Category: Observation

Time for a New Umbrella B*tch

əm-ˈbre-lə ˈbich:  The individual responsible for holding a weather protection device over another more skilled photographer while he or she composes the perfect shot while out on a shoot in non-favorable conditions.  This also includes all packing and hauling in/out of equipment.  Sometimes referred to as a flunkie, lackey or assistant.

I should probably give some background to this.  There are times when Linda and I are out in the wild taking some snaps with the trusty Nikons.  Unfortunately, there are times when the weather doesn’t exactly cooperate as planned and we find ourselves in need of shelter.  Of course, we always claim this makes for better lighting and mood in our products, but generally that is just a convenient excuse to justify why two grown people are standing out in pouring rain taking pictures of god knows what.  We were actually out in Maine recently (Acadia to be specific) when this exact situation came up.  It was raining off and on most of the time there so we broke down and headed out with all our equipment in tow.  We found a pretty cool rock beach and decided to see what we could capture.  Sure enough, it started raining meaning one of us has to stand over and protect the camera, tripod, photographer etc. with a large umbrella.   This allows the other person to compose the shots and capture the interesting landscapes while remaining relatively dry.  Like the Bass to Guitar, the Half-back to the Full-back and all other Blues-Rock Bands to the Stones, the less skilled has to give way to the more talented.  With Linda the somewhat better photographer (wait for it) the umbrella role has traditionally fallen to you know who …yep.. ME.  So there I stood on a rocky Maine beach in the pouring down rain while my lovely wife took her own sweet damn time taking what is sure to be  fantastic pictures.   After at least 3 hours she decided every inch of the beach had been sufficiently captured at least twice and it was time to go.  At this point in time, she put the cap on the glass and informed her Umbrella B*tch it was time to pack up.  This I dutifully performed with optimistic hopes of one day having my own flunky… I mean assistant.

Well  now, let’s just jump forward to say… I don’t know… hmmm.. okay, a month ago.  Setting the stage, imagine that Linda and I have entered pictures in the local county fair photography competition.  We have been doing this for a number of years now and really more of just a fun thing to do in order to get free passes to the fair.  I say that mainly to because we have NEVER ever ever ever actually earned a ribbon at any of these events, but pretty cool to see your work on display for everyone to admire.  Already resigned to another shut out, we walked into the display building to check out all the other efforts.  It is really a learning activity as well since you can experience the creativity of others and find interesting perspectives on angles, lighting, coloring etc. you may not have considered in your own works.  After a few minutes we looked over to the winner’s wall and were both shocked.  Turns out one of MY photos was on the wall with a ribbon attached to it.  Did I mention it was “MY” photo… as in a picture “I” took.  A quick scan of the rest of the wall confirmed that this was the only winning picture from our submitted set.  Now I am not one to gloat (who am I kidding, I love to gloat), but it appears there is a changing of the guard so to speak.  Or maybe more accurately, a passing of the torch where in the torch is actually the handle of the UMBRELLA.  I think this might actually turn out to be one great year especially with all the rain we have been having lately and what is sure to become my favorite weekend activity.   Hey, honey, it looks like it’s going to storm, what do you say we go get some lightning pictures?  This is going to be fun (at least until fair time comes around again, but that is a long long long way off).

I should probably make a quick, but funny admission.  The picture that actually won (embedded in the umbrella graphic above) was actually a last minute decision.  We had it hanging on the wall for a year or two and had actually planned to submit another photo instead.  I can’t remember if I ended up not liking the other picture or we miscounted on our tags, but we ended up taking it off the wall and entering it.  Oh well, a win is a win in my book (even if it is only an Honorable Mention which Linda keeps reminding me).

She Hit the Jackpot!

UPDATE: 8/16 7:28pm – Well, if there is one thing to be said about this idiot, he is persistent.  He called again around 7:00am explaining that plans had changed and he needed to come pick up the check sooner (than the originally planned pickup time in the afternoon).  She informed him that she was busy and he would have to wait until the original time (don’t ask, I can’t explain).  Soon after she saw a suspicious SUV in the neighborhood who drove by and stopped up the road. She called the police and they check him out (just a lost general contractor who probably had to go change his shorts).  Well, from 3:00 until 5:00 nobody showed up (which would have been quite funny seeing as how her son’s were waiting), but the guy called and asked for Mizz {First Name} when her son picked up the phone.  He promptly told him that there was nobody that lived there with that name and he had the wrong number – click, scammer hung up.  A quick *69 revealed a number that ..wait for it.. wait for it… was from Jamaica!  This seems odd since the caller originally said he was in Belvidere IL.  So apparently the dude was too stupid to even go with Skype and calling card minutes to cover his tracks.

UPDATE: 8/15 5:30pm – Mother-In-Law recently got ANOTHER call but get this, things have changed.  Apparently they can no longer wait until tomorrow to meet and need the money immediately.  Still pretty bold of them to continue to harass knowing everyone is on to their little scam.  The police and the phone company are now both fully informed and hopefully on the offensive.

… now back to your regularly scheduled blog

I have good news everyone!  My mother-in-law is apparently one of the luckiest people out there.  As of this Monday she will have increased her bank account by $50K.  The amazing part is she does not have to do anything to receive this incredible gift.  You are probably thinking to yourself, “this is incredible, how does someone fall into such a wonderful opportunity?” or maybe ” Hey, our government is spending us into the ground, maybe this is another benefit of the great CHANGE and NEW HOPE”  Well, to the later I simply say NOPE (as I will in November) and to the former I can safely say you too can be part of this joyous event.  However, there is just one tiny (itsy, weenie, microscopic crumb) of a detail I accidentally left out.  Well, accidentally may be a small untruth, but let’s put everything in perspective, we are talking about 50 THOUSAND dollars.  Umm… sorry about this, but that is a slight untruth as well…. make that 49,850 dollars but who is splitting hairs here, we are talking about getting free money for doing really very little work at all and in fact you even have the option of having THEM do the work for you.

Oh, you are still a little skeptical are you?  How about some details.  First off, this is not some hole in the wall lottery outfit, this is the Donald Trump Foundation from Las Vegas.  That’s right, VEGAS BABY, the bright spot in the desert that has more money than they know what to do with.  They could have picked anybody they wanted to, even people living outside of the U.S. but instead they picked my mother-in-law because.. umm… well not sure why, but let’s gloss over that for now.  Turns out some representative of the foundation has been calling her over and over badgering her to answer some basic questions before they can release the 50 THOUSAND DOLLARS to her.  Some of the difficulty has been trying to understand the caller’s thick foreign accent, but that is to be expected because a large corporate foundation like the Donald Trump Foundation would be drawing the best employee candidates from all over the world.  Oh, remember that tiny insignificant glitch I mentioned above?  Unfortunately, in order to actually release the money, she will need to pay the taxes on it.  After all, we are in America and according to Joe Biden, “It’s our patriotic duty to pay taxes. (note to Joe, let’s compare our charitable donations and see which party is working harder for the disadvantaged).  The good news is the tax rate appears to be only 0.5%, probably because she is retired.  So for a mere $250 dollars she makes $49,850.  Rather than have to do all that extra work of finding a check, locating a pen, getting finger cramps from signing the name etc. you can simply give them your bank account numbers and a few other small details like SS# and maybe a few odd facts like first dog’s name, birth date and by the way, do you happen to live alone?  The caller is also so dedicated to getting you this  money he will continue to call over and over if you have any reluctance to providing the information because after all it is 50 THOUSAND dollars (with a few bucks taken out of the profits for those required taxes).

Turns out that my mother-in-law was not enthused about providing the details they requested, but somehow they managed to get her address and informed her that they would come to her home this Monday to provide her the huge prize in person and get this “Wanted to know if she wanted the media to be informed so they could be there to capture this fantastic moment”  In either case, just be sure to have the tax money ready or they would not be able to release the deck (what?) I mean chect (huh?) I mean jeck, (oh, the tax CHECK)…those darn accents trip me up every time.  As a quick side note, she did mention that she would be waiting for them with her two sons who happen to be deputy sheriffs.  No problem, they will be bringing an FBI representative with them just so everyone knows that this is an official event.

Too good to be true?  Well, common sense says she’s caught up in the all too common scam efforts likely originating out of Nigeria, Jamaica, Middle East or possibly even out of the States (my bet is Nigeria).  This one seems pretty bold with the added component of making an appointment to show up at her house.  I can’t imagine how easy it would be for the elderly to fall into this trap with all the constant harassment and promised opportunities for fixed income households.  The good news is both her sons are deputies for the Sheriffs department and would be a very nice welcoming committee for these criminals.  I say “would” because I truly doubt they will actually risk even getting near her house, not to imply by any means that criminals positively tip the intelligence scales.

Some things are just to good to be true.  If something happens Monday, I’ll let you know.  For those of you with elderly family, friends, acquaintances, you might want to just give them a heads up about this situation.  If it wasn’t lucrative for them, they wouldn’t be doing it.

Hollow Words and Gutless Actions

Look into the eyes of another political victim.

I’ve mentioned numerous times on this blog that we have a true treasure near our house.  That treasure is the The Wildlife Prairie Park which is located in Edwards, IL.  Linda and I have been to many parks and zoos around the country and when it comes to the smaller budget outfits WPP stands heads and shoulders above the others.  Their environment is well maintained, their animals are placed in natural habitats and when it comes to wolves in particular, there is not a more lively and accessible pack.  They have plenty of area filled with trees and prairie and tend to stay visible most of the time, always providing great opportunities to snap a few pictures for your pleasure or portfolio.

It is actually very enjoyable to sit and watch the pack interaction from an overlook built off the side of their habitat.  Give it enough time and you will be able to distinguish the alpha from the subordinates and although it is difficult at first to tell all the wolves apart, you can actually start ordering them by their rank in the pack by who bothers who, who has first dibs at the food and which ones are willing to intrude on another’s kill.  Eventually Linda will drag me away from their area to go check out the other occupants of the park, but I always try and stop by before I leave to say goodbye.  Up to now, that has been acknowledgment of a temporary parting with an expectation that I’ll be back soon to check on their progress and take some pictures for the walls.

But now things have changed thanks to our wonderful Illinois politics which has managed to not only become a disgrace compared to the rest of the states but put us on the brink of financial ruin.  I will not go into the history of illegal activity by our past governors and you have probably seen stories on the recent one that was impeached and now awaiting a jury decision on ethics violations.  Instead, I would like to highlight the recent actions of the individual who took over for the impeached governor with promises to right the titanic.  Before the impeached governor decided to make a public mockery of himself on wiretaps, he cut funding to a large number of parks which included our very own Wildlife Prairie Park as well as Jubilee Park that I do most of my training runs in.  It was downstate so what the hell did he care and besides his wife thought all the roads to the hick cities were ugly and wanted wildflowers planted to keep her eyes from having to look at the filth (note to politicians and their spouses, I never forget).  However, when our temporary governor was sworn in, he promised to restore the funding gaining the trust and appreciation for all of downstate hicks.  Finally, a governor with more in the skull than a hair mop.  As of this week , this promise has become as hollow as the rest of the governors’ statements.

Continue reading Hollow Words and Gutless Actions

I’m Feeling a Little Smug Today!

I can’t believe it is August already.  Things have been a little hectic around here lately with July being consumed with the Bix7 race and probably more disrupting is I accepted a new job opportunity within my company.  So now I have the stress of getting up to speed on my new job while spending every available minute organizing and documenting for a hand off of my previous duties.  But with all that going on, I did find some time to look into something that has been circling around the noggin for awhile.  Let’s start with a quick experiment.  Take a look at this picture from the previous post on bobcats at Wildlife Prairie Park.

Okay, now take a gander at this image:

So, what were the main differences that you noticed?  If you said the first one was larger then you are both correct and possess a passion for the obvious.  If you also noticed the crop was slightly different then again correct and your analysis skills are starting to rev up.  Lastly, if you noticed the second one has a slightly different black tone and the vibrancy was reduced slightly then you have started developing your keen photography eye… oh, and correct again.  However, none of these things were part of the experiment.  The answer is actually much more “smug” than that and can be found after the jump.

Continue reading I’m Feeling a Little Smug Today!

You Can Never Be Too Careful

It’s time to close this month out and I cannot think of a better way than displaying some wildlife pictures.  A few weeks ago, Linda and I headed out for a day of shooting at the Wildlife Prairie Park.  We happen to be members at this park which is located just outside of Peoria in the small town of Edwards (about 15 minutes from our house).  This park puts the residents in their natural settings with plenty of room to move and live out a fairly normal animal life in spite of the numerous visitors that come to admire their beauty.  It caters to the typical wildlife found on the Midwest prairies (this includes the historical perspective).  They have a nice heard of bison, a few cougars, looks like down to one bear, a few foxes, otters (although I can’t remember the last time they were actually out in view), a badger and two coyotes to name a few.  But most impressive of all, they have one of the best wolf packs I’ve found outside of the International Wolf Center in Ely Minneapolis.  Linda and I have traveled to many states to check out their captive wolves and always end up being disappointed because they never compare to what we have in our own backyard.  I’ll be rolling pictures of the wolves out soon enough, but today’s post focuses on another inhabitant of the park.

For the uniformed city dwellers out there, this is your classic bobcat.  Half kitty cat, half cougar and 100% kill you when you least expect it.  Basically look at it as a house cat skin covering of pure muscle that enjoys nothing more than to gnaw the flesh off of crunchy bones.  We happened to catch this particular beast at feeding time.  I really liked the contrast of the dead tree with the living animal and the brightness of the coat against the dreary setting.  It was very apparent this cat was nervous about someone messing with his catch and spent the entire time we were was watching him checking back and forth for any suspicious activity.  The interesting thing about this set of shots is the opportunity it gives to experiment with different cropping options.  Cropping is an art unto itself and one of those activities you can spend a day on just exploring the different configurations and the effect it has on the viewer.  In this set, I tried to let the cat drive the crop orientation.  In the shot above, the cat was clearing the upper left of suspicion so the crop was skewed in that direction. In this shot, the cat is checking if anything was lurking on the other side of the stumps.

To compensate for this new direction, the crop was brought down from the top and extended in the direction of the area being scanned.  At first I had the cat pushed closer to the right side to hit the rule of thirds, but it just felt like the cat was too confined in the scene.   I actually really like this shot since you can see more of the facial features and the concerned expression seemed to fit the situation perfectly.  Lastly, the subject gave a final inspection down the hill.

As before, the crop was adjusted to compensate for this new scan direction.  After debating for awhile and trying a few options, it was decided to sacrifice some of the stump in favor of the extra shift it provided to the left.  The stumps provided a nice anchor to the left side of the shot, but unfortunately it did put the focus of the photo too much in the center for my liking.  It would have also helped if the living tree wasn’t shooting right out of his head but I had to take what nature provided.  Although this one really shows off the strength of the muscles these animals have,  my favorite is still the middle one and likely the one I’m going to send out for production print.

I hope you enjoyed my little crop experiment.  If you get the chance, be sure and visit the park.  You will not be disappointed!  Just be sure and bring your longer glass and a full bottle of Off.

Night Dwellers – The Wolf Spider Revisted

What is becoming the norm with this blog, I am pushing to meet my post quota for the month.  I’ve been pretty busy as of late and my extra hours as of late has been spent in therapy and late night workouts.  Luckily, I have line of site to the rest of this month so no dangers on the content front.  This particular post is going to revisit a post I had made some time back.  Once again, I was out on the porch one night and came across another opportunity to drag out the camera.  Any chance you remember the previous post on the Wolf Spider?  Well, those were taken with a 70-200mm zoom glass.  Earlier this year, we purchased a macro glass (105mm) that provides a ton of fun.  I am still feeling my way around this type of photography and still have a lot to learn.

Once again, our dog Rizzi once again found the specimen.  He loves to check out all the creatures on the porch, but tends to get waaaay to close for my comfort.  When he found this spider, I ended up picking him up and moving him away as soon as I saw his nose going for it.

As mentioned before, spiders are safe around me unless they cross the Loon coin size.  This one was definitely beyond that limit by almost 2x.  I didn’t have a scale indicator and decided against sticking my finder down by it, so you will just need to trust me on that.  Again, still working on getting these shots down.  I needed to open the Fstop up to get the entire body in focus, but for the most part it came out okay.  It definitely has a different feel that the spider shots did with the zoom.  This image came out a little better.

Pretty creepy eh?  While prepping the pictures for the blog, something kept nagging me about these two shots.  Eventually it came to me what was odd.  Anything you know about spiders seem contrary to these two images?  Hint, it is in the numbers.  I ended up verifying my arachnid knowledge just to validate my initial thought.  Spiders do indeed have 8 legs, but it looks like this specimen only has 6.  Turns out, what I thought were leg shadows, were actually doubled up legs.  Not sure why it was doing this but it may have been a defensive posture in order to propel it out of the way faster if Rizzi’s nose got a little too close.

Since the macro was on, it was time to move in for the cool shots.  It became very obvious I needed to get some stabilization under the camera to get some quality shots… but it was late and I was feeling the pull of the pillow.  I did get one fairly decent shot… extremely creepy I might add.

I can’t image the fear an insect must face having this ball of ugliness bearing down on it.  I should mention that I am not an expert spider cataloger so if I happen to get these identified wrong, please let me know.  Typically, the wolf spider is a little more furry than this one, but everything else (coloring, size etc.) seemed to match.  Oh, and if you are wondering how this turned out for the subject, you may be happy (or not depending on your fear) to know that I let it live.  Of course, now it will probably mate with an equally sized spider resulting in 10 billion offspring the size of a CD.  My only hope is Rizzi finds them before they launch their plans to take back their woods.

364 Training Days Left

It’s another one in the books folks!  Yesterday was my 8th running of Bix7 and probably one of the toughest ones yet from a couple of perspectives.  I am still nursing a leg problem I have been trying to get resolved for a number of months and if that was not tough enough to deal with, the weather god decided to unleash on us.  As in previous years, Linda and I went up with some friends of ours.  Ron O. and his son Tim are pictured here BEFORE the race.

I emphasized before since it looks like we already ran the race and now soaked from sweat.  In reality, it was raining from the moment we arrived at the course (7:00am).  The day before the race, the Quad Cities was hit with a major thunderstorm that dropped power lines, tore off tree limbs and even took some roofs off.  The city crews were busy most of the day and night trying to get everything cleaned up for the big race.  Apparently another flare up occurred in the early morning causing even more scurrying around.  The local news were telling everyone to hold off a little longer before coming to the race location in case they had to delay it due to lightening.  I was wondering how they handle lightening due to the dangers involved with 15,000 runners massed in such a tight location.

So we decided to head downtown and hope for the best.  By that time, it was raining pretty good and we were soaked as we made our way to the starting chutes.  It was bearable temperature wise (~low 70s, but when the wind blew it would bring out the goose bumps).  The picture above was actually taken inside while we were making our last visits to the restrooms.  Around 7:40 we made our way to the staging areas and proceed to stand in the rain for the next 20 minutes as they prepared for the start.  Luckily the lightening was holding off so hopes were still on for an official start.  Linda snapped this shot as she waited in her start area.

Gray, gloomy and terribly WET.  I think from a conditions perspective, this was the worst I had ever run in.  Sure, runners like the cool temperatures, but a constant downpour tends to get on your nerves.  At race start time, they lined up the elites, completed the requisite introductions and sang the Anthem.  About 3 seconds after the last notes, a huge lightening bolt flashes across the sky followed by an impressive rumble.  I actually relaxed a bit thinking they would delay the race because of it, but there were no other bolts coming after it.  Sure enough, the gun went off and the mass of humanity starting making its way up the steep  Brady Street hill.  Here is another shot she took at some point after the gun went off.  Note, there is a significant delay before the start ripples down to those in the back staging points.

A couple things of note in this picture.  First, it is still raining (and not just a drizzle).  Second, you can get a feeling of how many people there were if you follow the mass of people up the picture and lastly, some people dress up for this race in various costumes.  Linda wasn’t sure exactly what the individual was wearing in the lower left, but she thought it looked like a giant round of cheese on their head.  Well, at least his head was dry and the cheese looked like it could double as an umbrella.  Linda was doing the 2 mile Quick Bix option (as opposed to the 7 miles for the full race).  This was why she was able to take pictures along the way.  Unfortunately, she was on the move and in the rain, so a lot of her shots were a blurry mess.  She did get a shot of the most important competition out of the entire race field.  This is the one individual that every Quick Bix competitor must beat or forever face humiliation.  Who is this nemesis that puts so much pressure on us (well, the Quick Bixers) every year…..

Sorry for the blur, but it’s the Oscar Mayer Wiener.  You can probably imagine what if feels like to lose to a hot dog.  Guessing this costume was horribly heavy due to the foam soaking up all the water.   Now, coming clean, I was passed at the halfway point by a Where’s Waldo dude, but he was moving pretty darn fast.

As mentioned, the race was pretty tough for me.  I made the first turn up the hill and found myself running through a small lake due to a low point in the road.  Immediately my shoes filled up with water making them feel like boat anchors.  This sucked, but not as much as feeling the squishy slosh every time my foot hit the ground.  At mile two, the left leg hamstring started tightening up as expected, forcing me to concentrate pretty hard on watching the stride length and ankle flex to help compensate for it.  The split times were okay up to the turnaround.  I was not on any PR pace so kept it controlled trying to save the leg for the hard climb back.  About mile 4, the rain subsided a bit which started raising the heat index to an uncomfortable level.  I decided to partake on a couple more water stations than usual to to keep the demons at bay.  About mile 5.5, the rain started up again which felt good at first, but quickly turned annoying as I approached the left turn back to Brady Steet.  Remember that lake I hit there at the start… well, I hit it again packing on all the water weight I had ran out of the shoe since the last dunking.  By now, the leg was hurting and the water on the road made me more cautious than usual as I made it down the steep incline.  When I passed over the finish line, I had nothing left in the tank.  I had given it my all which is all I expect out of myself in every race.  I came in around ~61:04 which is significantly slower than my previous (healthy) year of 56:41, but faster than the 66.24 the year before.  All things considered, with my leg problems and the hampered training schedule that caused coupled with the rain, I’ll take the time.  I have 364 days to prepare for a better run next year.  In retrospect, I guess any vertical finish is better than having to go home in one of these….

Ironically, we look about the same as when we started.  Oh, by the way, Tim came in just under 46:00 (he’s 21, give me a break) and his dad Ron came in with an impressive 64:09, surpassing his pre-race expectations.  Reminded by this picture, I need to point out a sad situation that occurred during they race.  Running is an athletic event that can stress your system.  Your training can have a definite influence on how your body handles that stress.  There are also health issues that may be aggravated by running and quite honest those things that just happen for one reason or another.  I am sad to say that a 41 year old male collapsed at mile 6 and passed away.  He was a wrestling coach in a city about 15 minutes North of us.  Our deepest sympathies to his wife (who was also running) and family.  Let’s all be careful on the road!

Also, congratulations to Ryan Hall for a tremendous performance to take the ribbon.  I always appreciate it when an elite runner comments on just how tough the Bix7 is and he even congratulated all the runners who competed in the race.  Everything looks good for him to have a great run in the Chicago Marathon and quite frankly one of the true bright spots in our Olympic Running program.

Now time for me to plan out this week’s training schedule.

What Is This (WIT)  ANSWER:

As you may know, the last post was the first WIT.  I thought it would be harder, but two of our readers nailed the quiz.  It was indeed a scaled model of a Wankel Rotary Engine.  They were pretty common in the Mazda RX series of cars, but I don’t believe they really caught on in domestic cars.  Apparently there were some issues with maintenance of them – See Skid’s great comments.  Congratulations to Skidmarks (who was first) and my brother for identifying the mystery object.

Introducing New Category: WIT

We’re feeling the heat in the Midwest this weekend.  The last couple of days have been cresting 90F pretty easily making it tough for a lot of yardwork.  I did get the mowing done yesterday and then went to the park mid-day to see if I could get a training run completed in the heat – the Bix7 is less than a weak away.   Thanks to the leg rehab and quite frankly a very comfortable season up to this point, the heat acclamation has not been up to par this year and it is showing on the long runs.  A week ago Linda and some friends of mine piled into the car and headed up for a Bix@6 training run.  That was definitely rough and hoping that doesn’t repeat on race day.  Fortunately, I made it through the run, but I admittedly did take a mile off the distance due to the fact the human coolant system went dry capping off my sweat production.  When that happens, it’s best to cut your losses and head back.  I ended up feeling the after effects of that until early this morning.  Long story short(er), I’m just kicking back, taking it easy today and figured it was a great time to introduce a new category called “What Is This” or WIT for short.  Every once in awhile something comes along that is odd or interesting from a creative or mechanical perspective.  To make it interesting for you, I’ll provide a number of pictures or clues in a blog post to help you figure it out.  The answer will then be posted at the end of the NEXT blog entry.  Are you up for the challenge?

The first WIT challenge is this:

First some details that may or may not help you.  This was found in the basement of Linda’s mother’s house while we were clearing it in order to fix some foundation problems she was having.  It was just thrown in a pile of miscellaneous stuff and immediately fascinated me for a couple of reasons.  One it looked complex and intricately designed.  The other cool feature is there was a gear on the other side that rotated the rounded triangles in a unique pattern.  It took a few days to figure out what it was (big thanks to Linda having some recollection in the distant past on what it was).  As a hint, it is not really a toy, nor is it a working part for anything in the house … well, at least nothing in a typical house.  It is also not an American design.  There is one reader of this blog that might already know what it is, but the rest of you might want to check out the detailed assembly pictures that follow after the jump.

Continue reading Introducing New Category: WIT

Another Successful System Upgrade!

Good news everyone, the migration from Windows XP to Windows 7 is now officially complete.  As mentioned previously, I was a little hesitant to embark on this endeavor since it is my main workhorse machine and really the heart of my day to day activities.  Adding to the complexity, my new provider caps me at 300MB per 24 hrs with the exception of 1-5AM.  It did not start out exactly smooth, but some blame is on the space between the chair and the keyboard.  The upgrade was from Windows XP Professional 32Bit to Windows 7 Professional 64Bit.  There is some question where the 7 Professional was really needed, but that purchases was pre-release and thus too many months in the past to worry about.  Unfortunately, when I slipped the 64Bit upgrade disk in an error popped up saying the install disk was not compatible with my OS.  This definitely resulted in quite a surprise.  Of course I tried it again using the exact same process expecting for some reason a different result.. yeah, I know insanity.  It then occurred to me to try and boot off of it.  A couple of attempts at that before realizing my BIOS wasn’t set up to boot off the CD Drive.  This was corrected and sure enough the upgrade boot was successful.  From that point on, the install was pretty smooth – besides working around the download of the updates in the uncapped morning hours.  It took about 5 hours for me to get all but one of my applications re-installed.  A significant portion of that was getting my mail client (Thunderbird) to resync with my backup.  I was a little worried about getting my Firebird back to my preferred state, but it turns out there is an export file it routinely creates which allows you to quickly bring back all your bookmarks.  So far, every single app is functioning without issue and there is definitely something to be said about having a pristine install.  I am still getting use to the Windows 7 UI, but other than a few oddities and slight annoyances it should be fine.

I would like to make two comments that stood out.  First off, I am a heavy user of Casper as my recovery system.  Thanks to a Thermaltake bare drive external unit (BlacX) I can slap in a bare SATA drive, ghost the system on it and slap it on the shelf.  I rotate through 3 drives allowing me multiple backups to roll back to.  Trust me, stop wasting your time with resolving viruses and go the simple route of taking  2 minutes to replace the OS drive.  Now, I utilize Raptor drives for the base OS and my gaming needs.  I think there was a 150G in there to begin with.  Since I wanted to be able to roll back to XP if issues were encountered, I picked up a 300G Raptor to ghost and replace the original drive.  Got the new drive out of the box, removed all the packaging and slapped it in the enclosure.  Ugh, the drive would not seat into the slot.  After closer inspection of the drive, they had taken a small drive about 2.5 inches by oh 4 inches and slapped a heat sync around it which brought it up to standard desktop dimensions.  This would be fine, but the drive’s connectors were at a different offset.  As a result, I had to open the case and add it as secondary drive.  Even this had troubles since the spacing was different than the case SATA cables causing me to replace it with a cable that came with the drive.  After all this, Casper successfully completed the copy and the primary drives were swapped.  Note to WD, stick with the standards and keep your user base happy.

Lastly, I wanted to comment on the last application that I finally got running after about 2.5 hours of fighting with it.  First a little setup.  Recently a certain example has become the poster child  for arguments to switch away from Microsoft and go with Apple.  Any guesses what that particular example might be?  Hint, it has to do with a standard activity that commonly happens with all computer installations…. it has to do with a certain hardware component…. got it?  Yes, the process of adding a printer.  No less than three times last month I was subjected to case scenarios on how such and such a family member struggled time and time again trying to get a printer installed on their Microsoft computer but when [such and such person] gave [them an Apple or showed them theirs], they were able to tell it to just find the printer and PRESTO, the printer was spewing out test pages in seconds.    As a result, everyone in the world should switch to Apple because all their support problems would disappear and we will all be in Pandora.  Once my OS was successfully upgraded, I brought up the add printer dialog and started my st0pwatch.  26 seconds later my network printer was successfully found, installed and a test page was coming out of the printer.  I don’t know about you, but my life can spare 26 seconds.  Now let’s talk about the final app.  The last application that needed to be installed was Apple’s ITunes.  I have an ITouch and until I jailbreak it next week I’m stuck with utilizing this ridiculous excuse for software.  So I go through the install to find out that I have registered all 5 of my available 5 computers for my username and I’ll have to remove them all to add anymore in the future – translated, I have made 4 upgrades/installs of my computer and one on my laptop.  Oh, and I can only do this removal once a year.  Once I get everything installed, I have to wait for it to download all my purchased apps.  Once that is done, I tried to point it to a copy of my previous sync directory.  After what seemed like an eternity, the import completes, but all my playlists are missing.  Thinking this was not an issue, I deleted everything and went to simply sync the contents of my ITouch to the new desktop install.  Guess what – that ain’t happening ’cause you can only sync the other way (desktop to ITouch).  So I rebuilt all my playlists by hand and re-added all the music song by song.  Finished with that, I hit the sync button and and and and … it simply came back that the sync was done, but nothing showed up on the ITouch.  20 minutes later I found a checkbox on the music tab telling it to sync the files.  How silly of me to actually think that people who install ITunes and connect up an ITouch would want to sync their music by default.  It is finally all working now and needless to say I have a counter argument for anytime anyone brings up a similar contrived excuse to move to an inferior platform.  The irony is I have an iTouch, but that appears to be something they got right but of course the supporting software frustrates me more than any Microsoft product ever has.

Anyway, everything is done now so no more excuses for not blogging!  I just might have to break out some recent Acadia pictures in celebration.

Operation Firefly Completed

I figured it was best to get this post out tonight for the simple reason that I am planning on converting my primary PC from XP to Windows 7 tonight.  If things go terribly wrong I’ll still have at least one post for the month.  The good news is I already went through this process with two of my other machines and quite frankly it went pretty smooth.  It just makes me a little hesitant when there’s work being done on my workhorse machine.  So what is the topic that may have to hold you over for the rest of the month?  It’s Operation Firefly and represents  the final phases of Operation River Kwai.  Yes folks, the actual bridge building effort has come to a close.  On July 4th, my family was able to make it up for a cookout and opening ceremony.

It about killed me getting everything done for the big day.  It was less than a week after getting back from Acadia National Park so the yard was completely out of control.  Two mowings of the yard, a complete mowing of the back lot (trails and bridge area), 3 hours weeding the landscaping, 2.5 hours trimming the house lawn, 6 hours trimming and weed clearing the back lot and mixing 3 50lb bags of cement took up most of my time.  I also had to put up the Tiki torches (even little ones for the bridge, check out the railings).  The hope being the torches would keep the mosquitoes at bay.  Cutting it pretty close, I drove down to the bridge to put up the ceremonial ribbon about an hour before everyone was suppose to arrive.  Attaching it to one end of the post (check) start rolling the spool out (check), attach to other end ACCCKKKKKK!  Turns out there was only about 2 feet on the spool.  The heart sank, all the planning, all the work crushed by 6 feet of missing ribbon.   I slowly walked back to the ATV, and puddered back to the house.  Thinking all was lost, the day jumped back on the tracks with a great idea from Linda… “Why don’t you use duct tape?” Brilliant!  As you can tell from the picture, that was the perfect solution.

With my family watching, the  ribbon was cut and the bridge given its official name.  After long discussions with myself and thousands of ideas, it came down to really one name… SERENITY.  Firefly happens to be one of my favorite TV series and their spaceship happened to be called that.  I also thought it was quite fitting since it was truly relaxing spending all the hours alone down there clearing the area and doing the finishing work.  Just me, the bridge, the flowing water over the rocks and the sights and sounds of the local wildlife.  A stark contrast from the hectic days in the office and quite frankly the driving reason we decided to move out into the country in the first place.  I could probably sit on that bridge and just relax the entire day.

My brother Dan played a major part in this operation.  His design assistance was key to the whole effort and he spent numerous hours (including vacation days) helping me bring this beast to fruition.  He also highly recommended having the opening ceremony as soon as possible in case it fell .  You have to like his confidence!  Based on some initial tests, I was pretty sure it was going to hold up just fine, although, I will not go into the reasons for the extra 3 bags of cement mentioned previously.  He would not help me cut the tape, so I gave him the privilege of christening Serenity.

We actually discussed the best way to carry this out before he went at it.  Unsure whether a whack across the post would really break the champagne bottle a decision was made to take advantage of some bolts on the side of the bridge.  Now mind you we have never done this before, or at least me.  He owns a boat and might have done this with that, but clearly this is our first bridge christening.  Without a doubt, we were both surprised as to what happened.  Right before he went to do this, I took my safety glasses off (which I always wear since getting my eyes LASIK’d a few years back) and put them on him.  This turned out to be a wise move since the bottle COMPLETELY shattered when it hit the bolt, and by shattered, I mean everything but the handle was in a pile of glass with no piece bigger than a 50 cent piece.  If you look closely in the picture above you can see some of the glass making its way through the foam spray.  I thought Linda took a great shot of the aftermath.

As you can tell, Dan looked rather surprised at what little was left.  All in all, the day turned out fantastic.  We had good eats, good games (frisbee, ladders, Jarts (crappy safety ones) and Bocce).  But most of all it was one of the few times most of us were able to get together at the same time.  Unfortunately, my niece Kristen had to work and the our boys missed getting to play with Max, but the rest of the newphews/niece, brothers, sister-in-laws and parents were all present.  We were also able to get a family photo (on the bridge) which, believe it or not, is pretty rare.

In closing, thanks to everyone that helped on the bridge (Linda, Dan D., Jeff, Sung, Billy, Dan N., Paul R., Rand and Norm) with special thanks to my father who taught me how to use the tools of the trade at a young age.  He was disappointed he didn’t get a chance to help out, but in truth, he’s the one who set the foundation for us to even consider taking on such an ambitious endeavor.

(Spoiler Alert – Firefly Ending)

Okay, now who out there has been impatiently waiting to comment that SERENITY crashed towards the end of the Firefly movie?  Come on, I know at least one of you were thinking that.  I take comfort in knowing they put it back together again at the end and the fact I haven’t seen any Reavers in the area – just one CHUPACABRA and I’m hot on that trail.