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Better late than never

As you may remember, I went to Savannah for a conference the first weekend in April. I've finally managed to download some of the photos I took. Click for a bigger picture

Here's the view from our hotel room, complete with container ship:

This is the Savannah convention center, where our convention was held and more famous for hosting the last meeting of the leaders of the G8 nations:

And at night:

Here's an interesting car carrier ship:

and the obligatory shot of flowers in Savannah; Azaleas growing on River St.:

Finally, my favorite shot of the weekend. You might have to look carefully to read the graffito's opinion of the local paper.....

Spring in Chapel Hill

Here are some lovely pictures of the flowers in and around my yard, starting with the blossoms on my blueberry bush (YAY!!! but that's a story for another day, poor bush), lots of Azaleas and a Dogwood. Also, the Princess...

The originals are 2048x1536, so if you would like a larger version of any of them, email me and I'll be happy to send them to you!

And here's the Princess:
First, reproach (Mommy, why do I have to stay on the deck????)

Then a smile (Yay! Let's play!)

This stays at the top all day.... Scroll down for new content

Fight on Trojans!

A great way to ruin a laptop....

Claws + Screen = OUCH

But the kitty seems to be enjoying himself!

h/t Dean

Happy Halloweenie!

From our little lady bug:

wait, where's my head??


mom! get this offa meeee!

It's the big 3-0

So of course I celebrated like an adult:

I went to the zoo and then I came home and took a nap.

Of course, I did take a lot of fabulous pictures. The best were of course of the chimps.  I take better pictures of chimps than anything else.  Here are a couple:

i told you it was looking a lot like Christmas.....

See, I did decorate....





some...

Me too, kitteh, me too.

SONY rocks the house... and an explanation of why you haven't seen many pictures here lately

One of my most treasured possessions is my Sony DSC F717 camera. I love it like no other. We did months of research and field testing of high end digital cameras (alas, the Digital SLRs were FAR too expensive, then) and finally settled on the Sony. There were three major reasons we loved it (and still do!): 1) The real Zeiss lens. Both of us come from fields in which we do a LOT of microscopy, and Zeiss is the real deal. So a Zeiss lens on a consumer camera is a big deal to us. 2)The incredible detail in Macro mode. At the time this camera was leaps and bounds ahead of its competitors in Macro, and it's still better than a lot of what you can get. 3) I can take the pictures I want to take with little hassle. In fact, in 3 years of use, the ONLY time I've had trouble getting the shot I want is in front of chain link fencing (drop by flickr and see my zoo pictures...). So while maybe this camera would never be the professional's choice, as an advanced amateur, it works great for me.

Sadly enough, with all the business of moving, etc, the camera got laid away for quite a while. Earlier this summer I unpacked it, with the notion of capturing some "before" and "after" shots of various projects in the house. Sadly, this is what I saw:

That's Darlin' Hubby hiding behind the black box.

You can see my dilemma. Luckily, friend Google had an answer for me: The CCD chip was dying, and Sony would replace it for free! Assuming I could get off my butt and send it in on time (yesterday, 10/2/07 sadly, was the deadline for you googlers out there)...

So I finally sent it off two weeks ago. They sent me a free UPS shipping label, so I put it in a box full of packing paper with a memory stick loaded with the picture above and the previous picture (taken before the chip failed) and a nice note explaining what I was seeing.

Today, my camera is back, apparently fully functional, and this is what the pictures look like now:

YAY! Thanks, Sony, for a free repair and a quick turnaround. Let's hope it stays this way! Especially as we are going to be at this this weekend.

Happy Camera

The camera and I just spent some quality time together.  Results are up on Flickr, and are actually public, for the time being....

Picture Pages

Lots of new pictures on the Flickr site, including several that are Public!
Here are a couple of favorites:


The US Navy's Leapfrog Parachute team. Very cool. The first time I have ever seen them, although I have seen the Army's Golden Knights MANY times.


The LA Coliseum, home of the Trojans


Our Princess, cuddled up last night in a blanket

Playing around with the camera tonight

And I got a few nice shots. Posted to flickr.

Can you tell how much I love having my camera back?

Ok, so I was a day late with the pictures.

We had a minor plumbing emergency.... click over to flickr to see more!

I think this is Michaelangelo and Donatello.... hard to tell without the nunchucks....

But where is Master Splinter?

This is what has been keeping me away from the computer

Don't let her sleeping, jailed appearance fool you.  This is a high-speed, mightily independent monster with a bladder the size of a thimble and big, nasty teeth! (well, ok, little nasty teeth...)





It's a miracle she even sleeps.  She didn't shut up until 6 AM Saturday, and last night was pretty bad, although she quit crying a LOT earlier.  I'm hopeful that sleeping in the crate/ pen/ whatever means she's ok with it now......

Puppy Cuteness

On Flickr:

And lots more, including photographic evidence that big sister is learning to tolerate Puppy.

Picture Pages!

I finally got around to posting more pictures. Puppy goodness and the saga of installing the dishwasher are now available at Flickr.

Updated

Flickr, that is. Lots of springy backyard pictures and a few of the Princesses latest exploits!

A taste:

Possibly the BEST LOLCat of all time

Sums up my life most days.....

Wonderful weekend

This weekend was our un-official staycation. We went out and had fun on both Saturday and Sunday.

Saturday evening, Hubby's college roomie and his wife joined us for dinner and a movie. Had some terribly overpriced Mexican food at Paseo Cantina and then wandered over to the Paseo theater for a moderately over priced film. $21 just for the tickets. Ouch. Especially considering the last time we went to movies regularly, we'd get in for just $10. For both of us. Of course, this is was Sunday afternoons in Chapel Hill, not Friday night in Pasadena.

In case you're wondering, we saw the X-Files movie. It wasn't terrible. I'd give it 3 stars out of 5. Mostly because there was nary an alien to be found. It was, has our friend described it a "monster-of-the-week" episode, albeit a long one. Mulder-Scully shippers will truly appreciate the film, because (spoiler here, sorry) it pretty much answers the "Are they or Aren't they?" question once and for all, portraying our favorite odd couple in a long term, somewhat committed, and intelllectually intimate relationship. My take: It was a good X-files fanfic. But I appreciate that as a Mulder/Scully fan.

On Sunday we drove out to Simi Valley and took in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. We also met Jen and Beau and Jesse "Speaks" there! They are in CA on vacation, and were staying with family in Santa Barbara, so we met in the middle!

Jen and Beau are both as fun and awesome as you would imagine from their blogs, and that little Jesse is a charmer. If a bit shy.... although he seemed to really warm up to DH and even let DH hold him for a bit in the elevator!

The museum itself is really amazing. It was a lot like the Presidential Gallery in the Smithsonian, but more up close and personal. My favorite exhibit, other than Air Force One, which deserves its own post, was the Reagan Diaries display with his personal diary on the desk, laid open to March 30, 1981, the day he was shot. At the top of the right-hand page, he wrote "Getting shot hurts."

DH was also a big fan of the doodads and geegaws and random things that were given to the Reagans as gifts from people around the world. The sheer randomness of some of it was just unbelievable.

A funny story: The former president oversaw much of the construction detail, especially the White House replicas (the South Portico, Colonnade, and the Oval Office), and he was very concerned when the contractor indicated that the Oval Office would be an exact replica of the White House, except for the ceiling, which would have to be 2.5 feet lower in the museum due to the building's engineering. Never one to back down, Mr. Reagan replied, "Well, if you can't raise the ceiling, lower the floor." And indeed, you must go down a ramp to the Oval Office, and then up 4 stairs to the rest of the museum and the gardens.

We took lots of pictures, which are posted at my Flickr page. Most of them are public, so click over!

After the museum we headed over to Marie Callendar's for dinner. Now, I know it's maybe not the nicest place in town, but I knew where exactly 3 restaurants were in Simi, and they have Applebee's and Chili's in Virginia! So Marie's it was. Food was good, company was better, and we had a nice meal. And pie. Until Jesse got tired and his dad had to take him out, so we finished our pie and said goodbye to the Speaks clan, knowing Jesse would conk out in the car on the way back to SB.

Thanks, Kitteh

Not only can I not brain, but I suffer from this malady, too!



Yep.  That's it.  Exactly.

Six of Six

Picking up on a very simple meme:

Open up your computer, click on the 6th file of pictures, and then on the 6th picture, and post what you get.

And here it is (reposted from Flickr):



Looking down from the top level of the Air Force One Pavilion at the Ronald Reagan Library to the Presidential Motorcade diorama on the lower level.  On display are President Reagan's actual limousine and a secret service follow vehicle.

This is a lot of fun!  I'm not tagging anyone, but you can do it if you like!  Leave your link in the comments so everyone can click around and see all the pictures!

Pictures and stuff

Lots of new pics on the Flickr page.  Including Flea performing with the Caltech Jazz bands (and our own Kjerstin, too!) and lots of glorious jam/marmalade food pRon.

Like this:

24 hours of Kindle

Well, folks, it's been 24 hours since the Kindle DX arrived, and I have to say, it is worth every stinkin' penny I paid for it.

I've seen a lot of crappy reviews.  Whiny ones, too, complaining that the PDF support is minimal and that it's a pain to hold the bigger frame of the DX, and blah blah blah.  None of that is true.

After a full day of use, I can report that the only things I dislike about the Kindle DX are kind of minor.  First, there are no folders.  Yes you can organize your files by date, type, and author, but there is no true file structure to help you keep things organized.  This would really be helpful for those of us who carrying around a lot of PDF files.  They get overwhelming fast.  The other thing I am not a fan of is the robot voice of the text to speech feature.  Either of them, for that matter.  You get your choice of male or female. I'm not sure how it is with standard English texts, using only simple words, but you start throwing in complex sentence structure and foreign words, and the robot gets lost.  All in all, though, it's still smarter than I thoguht it would be.

The Kindle has a number of uses.  First and foremost, it's a LOT lighter to carry than some of the books I have already downloaded.  Second, it's useful for a lot of tasks that would otherwise require a lot of paper: PDFs, Cookbooks (just take care to keep the Kindle clean and dry inthe kitchen!), and sheet music to name a few.  You can also annotate any text file, so taking notes during rehearsal ought to be a SNAP with the Kindle DX.  Text to Speech also makes a great alternative to books on tape (CD?) in the car.

The e-ink is another awesome thing.  It's like a real page, so reading outside is totally possible, unlike working on most laptops.  In fact, I spent much of yesterday evening sitting on the patio with the Kindle DX until it got too breezy to stay out.  Long before the sun went down. Unfortunately.

My favorite feature, though, I think, is the free wireless internet access (thanks, Amazon!).  It's Sprint 3G (where available) and not only can you download books from Amazon (many are free!), but you can also surf the web.  I think the web browser on the Kindle, while clearly limited, is still MILES beyond the one on my Instinct.  Not as good as my trusty ol' Firefox, though.  Maybe on the next one.  Several popular sites are pre-bookmarked, and you can add any number of your own, too.  You can also download files.  Kindle compatible files are automatically displayed on your home page by type, title, and author.  There are a number of sites out there that offer free e-Books that display on the Kindle and are available for Text- to- Speech as well.

The only feature I haven't played with is the mp3 player.  I'd rather listen to the books for the nonce.  The speakers are better than I expected, though nothing fancy, so I assume sound quality isn't terrible.

It has been quite an experience so far, from the moment I laid eyes on the box.  Even the packaging says "this is something special."

This is what arrived:

yeah, and the junk mail, too. 

But it was soon apparent that this is no ordinary box:

the inside was pretty too:

And it's so awesome.  Even the screensavers are cool:

There's a couple more pictures of the Kindle on Flickr!, including a very smart sticker and also some new jam and garden shots.