Happenings

It has been awhile since I put anything in here. First of all, if anyone is following this blog I would like to update you on my buddy Geno (stubby) and his finger situation. It has been almost two months since he tried to become someone that could only point with their left hand or make everyone feel like he was constantly giving them the finger. Well, we had coffee yesterday and even though it was totally bandaged still I will say it looks marvelous. No blood or stains on the outside of the bandage. He even did a one finger tap dance on the table to show me it wasn't hurting quite as bad as before. I did fail to ask if he was still on the happy (V) pills but he seemed normal, well as normal as Geno can be. During our coffee break we came to the conclusion that we only have three months before we will get, at least, some top down weather. April should bring a few TDW's, anytime the sun is out and it's 50 + degrees counts.

Secondly, Steph and Greg went to York, England to visit some friends. From what I have gotten in e-mail it looks as if they are having a real good time. Their pictures are currently posted on Pat and Jamies blog, attached at the top of this site. It was different not having them here at Christmas, especially since I haven't missed one with her in 29 years. We'll celebrate next month.....you know.....pass out the gifts.

Only other thing I have done as far as the house goes is to move a switch to the otherside of the sink for the garbage disposal and convert the old switch to a receptacle. Before you had to turn on the water and then stretch 7 to 8 feet to turn on the thing and then reverse the procedure to turn it off. There was a receptacle to the left so I bought a combo switch/receptacle and installed it as well as re-routed the power to the disposal up to the new location.

Getting ready to paint again. Hopefully will post as I go.

Worth the effort

Lights are in and desk is functional. For me it is a perfect set-up. Now all I have to do is get to all those boxes of pictures and start going through them. Figuring out how I want to organize them and putting them on disc will be the hardest part. Love my new set-up and my new camera. Oh yea, I also like the new 50 watt halogens that I installed overhead. Not too bright, no glare.

Sore, again.

Went to Lowe's and got receptacle, switch, covers for both and a box for the switch. Went ahead and got some more wire, need to run some more lighting and receptacles on MY side of the basement. Comes with two lights and one receptacle but this not acceptable for about 700 sq. ft. Definitely needs more lighting. Can't even make it a good workshop. The storage side, which is a tad smaller has 4 lights and 2 or 3 receptacles. Well, one wasn't there until I installed it for the water softner. Anyway, I got the lights installed for over my new work area, re-routed some power and re-located a keyless light. Also I did some more prep work for the 1/2 bath. Installed a receptacle and pre- installed the light for over the sink. I'm now waiting for my 'ole buddy "Stubby", I mean Gene to heal from a slight hand injury. All I get from him now is "I'll be 'OUCH' right with 'OUCH' you as soon 'OUCH' as this quits 'OUCH hurting". "Thank 'OUCH' God for 'OUCH' Vicadine".

Weekend project

Move my computer and related equipment to the basement. Currently it is in a spare bedroom. Bought a desk with what they call a return (side board to me) so that I can spread out my photo equipment, scanner and printer. I want to take all the hard copies of photos and scan them, put them on disk and then quite worrying about the colors fading. I think we have 6 or 8 photo boxes, like shoe boxes but 1/2 again as wide, almost full. I also ran some wire for the 1/2 bath and prepped for two recessed lights over the desk. I'm installing two 50w minature halogens that will be on their own switch so the desk area won't be wasting electricity when not in use. I'm going to look at seperating the basement lighting out for the same purpose. No need to light up all of 900 square feet when it isn't needed. Today I will finish the electric in the 1/2 bath and do some switching of some lighting in one of the storage areas.

Correction

The four posting below with their pictures are actually from the day before the next set of pictures. It's just that I finally learned how to put the pictures in the body part instead of just down the side and let someone open them bigger if they wanted to. I am not going to redo the entire blog. Family and friends are the only ones reading it and they understand me, so, let it stand and look forward to better images in better places. Oh yea, I also figured out how to put all the pictures as one entry instead of multiple as these four were. You can see that in the post that follows the 4 pictures of the first snow, the Frosty Morning post has all the pictures in it.

First snow

Entrance to farm down the road.

Looking in

Couple of Doves looking in and staying warm

The lone tree standing guard over the pond.

A hunters blind standing empty on the side of a corn field. It hasn't been used this year. More likely it was used in the past before part of the farm was sold and now houses are too close to be useful. Not that it is needed but the geese are safer now.

Frosty morning the day after the first snow.

New kitchen arrangement and 1/2 bath floor

We have been in our house since last January and during this time the wife has complained about the location of the dishwasher to the sink for loading and to some cabinets for unloading. It just so happens that while cleaning out some old pictures of a model home (this model) I discovered that there was a different arrangement. Yesterday we had our 10 month inspection so when the people from the builder showed up I had to ask whether the kitchen was to 'print' or at the judgement of the installer. I asked this question this way because I have complained before and I was told it was 'to print'. Well they went and checked and we weren't to print. They proceded to swap one cabinet and the dishwasher. In doing so they discovered that the cabinet had, in their opinion, installed with too many screws. One had been ran in from the top before the counter top was set thus they couldn't get to the screw head to back it out. This required splitting the side piece so it could be moved. It couldn't be seen but they felt it was wrong. A new cabinet is on order and will be installed.

Also while they were here I had them look at the basement floor where I am going to install a 1/2 bath. I paid good money to have it roughed in properly 'to print' but I have a problem. The sump pump pit is too close to what would be one of the walls for the bath. It is the wall that the toilet and sink would sit on. This is the wall that is critical in the fact that it would hold the plumbing and the toilet as to sit 12-1/2" from it on center. When they put the door into this room they set it 6" too far to one side so that it is close to where the sink would be when it swings open. No room to move because there is a floor drain for the water softner, a/c condenser and hotwater tank blow-off. The wall has to be built over this open drain and then collect the drain the sink will go into and continue on. In order to install one of only two walls that I must build for this room this one wall will end up with a double off-set, on of approx. 4" -and then a 10" off-set to get around the sump pump pit. Okay, now I have thouroughly confused everyone with this description (pictures to come later) I am back to where I talked to the homes builder about the floor. The floor and a pitch to the sump pump that intails approx. 50% of the bath's floor. I tried to put a leveling compound down and even though I'm not a mason, I didn't do too bad. However, there is still some uneven issues with it when I put a straight edge down. I started with a 1-1/4" difference between the bottom of the board that would be the lowest point of the wall in that area and the elevation of the floor. I now have that up even with the wall but I still have pitch in that direction and some waveness to it. Now, to make this too long of a simple story short, I asked the service crew for the builder for some help with the 'to print' issue and they didn't even question it. Said they would have a manonry crew out within the next 14 days. If I had only asked before this, but then, I did point it out during the homes walk through and was told....'it's to print' with a grin and shrug.

Bad news

I e-mailed Canon support this morning to find out if my Keystone speedlite that I purchased with the film Rebel was compatible with the XTi. I felt I had an issue, dark but flashed pictures. Not cutoff as if they weren't flashing at 1/60 but just not much light. Canon responded this afternoon that my speedlite is not compatible with the digital cameras. Bummer! I really liked it because I could bounce off ceilings or walls, I could set it on wide, normal or one of two zooms for different concentrations of lighting needs. For now, I have to use the pop up, a convenience flash, and impervise if I want to tweak the flash down. I have put scotch tape or wax paper over the flash area in the past. Not very scientific but it works. You can even put colored tissue over the source as long as it is strong enough to push through the weight of the paper.

By the way, this reponse time was less than four hours. The one before this was somewhere between 8 and 10, hard to tell since I sent it on the weekend and at night.

Close up practice

As you can see from the pictures of the Ferrari, I have some practice sessions coming. This is a model in a case that Steph and Greg got me when they went to Italy earlier this year. It is in a plastic case so there are all kinds of prizm effects going on. That will be the next thing to learn, lighting and its effect(s). I took these shots on a tripod at about 12" range. I was on medium quality at 1/5 shutter, f5.6 and an ISO of 400. Lighting was from outside about 12 feet to the right. I also used the timer to release the shutter. Lots of blury pictures before this one. Doing shots like this is where the Olympus has an advantage but being a film type of guy, it wasn't an issue. It's is just that I did get a little use to the back of the camera viewing on the first point and shoot Sony as well as the video camera. That one was never good outside so I went back to looking through something before this.

Did it.

Well, Gene and I met up Friday morning and went to a local camera store. I checked out my lens functionality on the EOS XTi and just as Canon support said, they worked great. I have no idea what the guy on the forum had or what his complaint was except his lens combos didn't work. I'm not even sure what camera he had but I do think he mentioned the EOS.

Gene went in to the store with a pretty set mind of the Olympus E-510. He really likes the live view through the screen on the back of the camera. I beleive he has changed his mind a little when the sale rep showed him how much slower it was when the camera had to move the mirror out of the way and then back again when taking pictures. I also reminded him of the quality of the sample pictures we had seen on a website. Final declaration, the rep said Nikon and Canon were considered the number one and two brands in digital, currently.

OSU just beat Michigan. Go Bucks.

I didn't make a decision then but I actually had. I had a thought that I could get it cheaper locally but found out I was wrong. Went back today an bought the XTi body. I have been playing around with it for the last hour or so plus loading the software and pdf files. I just have to get my 35mm habits back and I will be in business. I can hardly wait until next summer when I go to some car shows and maybe some races. Oh yea, I get to do the family pictures at Steph's house. She just loves for me to bring the camera. Right Steph? Okay back to more playing around with the camera.

1956 356A My first and only

Guess who...not their car!

Camera shopping

Went b'day shopping for someone today and while standing in line at a food establishment in the food court I get a cell phone call. It was my good 'ole buddy Gene. I had to cut the conversation short because it was my turn to order. I picked up my order and turned to be face to face with Gene. We had lunch and decided to go camera shopping tomorrow. I'm going to take my two lenses and make sure they work perfectly well on the XTi. I feel confident that the small lens will but I want to make sure the Promaster will. Canon techsupport.com said they would but then I read a forum report recently that said "thanks Canon for the bad information". The writer didn't go into a lot of details so I don't know which lens he had or was complaining about. I figure that if I take the lens in they can prove to me that everything is perfectly all right.

Notice the new pictures. Once I get my auxillary hard drive on I will post MY Porsche, not a wannabe.

Gene, enjoy Detroit this weekend.

Decision, decisions.

I'm wanting to finally upgrade my camera to a newer digital. Currently running with a Sony 3.1 that doesn't do bad for what it is but I had my AE-1 with lenses that went to Steph for college and that got me a EOS Rebel. I really like the old AE is some ways better. The weight was not a good thing the the fixed lens was fantastic. Can't remember exactly what it was but it was some were near a 1.8, 55mm. I doubled it up with a magnifier because it was the cheap way and then I bought the 200mm tele photo. The newer camera has two zoom lenses with one being a macro and the long lens being a 100 to 300mm. Now the delima, do I go ahead and get a Canon XTi body or maybe a 30D or do I go for the new Olympus Evolt 510 or one more step to consider, the Nikon D40X. I have spent several hours looking at reviews trying to decipher the good and the bad of each camera. Then, along with questioning which one is best for the money and the needs of this user I have to remember that I already have two lenses that drops the cost of staying with Canon. Fixed income people must think of that on a routine basis. I have a friend that is looking at the possibility of getting a new camera, maybe we can go in and swing a deal with the purchase of two cameras and some related gear. I'll have to run this by Geno, new thought and he doesn't know about it yet. He's been in Canada since last Friday and even went to a Camera store where he fell in love with one of the Olympus', the 410,500 or 510, not sure. Cost prohibitive up there. He and his wife, the real better half, will get in tonight so I will have to spring this thought on him tomorrow. I'll let you know the outcome.

All new.

This is new to me and is only being done at the suggestion of my daughter, Stephanie. I will struggle through this first adventure of blogging to the best of my ability and in time I will surely enjoy it. Hopefully, I won't treat it like a diary, I don't like diaries, at least not for men. If I do then someone needs to point it out to me. In time I will explain the name of the blog PorcheCorvetteMusic and the fact that there is one missing.