Archive for January, 2006
So I went in after I cooled off, paid my bill ( I was civil, honest… there was a police officer there, she’d of beat me down if I acted out) but needless to say after a great day yesterday with Jake, Matt, Rosie (and another here today @ 1pm for lunch) I was tired, but I have been trying to get my sleep schedule to a set of “normal” hours, I know it won’t last, but I have to try - so I drove up to level 7 (aka the roof) of the parking garage, setup the tripod, got the E-500 out… and:
Woohoo! There are a few more in my Flickr, but this one I have had some fun with tweaking it some from the RAW files - have the lighting tweaked a bit - have to re-work some things in taking the photos as some places are too bright - have to adjust my settings, but the fun continues.
Anywhoo - giving my sister’s car an oil change today, and have lunch @ 1, and a photoshoot @ 3:30 with the 7 Steps staff, so busy busy, but fun fun 
Is the devil. Each month I randomly get shut off - never invoiced, they offer no auto-draft from card/checking - so this month it’s the 12th, last month it was the 15th, one month I get a call, another I don’t - kinda stupid. I think I may wander around downtown and see if there is anywhere else I can pay to park, as it stands I am parked below - its not marked, but I really didn’t feel like going in and paying the parking lady without the strong desire to slap her - so maybe this afternoon when I meet with Matt sneak in there and do it - but its just silly it’s not run better.
Thus ends my rant.
Between MySpace evilness, and Google indexing me like a crazy person, I think in the last 2 weeks I have had more people say “Oh yeah, I read that on your blog” or “Oh I saw that on your Photo Thingy” - apparently folks read this ramblings!
Today shall be a fun day though, meetings throughout, some work todo this morning (so much for my semi-week off, maybe next week) - but afternoon have a meeting with Mr. Foster, and Mr. Sherman is gonna tag along a little to get some Coffee with us - so fun stuff.
Photo Shoot Tomorrow @ 7Steps to take staff photos (granted I am guessing as her water broke the other day, Brenda and Bill will be spending time with new baby and family) - but everyone else should be there for photos, and maybe get a few more of the place and put it all together, maybe with Joe’s inspiration we can re-vamp the entire layout a bit and make it a tad more modern, friendly, and easy to look at - but also @ 1 lunch with some friends (possibly matt, but as it stands Courtney and Rosie) - so needless to say should be fun.
But one last side thought, next month, I am old - 26 on the 28th, crazy how quick this month seems to be going, and how very soon it’ll all come about, crazy crazy crazy, not where I thought I’d be @ 26, but not a bad thing, just plans as a kid were to be a master chef, or professional piano player - but I still cook (and eat) and play the piano to relax (w00t for mAudio!) but to be a server nerd and as one person put it “web guru” lol is not a bad thing - life happens, its all good, I am doing better than I was doing 5 years ago, so I have no complaints or regrets, but life is pushin on, and who knows, maybe this will be the year I meet that special someone… time shall tell.
Have a good day all. Keep readin Oh and if your a RSS reader, hit the main domain once, it updates my stats with where folks are visitor wise
So yesterday (yes it’s 2am again) was a day used for the camera, sure sure, have had code open all day, and misc. meetings which in one (I got to use the camera!) I shot about 450 photos, some were dupes to get a little “live action” and “movement” but also for the sake of changing lighting conditions and ongoing elements in the background (aka folks working out at the gym).
So what did I take shots of? Well was very excited and ran to the lake for starters - I enjoy it a lot, but sadly it was a tad foggy and overcast this morning so I really didn’t get to take as many great shots, but such is the game of winter weather, plus I really need to get some filters for these lenses as it’d of been great to have a UV on this badboy.
But none the less, some great shots - as the day progressed though, I found what I have dreaded in my A510 and X20, green dots. The dreaded “pixels of death!” well I searched ol Google (the mighty search engine that could!) and found a rather interesting post on Steve’s (one of my favorite review sites) which more or less had a E-500 user (like myself) who was having the same worry, dead pixels (or as other google’d sites noted “hot pixels”) - but there was hope from the note, a term I remember reading in the manual “Pixel Mapping” apparently all digital cameras have dead spots - but in the factory before they ship they get those spots mapped, thus they don’t show up in photos - but I did the full gambit of suggestions that Olympus support gave him, finishing of course with the Pixel Mapping, well there are still a few litle pixels, but they aren’t bright, white, pixels of death, but the 2 troublesom green dots on my photos are now gone when I snapped a few shots - so needless to say pretty impressed and happy - the manual when re-reading that section suggests it be done once a year, but as a few noted on other sites when I search maybe every 2-3 months (just to keep it well aligned).
Overall though, very impressed with the camera’s performance, speed, design, and layout - a nice upgrade from my 3.2mp A510 - the next test probably after tomorrow is to do the photo print test @ Target, great thing about Flickr you can upload your pics, then order prints - so needless to say looking forward to printing out something fun.
Going to upload a few choice shots from the Gym photo shoot today, that was a riot!
In other non-camera news, talked with my brother briefly tonight, he got his new laptop from work (his old work one died) but on top of that looks like in maybe 2 weeks or so I may be going out to Grover for a few days to work with him on mail servers and networking junk as they setup a primary mail server up in SLO and have my office here as a fall-back - so time shall tell how that all pans out - but as for me, I need food (I know I know, its 2am) but none the less im hungry Night Folks.
The E-500 showed up today around 3pm, charged it for 3hrs (though they say 5hrs for a full charge) - I took a bit of a nap seeing as I had been up since about this time last night, and headed outdoors to play with a very inviting moon!
Needless to say, very excited! As the photo notes if you click it - I have been wanting to take shots of the moon for some time, still need to figure out a few more tricks on this camera, but all in all - awesome and then some! If I am still awake in 4 hours, and it’s not packed in with FOG, I am heading to the lake for starters, just need to remember to set the camera settings off of RAW+SHQ - as 13.5+~5MB adds up quickly on a 1GB CF
More photos through the week I am sure, watch
my flickr as it’ll be the most updated in just random bursts I am sure - plus one of my reasons for buying this besides that of personal relaxing was for work on ocasion, so maybe some shots from the gym, as they want some photos added to their website.
Busy week ahead, but hopefully this will provide a nice relaxing distraction for a few hours each day
LoL - UPS this morning changed the delivery date from today, to tomorrow. Granted, it’s enroute from about an hour away, so in my mind, could very possibly still get here today - but they “Ensure” it’ll be here tomorrow (no later) - it’s a 3 day service (3 business days) so Friday, Monday, Tuesday would be right on schedule - but here’s to hoping it’ll be on the truck out for the delivery today (as it usually is with shipping from Newegg).
Need to actually make another order, power supply on my linux box is making loud noises, and the northbridge cooler fan has it’s moments of loud irritation - so I think today I’ll be buying a nice 450W power supply & a Zalman Northbridge cooler (fanless!).
Edit: Okay - so as of a few minutes ago when I refreshed - low and behold the delivery date has changed AGAIN! (Scheduled Delivery: 01/09/2006) - so I once again here at 7am, have things back on track with the UPS man to get a package.. who knows, maybe in an hour it won’t be on the truck anymore Somehow end up in limbo land like my dad’s FedEx package!
And to understand that FedEx crack, the short version is this - my dad buys/sells car stuff on eBay, he found a rare rear-end for one of the lil sports cars he has - well the package was shipped weeks before the Christmas holidays and yet, fedex has somehow managed to misplace a 138LB package - they have NO idea where it is, and thus my dad has had to file a claim on it, for one it’s nearly a month and a half over due for delivery, but to boot, he really needed the part to finish a car! So he’s a tad bummed - but hopefully, ol UPS won’t let me down today! Go UPS!
I always love reading tech conf. stuff - CES has always looked like a riot, who knows if HappyPalm get’s reborn and such, maybe I’ll go and hang out at various booths of vendors who work with us
One thing I just have to post because it’s a smart idea I think is Google Packs - a nice collection of Windows apps users definately need, I can only hope that over time they’ll do packs for Mac (be pretty simple to get a similar line-up of apps) (granting no Picasa and a few other “Google Brand” apps) - but all in all if your trying to secure your PC, or looking for a good collection of apps to get you from point A->B in the day, snag a pack! Even has “6-month subscription to protection updates” for Norton Anti-Virus - so you anti-virus junkies, free is good 
Back to wandering….
