Scanning Fever

Been spending most of the evening scanning old photos. Found some negatives from my Peace Corps days, and have been using the scanner's built-in film loader and excellent software to make those digital. It's a long process though, about 15 minutes a strip (5 frames), but mostly automatic.

In other toys news, when the CD player in the car stereo broke, I replaced it with the one I'd pulled out when I "upgraded" to HD radio. It has a USB port, which I thought was for something non-audio, but turns out I can load up a thumb drive with MP3s and it'll play it, displaying title and album info. Kewl. Only thing is it can't handle a full 1GB drive, it takes forever to read it, so I've stuck with my favorite 6 Jimmy Buffet CDs' worth on one drive, and found a 128Mb one which has Wicked and Avenue Q. Sounds almost as good as a CD, at 320 kbps. I'm impressed.

What is the President of the United States doing going to the Olympics committee meeting?

One more indication Obama is a tool of the Chicago political machine. I don't think there's a less worthy site for the Olympics, unless it's Detroit, and winning the bid would not generate any real jobs for another 4 or 5 years. But what it would have done was give Chicago and Illinois fat cats a chance to cash in on the real estate maneuvering which result from needing land to build the Olympic venues on.

With the health care bill floundering around Congress, and the economy still in the pits thanks to a total FAIL series of bail-outs, the Prez seems to have his priorities skewed.

Edit add: A bit of perspective here: No US President was involved in pimping the Olympic bids for Salt Lake in 2002 or Atlanta in 1998. I can't remember a US President ever making a move like this. And yeah, Brasil's Prez went to Copenhagen, but he was fighting for the first ever Olympics on his continent.

Elephant Fight

75-11-1-Elephants_004
Originally uploaded by how3ird.

Going through an old box of negatives, I found a nice neat stack of holders labeled by year and month, with notes on where they were taken. This is my favorite set of action photos from my Peace Corps years, taken at the Elephant Roundup in Surin, Thailand, November 1975. I was hanging around the back of the elephant holding area when two of them got into a fight, broke through the fence and landed on a van parked on the road. Spectators went running for cover, I just kept snapping pictures. Nobody was hurt (the van was empty) but the van was totaled.

Click on the photo to see the whole series.

The Latest Poop

Litterbox replacement, the one which uses the pretty blue crystals and claims no-touch for 30 days, arrived this afternoon, I took one of the clumping litter ones out of service, did some sweeping where it had been (they leak) and put the new one in place. Domino has toured it twice but did do anything in it, Pumpkin has looked at it and walked away to the older one.

Reading the manual, it seems it's only 2 weeks no-touch if there are two cats. Fair enough.

Domino did trip the sensors, and I have to say the new one is very quiet. Can't hear the motor at all from 3 feet away, but can hear the clap-like noise as the poop compartment snaps back into place halfway through the rake run (it has magnets to hold it in place).

Will give it a few days, if it looks like it is working I'll get a second one, and retire the original two, which are noisy and messy and jam all the time.

Geeky Day

I spent almost all day in front of the computer, mostly scanning images from the past. Mostly of myself. Mostly to post on Facebook and so my sister can make a 65th anniversary calendar for the parental units (October 2010 will be their 65th, 64 is coming up in 3 weeks, following hot on the heels of Dad's 86th birthday).

Looks like the scanner s/w is jammed. Power cycled, it's okay now. Found some pix of me and my co-workers/students at an off-site in June of 76, which is not long after I arrived at the Rubber Research Center assignment. I loaned my camera to some of the crew which means I'm in many of the pictures, and most of them are out of focus.

Took a break to go to Starbucks, but it was jam packed so I took my drink out to Shoreline Park, sat in my lawn chair by the lake, and read some Arthur C. Clarke short stories. He had a way of coming up with unhappy endings.

Plans for tonight: Catch up on Tivo. The Mentalist and Glee. And TMZ. And maybe the national parks series, though I'm inclined to leave that to when I am out of Netflix DVDs.
Plans for tomorrow: Railway Post Office & vintage rail car display at Niles depot. Garth's birthday BBQ.
Sunday: Picnic and folk jam session at Vasona Park, coffee date with an old friend, Harvest Moon photo shoot in San Mateo.