Avatar! (Forgot to Post)

Oops! I've once again forgotten to post! I have a tendency to do that, it seems.

Anyway! Megan and I watched a bunch of Avatar "last night" (I'm posting this into the past.) We powered through the second half of the Earth part of the show, and watched the first few episodes of the Fire part. In the next few weeks, I am hopefully going to finish the rest of the Fire part of the show, while audio-chatting with Megan. The idea is that we'll have pretty much watched the whole thing together.

Anyway, sorry I keep posting these things into the past, but I keep forgetting to post when I "should."

Sushi

Today, I accidentally wasn't on the schedule for most of the evening shift, so I was able to leave work at about 4:30 and hang out with Megan. We hung out in the room a little bit while she finalized the new color of her hair, and then we went to Hiro's to go get some Sushi.

Today we've also been watching Avatar: The Last Air-bender, but there's more on that tomorrow.

Visit!

I'm happy to say that after a few long weeks, Megan is back in flagstaff visiting. She and Meaghan have gone off to play, and hopefully there can be some Pita Pit as well.

Other than that, I didn't post a blog entry yesterday, which is like my tenth failure to post since I started trying to write a blog post every day. I'm not too terribly regretful of it, because it's really not that big of a deal to me. I started writing a post last night, and that post is probably one I'll finish writing and use as a pre-written post for my vacation time.

Downtown

One of my favorite activities so far this summer, one which I'll probably miss the most while I'm in Kingman then on my vacation, has become visiting downtown Flagstaff.

Before going downtown though, it's worth noting that I spent some time video chatting with Megan.

Today, Glenn, Meaghan, Mel and I went to downtown on a wonderful little photo adventure. We walked around downtown, had a bit of a fashion shoot in the park, and then went to Pita Pit for some dinner. That's the other thing I'm going to miss in Kingman/Michigan, Pita Pit.

Afterward we came back to the room and had a bit of a dance party, along with some music and web browsing.

After that, I did some color calibration and got myself caught up on processing and posting my Photo365 images. I've got a lot of workflow stuff I need to do on that front though, especially keywording the oldest of my image folders, making sure my list of keywords is complete, and burning keyworded folders to DVD for archival.

Chatting with Megan

Megan recently pointed out that I haven't been very talkative online lately. I'm not going to lie, and we already discussed this, I think it's because I'm afraid that my encouragement isn't always as helpful as I'd like it to be. We talked a bit today, then after I came home I accidentally fell asleep at the keys. Although I must admit that I do quite enjoy a good nap, I'm sure she wasn't happy about that.

so... um... oops.

Anyway, that was all I could think of today, so it's what I wrote about.

Missed a Day

Whoops! I missed a day. This post is therefore being posted retroactively.

Today (Yesterday, when I'm writing this) has been (was) very "full." I got up at about 10:30 and prepared to head out to the NAU Bookstore to pick up the T-Shirt I ordered back in March for Megan. (Oops, a bit of a delay in the delivery, but I can't say I mind too terribly much.) I also happen to have received the video card for flatdell and the hundred-stack of Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs yesterday, which was a nice bonus. I did also actually go shooting with the D300 and everything. There's even some nice images I think, but I haven't really had a chance to go through them yet.

Flatdell's new video card installed perfectly. I had to bring the machine and the card into the office to get it all set up, because I lack my own tools right now, but once Mel and I got the brackets rearranged, the card installed great and the drivers installed pretty easily.

Not too terribly much progress was made on the ThinkPad/OPENSTEP project. I burned the CD and the OPENSTEP boot discs seem to realize that the CD is there, but the machine seems still unable to read the disc -- that or I burned it wrong. I may try another (more conventional) CD to see if the machine is physically capable of reading the Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs, and I'm also getting a different CD image to try.

I also lacked progress on Meaghan's laptop, mainly because I had a bunch of other things going on. I'll work on that more today or tomorrow.

Relaxing Weekend

Well, after finally getting finals done, and getting everything moved last Friday, I've taken the bus down to Tucson and I'm here with Megan, watching her write a comment on one of Eric's notes.

I'm mostly confident about my grades, I think I got mostly Bs but I'm concerned about my grade in World History, because I'm not sure that I did so well on the exam, and if I did very poorly, it'll reflect pretty badly in my GPA.

Other than that, on Saturday morning I took the trip down to Tucson, meeting a nice older woman named Norma. She and I made our way down to Tucson where I met Megan and her little brother Donald, who took me to an interesting Mexican restaurant whose name I've forgotten. Afterward we went to her house and watched some Avatar. I've found out that her whole family seems to love DDR, although it's only been a few days yet, so I'm not sure how long that'll last.

The real highlight of the trip was Rent on Sunday though. The trip to Phoenix wasn't too relaxing, as we started to run a little late, which drove Megan completely crazy. Other than missing the first song or two, Rent was awesome. Although I've got to admit that the stage show is a very draining experience, emotionally as well as physically, especially in the second act. I cried during the movie, but during the stage show, I completely bawled, and wasn't able to speak normally for about a half hour afterward. If anyone remembers how I reacted to Fullmetal Alchemist, it was basically the same for Rent.

After Rent, Megan and I had some Ruby Tuesdays and I got on the FlagExpress van and came back up to the new room where Glenn, who is living with me this summer, and I set up the room to our liking. More on the arrangement of the room later.

Another Overnight

Well... I remember writing yesterday about how I was done with overnights for the semester, but the opportunity arose and I'm here for another night.

I'm not too terribly concerned at the loss of studying time, because I haven't got any finals tomorrow and I'm purportedly using some of this time to study.

My two finals left are for German and History, and after that I've got to get everything packed and ready to move.

Luckily, I've heard that I may be able to move into my room in Aspen for the summer as early as this Friday, because (luckily!) nobody has requested an extended check-out in that room. Another cool tidbit is that I'm on the second floor of Aspen, so I'll be right near the kitchen and laundry room.

The other cool thing about being able to move in on Friday is that I may be able to go to Tucson with Megan, and see Rent this coming Sunday.

Home Stretch

I know this is just about all I've written about in the past few weeks, but I'm excited to say that I'm nearly done with everything. Including the VC251 project about which I was so unhappy. It was one of those things that in the end wasn't too terribly difficult, I just needed to actually get started on it. I also ended up using a lot of Megan's advice about how to make a vectorized human face look good.

From this point forward, I just need to finish the website stuff for VC251, pray that I'm not kicked out of the class from my Unit 11 shenanigans, then finish up on my finals and projects for my German, History and Computer Information Systems classes.

In other news, I'm just now finishing out my last overnight shift of the semester. Having my macaroni and cheese, and chatting with my WonderTwin. Megan's around too actually, but she fell asleep at about 2 a.m. on the couch, so I then pursued some of the Thomas the Tank Engine videos I've got hanging around until at about 4:45, my WonderTwin Meaghan showed up, with a case of the insomnias.

On another Megan-related note, we finished the first season of Avatar today. I'm borrowing her set of "Book 2" to rip into the iMac so I can watch it, and then I suppose it'll be online videos for me, and Megan and I were talking about watching the show finale at the same time, and voice/video-chatting on the Internet at the same time, or seeing if she could come visit Flag sometime around then.

Photo365

Last night Megan linked me to an article on the PhotoJojo site, detailing a project that anyone can do called Photo365. If you've been looking at my flickr feed, you're probably fairly well-aware of the fact that I use my iPhone to take photos and post them online quite often.

Although, I wouldn't mind a good excuse to carry around the D300 a bit more often. And it sounds like there's gains abound to be had while participating in the Photo365 project -- Especially the part where...

Taking a photo a day will make you a better photographer. Using your camera every day will help you learn its limits. You will get better at composing your shots, you’ll start to care about lighting, and you’ll become more creative with your photography when you’re forced to come up with something new every single day.

Although I can't really start right now with it, I'd really like to start this summer, and hopefully be able to keep up with it next school year. Although I've been pretty good at blogging every day, I know that taking photos sometimes becomes difficult for me, because it's not really something I can do during classes. (Although between-class photos are better anyway.)

So I intend to start the project over the summer, I am probably going to either get Flickr Pro, or set up my blog on the U60, but that's a project for the summer, rather than posting every image to Blogger or Flickr. Things to consider later on, anyway.

Diety of iPods

Note: This post was pre-written last night using a feature in the latest Blogger In Draft version of the Blogger Dashboard.

Well, I've just now fixed what will officially be the second iPod I've repaired. I reattached a little cable in formerly-Megan's 4th generation iPod (20gig.) I can now load songs into it and play them! I think there's still some pretty massive hard disk damage, but the songs it does play, it plays loud and clear through the headphone ports.

The other iPod I've repaired was Megan's 5.5th generation iPod with video (80gig) which I transformed into a 32-gig SSD based iPod. For now, we'll call it 5.7th Generation iPod with Video. I eventually need to decide whether or not to go ahead and replace the hard disc in this 20gigger, and then I need to decide whether I want to go the compact flash route, or with another rotating drive. (I've even been considering replacing the hdd in my 5.5th Generation 30GB iPod with a 32 gig CF card, mainly for the increase in battery life, but for now it's fine as I use it so little, and when I do use it, I'm pretty careful with it.)

Another recent repair is the Mighty Mouse that was included with my iMac. I've got to start using the Logitech mouse with the R61i for awhile, as a result of it's recent aversion to properly working with the TrackPoint. Unfortunately, I think it may be time to give the R61i a clean install, especially now that I'm set in the software I'm using on Vista, and won't really need to run around installing and uninstalling every other piece of software I see, which I think is one of the things that killed it.

As another note, this post is being written on my iMac with Blogger's "in draft" post manager. It's basically exactly like the normal Blogger dashboard, except it supports scheduling of posts. What I wonder myself is when this particular feature will trickle down into standard Blogger. Almost more importantly, I wonder when Windows Live Writer will be able to take advantage of it. I'd really like to start being able to pre-determine the exact release time of some of my bigger project articles, many of which have been late as a result of me not being able to be online or at my computer when I wanted them to be released.

Worth noting: I can imagine the blog being very, very epic this coming summer. My intent is to really step up my game as far as finding things to write about, and with some of my project posts. I've got the Digital Imaging Series, which I will probably re-write, and the Advice for College Students, which I will probably rewrite, if I've got any of them written by then. I also intend to do a series on Computer Networking Technologies, and of course, my venerable series, which will inevitably receive a re-titling and re-working, Helpdesk. (Actually, I don't yet have a series called Helpdesk, but one of the things I'd like to do on my blog is start separating the types of posts a bit better, and one of my projects on the blog seems to include writing about my job at the ACHD.)

Also, Happy Birthday, Megan!

Yes, I have seen the rain on a sunny day.

Well, Spring has officially Sprung, so to speak, here at the university. Today marks the first day that I've seen and felt non-snow precipitation, and it seems fairly special in general also as a result of the fact that it's still really bright outside today. The light is pretty soft, it would probably make an excellent day for outdoor or environmental portraits.

This day is also very special for another reason, today Megan and I celebrate seven months together today. Also, Megan is turning in a portfolio she's going to be using for an art scholarship application, and today after her class she's going to head down to Tucson for the street fair, and to celebrate the birthday of her brother and mother, so I've got the weekend up here alone.

I think this weekend I'll end up cleaning the room a bit more, developing my NT4 domain and maybe I'll make progress on one of my bigger projects.

Megan is awesome.

I'm here on the overnight, and Megan is with me, using the iMac (which I've color calibrated pretty well using the built-in utility) and I'm thinking about what to put in my blog. In addition to speaking over Google Talk with Kevin from Washington, and putting off reading my book for HIS102.

When I asked what to write for my blog, Megan suggested I write about how awesome she is. So, for a bit of a change of pace, this post is approximately 73% dedicated to how awesome Megan is. (If I were to include more sidenotes, insignificant details or exposition about the situation, the number would've been something like 67%.)

Basically, Megan is awesome. :)

That's pretty much it. I don't have screenshots or anything prepared like I did for my post about how Vista is awesome. "oops."

Great day!

Megan had the day off yesterday, so I asked Meaghan to take my shift for me, and Megan and I spent the whole day together. Let's just say, it was great.

We started the day with a great breakfast at IHOP, getting my hair cut, and some kite flying, then went back to my room to watch some Avatar episodes and have some other fun time.

We also installed the 32 gig CF card into her iPod. It's a big reduction in capacity from her 80 gig hdd, but it won't break if she accidentally drops it.

Overall, the day was completely epic, and despite being filled with so many things, it was very well paced because neither of us had to worry about being at work or in classes.

Nikon D300

Well, I've gone and done it, I suppose. I've impulse-bought a new camera. It's not a half-bad camera either, I got the Nikon D300, and an "AF-S Nikkor 18-135mm 3.6-5.6G ED DX" lens for it, along with a filter for the lens, and a fast 2 gig CF card. I bought it at Ritz Camera after Megan and I had dinner at Ruby Tuesday's. The images in this post should link up to full-resolution versions of the images that came out of the camera. I did minimal work on them using the included Nikon Capture NX software. Unfortunately though, my ThinkPad's display is not calibrated.

I decided to buy it at Ritz because the D300 is new enough that it costs just about the same amount of money everywhere, and because it was a situation where I could have it and start using it right away. And right away did I start. The very next morning after my shower, I unpacked the D300 and its lens. What an exciting feeling, that of unpacking a new piece of equipment and starting to use it. I carefully removed the D300 and the lens from their boxes, taking care to take a variety of hopefully-interesting photos with the D50.

So far, the difference is rather amazing, especially in the lens. The lens isn't that different from my old Quantaray 18-125mm lens, except for the fact that this one seems much sharper so far. I haven't used under all of the same types of conditions as the Quantaray, but I'm sure it'll be less than a year before I can tell whether or not I really think this lens is a better lens. I can tell you now though, I think this is a better lens.

The body is extremely well-built, its heftiness, speed and overall build quality show that it's a higher end camera than the D50, which in and of itself is an excellent piece of imaging technology, from a usability as well as a quality standpoint. The difference in the amount of pixels is readily apparent, especially on my mobile computer, which has been suffering performance problems as of late anyway. The other most apparent differences are in the speed of shooting, which is immense. I have always thought of my D50 as fast, but this thing can rapidly fire off nine or ten shots without even blinking. Said images will be properly focused too, because the AF system on this body is amazing. The other immediately noticeable difference is the review screen. The review screen on this camera is nothing short of amazing. It's significantly larger than that of the D50, which back in 2005 and 2006, I remember saying was very large and bright.

I took it out for a test drive after unpacking everything and getting used to controlling it. (Not to say that I'm very good at it yet, but I'm getting used to it.) My initial reaction to shooting with it is that I feel like I'm getting the shot I want, when I'm framing and shooting, even if I'm shooting something I didn't expect to be, or if I'm walking around and I happen to see some people I recognize, such as the image above of Tracy. The only bad thing I've got to say about the body is that when I was setting it up and hooking up the camera strap, I did so in a retarded way, and while walking around,

I took it to the overnight too, and although it's not necessarily as great a low-light performer as the D300, I'm sure that between the onboard flash and the Nikon SB600 I've got hanging around, I'll manage. I used the SB600 on the image of the D50 at the top of this post. Although even at relatively high ISOs, the D300 does still procure nice images. The image of the Dell OptiPlex in the SLAC was shot at ISO1000. (The D300 supports all of these weird ISO numbers I've only ever seen on Olympus cameras before.)

One of the things I think some people may now be thinking is "what about that non-full-frame sensor?" Unfortunately, that was one of my biggest desires for the camera upgrade, and it's the one thing I didn't get. I'm not too terribly sad at this point though. For one thing, getting a full-frame sensor requires either saving a few additional years to be able to afford the Nikon D3, or a switch to Canon.

I was seriously considering that switch to Canon too. However, the thing about that is that I've already got four different Nikon lenses, the Nikon flash, the off-camera Nikon flash sync cord, and in general, I'm pretty decent at using my Nikon stuff. The other thing is that the currently-available Canon full-frames are the 1Ds-Mark II, the 1Ds-Mark III and the 5D. None of which can be had new for less than $2000. BH has the 5D for $2100, compared to the D300's $1800, and the lens I wanted for the Canon was just shy of $1300. That's a pain in the wallet. And really, being that the 5D was released in 2005, it's out of date and due for a replacement. A replacement that will most likely cost significantly more than the 5D's current price anyway. Aside from the sensor thing, for the savings, the D300 is a significantly better camera in nearly every way.

Although, they say that what makes a great camera isn't necessarily the megapixels or the image processor or the brand or the size of the sensor. It's the ability that the camera has to let the photographer create an image. And while I think that one of my talents as a photographer is to be able to get the results I want out of nearly any piece of equipment. The D300 just happens to let me be even more sure of the images I'm making, and it lets me make them a little bit faster.

Ohh! So that's what I forgot to do!

Well, it's happened again. Monday, I was struck down by the gods of massive headaches, yesterday I ran errands with Meaghan, got pancakes with Megan, and then updated UTV62.com. And this morning... Well this morning, I'm finally addressing Monday morning's task of posting a blog entry.

I'm not going to lie, I do have others already written, but I feel like this is a good time to give a bit of a general update, instead of a canned blog post about photo management or whatever. So here it goes.

In the world of Megan and I, it's been sickness abound as Megan is currently battling the flu, and prior to that, with almost no break whatsoever, was battling "Something completely unrelated" (but almost as bad, it seems.) As a result of that, I was commanded to get the Flu shot, so Meaghan and I did that before her midterm yesterday.

Classes are going pretty well,I'm mildly depressed about my CIS120 because I keep forgetting to check WebCT Vista, therefore keep missing assignments. This weekend, I intend to power through all of the Word tutorials so I can rock the Word exam, just like I excelled at the Excel exam. Photography is going well, we've got a cool shooting assignment coming up in the studio, which I hope to work on this Friday. The shooting assignment is exciting because this'll be the first assignment where we actually start working on something destined for "delivery to a client" which will be JPEG files ready for the web. Other than that, German is going well, learning new stuff all the time is a pretty nice change, and the things that are review are definitely helpful, as reviews go.

In other news, I'm apparently merely dating photography, as per a thread on the 68kMLA forum about the total cost of owning a computer. I will expound upon this issue significantly in an upcoming blog post.

Work is going fairly well for me too. I come in, take calls, and when I am not completely struck down by an epic headache, I leave work quite happy. The two overnights haven't killed me yet, but it always seems like people want to come visit me from Kingman right before or after one or both of them.

So that's my two-days-late, and probably poorly written blog post!

Return of the Pismo!

I know it's Sunday morning, not Monday morning, but I've got to admit that I'm really jazzed tonight by the fact that apparently my PowerBook G3 isn't completely dead. I was getting ready to harvest it for parts when I looked at the processor daughtercard, realizing that it was still in the system, but it was not secured too well. I pressed down on it, securing it once again in its slot.

Lo and behold, the pismo booted straight up, although it looks like it's developed a few more lines in the screen, but the fact that it's working at all still makes me quite happy. Basically, we all now know that Megan isn't a killer. I intend to keep its 10.3.9 and 9.2.2 loaded, although I may transfer some of my actual data from the Pismo to the R61i.

So yeah, that happened today and I thought it was worth posting off-schedule for that.

The stress of breaks.

I'm mildly unhappy because I had an extraordinarily stressful post-finals week. Unlike my prediction of it being completely stress-free because there was going to be no deadline for leaving, it was more stressful because Megan and Glenn stayed in Gabaldon too, meaning that most of my time outside of work was dedicated to either hanging out at Megan's work, or making sure that Megan and Glenn didn't kill each other.

I realize that there was an expectation from Megan that she and I have some time alone, probably more than we actually did (which was still quite a lot by my standards), but there's also the fact that Jim still lives in the room, and has paid for it, and likewise with Glenn. Not only did Megan not get enough time alone with me, but she and I didn't get enough time alone without anyone, we estimate less than two hours alone time for the whole week, which is a lot less than either of us gets during the semester.

Those various factors led to what turned into an epic breakdown on Friday night, wherein I revealed that I actually wanted to sleep alone for a night, Megan revealed she wouldn't be capable of sleeping in Glenn's room for the night, and I got pissed (needlessly as per Megan) off at Megan and Glenn. Let's just say that neither of them know when to shut up, even if you say "shut up" to them seventeen times repeatedly. I also learned that I'm apparently a rather frightening person when I'm pissed off. Megan and Glenn wouldn't shut up though, Both of them were so stressed, or feeling so superior, that it wasn't an option to just close their mouths and open their ears long enough to realize that the solution to their problem was extraordinarily simple. I  moved one chair sixteen inches to the right, and moved the display we were viewing the movie on eight inches to the right, and all three of us were able to watch the last Real Bout High School DVD. Not too difficult, but some people seem to really enjoy being pissed off for no reason.

At least Megan got The Sims 2 installed on her Sony computer, which we picked up in great condition at Best Buy, and was able to get her people loaded back in fine.

Night Over, Broken Phone

Today, I worked a shift for one of my coworkers, because I quite like the Saturday morning shift, and because I'm a nice person like that. It was great until I realized that it was so great because the agent phone out in the lab was broken. (Saturday morning works out in the lab a lot like the overnight shifts do.) I tried a different cable but it didn't work, so naturally it's a switch problem, or the phone itself is broken. I called Mel and got permission to try a different cable, but that didn't help.

Anyway, I'm back here in the office working out the rest of my shift instead of in the lab. It's not much of a difference because there are so few people here anyway, but it does make me say things like "wow, I can't wait for the lab aides to get here" which I don't say all that often.

On another note, Megan asked me to stay with her last night because of her scare from yesterday involving some creepy guy who likes entering random rooms. It was the first time this year I've slept on a low bed, and I do say that I miss it ever-so-slightly. Also of note, we can sleep on the same twin mattress successfully if we don't have any additional padding. And no, nothing other than sleeping happened. Well, we did watch "Meet the Robinsons" which is an amazing movie, just so you know.

Also, my NaNoWriMo wordcount is about 7,300 now. Pretty good I think, but I am totally looking forward to increasing that, instead of the word count of my blog.

Avenue Q

So, I know that this post is very late, but it's worth noting anyway that Megan and I went to Tucson last weekend to see some of her friends and watch Avenue Q. The show was basically amazing, there was more and better music than on the CD, as well as some plot points that you really don't get just from listening to the cd. It was really cool to see the show in person with the other people, arranged very similarly to the original Broadway setup too, just with different actors.

Before the show, was Donald's football game, which was a decent photography opportunity, and after the show was a trip to Takamatzu (sp?), which is one of Megan's favorite foot spots in Tucson. The ways there and back were okay, except for the whole thing about the traffic in phoenix, and on the way there when Megan and Glenn freaked out at each other because of a stop we had to make in Casa Grande.

One thing I noticed is that whenever Glenn wants to do anything with friends, he has to have them come get him, and they bring him home. I'm giving Megan's mom points for noticing this, but I've got to admit that in my universe, it's always been a given that the parental units of both parties share the responsibilities of child transport. And while Glenn, Megan and I aren't exactly children anymore, it's worth noting that over the weekend, doing that would really have helped us, especially when on Sunday we were running late and Glenn's mother freaked out because he left without warning.

Overall, it was a great weekend, aside from the whole thing about "almost no sleep." Megan experienced the very-little-sleep even harder than I did, because she was apparently faced with a few more than normal adverse conditions at work. (That is, of course, to say nothing of my busiest-shift-ever at the helpdesk.) Oh, and there was the carpal tunnel, which Megan seems to be getting really hard, I need to teach her how to fix that, the wrist massaging thing really does work.