WTF am i doing up this early on a Sunday?

So sleepy last night, I went to bed at 11, right after transporting a load of cat poop from the bedroom to the litterbox on the other side of the apartment. Cat is now permanently banned from bedroom. No more Mr. Nice Guy. She has two litterboxes, there's no excuse. Serious thoughts of young people in the orient for her.

Could not get to sleep, despite serious sleep deprivation after a busy day.

Saturday started with a return of the gastrointestinal problem. Lactose intolerance is not the issue. I think what had cleared it up the last time was taking 4 Immodium the day before my doctor's appointment. It just took a day to kick in. LactAid did not help. That made me 5 minutes late for the photo shoot, and I was pissed that they were not at the designated meeting spot. Usually this group leader waits for up to 15 minutes for everyone who paid up to show up. Phoned him, they had gone over to Rengstorff House, which is a great shooting venue, and were waiting for the model to get dressed. Very photogenic model, not real good at posing without direction, but a killer body and gorgeous eyes & hair. I was using the $300 flash on the camera for fill, but when I got the photos uploaded to the PC it was clear this did not work. Good thing I have PhotoShop. There's a widget called "lighten shadows" and another called "midtones brighter" which fix that quickly and seamlessly.

Only 4 photogs, so lots of shooting time (I took about 215 pix). Beautiful weather just kept getting more beautiful. For shooting I would have preferred high cloud overcast, but sunshine is okay too.

Starving after, went to Lakeside Cafe for lunch. It was packed (lots of people there whose kids were taking boating/sailboarding lessons). Service was slow but that's okay, I had my Kindle and started reading Hugo nominee Jar Jar Biggs Must Die. It's basically a compilation of one reviewer's sci-fi film reviews, starting with an extremely defensive forward about how sci-fi is not crap, and how horrible it is that the makers of most classic sci-fi films feel they have to pretend it's another genre to not be labeled as crap.

They slightly carbonized the fish part of fish and chips, and the fries were undersized. The clam chowder was great, I should have ordered a bowl instead of a cup.

Home after a restroom stop, tried to take a nap but Domino decided to climb up on top my chest, lie down and go to sleep there. For an hour.

Up at 4 pm to meet Janice for coffee not far from where the photo shoot was. She had stories to tell about the Cruise From Heck. I thought she had been on a cruise before, but apparently not, and she discovered she hated cruises. Nothing to do. And more important, no single black men. And she made the mistake of sharing a cabin with her drop-dead-gorgeous nurse friend/neighbor/AA sponsee and friend's mother, which meant being on the couch. And I told her about auditions, and work and roller derby.

It was only a little after 7, and I was wanting goat and sheep cheeses, so I headed over to The Milk Pail, which stocks my favorites, but they were closed and hosing down the parking lot. On to Piazzi's market, where I spent $57 on cheeses and Scharffen-Berger dark chocolate.

Home, there was just enough light left to tie-wrap the part of the cat fence I had put up last week, and put up the other three sections enough to hold them in place. Will secure the new sections more today. Last night was I was using the 14" ties, which worked way better than trying to daisy chain a pair of 7" ones. Less visible from the outside, too. Today will be the 7" ties on the smaller vertical bars. And then I'll let Domino test it.

Went onto Kaiser's web site looking for travel vaccination info, and it took about 15 minutes to find it. Looking at the list of vaccination they have on file for me, everything is out of date, nothing since 1995 except 7-year Td in 2005.. I thought that was a mistake, since I'd been to Thailand in 2005 and 2008, but looking at my health card, the last item was just one shot - Td (tetanus & diphtheria) in 2005. I'll call the immunizations clinic tomorrow and make an appointment.

So far this morning I set up autopay on all my credit cards to pay the minimums, just to cover me from forgetting. I generally pay off the cards which have finance charges, and keep the balances of the 0% cards reasonable, but I'll be gone for almost a month. Also ordered a better GPS unit for the camera, the one I bought the new cable for would not stay connected - something wrong with the proprietary slot on the unit. They should have a standard USB slot, but they went one-off. I will send this one in for repair, but it won't get back to me before I go on vacation.

Moved my only surviving VCR into the computer room, only to find it does not have S-Video, and my capture card has only cable and S-video inputs. Silly me, I should be able to daisy chain the cable through the VCR. Problem solved.

Other plans for today are to process the photo shoot pictures and post the best ones, watermarked, on Flickr, make a modem ringtone, maybe re-capture some of my old theater clips and put higher resolution ones on the web site. Maybe enjoy the sunshine.

Wasted Youth

From my last post, this morning:
Moved my only surviving VCR into the computer room, only to find it does not have S-Video, and my capture card has only cable and S-video inputs. Silly me, I should be able to daisy chain the cable through the VCR. Problem solved.

Other plans for today are to process the photo shoot pictures and post the best ones, watermarked, on Flickr, make a modem ringtone, maybe re-capture some of my old theater clips and put higher resolution ones on the web site. Maybe enjoy the sunshine.

Got the VCR set up after some false starts. My capture card, which I thought had one cable connector for TV and another for FM radio, actually has one for digital TV and one for analog TV (aka VCR). Killed my cable modem connection while discovering that. Now all is well, except when I put the tape cleaner into the machine, it was obvious the audio heads were shot. I went online and bought a replacement machine for about $60 (eBay). After which a friend offered to give me her old one.

Ordered a new, better GPS unit for the camera this morning from a company in HK which has been very good to me. Got email offering to send me the next gen of that model, which is officially not out till next week, if I don't mind it not coming with the new gen manual or the wireless remote (both of which will ship in 2 months). The next gen will be about $40 more but they will send me the new one at the same price I paid already. I said okay. It should be here later in the week, plenty of time to learn it before Thailand.

I processed the photos from the model shoot, they are here. Some of my favorites:
 





I achieved a watermarking breakthrough - something I needed to figure out before printing the Worldcon art show entries - turns out that in three easy steps, the first one being entirely not documented, one can position it at any corner. I like the lower right, since that's where artists traditionally sign their work. I could build a signature just as easily, but no one would be able to read it.

Made the modem ringtone and texted it to my work buddy. And my middle sister. She has not mentioned it.

And the VCR problem nixed the video captures for now.

I finished the cat fence, Domino yelled about it for a while, then settled down to watching the world through it.


She eventually jumped up on my lap (I took the photo from a chair in the other corner) and stared out of that side (it's mirror image of the side you see here). Until she got bored and went inside and parked herself just inside the patio door, where it was cooler. It was about 86° when took the photo, 74° indoors.

Oh, and while I was putting the finishing touches on the fence, I used one of the small tables to push myself from kneeling to standing, and my hand went completely through it:



That was a surprise. The rest of the day I mostly napped, in between reading from Jar Jar Biggs Must Die. Lunch was two lean cuisine entrees and four amazingly delicious sweet corn cobettes.

Changed both litterboxes, ordered another 3-pack, which should do me till vacation. It is getting very close. I am starting to get pre-post-travel regret.

While I was puzzling out the capture card, I updated the drivers for the display adapter. AMD/ATI has made that a 30-minute install. Too many gamer features, out of which one cannot opt.

Shopped for Nikon's latest greatest telephoto zoom lens, which I dearly want, but no one has it in stock. One site had a message from last year blaming the floods in Thailand for the delay. The lens is, indeed, made in Thailand. When I get to BKK I'll see about buying one, which will mean paying some $$ at customs on the way home, but I can live with that.

I also will be buying a suit, Thai silk tie and dress shirt when I get there. It's not the bargain it used to be, but they also have learned that fat old white guys are really that large. Used to be they didn't trust their measurements, and instead trusted their (always wrong) instincts about that.

Time for dinner, maybe an hour ago.

Plans for tomorrow:
9 am team meeting
call Kaiser about travel shots
BASFA?