rant-o-riffic!

Drink up!

2011-12-05T14:46:00.001-05:00

It's like a birthday...only better!

Happy Repeal Day!!

Hell is...

2011-11-28T05:07:00.001-05:00

Insomnia + Thomas the Tank Engine theme song stuck in your head on infinite loop since 4am. (At the tone, the time will be 5:07am...beep.)

Pulse check

2011-11-22T10:55:00.001-05:00

*tap tap tap*. Is this thing still on?

2009-09-09T20:58:00.004-04:00

Yeah, yeah, I know. This blog has been offline for months. Blame the summer doldrums, blame blogger laziness, blame the new baby, blame other recent time-wasting discoveries like Facebook and Twitter (of which interest in the latter is waning), blame lack of interesting content. Whatever.

Lucky for you, dear reader, there are some things that are just stupid enough to spur me to action (and rip me from my semi-retirement).

Courtesy of "The Fresh Market", a store proving that the road to hell is paved with good intentions^[1]^[2]^[3]. I present an attempt at raising funds to fight diabetes by selling you foods most likely to give you diabetes. Well planned.

(Click the image for a slightly larger, more readable version.)

[2] Did I ever mention how much I liked superscript? Well, I do.
[3] A lot.

High-wheel cycling...ur doing it rong.

2009-06-03T15:10:00.002-04:00

One of my hardware vendors constantly sends me classic photo post cards. This one arrived today. I thought it was worth sharing.

The back of the post card reads "Perilous ride down Capitol Building steps, Washington DC c. 1910. Photographer unidentified". So I assume it's in the public domain.

(I originally posted this on Bikecentric, but I liked the image so much, I wanted to post it here as well.)

Don't judge

2009-05-20T15:14:00.008-04:00

While sitting around BSing with my buddy Steve after a mountain bike ride last evening, a guy on a mountain unicycle exits the trail at the end of his ride. We get to chit-chatting with the guy when Steve mentions that we tend to ride singlespeed mountain bikes (i.e. no gears). The guy with the mountain unicycle looks at us kinda quizzically and asks something to the effect of "Why would you ride *that*?"

o_0

B!tch! At least we got two wheelz!

No Hours of Lodi Farm

2009-05-01T14:24:00.004-04:00

Sadly, due to a death in the wife's family, I'm not going to be able to shoot one of my favorite races of the year - 12 Hours of Lodi Farm - which happens noon to midnight, Saturday.

You racers have a good time. And try not to do anything interesting or particularly photo-worthy till next year, k? Thx.

Leesburg Baker's Dozen race photos posted

2009-04-21T08:05:00.000-04:00

I've posted my shots from the Leesburg Baker's Dozen mountain bike race. The gallery can be found here.

The posted shots are free for the taking/use non-commercially (Facebook/blogs/whatever). A photo credit and a link back to the gallery is all I ask in return.

Full-res digital files are $15. 8x10ish" prints are $25 (assuming my source image is good enough to sell/print). Email me if you're interested. The posted shots are straight out of the camera (no post-processing). Any full-res file or print will be hand tweaked and should look better than the web version.

...essing...Processing...Processing...Proc...

2009-04-19T20:30:00.001-04:00

Cross-posted here and at my other blog, cuz, face it, content around here has been pretty sparse lately.

Processing pix from the Leesburg Baker's Dozen race on Saturday. Shot roughly 700 shots. There's gotta be one or two worth sharing...right? Right?

We can only hope. Stay tuned. Pix, write-up and lessons-learned coming in the next day or two.

Sadly, I'm beginning to detect a pattern

2009-04-08T12:23:00.003-04:00

Normally this wouldn't be fodder for a full blog post on its own, but I figure since it was so closely related to an earlier post, I'd mention it.

"Rare megamouth shark caught, eaten in Philippines"

Cue the tumbleweeds

2009-04-06T19:46:00.001-04:00

*

As buddy Spearman was kind enough to point out, stuff around here has gotten somewhat stale of late. Reasons for the staleness range from "How many blog posts about poopy baby diapers can one man make?" to "Twitter <3s my ADD." Who really needs more than 140 characters at a time, anyway?

In general, I haven't really been up to too many long-form-blog-worthy exploits lately. Photography time has been limited by baby time. As has biking time. I did manage to sneak in a couple of MTB rides over the last week. And I performed as poorly as I expected I would. I also decided that I much prefer freewheelin' off-road to fixin', so I converted my SS back to freewheel. The current plan is to build up a fixed/free rear wheel using the spare flip-flop IRO hub I bought a while back and an old 26" rim I have lying around. Only thing missing are correctly sized spokes (the ones I had lying around were too long). Er, and possibly a frame to mount it in...now that I think about it.

A while back I signed up for a Twitter account. And although it has the potential to be a completely annoying service, it's actually pretty entertaining. I can't explain exactly why. I enjoy tossing out 140-character missives every now and then. And I enjoy the one-on-one connection you feel you get with other Twiterererers, famous and non-famous alike. (Example: I thought it was cool that I knew about Lance Armstrong's broken collarbone before any of the news services had a chance to get the story out. Of course, so did Lance's ~350,000 other "followers", but still). In an attempt to breathe some life back to this blog, I used a plug-in to mirror my Twitter posts here (top right side of the screen, in case you missed it). I find I use Twitter as a place to post semi-interesting things I find online. Links and such. Cool enough to mention, yet not worthy of a full-on blog post here. If you partake of the Twitters, you can follow me here.

Lessee...what else?

Photography: Like I said, I haven't been shooting much. I did a bit of in-home studio stuff, and have a few other ideas. But to be honest, it's not the most exciting shooting. And I've totally gotten bored with my photo-a-day project with the baby. Luckily, the wife has her own camera and takes about 2.5 million photos of the baby daily (plus video!), so if I ever get off my ass, I should be able to cobble together enough photos to keep the project alive (although, I guess now I'll have to bill it as a collaborative project).

If you look in the sidebar (over there ------->) you'll see a link that I put up to the "This Week in Photography" podcast. It's a cool show where a number of guys sit around talking photography. It took a little while for the show to grow on me. But it really did, especially after I checked out a number of other photography podcasts which were were really god-awful. One even resorted to what I imagine 1950-era gonzo-radio styles with heavily affected voices and silly whistles, bells honky-honk clown-nose horns and other ridiculous noises. Anyway, check out TWiP if you feel the urge.

Music: I scored a pair of pre-sale tickets to the Nine Inch Nails/Jane's Addiction (original lineup!) show at Merrywhether this summer. At $86 each (after BS "fees" and all), it is by far the most I've ever paid for concert tickets. Few things apart from a reunited Jane's Addiction would spur me to do that. Now let's just hope that both acts don't plan any songs recorded after about '92.

Tech: Been drooling over the announced-yet-still-vaporware Palm Pre smartphone lately. As often as I find myself awake in the middle of the night with the baby (less than the wife finds herself in the same situation, I've gotta say), my current smartphone with internet access and lots of .txt articles has proven a lifesaver (and timekiller). I've been sorta considering the iPhone for a couple of years now, but have been locked into a Sprint contract the whole time (with a Palm Centro). Breaking contracts and changing providers just seemed like too much work (and expense). Thus, when the Pre was announced, it caught my attention. Exclusively Sprint (at first), means I won't have to change providers, and probably won't even have to try and wriggle out of a contract; I'll just tack on an extra two years. Bonus is that the device seems to offer some key features the iPhone doesn't (multitasking being one). I just wish it would hit the market already. I don't want to be the first kid on the block to drink the Kool-aid, so it needs to shake out for a while before I plunk down my hard earned loot. If it's not in the wild till June, I'll be stuck using what feels like a clunky Windows 3.1 device for another few months, all the while knowing pretty Vista is out there waiting (wait...that's a bad analogy).

Anyway, there ya have it. Yeah, yeah. I promise to try to update more often, blah blah blah. Everybody says it. Everybody has good intentions. But you know what they say about good intentions...

*[CC-licensed photo above by flickr user parudox]

Daily d'oh-se of environmentalism

2009-02-23T15:03:00.011-05:00

Once again, sadly, the Onion predicts the future:

Funny:

May 18, 2005
"New, Delicious Species Discovered"

Less funny:

February 19, 2009
"Extinct Bird Found, Photographed & Then Eaten"

(Image linked from Cryptomundo story, above).

Backing up is hard to do...

2009-02-09T19:12:00.003-05:00

I feel safer already.

I've got a metric crap-ton of images on my home computer. And another metric crap-ton of music files. And far fewer (tho no less important) documents and other little files. All of this is backed up semi-regularly to an external USB hard drive. Thinking that wasn't enough (what about fire? Flood? Theft?), I decided to try one of the internet-based backup solutions.

I'd heard good things about BackBlaze and, after comparing them to a number of other similar companies, decided to try them out. They offered a 15 day free trial, which (for me) is basically a joke. My 250+GB of data would take far longer than that to upload (even via my crappy cable company's crappy cable modem). After the free trial, they cost $5/month for unlimited storage. So on December 10, 2008, I started my backup.

Flash forward to today, February 9, 2009, nearly two months later and the backup finally completed. And at that, the only reason it did so so "quickly" was that I lugged my home PC in to the office and connected it to our 3Mbps (upstream) business-class cable connection, which is more than 10x faster than my home (upstream) connection.

From here on out, the home connection should be able to handle the incremental updates. I figure after an infrequent heavy-shooting weekend, I'll have a couple of gigs to upload at most (after I dump all the junk shots...something at which I'm getting much better). And that should happen relatively quickly.

Surprisingly, my crappy cable company (is that redundant?) didn't scream too loudly when I pushed ~200GB up through their wires. I did get a couple of out-of-the-ordinary robo-calls from them, which I assume was them trying to yell at me. But if you want to yell at me, call me directly and yell at me. Don't call me and leave a message asking me to call you back so you can yell at me. Eff that.

"Zack and Miri (definitely do not) Make a Porno"

2009-02-02T20:32:00.000-05:00

Widely available version.

I don't know what exactly the title characters in the latest movie by writer/director Kevin Smith *do*, but whatever it is, it definitely ain't makin' a porno.

At least according to WalMart, who've decided to keep us safe by protecting us from having to see the letters M A K E A P O R N O on the cover of the newly released DVD.

Walmart special.

I have to wonder what they think is going to happen when all those good "M A K E A P O R N O"-fearing folks get home, unwrap their new DVDs and pop them into the ol' DVD player, only to learn exactly what it is that Zack and Miri are up to. Perhaps rush right back to Wally-world (with that filthy, filthy, dirty DVD well hidden in a brown paper bag) and return that smut-titled movie? Ah, but isn't the standard policy that you can't return a movie (or CD or video game) once it's been opened?

Fear not, tho. If you'd like a copy of Predator (in which a space monster rips out the skull and spine of a guy), or Scarface (which, from what I remember has a rather nasty scene involving a chainsaw), or Reservoir Dogs (remember the ear scene?), or a whole host of other violent, bloody offerings, WalMart is ready to help you out.

Snotcycle

2009-02-01T22:14:00.004-05:00

I posted a write-up of my half-assed attempt to shoot the Snotcycle mountain bike race over on my other, even less frequently updated blog.

Farewell, inside access

2009-02-01T11:35:00.010-05:00

For the last 9 years, I've worked at a publishing company for a guy who also owns the local Ferrari/Maserati/Lamborghini dealership. This inside connection has allowed me the opportunity to get up close and personal with super-cars the likes of which most people only see in Road and Track magazine. It's also allowed me the opportunity to ride around in a few vehicles I'll likely never (ever ever ever) own: a Lamborghini Gallardo, a Ferrari 512TR, a Ferrari 575M, a Ferrari 360 Spyder (around a racetrack, no less). I've also had the chance to oogle (and shoot) a Ferrari Enzo (pictured above) and Porsche Carrera GT up close and personal. Finally, it has given me the chance to be the "official" photographer for a number of dealership-related events.

Sadly, come Monday morning, this connection will be broken. The boss has decided to sell the dealership. From here on out, I'll just be another Joe at the track events, snapping photos from afar (assuming the new owner even keeps the track events going). Sadder still (much more-so for them than for me) is that many of the guys I'd consider friends who worked at the shop have had their positions cut. So they're out job hunting in this crappy economy.

Dude...switch to decaf.

2009-01-14T08:54:00.010-05:00

Just experienced the most vile, hot-headed bit of road rage I've ever seen. Aimed directly in my passenger window by a ~60 year old white guy. Epithets below are verbatim. I don't mean to offend anyone.

I pulled up to a 4-way stop on my commute to work a bit ago. I stopped. The guy in the huge, tricked-out 4x4 opposite me was still rolling up to his stop sign (easily seen by the enormous tread on his off-road tires still moving). So I turned left. He didn't stop, at all, and proceeded to drive towards me getting about 3" away from hitting my car (at about 2mph). I kept on my way, he made some crazy-ass traffic-stopping U turn in the middle of the intersection and followed me. I took off my seat-belt.

At the next stop light 20 seconds later, he pulls up along my passenger side and stops; hanging halfway out of his driver's window, obviously having something terribly important to say. I roll down my passenger's side window eagerly anticipating whatever bits of driving wisdom he can bestow upon me. What follows is a tirade unlike anything I've ever heard. He starts out by telling me that the (public) road on which I was just driving was an "industrial road" (all the commercial shops not withstanding) and that I should "stay the fuck off it". To which I reply "Um, no". Then his head explodes. He proceeds to get out of his truck, stick his face in my passenger's side window and (screaming, at this point) call me a "nigger" (I'm white), a "faggot" (I'm straight), a "pussy" (I'm a guy), "Obama" (I'm not), "earring" (guilty on that one. I have an earring in each ear), and "democrat" (you got me again. Two outta six ain't bad, I guess). He then tells me "If you ain't a cop or ain't got a cop friend or ain't gonna call the cops, I'd beat your ass right here". At this point, I swear to god, my left eye is twitching like Clint Eastwood in some old western movie. It's taking every bit of my restraint to not reach into the glove box and pull out my 3 D-cell Mag light and brain this fucker. I'm thinking "No matter how much this asshat deserves it, if I cave his skull in, there are a lot of witnesses. I've got a wife, a teenager, and a new baby. Jail time would suck." So I just sit there soaking in his rage (maybe passive-aggressively goading him on...just a little, hoping he'll put forth that last little bit of effort necessary to give himself a coronary right there in my window; Sadly, he does not.) The light ahead of me turns green, and I start to drive off, his face still in my window. He ends his tirade with...and I swear this is true and a direct quote..."Be a Republican! Pay your bills!!!!"

I'm really pissed that I'm not faster on my feet (so to speak). I had my camera in the bag next to me. I *really* need to learn to pull it out and start shooting when jerkoffs like this are melting down in front of me. In addition to having some nice images for this blog post (which I started composing in my mind about halfway through his meltdown), I'm quite sure it would have been the final straw and driven him directly into that coronary I was so hoping to see. Which would have been beautiful poetic justice.

The up side to this is that he drives a *very* distinctive, *very* customized truck. And he mentioned (when talking about the "industrial" road) "We've been on this street for 45 years". Sure would be a shame if something happened to that truck. A damn shame. It sure is a pretty truck. Just sayin'

The Big Picture

2008-12-18T11:11:00.003-05:00

Via www.boston.com.

Hand's down, the best post on one of the best photo-blogs ever. Check it out. RSS it. Follow it. You'll be impressed.

flickr and self promotion

2008-12-16T13:44:00.009-05:00

Since time has been tight in recent weeks (funny how a baby will do that to you), I've had little times for photography (or biking for that matter, but that's fodder for another post). Lately, in an attempt to quench my creative desire, I've been going back through the thousands of photos in my archive and trying to find the few gems that may lie hidden among the crap.

So far, I've found a random shot...

or two...

(maybe three)...

...that I don't mind much. Hopefully there will be more.

In addition to going back through the old photos, I've decided to start joining various flickr groups (for which I have appropriate photos) and adding my images to the photo pools. I figure, as much as I like having my 15 or 20 friends and contacts see my work, I'm not doing a very good job of expanding my audience. At this point, I have ~215 shots in various groups, and ~392 not. Time to find appropriate homes for them, while adding more to the inventory.

The new, new steed

2008-12-14T22:17:00.002-05:00

With the demise of my last "new steed", I'd been on the lookout for a new bike to fixie-up as a one-geared-wonder road machine. A couple of weeks back, a candidate presented itself to me for consideration. A guy who sells old-ass bikes both on Craigslist and at a couple of local flea markets advertised a "ridiculously large" (~67cm), circa 1980 Schwinn Traveler road bike.

I told him that being ridiculously large myself (~195cm), this sounded right up my alley. I met him at one of his usual haunts and gave the bike a test spin. It rode quite smoothly. There were a number of oddly-colored painted touch-ups on the frame, but it seemed solid (hopefully). I managed to talk him down from his asking price by telling him he could have pretty much everything off of it, aside from the frame, fork and cranks. Less crap for the crap pile in my basement, and more crap for him
to fix up other long-in-the-tooth rides in his inventory.

I hauled her home, stripped off the remaining useless bits, cobbled together enough useful bits from fixies past and rebuilt her:

My initial test ride was last weekend. My kid had a lacrosse game ~8 miles away, practically on the local bike path. It was an agonizingly windy ride out (but the ride back was a breeze!). A few times, I literally had to stand up and pedal on a flat section of path cuz the headwind was so brutal. While the gearing on this build was the same as on my Sekai (42x15, 170mm crank), it seemed much more difficult. During the wind-tunnel portion of the ride, I decided that when I got home, I'd re-tool the Schwinn and make it 40x15 (since I happened to have a 180mm crank set w/ 40t ring lying around the crap pile).

My initial test ride with the new and improved 40x15 gearing was today. This time, the kid had lacrosse tryouts (for a different league) out in Leesburg, at a location again easily accessed by the local bike path. Being generally outta shape and on a test-ride, I decided to drive about half way out and ride the rest of the way (~7mi each way). The gearing was noticeably more spinny, but seemed more comfortable for my a fore mentioned outta-shape azz. (The lack of wind didn't hurt matters either.) Sadly, while I had no trouble finding the town of Leesburg in general, finding the specific school at which tryouts were being held proved more challenging. After tooling around the streets of old-town Leesburg for a couple of miles, I decided to throw in the towel and head home. Test-ride mission accomplished, meet-up-with-the-kid mission a total failure. Upon closer inspection (once arriving home), there apparently are not enough streets named "Catoctin Circle" in this world, as Leesburg decided it needed two. The correct one about a mile further out than the other (incorrect) one. SE? SW? Really, what are you...DC? You need NWs and SEs?? No, I didn't think so.

After the ride, I was hungry and looking for something different. Decided it was time to give Phở a try. Used the phone and Google Maps to find a local Phở joint and told them I was a total phở noob. They suggested the "starter phở", which included eye of round, flank and chicken (I think), but thankfully left out the fatty brisket, tendons and tripe. Downed about half of the as-big-as-my-head sized bowl before I noticed the bottle of hot sauce (rooster sauce?) on the table. After sampling trace amounts and deciding it was OK, I added a significant number of dashes to my soup which took it from "Eh, it's pretty tasty" to "Holy crap, this is good!!". This might be my new favorite post-winter-ride meal. The rooster sauce gives you the sweats in places you never even imagined you had sweat glands.

"Good lord...are my fingernails sweating?!".

Strange

2008-12-03T18:20:00.002-05:00

A couple of Sundays back, I had the opportunity to explore some new trails. My oldest kid had an all-day lacrosse clinic at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA. I took the opportunity to scope out some local trails.

After dropping the kid off at W&M, I had a few hours to myself. Area trail reviews tended to favor the Marl Ravine Trail at York River State Park, so that's where I headed. After finding the park and asking a local rider where the trailhead was, I suited up in cool weather gear, mounted the (still-fixed) Monkey and pedaled off into the unknown.

The trail was fast, fun and a hell of a workout (particularly for my non-ridin'-ass). The terrain was what you would expect if Fountainhead and Rosaryville got together, got bizzy and made a baby trail. Flowy, but not as flowy as R'ville. Lotsa quick up and down hills, but not as grueling as F'head. Total distance is anywhere from 6 to 7 to 9 to 14 miles, depending on who you believe. The trailhead says 5.8, I think, but the paper map available at the park entrance seems to say 9.1. I've ridden my local ~7 mile loop fixed a few times, and the Marl Ravine *definitely* felt longer. Probably didn't help that there was a ~1.5 mile ride from parking lot to trailhead. I definitely felt that at the end of the loop. I also took the opportunity mid-ride to take a break in the woods and just soak up the total silence. A rare item you don't find at many local trail systems.

I had planned on posting a GPS track of the trail. I meant to pack the GPS in the backpack, but managed to leave it safe and sound in the truck instead. So no waypoints for you.

Props to the Eastern Virginia Mountainbike Association for building and maintaining the trail system there. Apparently, they had been out cutting new trail as recently as the day before my ride. Well done! One request, tho: When you get to the one and only intersection with the vague marking "Raccoon Run --->" and "<--- Bluejay Jump", how about an idea what one is getting one's self into. I was actually looking for the longer route and decided on the "Raccoon Run" option, since it seemed to be more in-line with the trail and flowed more naturally than the other. But I have no idea if that was better/worse/shorter/longer than the other cleverly named path.

The entire endeavor took just about two hours (including gearing up before and gearing back into street-clothes after). Afterward, with time running tight, I tried finding a local pub for a beer and burger, but came up empty. I sadly had to settle for an Appleby's (Applebees? Whatever.) for a mediocre brew and uninteresting burger. Following that, I picked up the kid and took off north-bound on the leisurely three-hour drive home...in traffic.

CNN: We're Good at Stating the Obvious

2008-11-26T08:36:00.009-05:00

In a story about the Indian lunar orbiter overheating* CNN, speaking about a probe released by the orbiter, says

"Officials say that the TV-size probe...hit the moon's surface at a speed of 3,579 mph."

So far, so good, right? Then they thankfully point out

"...[it] was not intended to be retrieved after that."

o_0

Who'd have guessed.

* Side note, isn't space roughly 0°K (like -276°F)? Can't they just crack a window on the orbiter and be done with this overheating problem? If "yes", can I now add the title of "rocket scientist" to my resume for offering that bit of advice?

NotGeo

2008-11-20T12:08:00.010-05:00

Dear NatGeo, don't you think you have enough quality photographs in your archive that you don't need to swindle average, unsuspecting photo-contest entrants out of their mediocre photos? Stop it already.

From the above linked site:

5. License

By entering the Contest, all entrants grant to Authorized Parties (National Geographic Society and its licensees) a royalty-free, worldwide, irrevocable perpetual, nonexclusive license to reproduce, distribute, display, and create derivative works of the entries (along with a name credit) in whole or in part, without further review or participation from the entrant, in any medium now existing or subsequently developed, in editorial, commercial, promotional and trade uses in connection with NGS Products.

Bottom line, **every photo submitted** to them (not just the winning photo, which would be bad enough) becomes theirs to do with what they want. Forever. And ever. Amen. If you enter this contest after knowing this, you're an idiot. If you've entered without reading the fine print, you're naive.

Props to Twitter user Photo_Guide for pointing this one out.

Best. T-shirt. Ever.

2008-11-13T12:05:00.002-05:00

(Click the photo for link to original. Image by flickr user sconartist).

In case you don't get the reference:

Edit to add: Apparently the place to get this masterpiece is Slash Jeans in Berkeley, CA. They have a website where they were advertising the shirts for sale in CA for $25 (with $5 from each shirt going to the Obama election campaign...my kinda shop!!). I emailed this morning to see if the shirts were still available and if they shipped. Fingers crossed.

Edit^2 to add: The shop in CA is sold out. The guy who made the shirts sells them online here:

http://dna-barackbrains.11345.com/catalog.php

Assuming he has them in stock, I'm placing my order tomorrow. Without a doubt.

That which often halts my finger just before hitting the "send" button.

2008-11-05T16:07:00.000-05:00

(webcomic XKCD)

Often, I spend time crafting a retort to a friend's/acquaintance's/random stranger's online post; Be it an email, blog post, Facebook post, news story comment, or whatever. I put thought into my reply, only to hit the delete key at the last minute. Invariably, I think back on this comic and see the futility of my actions. I'm trying to get to the place where I think of this comic *before* wasting my time crafting marginally informative missives, only to send them to the ether.

2008-11-05T10:14:00.004-05:00

Here's hoping whatever ride takes place in DC on 1/20/2009 it will be more optimistic than the CritMass Anti-Inauguration ride of 1/20/2005.

(above photos not representative of the angry-ness of the CritMass ride of 1/20/2005, but they're all I had handy.

I feel like Gwadz

2008-11-05T09:27:00.003-05:00

So many updates, so short a timespan.

Cool bit: Google Street View comes to DC.

2008-11-04T23:01:00.001-05:00

Thank. Fucking. God.

That is all.

Get Out the Pano

2008-11-04T17:58:00.006-05:00

Left for the polls this morning around 5:40am. Got there by 5:45 and was at least 100 people deep in the L-Z line. The A-K line was just as long. Once the polls opened at 6am it was about a 45 minute journey through voting land.

The only strangeness came when a woman who voted before me came out saying "You guys might want to use the touchscreen voting machines. The optical reader is having problems and they* were telling people to leave their ballots and they* would enter them later". Er. Wha? No thanks. As unreliable and paper-trail-less as they are, I opted for the touchscreen. After I had made it in the door, I saw only one woman attempt to use the optical scanner, and it took her three attempts at feeding the paper before the machine finally accepted it.

I shot a couple of snapshots while waiting in line at 0-dark-30. Click the images for biggerer versions:

and a 5-shot pano of the line out front that I snapped after finishing my civic duty:

(better if seen full-sized)

*not further identified

Potential new fixie candidate?

2008-10-29T22:18:00.002-04:00

Anybody ever heard of a bicycle manufacturer named "St. Regis"? A local guy is selling a freak-sized road bike, but I've never heard of the brand. Google has been little help.

Anybody?

Snooze=lose

2008-10-24T17:07:00.004-04:00

So local golden boys (and personal favorites) Bad Brains are playing at the 930 club in a few weeks. Why the hell didn't it occur to me that it might...maybe...just possibly...sell out? Cuz I'm an idiot.

It did, and yours truly won't be there. Unless I come across some tix on Craigslist. And even if they turn up, they'll prolly be a premium. I'm rather annoyed with myself.

In other "cool punk shows I'm not gonna see" news, apparently NOFX is playing in Annapolis tonight (also sold out...for good measure). Goddamnit. I guess I wouldn't have made that show, even if I weren't fighting this damn cold. Tonight is also my 20th high school reunion.

Apparently, I'm getting kinda old.

Hope all the former classmates attending the reunion have a blast.

*grumble*

Further Fixie Forest Forays (aka "The Epic"™)

2008-10-08T20:59:00.015-04:00

Ok, so Epic may be a bit overly dramatic. Anyway...

I decided that since it wasn't such a horrible experience the first time, I'd give this whole fixed-gear dirt riding thing another go. This time, however, I decided to step it up a bit, opting to ride my go-to loop in Reston.

Since this loop is significantly more interesting/challenging/rocky/rooty/hilly than my first fixed outing (@Wakefield), my plan was to only ride a portion of the ~10 mile loop. I figured I'd head out 'till I was half-tired, then head back to the trail-head.

Much like the first fixed dirt ride, I found that riding these slightly more interesting trails wasn't nearly as bad as I expected it to be (even with the 32x15x29er gearing still attached to the bike). I pretty quickly reached my first planned end-point (the cricket fields), but decided I felt no worse than a normal ride, so I pushed on, planning to make the halfway point of the loop. Once there, and still feeling good, I figured I could turn around and head out the way I came, or I could simply finish the loop. Since the second half of the loop has far less climbing than the first, the choice was easy. I continued on and made it to the end of the dirt portion of the ride (~8 miles) in decent time and feeling pretty good (aside from that pinch flat that I had to repair along gang graffiti row under the highway overpass - yay). All that remained was the ~2 mile paved bike-path ride back to the car. At this point, my lower back started bugging me quite a bit. I'm guessing that it was a result of either having to pedal every inch of the preceding 8 miles, or of having to strain like a bastard to make a few (aka "most") of the climbs. Whichever, the last mile was not terribly enjoyable.

On the whole, however, it was a great ride. I made all but two of the climbs (which is about par for me, even with a properly geared ride). I'm hoping that getting a correct size Tomicog will lead to easier climbing and hopefully less back anguish on future rides. I'm still leaning towards running fixed at a certain beercentric ride in the not-too-distant future. Gotta put in a few more rides with the right equipment (cogs, not beers...tho, now that I think about it, beers might help too) to be sure I'll survive the experience.

Told ya so

2008-10-04T18:54:00.006-04:00

A month back, Sara Palin quoted a "writer" (apparently not further identified at the time) when she said "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity". It turns out the writer is one Westbrook Pegler (1894-1969) an ultra-conservative (*surprise!*) who also had nice things to say about Jews, gays and the civil rights movement. He had especially kind words for Robert F. Kennedy, saying "some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies". RFK Jr. was, understandably, unamused.

Originally (as far as I know) blogged here.

I found it (as I do much of my news) via Boingboing.

Bicycling Magazine makes things right(!)

2008-10-02T11:28:00.007-04:00

Bicycling Magazine has put things right regarding the use of my image in their print magazine and on their web page. They've asked that I keep our specific communications confidential, and I've agreed to that. So, I've pulled down the letters I wrote to them, as well as their responses to me.

Generally speaking, I specified terms and compensation that I felt were fair, and they agreed to them. They also agreed to post a correction in the magazine giving me credit for the original image.

I'm happy with the way things worked out. I can only hope that going forward, Bicycling Magazine (and publishers in general) will be more careful about the images they use and the manner in which they acquire them. That's really the heart of the matter. Photographers have rights. We've got to stand up for them. They've got to respect them.

Welcome fascism!

2008-09-30T09:46:00.012-04:00

"When Fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the Flag, and carrying a cross." -Sinclair Lewis

I fear he may have been right.

(Lest anyone think I've boosted the photo and taken food out of some poor Alaskan photographer's mouth (and in light of recent events))...The image is from Alaskastock.com. The image is here. The instructions under the photo state "To download image for comp use...", so I'm assuming it is OK to use. "Comp use" seems to be definied as "PRIVATE USE, limited to: (a) personal, non-commercial or (b) sample, design, test, or layout use ("comp use")"

First Fixed Forest Foray

2008-09-27T16:34:00.001-04:00

(That one was for you, Spearman)

With the untimely demise of my road fixie last week I had the brilliant idea to take fixing into the woods. Why not? I had just started my affair with fixed riding. If I shelved it now until a new road frame presented itself (side note: if anybody comes across a bigass (59+cm), cheapass (<$100) road frame capable of fixing, email me please!), who knows how long I'd have to wait. So I pulled the rear wheel off the roadie, pulled the tire off the wheel, slapped a dirt tire on and put the whole shebang on the Karate Monkey. At 32x15, she's not optimally geared, but I was hoping she was at leas survivable.

Having taken last Tuesday and Wednesday off of work, I was able to sneak in my first fixed dirt ride at Wakefield. Truthfully...it was a lot of fun. Way more than I expected. And not nearly as agonizing as I had envisioned. I guess the same could have been said at the dawn of my singlespeed riding years back. In each case, I fully expected the experience to be agonizing. Not understanding how or why so many friends chose to endure it in the name of "fun".

Anyway, for those familiar with Wakefield, I started on the flattest section I could find...the far end opposite where the races are run. I tooled around on the flats for a while until I felt comfortable pedaling every dirt inch. I then headed over to try my luck riding the race course (which is a bit more hilly). By the end of my hour ride, I think I had covered the whole race course, and even added in a few climbs just to see if I could manage them.

So I guess my shopping list is a bit longer now, and must include a new Tomi Cog in a more dirt friendly size. Spearman has generously offered the loan of his 19t Tomi cog. I hope to give that a spin and decide if 19t or 20t is the sweet spot I require.

As for riding fixed on dirt, it's amazing how quickly you stop thinking about the fact that you're constantly pedaling. That always seemed to be the most physically daunting aspect of fixed dirt riding (or road riding, for that matter). But after a short while, you don't even notice it...Until you try to coast when crossing a log. Twice. Aside from that, there were no mishaps. I made all but one of the climbs I attempted. I successfully crossed about 40% of the logs I attempted. I had to bail on a few attempts, but I never fully hit the ground. I did keep grabbing my rear brake lever. The fact that its cable lead to a caliper sans rotor never seemed to sink in.

Broken? Fixed?

2008-09-19T19:07:00.017-04:00

When life gives you "Goddamnit, my frame broke" make "Goddamnit, my frame broke"-ade.

In a plot that could only have been conceived by my fatass after two (so far) 8% ABV beers...

After a couple of half-commutes* into the office on the fixie, I noticed the headtube/toptube crack mentioned previously had bested my attempt to have it welded shut and had re-cracked. (Cue the much deserved "Told ya so" from Spearman and Palmero Cycles). I decided not to further risk life and limb and deconstructed the bike. My original plan was to take the parts off and fix the other frame hanging in my bike shop...and '80s era Canondale. Sadly, that bike has got two things going against it: vertical drops and a ridiculously-long 11.25" head-tube (for which, apparently, no fork exists with a long enough steer tube) so that plan was ruled out.

So now my former Sekai fixie sits disassembled in the basement. Destined for a sledgehammer and a recycling bin. (Don't want anybody finding it and trying to use it again). With play-money in short supply these days, the question becomes "What to do about my budding interest in fixed-gear riding...on a budget?".

Cue the beer.

At some point in the evening (at about beer 1.25), I decided it would be fun/interesting/adventurous/life-threatening (in a good way) to fix my Karate Monkey mountain bike. Why not? It's got 29er wheels (which are nothing more than 700c road wheels with a fatty mountain tire on there). It seemed destiny. All I needed do was take the fixed rear wheel from the recently departed Sekai and mount the 29er mountain tire on it. There will be no rear brake, as the wheel from the Sekai had a non-disk hub, and the KM is disk, but running fixed, all that is necessary is a front brake. Which I've got covered. You want a brake in back? Stop pedaling.

10 minutes and a couple of greasy knuckles later and I've got a fixed off-road machine.

There's little chance of her ending up on any hardcore trails (the 'Shed, Gambrill are right out, not that I ride there often anyway...I'm just sayin'). Inaugural ride will probably be Wakefield. As will many subsequent rides. And the lamest/flattest part of Wakefield that I can find. If I'm feeling particularly strong, I might try to climb a hill, but no promises. The only fixed cog I have is 15t mounted to the formerly-road wheel. The cog that came off of the KM was a 20t. That's a 5t difference that I'm gonna feel. A lot. The chainring on the KM is 32t. So...

The gear-inch measure that I'm used to riding off-road is 46.4.
The current gear-inch is 61.9.

Truth be told, I don't know what exactly gear-inches are, but bigger=harder. I foresee a lot of hiking on my future mountain bike rides. More then usual, even.

* As I'm still quite new to fixed gear biking, I opted to test-commute before committing to the full 10 mile ride. I drove about half-way in and biked the other half.

Infringed-o-riffic?

2008-09-05T22:28:00.022-04:00

Oh, snap! As my eagle-eyed buddy RickyD discovered and posted over on bikecentric, it appears that one of my photos...

...has been, um, borrowd...

...at least in concept. And by none other than Bicycling magazine, in both print (October 2008 edition, page 49) and on the web.

Just for fun, I thought we'd play that old Highlights Magazine game "Spot the similarities/difference between the two photos". Here's what I found:

Things that are the same
Singlespeed
Baby-blue frame
Skinny, black fork
Front disk brake
Rear rim brake
Bendy (Mary?) handlebars
Bike position over log
Rider's leg position
Race number plate
Zip-tie position holding front brake cable to fork
Black spandex shorts, light swoosh (and position of swoosh)
Black socks with light top
Black shoes with three light straps, yellowish sole and yellowish heel part
Black 3/4 finger gloves with small white stripe at the pinky
Backpack straps (number and position including the dangling end of a strap)
Thick stripe down the side of the rider's jersey

Things that are different
Jersey color
Number on race plate
Their rider doesn't have a head. Poor fella.

(Some of the similarities and differences are more easily seen looking at the larger copy of their illustration found in the print mag.)

Did I miss anything?

I wonder if I should be more pissed than I am. I mean, imitation *is* the greatest form of flattery. But flattery don't pay the rent. Maybe I'll send them an email.

EDIT TO ADD:

My buddy Ben (THANKS BEN!) put together a little animated GIF of the two images. It leaves no doubt that they're the exact same shot. In fact, I'd be surprised if the "artist" did little more than take my image, run a Photoshop "sketch" filter on it, and posted it. Make sure your image animation is turned on then check it out...

It's not as humorous to me this morning.

Bet the authors didn't think of that one.

2008-09-01T10:43:00.003-04:00

The wife heard of a book titled something like "365 Things to do with your Baby", so naturally, I asked Google where to find it. I don't think that's one of the 365 things she had in mind. Er...hopefully.

More spam, but in a good way.

2008-08-26T13:06:00.005-04:00

I rarely look in my gmail Spam folder, so today when I noticed it contained nearly 600 messages, I figured I'd take a peek before dumping them en masse. I was quite surprised to see all of the things Paris Hilton has apparently been up to lately. A selection of subject lines:

Paris Hilton violated by Gypsies
Paris Hilton Loses Vagina - Blames Dr Phil
Paris Hilton tosses dwarf on the street
Paris Hilton's ingrowing toenail was life-threatening
SpongeBob named in Paris Hilton paternity Lawsuit
Paris Hilton To Become Nun
Paris Hilton Sold Her Soul to the Devil, admits it on Larry King
Paris Hilton Lectures on Dickens and Dostoevsky
McCain Chooses Paris Hilton to be Running Mate

In a slightly more serious tone...just what the hell do these spammers hope to gain/sell by sending these messages? I mean, at least I can understand purpose behind the \/1@gR@ spams.

Infinite penis!

2008-08-20T14:49:00.003-04:00

As much complaining as I did about spam in my last post, sometimes, they just must be shared.

For example: When a chick's cervix emails me directly to tell me "how big he was". That is a _serious_ endorsement! However, I'm not sure I want to "extend [my] penis infinite inches". That sounds...uncomfortable.

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: cervix
Subject: Did you hear about how big he was ?

Extend your peni5 with infinite inches using the best cure.

Co-opting other people's idols

2008-08-12T22:52:00.001-04:00

In this case, they're not my idols. Not by a long shot. But I still think its a pretty weak to name a pair of bikes "Sid and Nancy"; An obvious reference to Sex Pistols bass player* Sid Vicious and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen. Worse yet? Looks at the f*cking pansy-ass bikes to which they chose to attach the names in question (click on the photos for larger images):

Hi, I'm Sid. I like gracile hairless boys.

Hi, I'm Nancy. Me too.

I mean, seriously. If you're gonna name a bike after Sid _fucking_ Vicious, it had better look mean:

Flat black. No gears. No brakes (ok, maybe a coaster, but if you really wanna be hardcore, you fix that bastard). No fucking around. If it's gonna be mass produced, at least make it *not* look mass produced. If we don't put a stop to this now, the next thing you'll see pedaling down the block under the butt of your favorite neighborhood 6 year old little princess will be the Harley Flanagan:

If you're gonna go all namby-pamby on the names, why not just name the bikes "Blink" and "182".

* the term "bass player" is used in its most loose sense here. From what I know if the Pistols, Viscous was a guy who stood* on stage holding a bass, occasionally (perhaps accidentally) hitting the strings.

* the term "stood" might be an exaggeration here as well.

Randomness , now with photos!

2008-08-07T08:09:00.002-04:00

I finally bought a SDHC card reader, so I can pull all of the photos off of my phone camera. So here's a quick post of some of the "WTF?" things I've come across of late:

Er, huh?? I love me some creative marketing, but seriously...why not just name it "This Is Your Favorite Ice Cream! Buy It, Fat Boy!". I did. It wasn't. I felt cheated.

Speaking of creative marketing/advertising...how do you leverage all that wasted space on movie theater shitter-room doors? Advertise on it by making it the Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Crystal Poo™ Women's Shitter, that's how!

Then there are these poor fucks...er Fouches. I bet they never thought they'd end up spending eternity in a 10'x10' patch of grass in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant. Poor bastards. Sadly, "that's how they do" in *cough* beautiful *cough* Ashburn, Virginia. One of the fastest growing Setpford-esque towns in America, where any 100 sq. ft. of land is fair game for another Mc D's, Starbucks or Home Depot.

And finally, from the cafeteria in the hospital what birthed my latest kid...

Why are the spoons given the highly coveted "Multipurpose" label while the lowly forks and knives are relegated to a miserable single-purpose existence? It's not fair! Not fair I say!

Stay tuned, more foolishness to come. I've got more photos and opinions.

And now, for my next trick...

2008-07-27T21:09:00.007-04:00

Blog, meet Amy. Amy, this is blog. Amy is new around here...matter of fact, she was just born...oh, about 2.5 days ago, so you guys take it easy on her. She clocked in at 7lbs 5ozs and an astonishingly average 20" long. If you know her dad, you'd know her mom got off easy.

Ok, everybody, all together now...

"Hi Amy"

The thing is dead, long live the king...

2008-07-23T23:02:00.000-04:00

Old and busted (really, *really* busted):

New hotness:

Less engine
Less horses
More MPGs
More sunroof
Less years
More redder (=faster!)
More interior space
Less carpety spaces to get smoodged up
More reliable
More XM (maybe)
Less spraypaint
More sleeping space
More warranty
More payments :(

Looking forward...

2008-07-16T08:18:00.005-04:00

So here's a post I started back in Febuary. It's been slightly updated to reflect the passage of time.

As I think most readers of my blog know, the wife is pregnant. We're gonna have a kid in ~~July~~ about two days (er, roughly). The last time I had a kid, I was not yet 22 years old, earned about $20k/year by working construction, was living at home with mom, had no health/life insurance and was scared shitless. This time, I'm somewhat better off emotionally, financially, benefitially and relationshipally (I think I made those last two up), and therefore just slightly less terrified. So this time, I plan to have some fun.

Since, oddly enough, we didn't any of this stuff at the baby shower, here are some things I'm left to buy for my new kid myself:

Giant effing microbes!. My kid will be the hit of the germ-caked playground. I'm definitely getting him/her the stuffed Ebola virus. (Remind me to tell you about the time I spoke with Dr. Frederick Murphy about Ebola sometime):

And probably a Rabies too, since it's near and dear to my heart (remind me to tell you that story some time, too):

In addition to all the pinks and blues, my kid's got to have some non-traditional gear. First up is this Iron Maiden "Killers" onesie:

Still trying to find micro-sized Operation Ivy, Bad Religion, Ministry or Thrill Kill Kult t-shirts. If you have a lead on some, leave a comment!

At sleepytime, my kid will be rocking out, nappy style. None of the Barney "I love you, you love me" bullshit I had to live through the first time around. This time, it's all about quality songs. My most recent CD purchase have just arrived: Three flavors of "Rockabye Baby: Lullaby Renditions of..."

Tool

Nine Inch Nails

The Cure

Chill enough to listen to with the baby around, yet grown-up enough not to lead to total psychotic break. The Tool Lullaby disk may be my favorite CD purchase of the last few years. To a kid, it will sound just like any other mellow lullaby type music. To an adult...it's creepy. Really creepy. I'm talking abandoned-run-down-carnival-on-a-gray-winter-day kinda creepy. It's really quite fantastic. Their music really lends itself to creepy-lullabying.

I also picked up the "String Tribute to Tool":

In the pile of bits and bytes that make up my stuff "saved for later purchase" are:

The String Quartet Tribute Nine Inch Nails
The String Quartet Tribute to Tool's Aenima
Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of Green Day

Dance the SKA!

2008-07-13T21:04:00.008-04:00

Ok, time to honor my recently departed aunt with a more upbeat memory.

A couple of years back, I found this old 45RPM record in a box of stuff at my aunt's house (with countless other old 45s, but none as cool looking as this). I asked her about it, and she didn't remember when she gotten it. She said I was welcome to have it if I wanted it.

"If"??!

(Click any of the images for the full-sized versions. You can read the text and learn how to "Dance the SKA" yourself!)

(Detail of the front cover text)

(For all you Arthur Murray dance school drop-outs)

(Seriously? I'd drink more Red Stripe beer if they were still using this slogan!)

Now I just have to hook up my old turntable to my PC and rip the four songs on this record to MP3 and I'm ready to skank...er..SKA!

:-(

2008-07-09T22:56:00.004-04:00

My aunt died. Connie, for those from way back who remember her and read my blog. She was a good aunt. A great aunt, you could say. But not "great aunt" like that.

(Connie, circa 1932)

My dad split when I was 7 (my sis was 4). We didn't see much of him again (to this day). My mom raised us. Connie was there. Always. Every weekend she'd make the drive from her home in Arlington to MD where mom, sis and I lived. Usually she'd arrive bearing gifts, which over time, spoiled us rotten. She was almost always the "good parent". When mom was "being mean" (i.e. making us do things we didn't want to do), Connie was the person we could run to. Not dad.

When I was a kid, and in the throes of a pretty severe Star Wars addiction, she was my primary supplier. She would have no problem trekking around town, looking for that one elusive figure for me ("Klaatu in Hoth gear with a brown Yoda snake and special edition Han blaster pistol? I'm on it!"). Like I said, she spoiled us pretty badly. But in a good way.

As we got a bit older, Connie was the chauffeur. Anywhere we asked (begged/pleaded) to go. Starting with a Blue Oyster Cult show in '82, she was my ride to nearly every concert I saw until I could drive myself. Always happy to endure the worst 80s metal bands; whatever it took to make me (us) happy. Judas Priest, Metallica/The Cult, Dokken, Skid Row, Iron Maiden (how many times?), Dio, Kix, Pink Floyd. You name it, she saw it with me (us). And only rarely had an ill word to say about the experience, no matter how bad the bands or opening acts were.

As time went on, and I had my daughter (at the ripe old age of *almost* 22 years), Connie was there to help with the next generation. Diabetes had left her wheelchair bound by this time, and she needed help around the house. My (then) wife and I were barely into our 20s and together pulling in maybe $30k/year at most. We needed a roommate. It seemed a perfect fit. She was there to help with babysitting and pretty much anything else we needed when it came to our kid. When my (then) wife and I split years later, Connie became even more important to my kid. My daughter and she were together daily for the first ~6 years of said daughter's life. Without Connie and my mom, raising my kid the years after my (then) wife left would have been infinitely harder, if not impossible.

Later in life, she inherited her mother's house in PA and moved up there. I didn't visit as much as I should have. I didn't call as much as I should have. The usual story. We get older, we get busier, we seem to have less time for those around us who matter. By we, of course I mean "I".

Her health had been up and down over the last couple of years. The diabetes continually assaulting her body. She wasn't really one to abstain from the things she enjoyed in life. Not a good idea, when the things you enjoy are cookies, brownies and the like; the whole while you're fighting your body, and sugar is the enemy. But I suppose it's a quality vs. quantity of life issue (at least I tell myself that). Do I really want to live forever eating only wheatgrass shakes and slices of white bread? No thanks. I think, towards the end she made the same choice. 76 years may have seemed like enough to her.

Thankfully, the end was peaceful. She had gone into the hospital, and been transferred to the ER a week or so back. She had a couple of bad days in the ER, and then a good day. She'd pulled out miracle recoveries in the past and we were hoping for one more. Then she had a really bad day. Thursday. She was unconscious for the most part all day. As my mom, sis, other aunt [edit to add: and perhaps most importantly for both of them, daughter] held a bedside vigil, her vitals faded over the course of hours. Her blood pressure dropped to nearly nothing, and sometime around 6pm, she was gone.

The funeral was Monday. It was tough. My sister and my kid both got up and read/said some wonderful things about the woman who meant so much to all of us. I wasn't able to say a thing. I tend to devolve into a blubbering mess at funerals. At least I do so quietly, for the most part. If I'd have been able to utter a few words about her, they'd have been pretty similar to this post. Thankfully, my sis hit on almost everything I wished I could have said. Thanks K.

Connie is buried in a cemetery a few blocks from the home in which she grew up, and spent her final years. It's a good cemetery. I used to take walks there with my mom when I was little. It's home to a lot of my family these days. She's among friends. And at peace.

Damnit. I almost made it through this without crying. Almost.

If there's a silver lining to this dark-cloud of a week, it's got to be that my kid is now almost certainly the only junior in her high school who is homeowner.

Edit to add: This is the poem that my sis and kid found to read at Connie's funeral. My kid read it. I blubbered.

Many Winters - by Nancy Wood

All my life is a dance.

When I was young and feeling the earth,
My steps were quick and easy.

The beat of the earth was so loud
That my drum was silent beside it.

All of my life rolled out from my feet
Like my land which had no end as far as I could see.
The rhythm of my life was pure and free.

As I grew older my feet kept dancing so hard
That I wore a spot in the earth.
At the same time I made a hole in the sky.
I danced to the sun and the rain and the moon lifted me up
So that I could dance to the stars.
My head touched the clouds sometimes
And my feet danced deep in the earth
So that I became the music I danced to everywhere

It was the music I dance to everywhere
It was the music of life.

Now my steps are slow and hard
And my body fails my spirit,
Yet my dance is still within me and
My song is the air I breathe.
My song insists that I keep dancing forever.
My song insists that I keep rhythm
With all of the earth and the sky.

My song insists that I will never die.

Suck.

2008-06-30T16:50:00.012-04:00

This was supposed to be a post about the "2008 Reston Town Center Grand Prix" road bike race I shot yesterday. It was supposed to talk about the hundreds of photos I took, and maybe even show off the two or three that *might* be worth sharing . It would probably have gone on and on about how much different road race shooting is from mountain race shooting. And it would have mentioned me being in the right place at the right time when the race promoters started giving away free bicycle messenger bags, and about how I managed to score one. It would probably even included a photo of my fancy new bag, to illustrate the fantastic irony of my new *bicycle* messenger bag sporting a big "Mobile 1" motor oil logo.

Instead, it's about how, on the 3-mile drive home after the race, my truck died a mile from my house. And about how, now that I've had the truck diagnosed, it appears that the timing belt has snapped. And about how Nissan (in their infinite wisdom) use an "interference engine" which means that should you be unlucky enough to snap your timing belt, there's a hell of a good chance that dainty bits of your engine will smash into other dainty bits of your engine causing not so dainty catastrophic failures, probably costing in the many-thousands-of-dollars range. More thousands-of-dollars than the truck is worth, some would say.

Oh, and in addition, it seems that my favorite aunt (who was a huge part of my growing up) is in the ICU with failing kidneys and is quite probably dying.

O hi, welcome to Monday.

Fuck you, Monday.

Now where'd I leave my beer?

Sad day

2008-06-23T12:24:00.003-04:00

One of my favorite atheists/philosophers/comedians has gone up to the roof.

There's a Slashdot thread in which people are quoting favorite lines. A few of my personal faves:

"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realize that half of them are dumber than that."

---

...And here's something else, another problem you might have: Suppose your prayers aren't answered. What do you say? "Well, it's God's will." "Thy Will Be Done." Fine, but if it's God's will, and He's going to do what He wants to anyway, why the fuck bother praying in the first place? Seems like a big waste of time to me! Couldn't you just skip the praying part and go right to His Will? It's all very confusing.

So to get around a lot of this, I decided to worship the sun. But, as I said, I don't pray to the sun. You know who I pray to? Joe Pesci. Two reasons: First of all, I think he's a good actor, okay? To me, that counts. Second, he looks like a guy who can get things done. Joe Pesci doesn't fuck around. In fact, Joe Pesci came through on a couple of things that God was having trouble with.

For years I asked God to do something about my noisy neighbor with the barking dog, Joe Pesci straightened that cocksucker out with one visit. It's amazing what you can accomplish with a simple baseball bat.

So I've been praying to Joe for about a year now. And I noticed something. I noticed that all the prayers I used to offer to God, and all the prayers I now offer to Joe Pesci, are being answered at about the same 50% rate. Half the time I get what I want, half the time I don't. Same as God, 50-50. Same as the four-leaf clover and the horseshoe, the wishing well and the rabbit's foot, same as the Mojo Man, same as the Voodoo Lady who tells you your fortune by squeezing the goat's testicles, it's all the same: 50-50. So just pick your superstition, sit back, make a wish, and enjoy yourself.

---

"Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?"

---

"Get 'on' the plane, get 'on' the plane..."
"Fuck you, I'm getting *IN* the plane."

(CC licensed photo from Flickr user Mr Scratch)

Headlines that don't mean what you think they mean:

2008-06-20T13:58:00.003-04:00

CNN: "Woman in 'Pacman' brawl found dead"

Sadly, the story was not nearly as cool as I had imagined.

Test flight

2008-06-18T13:17:00.000-04:00

I got the injured Sekai frame back from the welder ~~earlier this week~~ early last week. While the weld might be the ugliest one I've ever seen (and believe me, I made some *ugly* welds back in my construction worker days), it appears solid enough. For now.

~~Earlier this week~~ Early last week, Spearman and I had discussed the idea of hitting a local watering hole followed by Artomatic in NE DC, via bicycle. I figured that would be a not-too-strenuous inaugural fixie ride for me. After talking with Spearman about my frame and weld and the possibility (and ugliness) of a separated top-tube crash, I decided (at about 10:30pm the night before) that I wanted to put the rear brake back on. My thinking was that a disintegrating frame at 10-15mph was better than one at 20-25mph. My legs and poorly-aligned 27-year-old front brake would not be enough to keep my speed down on some of the descents through Arlington. The job of re-adding the brake would have been much easier had I not used my cable cutter to sever the original brake cables and housing when I removed them in the first place. C'est la vie. An hour (and a few parts stripped from various other horses in the stable) later and my Sekai was ready to go. As far as I could tell.

After work (last) Wednesday, I drove down to Arlington, parked the truck, mounted the Sekai and pedaled (and pedaled and pedaled and pedaled) a couple of miles into Georgetown. Spearman and I spent a few hours BSing and partaking of some extremely tasty brews. Primarily Lagunitas Maximo (from the cask) for me. Quite tasty, but very powerful magic.

After putting away a number of the liquid courages, we remounted our bikes and headed east the 30 or so blocks to Artomatic. I had high hopes of seeing a good bit of the 10-floor, 1,000-artist exhibit, but after lingering at the bar longer than expected, we were left with limited time for broadening our artistic horizons.

The 6th floor was the home of the "visual arts" displays. I knew of at least one friend who's work was hanging there, so we decided to start (and end) our tour there. After a single lap of the floor, with 11pm fast approaching and a not-entirely-sober ride across the city ahead of us, we decided to call it a night and head west.

The ride back to Georgetown and over the Key Bridge was uneventful (as far as I can remember). The ride up Mount Rosslyn was uneventful but damn painful. I made it perhaps half-way up the hill before I had to dismount and take a nice near-midnight stroll. Once I crested the hill, I remounted and eventually caught up with Spearman who had turned back around to see what had happened to me.

Another mile up the road and we were back at my truck where I hitched up the bike, bid adieu to my partner in crime and headed for home, well sober by this point from all the incessant pedaling. Damn fixed gear bikes.

A (TIG) spark of hope?

2008-06-09T17:32:00.000-04:00

She may yet live.

I ended up taking my new/old fixie to a local bicycle frame welder who advertised his services on Craigslist. If he manages to bring my injured frame back to life, I'll sing his praises here - stay tune. After talking with him via email and showing him the photo of the damage, he thought the crack might be fix-able. For the quoted $30, I figured it was worth the risk. He can't destroy it any more than it's already destroyed.

I spoke with another semi-local frame builder/welder last week who didn't think it could be repaired. He also mentioned that he was backed up with work, and that his summer was going to be cut short by the arrival of his first kid. So I'm thinking he didn't want/couldn't spend time on a rinky-dink fix like this. At least, that's what I keep telling myself.

On Saturday, I stripped the paint off the damaged area with a wire-wheel on the grinder; the crack definitely seems to follow the joint between lug and tube. At no point does the top tube appear cracked. Fingers crossed. I figure once I get it back, I'll put some weight on the top tube itself and see if there is any indication of immediate danger/destruction.

Neither bikes nor cars (for a change).

2008-06-05T08:01:00.001-04:00

Think before you submit

I recently saw this extremely cool, probably once-in-a-lifetime photo of a tanker fire and lightning strike on CNN's "iReport" website:

(Photo by Chris Phillips. If it weren't a stupid Flash slide-show I would have simply linked to the photo instead of...um...borrowing a copy to show here).

Basically, iReport is CNN's site of user-submitted content: news stories, photos and video. They get content without having to pay a reporter, photographer or cameraman, you get some tiny modicum of notoriety for your work. However, a wise man (or woman) may ask "What exactly do you give up when submitting your work to their site?" Quite a bit, actually:

By submitting your material, for good and valuable consideration, the sufficiency and receipt of which you hereby acknowledge, you hereby grant to CNN and its affiliates a non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide license to edit, telecast, rerun, reproduce, use, create derivative works from, syndicate, license, print, sublicense, distribute and otherwise exhibit the materials you submit, or any portion thereof in any manner and in any medium or forum, whether now known or hereafter devised, without payment to you or any third party.

(via iReport's TOS page).

So basically, they can do whatever they want with your image forever and you get neither a dime for it, nor a say in its' use. What if they license it to WalMart's advertising department for $2,000,000? You get nothing. What if they license it to the KKK, the NRA, NARL, the ACLU, the GOP or some other group that goes against every fiber of your being? Tough shit.

So, before you submit your work to online photo contests or news sites or pretty much anywhere else...remember to read the fine print, then read the fine print, and read the fine print, and always remember to read the f*cking fine print. And think about what your image is worth to you, and what it may be worth to you in the future. Do you really want to see a photo of your grandma blowing out her birthday candles on a billboard advertising anal-itch cream? Yeah, me neither.

It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times.

2008-06-04T12:57:00.000-04:00

Spearman said it first. RickyD repeated it shortly thereafter. I suppose it fits here too:

"Crack Kills!

Alas, the Beast—this Beast, my Beast—is no more. My ~~Cross-check~~ MC Sekai has checked out, given up the ghost, bought the farm, bit the dust, kicked the bucket, taken a dirt nap, shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain, joined the choir invisible, cashed in its chips, hung up its spoon, had its ticket punched, sung its chant du cygne, earned its wings, gone tits up.

It is finished."

I contacted Baltimore-based framebuilder/framerepairer Tom Palermo at Palermo Bicycles (Flickr group here) and asked about the chances of recovery for my cracked-out Sekai frame. Sadly, the prognosis is not good. Tom says:

"It's repairable but it's a pretty involved/expensive job. It looks
like the top tube is cracked as well as the lug. So, you're looking at
a top tube replacement, which is major surgery... at least $200.
Personally, I wouldn't spend the money to do that. You can probably find another used frame for what it would cost to repair this.

Cars, bikes, cars, bikes, repeat.

2008-06-04T07:03:00.001-04:00

This is video shot by the girlfriend of one of the attendees of the Lamborghini event the other day. This is her test ride in a Gallardo Spyder convertable. Her driver was the same guy who took me out.

Papa's new pride and joy

2008-06-03T07:04:00.001-04:00

"It was the best of times,"

"...it was the worst of times."

(Click on images for larger sized versions)

Let this be a lesson to all my DIY-bike-building-I-got-the-frame-from-some-guy-in-the-"Free Stuff"-section-of-Craig's-List readers out there. Probably a good idea to clean the frame and give it a *thorough* going over before you put your heart into building your new friend up into fixed-gear glory. Cuz that ain't no crack in the paint. It's a crack in the lug that joins the top tube to the head tube, just below the top headset race.

So what's a guy to do? I'm hoping somebody with a brazing torch and a modicum of talent can simply repair the injury for a modest fee. Until I get around to getting that done, I'll probably just ride it and hope for the best (some might call this "living 'DT Style'"). Maybe I'll throw a zip tie and a couple o' wraps of duct tape on there, you know...just to be safe. I guess worst-case scenario, I've still got the jumbo aluminum Cannondale frame from the same Craig's List post.

My adventure started a few weeks back when I saw a Craig's List post advertising a free jumbo-sized bike. I picked it up with the idea in mind that I wanted to try building (or un-building, as it were) a fixed-gear bike. I stripped off about 4.25 pounds of stuff, bought a pair of IRO flip-flop hubs, a mass of DT Swiss spokes, a couple o' 700c WTB rims, (in addition to a Surly 15t cog and lock-ring, and a new chain). A few years back I'd bought a wheel truing stand and wheel dishing tool, so I guess I've been aiming for this process for a while now. How hard can building your own wheels be, anyway??

Actually, with knowledgeable friends like Spearman who are willing to spend a good deal of time and explain the subtle nuances of wheel building, and Sheldon Brown's (RIP) website which spells out quite clearly how to go about the process, it's actually not too hard. It requires patients, beer, and an almost zen-like sense of peace and concentration and beer. But once you have those, it's pretty straight forward. So far.

I got the wheels laced without much fuss. Getting them true was a bit more challenging, but listening to Spearman's advice ("Take your time and make lots of little adjustments") they eventually came together quite nicely. I'm still awaiting the delivery of my new Park Tools Spoke Tension Meter*. Once that arrives, I may find that what I thought were fairly well-built wheels actually need semi-professional help. We'll see.

There are still a couple of things to do to finish up the project: I need to buy new (or Dremel existing), shorter chain-ring bolts, so I can run just the 42t ring, instead of both the 42t and 52t as it is now. I also need to wrap the handlebars, and perhaps install a different brake lever. And I need to install new brake pads, hopefully on adjustable posts, as the current brake arms don't reach far enough down to center the pads on the rim. After that, it's just a matter of hoping it doesn't disintegrate under me on a hairy downhill or anything. Wish me luck.

Allow me to digress just a moment and bitch about how annoying Performance Bike is for damn near anything. First they don't stock anything the least bit technical in their stores (nor do any local bike shops, for that matter). When you order online, they slug you with a $10 premium for shipping (in addition to the 5% state sales tax). Of course, if you pick the "Shipping free when sent to your local store" option, you can save the $10 and pick up your item in, oh, say...about 23 fcking days. Kinda forces your hand to pay the shipping (or plan out your bike needs a month in advance). We now return you to your happy go lucky bike post.

So,

2008-06-01T22:13:00.002-04:00

"...Do ya want to drive it?" he asked as we swung a left around a 90º corner at something north of 60 mph.

Do I??

The "it" in question is a $250,000, Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera. V10 engine. 500+hp. Sleek lines. Low weight. More carbon bits than a Stealth fighter. And gas mileage that would make a Hummer driver blush. F*ck yeah, I want to drive it.

Only there was a problem. A simple matter of physical limitations: My ability (and lack thereof) to squeeze behind the wheel. You see, the distance from the underside of the steering wheel to the pedals on the floor is less than the distance from my knee to my ankle. (Just one of the perils nobody thinks of when they say to someone 6'6" "It must be nice to be so tall". Sure, it's nice, but at least you can drive a $250k sports car when you want to! Don't mind me...I'll just be over here in my '78 Buick. And don't even get me started on low-hanging ceiling fans!). Anyway...what was I saying? Oh yeah...So I can't move my legs/feet enough to go from the gas pedal to the brake pedal. So, until they make a production stretch model for us freak-sized folks, I'm stuck riding shotgun.

It was still a ride during which the acceleration and deceleration *literally* made me light-headed.

The reason I was able to get up close and personal with that nifty little toy was the local Lamborghini dealership had a "Hey! Why don't you come by and test out a new Lamborghini" event and hired me to shoot photos. (I tried bartering my services for goods, but sadly they weren't having it). The shooting was nothing special, just people standing around chit-chatting amidst freakishly expensive cars. I also tried to get shots of happy test riders returning from their runs. I guess the idea is that when people see how good/happy they look in the $100+k cars, they'll be more inclined to buy them.

So I may post a few random shots of mine in the next day or two. Sadly, the shots above were simply taken from a website of freely-downloadable desktop backgrounds, shot by someone else. Mine are not nearly as professional looking. Of course, I wasn't in a pro studio the size of an airplane hangar, either. I'm just sayin'.

Dear Nissan,

2008-05-23T15:42:00.007-04:00

I still fucking hate you.

Love,

Gary

---

If it's not one thing, it's 1,350 others.

Ye ole Frontier failed inspection again this year (I don't think I've passed one since 2002, if anybody is keeping score). This time, it's a well-known Nissan Frontier/Xterra problem. A cracked passenger-side manifold. Apparently, this happens to nearly everybody who owns one of these trucks. The lucky ones have it happen within their vehicle's warranty period. The rest of us are shit outta luck, to the tune of "...anywhere between about $800 and $1,000...oh, and you need a new exhaust system too...that'll run you another $350".

I knew Nissan had issued a technical service bulletin out about this exact problem a number of years ago. Only problem with that is that it doesn't entitle owners to shit. It's simply a way for Nissan to tell their own technicians "Yeah, we made a shitty product. You're gonna have to support it. Here's what you gotta do". Big fucking help to the consumer. Thanks for that.

So I figured I'd write to Nissan North America's Consumer Affairs division and see if they had anything good they could tell me...

Greetings.

My 2000 Nissan Frontier recently failed our state safety inspection due to a cracked passenger-side manifold. I read online that there may have been a recall issued for this problem, or a class-action lawsuit settlement of some kind. Can you give me any details on either of these please? The repair is quite expensive, and apparently quite widespread in the Xterra/Frontier community.

Thank you.

-Gary R.

To which they replied in a most unhelpful way:

File # 6xxxxx3
VIN # 1xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx7

Dear Mr. R Gary:

A review of our records indicates that the vehicle with the vehicle serial number listed above is involved in the recall as follows:

OPEN R0401 (W)D22 FUEL SND SLT NTB04062

Please contact your Nissan dealership for an appointment to have the recall repairs performed on your vehicle. These repairs are free of charge to you.

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to be of service.

Sincerely,

Nissan North America, Inc.

Arnel Gomez
Consumer Affairs Representative
National Consumer Affairs

Getting such a canned response pissed me off, so I wrote back saying...

Thanks for that nearly useless bit of information. Any chance you can tell me how to file a class-action lawsuit? Thanks!

-gary

I'll post back if they reply. Until then, allow me to say "Never again, Nissan. Never fucking again". If this truck weren't (just barely) paid off, I'd be on the way to CarMax instead of writing this post.

Where's my beer...

She may not look like much now...

2008-05-14T21:05:00.016-04:00

...but that's cuz she's broken.

Just wait till she's fixed.

There's a new ride in the stable (well, one and a half, actually). A "free stuff" post on Craigslist caught my eye a couple of weeks back. It said basically:

"Freak-sized road bike and frame. Old. Only good for rider 6'4"+. Both need work to be ridable. Did I mention they're free?"

The poster added some half-hearted disclaimer, doing a CYA in case the frame(s) disintegrated under the new owner. (Ahh, America. Land of lawsuits.)

So I made the trek into Arlington last week and picked up the new toys. The guy wasn't kidding when he said "freak sized". The first is a Sekai 2500, hailing from MN circa 1981 ("Lock your bike!").

If my rudimentary frame measuring skills are accurate, this beast is a 67cm frame (c-to-t). Bigger than even I, at 6'6" really need. It was the more complete of the two offered. All bits seemed in pretty good working order. The steel frame has some rust spots on it that I'm a little concerned about, but the horizontal drops make it my ideal fixed-gear candidate. I spent last evening giving her about a 5lb crap-ectomy. I removed pannier rack, F and R derailleurs, rear brake (may go back on), cables, cool little screw-on cable holders, reflectors, and little plastic lock holder. She looks much sleeker now. I need to shorten (or replace) her chain and she should at least be ridable as a totally dangerous one-brake-having freewheel singlespeed deathtrap.

Bonus included bits were an old set of Look road pedals (which will end up right back on Craigslist!), and, coincidentally enough, nearly the exact saddle I use on my primary bike: a Terry something-or-other, with a bigass junk-saver cutout. So my ass should be quite comfy on the new bike right outta the gate.

She came with a set of 27" wheels which may be salvageable (the wheels in the photos are from my other, ancient road bike). The rear has a busted spoke and is way outta true, but the guy said they were never abused, so I'm hoping that a spoke replacement and re-truing/re-dishing will bring it back to life. The front wheel seems a bit better off, but under my fat ass, will definitely need to be looked over by somebody more familiar with wheel physics than I am (hey Spearman, you paying attention? I'll bring the beer!).

The rest of the hastily snapped photos of her are here.

The other frame that this kind gentleman had hanging in his shed was an early 1990s era aluminum Cannondale road frame. Other than the destroyed steel fork, it seems to be in pretty good shape. It's smaller than the 67cm behemoth Sekai, so it may actually be my size. At the moment, it's hanging on the rack on the back of my truck (the wife mentioned something about '...something something another bike into this house something something divorce court something something out on your ass something...' so I figured it was safer out there. At least for now.

I can't own it...

2008-05-14T12:02:00.004-04:00

However, I must at least blog about it:

**Update**, seems it's a real plate. Trying to configure it on the VA DMV site leads to this:

"Personalized message already taken. You can only purchase it if you already reserved this message or it is on a vehicle you own."

Bravo to you, clever license plate customizer. My hat is off to you.

Cross-post love

2008-04-21T12:44:00.001-04:00

I posted a few photos and a write-up from my shooting of the Leesburg Baker's Dozen mountain bike race over at my TooFatToRace blog. More to come as I weed out the crappy shots and post the 3 or 4 remaining good ones.

Fox kits pt. 3

2008-04-14T20:16:00.003-04:00

A couple more shots of the fox kits from a few weeks back. I specifically held off posting these since they kinda have some location specific features (if you're familiar with the location). Apparently the mother fox has moved the den, so there's no need to try and keep the location on the down-low (like my throngs of readers would flock to the site).

Anyway, enjoy the cute and fuzzies:

Facebook reading

2008-04-09T07:24:00.002-04:00

The Bible and 1984? Why am I not the least bit surprised? Welcome to Washington!

(List found on Facebook.)

More Blackwater shots.

2008-04-04T08:33:00.005-04:00

I posted a few more shots from my mid-week trip to Blackwater NWR.

This one is definitely best viewed full size

A kit checks out the big, scary world.

A (bigass) great horned owl slowly waking up at sunset.

Photo safari: Blackwater NWR. Success!

2008-04-03T07:23:00.002-04:00

Note: The photos I've posted here were JPGs processed in about 3 seconds using The Gimp. I have a hard time getting non-harsh results with The Gimp. As such, I will probably re-process these, from the original RAW files, using PS one day soon. I think there are far better photos to be coaxed out of the originals files than I was able to do here.

After my last pathetic outing at Blackwater NWR, I was about to write that place off for few months. A Flickr post from a contact and a few emails later, and I'm glad I didn't.

I took the day off yesterday to capitalize on the news that there was a fox den and 5 kits romping around at Blackwater. The day began with my alarm sounding at an unholy 4:30am. I was out the door shortly thereafter. Two hours later, I was watching sunrise at the refuge.

About 7 hours after that (roughly 1pm), the kits made their first appearance. Ugh. Who knew foxes were the "we like to sleep in" type? Of course, I was in town grabbing lunch when they decided to emerge. Luckily I made it back before the first show was over.

I spent most of the day with a Flickr acquaintance who happened to make the trek out there too. We would sit by the den for an hour, then take a drive around the refuge to thaw out. After our brief respites, we'd meet back at the den and continue our vigil. Around 1pm, the first signs of life began to emerge. (Up to that point, we were worried that the den may have been abandoned).

The kits quickly acclimated to their human watchers. They would romp and play and chew sticks (and each other) with little regard for us, unless we made too sudden a movement, which would send them haul-assin' back into the den. After a minute, they'd come back out and resume playtime.

They would hang out and play for an hour or so before retreating to the den for nap time. Then they'd be gone for a couple of hours (during which we'd be back to our sitting around/driving-around-the-refuge routine). Around 4pm they made another appearance, after which my Flickr associate decided he'd had a long enough day and packed it in. I decided to stick it out till sunset, hoping for more kit-time. I wasn't disappointed. Towards the end of the day, they seemed to get more adventurous and/or brave. Around 6pm, they would leave their den and come up to the road from which I was shooting. I backed way off and gave them all the room they wanted, and they proceeded to wander farther from the den then they had all day.

I shot them all the way through the fading light of sunset. When they went back into their den around 7:30pm, I decided that was my cue. I packed it in and headed for home. On the way out of the refuge, I managed to grab a couple of snaps of a (great horned?) owl and a heron with a backdrop of the setting sun. I'll post those as I process them. But all in all, a much better trip to the refuge than ever before.

Thanks to my pseudo-anonymous Flicker associate for the insight provided throughout the day, and for tipping me off to the existence of the beasties.

I'll take a Centralia, medium well...no...make that well done"

2008-03-31T08:34:00.000-04:00

"Uh, excuse me, but uh, I think your town's on fire""
"What? Nah, it's just a little coal"
"No, no...your *town* *is* *on* *fire*!"

Centralia is a former coal mining town in central PA. In 1962, a fire set to "clean up" the local dump spread underground to old, abandoned, played-out coal shafts beneath the town. The fire has been burning ever since (nearly 46 years, in case you don't feel like doing the math). In the '80s government bought out most of the residents. A few chose to stay despite the dangers of the unstable ground (sinkholes) and high levels of carbon monoxide produced by the flames. Today, the town is now mostly abandoned. The ground is warm to the touch, and smoke rises from cracks and crevices. Just feet below the surface, temperatures reach nearly 200°F (photo by somebody else).

I put a few photos of the town up on Flickr. These photos were taken probably 5 years ago when a group of offroading friends and I ventured to the town. They were shot with my old Canon EOS Rebel IX (APS baby!) film camera, then scanned in and slightly fixed-up in PS.

My family hails from two towns near Centralia: my grandfather was from Mount Carmel and my grandmother from West Hazleton. Had I known Centralia existed in my younger days, it would have made trips back home *much* more interesting. I plan to go back up there with my DSLR one of these days soon and take more artsy photos. These photos were taken more as simple snapshots, with little regard paid to aesthetic.

Anybody up for a road trip?

Photo safari: Blackwater NWR. Fail.

2008-03-29T10:26:00.001-04:00

Last weekend I drove out to Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge to take some photos. I had to drop the wife off at BWI early Saturday (which is about half way to the Refuge) so I figured after making my drop I'd drive out to Blackwater, shoot till sunset, then find a hotel room for the night. Sunday, I would get up before the sun, get to Blackwater to shoot sunrise, and continue shooting the rest of the day till I had to head back at BWI to retrieve the wife.

The best-laid plans of mice and men etc, etc, etc...

I got to the refuge mid-morning and there was *nothing* going on. A couple of osprey were about, but keeping 100-200 yards offshore (perhaps more). Even with my fancy rented 300mm f/4 IS lens they were too far off to be interesting. I saw an eagle or two, but they were pretty reclusive as well. Apparently a couple of the breeding pairs that hang out on the refuge were nesting and/or rearing newly hatched chicks. So all in all, the place was dead, photographically. I tried finding other stuff to shoot, but with everything there being dormant-tree-brown or still-water-brown, I was at a loss. I hung around till 4:30pm, when the clouds started rolling in. The first few drops of rain were enough to send me packing. I decided to cut my losses and head for home. No sense springing $100 for a hotel when there'd likely only be the same animal-free brown-on-brown pallet to shoot the next day.

I took maybe 30 photos the whole day. The only shot worth keeping was of a squirrel. Yeah, I know. It was one of those endangered Delmarva Fox Squirrels and all. But still, a fuckin' squirrel.

2008-03-18T20:49:00.002-04:00

Looks like the rest of my shots from the Ferrari event are up. Thankfully, it looks like somebody had the good sense to cull the herd of *uber* crappy shots.

Photo gig

2008-03-17T16:59:00.012-04:00

Note: This post contains a bunch of photos that are resized in-browser, so they look like crap. Click on the images to see the slightly less crap versions.

Saturday night I was given the chance to shoot the local Ferrari dealership's anniversary party. (High Road Auto Group in case anybody is in the market. Tell 'em I sent ya. If I refer enough people, maybe I'll earn a free car one day).

As far as photography goes, it was pretty basic stuff. As the guests arrived, the organizers wanted me to ask them if they'd like to have their photos taken in front of an F430 they had on the showroom floor. Many did.

A few asked if I could accompany them out to the parking lot to shoot them in front of their own Ferrari, which I was happy to do until the darkness and rain made it impractical.

I stuck with my Sigma 30mm f/1.4 lens and 500DG flash. Both worked well all night. The lens mis-focused a couple of times, but in the low light, this wasn't surprising. The straight-outta-the-camera photos should be up in a day or two at the dealership's "pics" website.

In between people shootin' I tried to take a couple of snaps of the environment. There was a nice 599 GTB on the showroom floor, but it was a gray car, in a dark environment, and with a ton of people milling about. So I decided to go for the detail engine shot...

They also had a chair made by the people who do all of Maserati's interior leather work. Pretty comfy, with really cool lines. Probably costs as much as my truck. On second thought...more.

They also had a couple of the new...

...GranTurismos in stock. One white, one...

...gray.

Towards the end of the evening, one of the women from the string quartet that provided the music for the evening asked if I could get a shot of her with the F430. I was happy to oblige

One thing became immediately clear to me at this point...I need more practice arranging/posing people. She asked "So what should I do? How should I stand" and I just kinda did the "Uh...stand over there...um...like you normally stand". A day later, I thought "Dumbass, you should have had her playing her violin, eyes closed, oblivious to the car, and totally absorbed in the music". *That* would have been more interesting (IMO). Oh well. The next time a violinist asks me to take their photo in front of a Ferrari...I have a plan.

A family legend, a national mystery, a bullshit confession?

2008-02-28T18:47:00.007-05:00

Another long-drafted post, and a bit of weird family history...

(Full-sized version available here.)

Preface: According to Wikipedia, Charley Ross, born Charles Brewster Ross in 1870, was the primary victim of the first kidnapping for ransom in America to receive widespread attention from the media.

(Another account of Charlie Ross can be found here.)

Jump to 2000: In a set of old family photos I received when my grandmother died in 2000 was a photo with this handwritten on the reverse (I believe the writer is my aunt, which is why in the note my grandmother is referred to as "Mom"):

---------------------------------------------------------
Grace Van Fleet
daughter of
Mrs. Ruth Van Fleet
who stayed in our house.

    Grace died young at the White Haven
Sanitarium from tuberculosis. She +
Mrs Van Fleet + her murderer husband are
all buried in the White Haven Cemetery.
    Mrs Van Fleet + her daughter left Ruth's
husband in New Jersey or West Chester (in the Phila. area)+ came here to live.
    When Ruth's husband was dying
he came + found her in White Haven
(where she had moved to be near her daughter)
+ confessed to the murder of young Charlie
Ross on his death bed. Ruth gave him a proper
burial.
    Ruth came to live with Mom [my grandmother] in 1937 + stayed
until Feb. or March 1943 when she died here
at [my grandmother's home in Hazleton PA]. On her death bed she
confessed to Mom [my grandmother] that her husband had
admitted to the killing of Charlie Ross before he
died.
---------------------------------------------------------

According to the Wikipedia article, "The fate of Charley Ross remains unknown".

So, while it's most likely bullshit, I can't figure why a dood on his deathbed would confess to a famous kidnapping. You hear of the nuts who confess to things they didn't do while still alive and healthy. They're just attention seekers (and nuts). Buy why confess to something you didn't do when you're near death and can't "enjoy" the fame/infamy?

iTunes license agreement

2008-02-24T18:25:00.001-05:00

Another of my ancient, random posts. Not sure where I found this, but I don't think it was from one of the usual sites (Slashdot, BoingBoing, etc). I think I actually found it on my own (tho is had apparently been pretty widely reported before I found it).

---

So it would seem that using iTunes to manufacture a missile or nuke is verboten. Shit. *Now* what am I supposed to use??

"10. Export Control. You may not use or otherwise export or reexport the Apple Software except as authorized by United States law and the laws of the jurisdiction in which the Apple Software was obtained. In particular, but without limitation, the Apple Software may not be exported or re-exported (a) into any U.S. embargoed countries or (b) to anyone on the U.S. Treasury Department's list of Specially Designated Nationals or the U.S. Department of Commerce Denied Person’s List or Entity List. By using the Apple Software, you represent and warrant that you are not located in any such country or on any such list. You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of missiles, or nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

PDF link to full Terms.

Ball of confusion?

2008-02-23T09:17:00.001-05:00

(Here's another oldie from the black hole that is my "Drafts" folder).

OK, grammar lesson 101, people: Sentences do not automatically call for a question mark just because you're confused. Examples (from a couple of serial offenders at the office):

"My printer is not working.....the drum light keeps coming on, but the status is green?"

"I'm not certain, but hopefully there's a generic one from before?"

"I'm looking into buying a Digital Camera…I'm not sure where to start?"

"I'm guessing with Black Friday coming, maybe I could look for a deal, I just don't know what type or model is good?"

"I think someone accidently[sic] hit the alarm in the elevator, although it's funny that Jane heard it?"

"Just wanted to forward this question to you?"

"Is there another time you would be able to help me? Since I cannot attend?" (Oh! so close!).

"Let me know if you need me for anything?"

"I need to access some art files for [company website] which should be on the [company name] server????"

Apparently breaking up really is hard to do.

2008-02-21T19:06:00.003-05:00

So here's an old-ass post that's been buried in my "Drafts" folder for months. I was gonna delete it, but I like the thought I put into determining the casket size (in last season's finale of 'Lost'), so I figured I'd post it. I have other, old, still barely relevant posts which I may throw on the blog to fill time until I get around to spewing something more meaningful (er...more meaningful for this blog, at least).

--Begin WayBack Machine---

So, you remember a month or two ago when I went on about the wife and I breaking up with "our formerly-one-and-only "must see" TV show, "Lost"? Yeah? Well...we've decided to take her (er...him?) back.

According to a number of friends, we broke up the episode before the series pulled itself together. After a couple of purchases on iTunes, we were able to catch up. After that, we watched the remainder of the season on ye ole' DVR.

And I wholeheartedly agree with the friends who said we left at the exact wrong time. The remainder of the season was pretty great. Much better than the first half (IMHO).

Anyway, I write this not as a review of the show or season, but as an analysis of one aspect of it. At one point, Jack, the doctor character, is shown standing over a casket at a funeral home. The mysterious inhabitant of the casket is not made known. In the world of the online Lost-nerds, there is much speculation as to who it is. I (being a Lost-nerd, again), thought the casket looked smaller than average. There are those who share this opinion, and those who don't. Thinking about it a bit, I *think* I have a way to estimate the size of the casket, providing a possible clue to its owner.

Using a screencap of the scene from the Lost Easter Eggs blog

I measured the width of Jack's hand (in pixels):

Hand: 36 pixels wide

and the width of the casket (also in pixels) along roughly the center of its' parallelogram shape (due to weird camera angle):

Casket: 392 pixels wide

Divide the width of the casket by the width of the hand, and you
should get how many "hands" wide the casket is:

392 / 36 = 10.8888

So the casket is 10.8888 x the width of the hand.

Width of my hand as spread out the same way jack's hand is in the image: 6 inches

Assuming my hand is the roughly the same width as jacks (in reality, me being 6'6", my hand may well be larger than Jack's, which would make the casket even smaller than my numbers indicate) multiply the width of my hand (6") by the number of "hands" wide the casket is (10.8888) should give us the width of the casket in inches:

6 x 10.8888 = 65.3328 inches

Divide by 12 to get the width in feet:

65.3328 / 12 = 5.4444 feet wide

Small casket.

Small casket = small body.

Headlines that are not what they at first seem...

2008-01-31T13:43:00.000-05:00

WTOP reports:

"Star Tenor Sidelined by Fishbone"

Sweet! LOC on Flickr.

2008-01-16T15:12:00.000-05:00

The Library of Congress is posting a ton of old photos to Flickr so that users will assist in tagging the works. Pretty cool.

LOC blog post on the project.

LOC Flickr member page.

I love old photos. Like Shorpy. I gotta start reading them again regularly. I've slacked.

Happy anniversary to me.

2008-01-05T12:06:00.000-05:00

This month marks 8 years since I kicked smoking. (Coincidentally, it marks 8 years since I started biking seriously, too. You'd think I'd be better at it by now!).

I know it doesn't make for a terribly interesting blog post, but it really is one of the best/smartest things I ever did, and I like to remind myself of that every year.

(CC licensed photo by CathyG.

Culpable?

2007-12-06T08:59:00.000-05:00

When can we start prosecuting news organizations for inciting murder? I mean, seriously. When Midwestern corn-fed fucktards go on killing sprees in malls, and leave suicide notes which explicitly say "Now I'll be famous", how about you news organizations *not* fulfill their murderous dying wishes, huh? I mean, goddamn. This isn't rocket science here.

Sure, you have to report the story. I understand that. And sure, you want everybody to know that you're the best news organization in the world, and that you know the shaggy-haired Midwestern corn-fed fucktard's name. And that you have the shaggy-haired Midwestern corn-fed fucktard's picture. But why not make him look like the asshat that he is, so the next shaggy-haired Midwestern corn-fed fucktard will think twice about "being famous" by killing a bunch of people on their way out. Is that so hard? Here, next time, try this:

"Police have identified the gunman as Munchie McButtbutt of Bellvue, Nebraska, who had a long history of inappropriate relations with male barnyard animals". Blahblahblah story continues...we're the best news organization on the planet, so buy advertising with us blahblahblah...

There, now everybody knows you have a photo of the fucktard. And you probably know his real name. And the upside to this is that Mr. McButtbutt doesn't get any free publicity, and looks like the asshat that he is for his 15 minutes of fame, so maybe...*just maybe* the next shaggy-haired Midwestern corn-fed fucktard who wants to "be famous" by killing off a bunch of shoppers will think twice about looking like a dumbass and will just off himself in his parent's basement without bothering anybody else.

Or maybe we just use the new and improved "LOLcat bulider" to LOLcat-ize the killers and make a mockery of them (and their bad grammar skillz):

Maybe.

So there you have it...

2007-12-01T20:18:00.000-05:00

View from the airport shuttle window.

Ben and I are officially "Experienced destination-wedding photographers". Future wedding dates are filling fast, so book early, book often.

My original write-up started getting a bit long(er)-winded, and the more I wrote, the less interested I became in my own yammerings. And if I was boring myself, I can only imagine the family-vacation-slideshow-like boredom I'd be inflicting upon my readers. So here's a slightly less wordy summary:

Our whirlwind adventure began early one Friday morning a couple of weeks back. We flew out of DC around 7am and touched down for a four-hour stay in Houston. After getting our grub on (if you will) and browsing the airport shop wares, we departed for sunny Cancun Mexico and hit the ground around 4pm local time.

View from the hotel room balcony.

We dropped our bags in the room and dashed out the door destined for the rehearsal and dinner, which began just after we arrived. That wrapped sometime around...uh...8? 9? (It's all kinda a blur at this point).

Saturday morning we were up and out bright and early. We were scheduled to start shooting the bride and bridesmaids getting ready at the on-site spa at 8am. Around 11 we broke away and took the wedding dress and shoes out to the beach for a photo shoot of their own. Shortly after, I split off to shoot the guys while Ben stuck with the girls.

Somewhere around noon:30 the groom, groomsmen, bridesmaids, Ben and I convened at the chapel-by-the-sea (or ocean, or gulf, or whatever the hell that body of water is down there). Before too long, the bride arrived by white horse-drawn carriage and the ceremony got underway. We did our thing and shot the event. I managed to scratch the hell outta my (best quality, longest, most expensive) lens. Being a true professional, I only mourn for a second before getting back to the task at hand.

Immediately following the ceremony, Ben directed the principal players in some formal poses. Somewhere around 4pm we were granted an all too brief break. We headed back to the hotel room where I promptly fell dead asleep. After my 20 minute power nap, we were back on duty. We wandered over to the ballroom, arriving shortly before the start of the 5pm reception.

The reception rocked all-out. Like a party put on by 75 just-out-of-college kids run amok at an open bar (which, now that I think about it, is exactly what it was). It was an absolute blast. Many drinks were drunk, dances were danced and "I love you man"'s were distributed (all by the wedding party and guests). Ben and I just took pictures. Things finally wound down somewhere near...10? 11? Honestly I don't remember exactly.

Sunday morning we had to sort out bit of a room snafu. A situation made more difficult by us staying in a room under the groom's name, but paid for by the groom's father's credit card. Both of whom were staying on the far side of the resort, a half-mile up the road. Trying to organize all parties to get things straight was a challenge. Thankfully, Ben did the hard work. I held up in the room and fended off the encroaching housekeeping staff with a plunger and an arsenal of tiny vodka bottle from the minibar. They had orders to evict us, but we were having none of that.*

Once the room situation was straightened out, we had about a half of a day to ourselves. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time for me to take a trip out to any of the semi-nearby Mayan ruins, so I ended up sitting on the beach, reading my book ("Elephants on Acid", a fascinating read, if you're interested), and having drinks brought to me by a resort employee.

The view from my lounge chair. Not bad for a mid-November afternoon.
The beer selection at the resort left a lot to be desired. It's hard to utter a discouraging word about a place where you can walk up to any bar anywhere on site and walk away with alcohol free of charge. However, when I asked a bartender what kind of beers they had, I swear I heard him say "We have both kinds, senior, Dos Equis and Tecate". Aiiiieee! So...I was forced to drink margaritas. I know. I'm a trooper. Mmmm, salty good.

All weekend, members of the wedding party took to calling me "Big Ben". It started out as just "Ben", but as Ben was the One True Ben, having both of us being Ben quickly got confusing. Hence the "Big" was added especially for me. Apparently, I resemble their hometown hero, Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger:

Hrm. There may be a slight resemblance there. On the plus side, I know what I'm going to be for Halloween next year. Now I just have to find some parties in Pittsburgh where I can drink free all night.

I did notice an odd rule at the resort. Apparently, they're not too keen on you riding your bike in the pool:

(Click the image for the full sized version).

Can't imagine why. I guess they don't want you to run over the volleyball players. I only wish I'd visited in the era that predated the sign. That must have been a sight. A bunch of pasty white tourists biking around the 5' deep waters.

Anyway. The weekend wrapped up with Ben and I catching a cab to the airport at 5am Monday morning. After a few more hours lost to a Texas layover we were back in our own timezone and officially done with our first destination wedding. Er. I guess I should say "done shooting our first destination wedding". Now I've got to find time to process the 1,400 photos I took.

*(Not really, but that sounds much more interesting than "I held up in the room and read my book, just in case housekeeping came to try and throw us out on our ear").

How's that for timing?

2007-11-30T12:34:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, I mention all the gross stuff I used to (and still do, to a lesser extent) follow. That prompted me to spend some time on Wikipedia last night reading about the various flavors of Ebola. I even spent some time cleaning up the entry for local favorite Ebola Reston. Then today, the WHO announces a new subtype of the disease has emerged.

"New subtype of Ebola suspected in Uganda"

Good day to be a virologist. Bad day to be a Ugandan in the midst of an outbreak.

Thanks to Lori for the Ebola scoop.

To watch, or not to watch. That is the question.

2007-11-28T13:23:00.000-05:00

It's like a train wreck. You don't really want to watch, but somewhere, something inside you, on some primal...even guttural level...needs to.

A friend pointed out this BoingBoing post, which references a video called "Two Girls, One Cup". Actually, it doesn't reference it so much as it warns you -on the future wellbeing of your eternal soul- against watching it. With an anti-endorsement like that, how can anybody *not* watch it?

Now, I'm a relatively macabre guy. I'm OK with gross stuff. I was reading books on epidemiology and disease science (Ebola is still a favorite subject), forensic pathology and forensic anthropology well before it was vogue (and before there were 37 CSIs to choose from every night of the week). Back in the pre-internet days, I watched at least one of the "Faces of Death" video tapes (see, I told you it was "way back"). A bit more recently (tho still at the dawn of the modern internet), I spent my fair share of time on rotten.com website and the alt.binaries.grotesque newsgroup looking at all kinds of horrific photos of all kinds of horrific events. I've seen herring inserted in places herring have no business being. So, by now, I'm not too freaked out by gross stuff. Jaded, if you will.

However...

Some clever and creative soul has posted a ton of "Two girls, One Cup reaction videos" on YouTube. These are safe to watch (and quite funny), as they show first-time "Cup" viewers watching the video...they don't show the video itself. Occasionally the viewers do mention what they're seeing on the screen. And it ain't pretty.

Watching these other "Cup" virgins react gives me more than a little pause.

So now I'm seriously considering how to proceed. Should I stay a "Cup" virgin, and innocently watch the reaction videos on YouTube, laughing along oblivious to the horrors being shown? Or do I watch the video itself, so I can understand what these victims are going through, tho probably never again able to watch the reaction videos again without becoming sick. Decisions, decisions.

For those brave enough to even read a description of the "Cup" video (and be warned, I've heard the description is enough to give you nightmares), one can be found here.

If you're not as brave, for a laugh you can check the reaction videos #10 and #9. Both are quite funny (and mostly harmless).

At the moment, I'm leaning towards not watching the original. Maybe I'm going soft in my old age.

Dumbest thing I did today?

2007-11-21T16:07:00.000-05:00

*Not* biking to work.

Let's do the math, shall we?

10 mile commute divided by 1 hour drive time equals...hmmm....lemme see, about 10mph. Fuck. I can do better than that on two wheels.

I swear, I'll never drive to work on one of the day-before-a-holiday commutes again. Rain, snow, hellfire, fucking biblical floods and plagues of locusts. I'm biking it (or taking the damn day off).

So there.

Now where'd I put my beer?

(CC licensed photo above snagged from drb62's photo stream).

...please stand by...

2007-11-16T09:26:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the long delay in posts. It has been a busy couple of weeks/weekends. I promise I have a few in-progress posts that will be done shortly. There's the post-Bliss ride post, the post-Mexico trip post, a post about the best thing to happen to the web *evar*, a couple of posts about local weddings Ben and I have shot, and a post about a product I purchased as a goof, but now find myself really digging.

brb.

(Above CC licensed photo by Flickr user jaybowalkin).

Inventing new uses for words

2007-10-31T08:10:00.000-04:00

beverage
bev·er·age
Pronunciation: \ˈbev-rij, ˈbe-və-\
Function: verb?

On the way in to the office this morning, I had WTOP on the radio. They were speaking with a DC cop about Georgetown's Halloween festivities scheduled for this evening. The cop said that the city would have 300 officers around Georgetown to "assist the public", "ensure nobody stumbled into the streets" and "make sure nobody gets 'over-beveraged'".

"Over-beveraged" might be my new favorite term.

"No, officer, I'm not shitfaced. I'm just a bit over-beveraged! If you allow me a few minutes to find a restroom and a Starbucks, I'll de-beverage, re-beverage with some coffee, and go on about my night. Thanks!".

Really, now? You don't say.

2007-10-26T11:27:00.000-04:00

Pa. Coroner Says Homicide in Beating

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) - The death of a college student found severely beaten on a street in Pennsylvania Dutch country has been ruled a homicide..."

I'll sleep better at night safe in the knowledge that suicide by self-beating isn't on the rise in Pennsylvania. At least...not yet...

What are you doing to me, C3-C4? I thought we were friends?!

2007-10-24T10:34:00.000-04:00

Monday I had the distinct displeasure of having my XXL-sized body squeezed into the drinking-straw-sized device they call an MRI machine. Being mildly claustrophobic, it was not an enjoyable 20 minute ordeal. Luckily, they only inserted me from head to waist. Had I had to endure a full-body encapsulation, I'd have needed tranqs.

I just heard from the doc with the results. Word on the street is that I have a "small herniation" of the C3-C4 disk. Actually, he said I have *two* herniations. One at C3-C4 and one somewhere lower (he wasn't specific), but he thinks C3-C4 is the one causing me discomfort.

I asked him what the next step was. He said for more severe herniations, we start talking about surgery at this point. However, with the size of mine, and the fact that my symptoms seem to be subsiding (slowly), we were best off taking a wait-and-see approach. Apparently, herniations never "fix" themselves. The symptoms may go away fully, but once you're herniated, you're herniated till you opt for surgery to smush the disk back where it belongs.

I asked what I should and shouldn't be doing physically at this point. He said tackle football was out (I can manage that...I've avoided it for 20 years now), and he said that "getting in a car accident would be really bad now". Check. I'll put that on my "stuff not to do" list, too. When I specifically asked about mountain biking, he said that I should be able to start again. But that I should "avoid head-on collisions". Thanks doc. Master of the obvious. That's why you get paid the big bucks.

So (thankfully), it's time to get back on the bike. I'm gonna take things gingerly at first, I think. The Bliss is just a few weeks away. Gotta determine if I'll be riding it, or driving around the park strategically placing myself (and my camera) at peak action-shot locations.

While I had the doc on the phone, I took the opportunity to explain that I was going to have to start traveling (flying) more for (wedding photography) work. I asked if he could prescribe me some Xanax to keep me sane at 30k feet. Thankfully, he obliged. Ye ole medicine cabinet is getting crowded these days!

ouch

2007-10-20T21:36:00.000-04:00

...my vagina hurts.

Lately, I've taken to buying bridal magazines. Mainly the localized versions of national rags: most recently, The Knot and I Do For Brides ("For Brides" and bigass hairy dudes with expensive camera gear, apparently. Guess that last bit wouldn't fit on the magazine header).

I'm avoiding the big-name fashion mags (Glamor Wedding, Vogue Wedding, Ranger Rick Wedding, etc) mainly because I don't give a shit what $4M will buy you in a "Hollywood Fairytale Wedding"™. I want to stay in touch with what's new/hit/hot/happening/popular (and most importantly, perhaps: selling) in local weddings. As some of you know, a friend, Ben and I have started working towards breaking into the wedding photography biz. The way I see it, these magazines are business-research tools, not just some creepy old guy buying girly magazines.

Thankfully, it looks like things are beginning to get interesting. Ben and I (mostly Ben) have apparently managed to book our first destination wedding (woot!). We've been booked to go to Cancun, Mexico in a few weeks. We don't have the tickets in hand yet, but we met with the bride and groom. And they seemed to like our work enough to sign a contract. I'm cautiously optimistic, but trying very hard not to get ahead of myself. Once the tickets are in-hand, I'll probably move to full-on giddy. It's supposed to be a three day affair; leaving town Friday, returning Sunday. We're hoping that this will lead to future destination weddings. Ya see, destination weddings tend to be a catch-22: Nobody will hire you to do destination weddings, until you've done destination weddings. But you can't do a destination wedding until somebody hires you to do one, which nobody will do if you haven't done one before. See what I mean? Hopefully this will be our foot in the door of the destination wedding world. And an added bonus is that the couple getting married is young (~23ish) and are the first of their group of friends to get hitched. If we do this, and do it well, we may have the beginnings of a wedding empire on our hands.

"Remarkable"

2007-10-17T07:21:00.001-04:00

Dear Doctor's Office,

If you have 99 employees who speak English as a second language, and one who speaks it natively, pretty please, let the native speaker do the calling to update patients on their conditions. Case in point:

Scene opens: Casa du Rant, afternoon.

[Ring ring, ring ring]

Me: Hello?

Very heavily accented nurse: "Mister [first name]? Mister [last name]? Mister [first namd last name]?"

Me: "Uh, yeah, I'm [first name last name]."

Nurse: "I'm [unintelligible] nurse from doctor [Smith's] office. Doctor read your X-rays and they are remarkable."

Me: "Remarkable?! Really? How so? Remarkable good? Remarkable bad? What do you mean by "remarkable"??"

Nurse: "Yes, remarkable. They look...normal".

Me: "They look *normal*? So they are UN-remarkable. Is that what you mean?"

Nurse: "Yes, everything look fine. Unremarkable"

Me: "So everything looks OK? The x-rays look normal?"

Nurse: "Yes. Normal,"

Me (thinking): Jesus fucking Christ, lady. You might want to be careful where you insert and omit random "Un"s. Innocuous enough for me, but I'd hate to be the guy waiting to hear how my cancer treatments are going and get the "your cancer treatment is remarkable" line. Especially if it ain't.

Prognosis?

2007-10-16T07:19:00.000-04:00

So I guess the doc saw something he didn't like in my neck/back x-rays last week. I got home from work yesterday to find a prescription for an MRI in my mailbox. At least I think that's what it is. I can't say for sure, having never seen one before. The bad news: Doc didn't even wait to see if the Prednisone and Vicodin cocktail he prescribed me had any effect. The good news: at least he didn't send the paramedics to round me up.

It would have been nice of him to call and mention that something was up, and that an MRI was in my (immediate) future, instead of blindsiding me. I've got a call into his office for an explanation. Hopefully more news today. Wish me luck.

I can't be the only one...

2007-10-11T21:57:00.000-04:00

...who rocks out while doing domestic chores. Can I? I mean, I do this shit all the time. Like tonight..

After returning home from a work happy hour (which might explain the rest of this post), I'm doing the 3-week-old dishes which have lived in the sink since my wife headed back to SF to finish up her work training, when I happen across some old Queensryche (Take Hold of the Flame) on the cable TV "Arena Rock" music stations.

After that ends, it move into some old KISS.

Beyond that is some lame ass something, so I hit the remote and change to the "Heavy Metal" station where I find Rammstein doing "Du Hast", which I never particularly liked, but sounds quite good in my current state.

The last time I cleaned the bathrooms ("inside", for my long-time readers), I did so with Tool cranking full-blast on my MP3 player.

I can't be the only one.

(BTW: If you think this post is random, just wait till later when the Vicodin kick in ;)

(PS...Baby, if you're reading this, the part about the three-week-old dishes is what's called taking "creative license". They didn't exist. They were like 1 day old. Promise.

Wedding 2.0

2007-10-10T22:09:00.000-04:00

Ben and I had the opportunity to shoot our second RasmussenPhoto team-effort wedding two Fridays back. A few months ago, a friend from work asked us if we'd be interested in shooting his wedding. Still in portfolio-building mode, we jumped at the opportunity.

The ceremony and reception were held at a hotel?...conference center? I dunno. Whatever it was, it was 12 stories up, overlooking the USMC Iwo Jima memorial and Washington DC. A fantastic location with a rooftop deck.

The day started out with us shooting the prep at the hotel. After that, we moved to the ceremony/reception place and shot the meeting of the bride and groom (they decided to see each other just before the ceremony. It was a very private moment and very cool to be there to capture it so the families could share the moment later.

After the meeting, Ben handled most of the formal, posed shots. I don't remember where I was, but I'm certain I was doing something uber-important. Probably saving small children from certain death in traffic or something. Anyway, next came the ceremony itself. We were positioned facing out the floor-to-ceiling windows, overlooking DC. It made for some challenging lighting (severe backlight), but I think I managed to push the flash up enough to compensate.

Almost immediately after the ceremony came the reception. Same fantastic location, less ambient light! I had rented an extra-bright lens (f/1.2) so I was able to get some decent shots despite the dim conditions.

Below are a few of the shots I've processed. I'm not crazy about the way you link to photos in flickr. Click on the images to see the full-sized versions. They look significantly better than these shrunken ones.

Pill diet

2007-10-10T07:33:00.000-04:00

I wrote most of this in a comment yesterday, but I figured I'd post it here as an update...

So I just got back from the docs [noon, yesterday]. His diagnosis was right in line with mine (hey! he must read Wikipedia too!). Probably not a fully-herniated disk, but an irritated/swollen/protruding one that's pissing-off a nearby nerve. I got some Hydrocodone+Acetaminophen (AKA Vicodin. Yay narcotics!) and some steroid anti-inflammatory stuff. Supposed to use both for the next 9 days and see where things stand. The doc took a bunch of x-rays, too. He should have the results from them by the end of the week and get back to me if he sees anything scary. If he does, then we'll alter plans at that point.

The Hydrocodone is magically-good. Pop two of those babies and the back and arm pain are quashed for hours (while the warm-tingly-I-really-shouldn't-be-driving-like-this feeling takes over my body). It's a nice change over the last ~10 days. I was finally able to get a good, uninterrupted sleep last night, laying (lying? I never could conjugate that verb) in whatever position I wanted. For the entire week+ prior, I could only lay in one position, on my left side, arms crossed in front of me. If I'd try to roll over in my sleep in the middle of the night, I was jolted awake by the pain. No more with Mr Hydrocodone. Thank you modern medicine!

Pills for Breakfast*

2007-10-08T15:53:00.000-04:00

So I've devoured 40 Allieve pills in the last ~36 hours. And that's in addition to all the Tylenol, Advil, Dones and Mydol. (Hey, I was desperate at this point. Seriously, I'd have licked a toad if somebody would have told me it had pain killing properties).

Last Sunday morning (8 days past), I managed to turn/twist/stretch and felt something in my upper back go *crunch*. Its been constant pain ever since. From my research on Wikipedia and the rest of the internets (why do we even have doctors anymore? Oh yeah...meds), I'm thinking I caught a Cervical disc herniation. This is pressing on a nerve, which is quite pissed off about the whole situation. My symptoms (constant upper back pain, constant left-arm pain (tricep/underside), on-and-off numbness in the pinky-side of the left hand, constant weakness in the left hand) seem to line up with a herniation in the C7 - T1 region of the spine.

So I broke down and called the ol' doc. Just to get a second opinion (and hopefully some high-octane pills that will stop the pain. The dozens of over-the-counter ones I've taken over the last week have done little to dull the constant throb.

The good news is that these things tend to clear up on their own. The bad news is that (according to one web site), the clearing up could take from 6 to 12 weeks. Too effing long. I haven't had a decent nights sleep in a week. I'm up every 2-3 hours groping in the dark for my magic pills. I can't imagine what kinda condition I'll be after five more weeks of this. Aside from that, the calendar is packed with upcoming "to do" things. Wedding shoots. Soccer game shoots. Bootlegger's Bliss mountain bike ride/beer tasting/photo op. Bad Religion show. Of all the weeks for the back to ask for some time off, this was the least opportune. Jerk.

*Title lifted from the FAITH NO MORE song from the album We Care a Lot © 1985.

Canon 85mm f/1.2 DOF chart

2007-09-28T00:15:00.001-04:00

In case you were looking for it, here's a Depth of Field chart (in both feet and meters) which I compiled for the Canon 85mm f/1.2 lens @ f/1.2. Click on the image to see the full sized version, which you can actually read.

Take it and use it how you will. I hearby release it under a Creative Commons "Do whatever the hell you want with it, man. I don't care" license. (Forgive me. I don't know the actual license name.)

It's based on Canon's DOF chart (which I've found in meters only) found here, and this online meters-to-feet conversion utility. All I really did was save you some cutting and pasting. Consider it my gift to you, semi-anonymous future internet visitor.

RABIES OUTBREAK!

2007-09-24T16:39:00.000-04:00

Bwahahahah! I love the sensationalist graphic that accompanies this story about a rabid kitten in DC:

"PH33R THE KITTEH! FLEE! FLEE FOR YOUR LIVES!!!" YOU ARE ALL DOOOOOOOMED!

I can hear the network hacks brainstorming now "So, how can we make a kitten scary?"...

F*cking media.

Fly me to the moon...

2007-09-20T08:24:00.000-04:00

(Above CC licensed photo linked from misterbisson's flickr stream)

My buddy Joe recently blogged about this interesting little bit of information:

NASA posted a hiring notice for new astronauts Tuesday, seeking for the first time in almost 30 years men and women to fly aboard spacecraft other than the shuttle.

So I'm thinkin' I gotta apply, right? I mean, sure, I'm not remotely qualified. Not in my wildest LSD-induced dreams (not that I do, or have ever done that kinda stuff, cuz that would disqualify me too, I imagine). But how many people can say that they even *applied* to be an astronaut? It's got to be good for at least 2 or 3 minutes of cocktail-party conversation.

So, just to see *how* unqualified I really am (before submitting my un-qualified resume), I'm looking over the job qualifications required and my aspirations of spaceflight are stopped dead in their long-strided tracks by this:

* Standing height between 62 and 75 inches

Goddamn our miniature astronaut force!! What the hell is America going for? Dwarves in space? If there's a war for the moon, we sure as hell don't need a bunch of little people up there battling it out with bigass Ruskies (or MoonTerrorists). We need some big, hearty flyboys, damnit! So, NASA, I call on you to abandon the mini-nauts program and open the astronaut force up to us "big-n-tall" types. At least raise that upper limit to 78".

Ah well. More institutionalized height discrimination. What can you do?

My favorite part of the job overview for astronaut...and I quote:

*Frequent travel may be required

Doomed.

2007-09-20T07:20:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I had shoved down my throat (figuratively), another shining example of why we, as a society, are doomed:

After reading this Salon.com article (via BoingBoing) on how plastic grocery bags are procreating at a rate which will allow them to be the dominant life-force on the planet in about 3 weeks, I've developed a solid aversion to them. If given the choice between paper and plastic, my response used to be "eh, whatever". Now, it's a hearty "paper, you planet-killing bastard". For years, I've hauled bags stuffed full of bags back to local grocery stores to be recycled. Recently, I was pretty happy to learn that Whole Foods is phasing out plastic bags entirely. You get paper, or their reusable cloth sacks. Being the Earth friendly hippies the wife and I are, we bought two or three.

So yesterday I go to [national drug store chain] and pick up a few things. They, being not-so-progressive as Whole Foods have phased out paper bags eons back, so I'm left with little choice. I get plastic. I then wander to the far end of the mini-mall and pop into Michael's-We-Shit-On-Your-Planet-Craft-Store. I pick up a single, small picture frame. When I get to the checkout, the girl stuffs it into its very own Michael's plastic bag. I say "You know what...I don't even need a bag, I'll just stick in in my bag from [national drug store chain]", which I do. So friendly I-Hate-The-Earth checkout girl grabs the abandoned brand-new plastic bag and shoves it into the trash can next to her. If I'd have just accepted it, at least it would have ended up in plastic-bag-recycling-heaven, and not landfill-hell.

Some people just *don't* get it.

(Creative Commons licensed photo above taken from Pete Arkestra's Flickr stream).

Wedding v2

2007-09-18T21:20:00.000-04:00

So Saturday was my most recent attempt at wedding photography. Ben had lined up a shoot in MD with a bride and groom who's original photographer had bailed on them. I told him I was happy to come along to help out and build my skill set (not to mention portfolio).

The day was busy. We met at the bride's mother's house at noon. Ben soon went off to the church to shoot the bride/groom/groomsmen prepping. The bride was supposed to be arriving there well before the 3pm ceremony. I stayed at the house shooting the 8+ bridesmaids and junior bridesmaids and mothers and grandmothers and aunts and cousins (*big* family).

At 2:45, the limo arrives. The girls pack in and head for the church while I follow along behind. We get there a hair before 3pm and proceed to cool our heels until the bride finally arrived at 4:30pm.

Once the wedding finally begins, Ben and I cover different angles. He's down in front, I'm alternately off in the wings and up in the balcony with my longer lenses. It's taken me a while to like the shots I got, but I'm coming around.

The reception followed at a neighborhood community center. Lotsa guests, darker complected bride and groom, white wedding dress, gymnasium lighting requiring high ISO settings and less than picturesque backgrounds made for some challenging shooting. In a lot of my images, skintones look nearly blue. It's taking some post-processing time to get things looking right.

By the time the final frame of the bride and her girls was shot...

...it was after 9pm and Ben and I had been shooting for 9 hours. We had expected to be done by 6. Ah well. Here's hoping future weddings run a bit more on schedule.

I have a ton of shots to process for delivery. I may post a few more if I manage to find some that I really like.

More beer.

2007-09-17T16:19:00.000-04:00

Dear future me,

A bit more about beers the past-you like:

Flying Dog Tire Bite Ale is pisswater. It's like Budweiser with an extra hop. And not even a tasty hop. Avoid this one. You can't stand it. Trust me on this.

Longhammer IPA is a good one. You tried that a while back and liked it. Stone IPA is great. And HopDevil is damn fine too.

I offer you this, future Gary, an attempt to keep a best-to-worst running list (not that it will help you when you're sitting at a bar getting shitfaced):

Bear Republic Racer 5
Stone IPA
Redhook Long Hammer IPA
Vicory Hop Devil
Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA
Dogfish Head 90 Minute Imperial IPA
Heavy Seas
Speakeasy
Bear Republic Red Rocket Ale
New Belgium Fat Tire Amber Ale
Monkey piss
Tirebite Ale

There's a bunch more to add (not that I drink a lot or anything). This is all I can come up with at the moment. Cheers.

--Edit to add---

I've discovered the secret of Tire Bite Ale. If you drink it straight from the bottle, it's not as bad. Don't pour it into a glass. You have to hide both it's pale-yellow, pee-like color, and it's unfavorable Budweiser-like aroma and it becomes bearable. I wouldn't suggest you run out and buy more. But if you find yourself stuck in a bar offering only Bud Lite and Tier Bite. Go for the Flying Dog.

Wedding, Meeting, Meeting, Wedding, Wedding, Wedding

2007-09-11T23:21:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks back, a former coworker who left the 9-5 world to join her husband as a full-time wedding photographer contacted me. She wanted to know if I'd be available to assist her shooting a wedding that she had scheduled. I jumped at the chance.

The ceremony and reception were held at an estate in MD. A few rough-shots are below. (For the record, they are ultra compressed, ham-handedly resized, and didn't have much post processing work done to them. Essentially, these were meant for small web-display only. The final, full-sized versions are better.).

For months now, Ben and I have talked about getting into the wedding photography business. It's interesting, fast-paced work. There is tons of room for creativity. And, if you're good, it's lucrative.

Things really started to come to life when a coworker-friend of ours asked us to shoot his late-September wedding. We agreed. Since that initial booking, Ben's been much more active in moving things forward. He's started a company (linked above), at first focusing on portraits, but now moving into weddings. Recently, he's taken to combing Craigslist posts on wedding photography, and posting a few of his own ads. I told him I'd be happy to be an assistant, or "second shooter" for any weddings he schedules. I feel like I need to get some more real-world practice before I jump in, ready to solo.

Last night, we had our first client meeting. A bride and groom who's wedding we're shooting in October. Tonight, we have our second client meeting. (Told you things were moving now). A bride and groom who's wedding we're shooting on Saturday (*gulp*). Apparently, this couple had a photographer who bailed on them last-minute.

On top of all that, my former-coworker-friend just contacted me again to see if I'd be able to assist her with another wedding she's shooting this Saturday. Unfortunately I had to turn her down, as I'm already booked (with Ben) shooting the "our first photographer bailed" couple.

Moving along indeed.