ever want to reread a research paper that I wrote a decade ago as an undergraduate? I know, probably never. Still... I wanted to save them. Digital souveniers are supposed to be so easy to store, aren't they? So convenient? There forever? Right. Continuing... There were 280 PDF documents, most of which were corrupted and I was unable to open. Of the handful that I could open, I saved 7. I deleted 84 excel spreadsheets without saving any. Heck of a way to weed through old files, I gotta say....
August 4
[Taken 23 July 2005 | Something White | Dayton, OH]
The Thin Man DVD collection that I ordered from Amazon arrived the other day - The Thin Man, After the Thin Man, Another Thin Man , Shadow of the Thin Man, The Thin Man Goes Home, and Song of the Thin Man. I like Thin Man movies. Classic, black and white, Hollywood at some of its best. Jazz Age detectives (and socialites) Nick and Nora Charles always solve the crime, always get their man, and always have time for a few martinis and a good party. I have seen the first three movies in the Thin Man collection, but not the rest. I am looking forward to a nice Thin Man movie marathon this weekend. Martinis will, of course, be part of the entertainment, so John and I went out to Arrow Spirits to re-stock this evening.
August 3
[Taken November 2004 | Sunset over the Rhine | Basel, Switzerland]
One of the many recovered files...
John and I have taken to watching one of Comedy Central's new shows in the half hour preceeding and the half hour following South Park. South Park itself has gone kind of downhill lately... it is just not as funny as it used to be. This new show, "Mind of Mencia", is one of Comedy Central's patented "let's find a stand-up comedian and give them their own show!" shows. Despite the non-original concept, we like the show. As a note of additional interest, the comedian in question, Carlos Mencia, reminds me eerily of Sarah's husband, Mike.
And elsewhere... baby bunnies!
No sign of any parent rabbits, but there are three baby bunnies living among the plants in our backyard flowerbeds. I think thay are cute. John thinks that we need a higher population of feral dogs and cats in order to eliminate the cuteness before it reaches critical mass.
And, as it is almost midnight and I am losing hold of what little coherence that I may have had to begin with, good night!
August 1
[Taken 31 July 2005 | Stargazer Lily, no. 1-3 | Dayton, OH]
This is for Sarah, because she loves Stargazer Lilies.