Writing Wrongs

Amazing but true, everything I planned to do today were did.

Lowe's, bought a 5/8" drill bit. Home, drilled the hole in the door from the now-discarded industrial strength knocker from 1/4" to 5/8". Sort of. The drill bit didn't like the metal facing on the door, and made a somewhat triangular hole, so I had to finesse it with a file.
Installed a peep lens into the hole in the door.

Lunch was some small Safeway Select Asian beef thing.

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Photo shoot at 2 pm in a warehouse space tricked out into a workable studio space. This was a group shoot with one of my Meetups, the first one I have been to in a long time (tendinitis after the whale watching trips made it painful to hold the camera, and most of my favorite meetup groups had disappeared or gone downhill).

The host photog has lots of experience, lots of lighting equipment, and he runs the shoot in a friendly manner while still maintaining the rules. I stopped going to two groups because the host didn't enforce the "no shooting unless it's your turn" rule.

The model is drop-dead gorgeous. Redhead. It was a nude shoot, so I can say natural redhead. Which reminds me of a joke: ( Read more... ) She never ran out of poses, kept a sense of humor, and we were her 2nd 3-hour session but she was still energetic right to the end. Or at least till I left, which was at 4:50.

We did four sets:
Stripes Darkened room, black background and side panels, a special spotlight with a patterned slide projects stripes onto the model's body. There is enough light to focus, barely, but when the shutter is pushed, the light flashes. The model had a lot of fun moving around in ways which made interesting patterns. Kind of fun, but a waste of a beautiful model.
Box: Lights back on, white background, a white cube about 2 feet on a side in the center of the shooting area. The model took direction well, and she looks a lot better fully lit than striped.
Rope: Same background. A huge rope is suspended from the ceiling. We are talking the kind of rope which secures The Queen Mary to the dock. Model poses with the rope draped around her, hanging onto it as a counter-balance, but didn't have the biceps to climb it.
Ring: Same background, the rope is replaced by a Cirque-style metal ring large enough for the model to sit inside without hitting her head on the top. Lots of fun poses, and lots of laughs because she had no way to keep the ring from slowly spinning. She tried, but nothing worked. Finally the host and the model's companion helped, but it slowed things down waiting for the hand to leave the shot.

With 9 photographers, we didn't get a lot of shots, I only came out with about 140.

A couple of my favorite work-safe ones:
( Read more... )

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Ducked out at 5 to meet Janice a couple of miles up Lawrence for Starbucks. It's the largest one I know, it used to be a bank. And it's always packed. We had a good chat. Her current boyfriend has survived a year now. We decided to take light rail to see 1776 next weekend.

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Watermarked one photo from each set, and uploaded to the meetup page, and added a comment full of compliments to the host & model.

Plans for tomorrow:
Do some reading
Afternoon head for Murphy Ave and find a place to watch the ball game. The Seahawks meetup in MV already has 50 people saying they will be there, and that place only holds about 40 places where you can see the screen. 
Evening depends on who wins
 
   

Woke up before 7, was in the bathroom when the two alarms went off, which is one perk of living in a house, no wall-share neighbors to hear your alarm going off. Got to the DMV at 8:30, found parking and made my way past the long line of people without appointments to the line for people with. 3 people ahead of me. 8:45 had the form filled out and was assigned a number, and told that contrary to what the web site says, yes, I can get a new license with my current address for a mere $26, and yes, I can also get a free senior citizen ID card. 5 minutes later I was being helped by a trainee and two veterans on either side of her. She was way too bright to be working at the DMV - she understood stuff the first time, is a native speaker of American English, and did not blame the slow computer for anything. After collecting my $26 she gave me a receipt, a temporary license and another receipt for the ID card and sent me to the line behind me. This was apparently the line for people with appointments because after the three people ahead of me were shot, they pulled me in ahead of abut a dozen others for my photo & signature. So not only do I get a new license with the right address, I get a photo which was not taken in 2000.

I was out of there by 9:10. Meanwhile the no-appointment line had reached around the building, in the 45° chill.

Which meant I was at work on time, because the DMV is only 1.5 miles away.

Not much to do at work, so I socialized. It was a good chance to chat with team mates who also had little actual work to do.

One cute thing, the media program we use for playing video over the lab network, VLC (videolan - it's free and you should get it) has a taskbar logo which is now sporting a Santa hat. My back wall neighbor has been receiving tons of toys from amazon, I figured she would get a kick out of it - she did.

My weakly report was pretty sparse this week.

Home, gave Domino her chew treats, relaxed until it was time to go to uke class. I'd put a load of bedding in the dryer this morning, took that out and started the load of shirts.

Uke class was not very productive, even though only 2 of us showed up and he gave us each a lot of personal attention. Problem is he goes at his pace, not ours, so while he's playing the entire song in the book, I'm still trying to figure out how to play a G. He showed a finger pick routine which could work, with practice, but he didn't allow time to practice. One thing I did learn is my fingers are too wide for many chords. Or rather, to play them the way they are shown in the book. With practice I think I can play tunes which have C, A, A minor and F. Are there any?

Stopped off at Safeway on the way home, mostly for TV dinners and ice cream. Also got a long thing sourdough baguette which I'll slice up to eat with the goat brie I bought the other day.

Dinner was a Healthy Choice Asian steam bowl. Not going to stay on my list, that series.

Spent some time on Amtrak.com looking for a trip to take during NY's holiday. We get eve & 1st off, and I'll take Monday too for a 5-day weekend. Denver looked do-able. Grand Canyon did not - fares are sky-high on the Texas Eagle. And there's a bus bridge, which defeats the purpose of taking the train. Santa Barbara and even San Diego are possibles, if I don't mind arriving at SAN at 1 am. Also looked at Reno, but it is too !@#$%^&* cold. Did not look north, been there, done that too many times. Vancouver BC might be nice but that's a 2-day ride.

Got email from PG&E that they were billing me twice, once for December and once through January 8. I emailed the old apartment asking if this meant my apartment had been rented. They took their time replying, but said yes, I don't owe any more rent. So I went online with PG&E and had the gas & electric shut off, and updated my address. And emailed Allstate to cancel the insurance. Got an out of office reply, will shoot some email to the assistant.

Anyhow, typical that the apartment people didn't tell me on their own.

And it saves me about $3k. Which was part of the point of this whole exercise. So now I have officially lowered my rent by $1k/mo. Yay!

Plans for tomorrow:
Visit the mobile home park office, say hi,  and request a larger garbage bin
Unpack the 3rd BR.
Fill the car with cardboard and take it to the recycle center
Replace the kitchen light fixture
Call Fuzzy about fixing the second set of lights in the bathroom and the nearby dead outlet in the bedroom. They may be related. And ask about replacing the sink. And whether it is feasible to remove the second sink and install a walk-in shower. It may not be possible structurally. And a ramp to the side door.
Watch a bowl game, if there is one.

This is the best whale shot I got Sunday. We were maybe 50 feet away.

Monday morning the plan was to walk across the street to the Carriage museum, and see what they had there. Backstory: When I worked for the Daily Astorian in Oregon in 1973-4, my friend Hilary (with one "L") who had directed me in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, invited me to meet her friend and his carriage collection. I did a photo spread for the newspaper. Her friend was quite a legend in the science fiction community, though I was mostly unaware of it at the time. I just knew him as Graham. Hilary and I are still in touch (last week she sent me a cool card - she always addresses the envelopes in calligraphy, so no matter what is inside, the envelope is a keeper.). He was Graham Doar, who wrote several early sci-fi TV classic episodes back in the late 40's, early 50's.  Anyway, I went there knowing photos would be amusing for Hil.

This one caught my eye

It's a very interesting museum, lots of carriages but also a huge collection of saddles and tack. Very poor display, though. Most of the vehicles are up on a ledge or out in the back parking lot not on formal display. The saddles are behind glass, and some clever person designed signs for each one set inside a horse shoe, but they are too small to read.

It's free, it's worth going to and making a small donation. There were no humans anywhere near the displays  when I was there.

Checked out of the motel as a family of 6 Japanese tourists invaded the alleged breakfast offerings. I had seen two of them the day before - they were hard to miss. Two women in neon pink, one in very tight jeans and one in stretch pants. Both had amazing round bubble butts. Turns out they were a mother-daughter team. More on this family later.

Walked to the main drag, the bus went by when I was half a block away. Decided waiting half an hour for the next one was less painful than walking 20 minutes. It was 10:15, I was in no hurry.

Bus took 2 minutes to go that 20-minute walk distance. Win. Walked a block to the 24-hour coffee shop, had iced tea and one of their giant almond croissants. Wandered across the street to the train station, an hour and a half early. My Kindle kept me entertained, and so did the occasional eye candy, which included the Japanese family. They were seated in front and to the side of me. The way it broke out was: young man and young woman, in their 20's, maybe married, maybe just engaged. His parents and her parents. He was really cute and had that Japanese assertiveness gene, and I just really wanted to ( TMI here ) But that passed quickly when he showed his romantic side. As soon as they were seated, the young couple plugged in their laptops and tried for a wi-fi connection, of which Amtrak has NONE. FAIL!. He figured this out in no time, put his computer away and fired up a Japanese soap opera on her machine, and they snuggled together and watched it. Later in the trip, he gave his dad some help with a new tablet. Nice guy, I wish him well.

The camera went off by accident, I swear. :-)

Her dad, OTOH, was extremely annoying. He sat there much of the trip cracking sunflower seeds with his teeth, using his cavernous mouth as a sounding board. It sounded like cracking walnuts in a cave.

The train was packed. I was lucky to have no one seated next to me, but my "window" seat had the divider between the windows, so totally crap for photos. I hardly took any. The lounge car had three or four very loud drunks and no empty seats. Where were all these people going on a Monday? Sheesh.

The ride was mostly uneventful until San Luis Obispo, where there was a crew change. The new conductor made the announcements which th previous crew had neglected, such as "drunks will be put off at the next stop". They sobered up pretty quickly. He also pointed out interesting sites and sights, and gave some Little Known History. For instance, who knew that Norma Jean was the first Castroville Artichoke Queen? One thing he missed, though, as we passed through San Miguel, I saw a sign on a bar called The Ranch, which said "We Now Serve Mexican Food", as if it was the only non-Mexican place in town and had succumbed to popular demand by offering tacos or something. When I got home, I found them online here. It appears to be a gay show bar, which only serves Mexican food.

We were side-tracked once, and for some reason we didn't start up again until 15 minutes after the other train had passed. There was a lot of slow going, for no apparent reason.  Even though we were a little bit late, we were not late enough to get a true sunset over Elkhorn Slough, so I faked it with manual shutter/f-stop settings.

Nice sepia tone look was the result.

We arrived in San Jose just about on time, I drove home to a very vocal cat.

As usual, all my best photos are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/how3ird/sets/

Felt like Friday, but was Tuesday. Routine day at work except for the boss² staff meeting, which was good but the usual suspects shut off the lights and the glare from the screen plus the aircon burned my eyes, had to keep closing them.

Lunch at hometown buffet because: lazy, did not want to eat much. They have a goodly variety of cooked veggies. Sweet corn was sweet.

Had some Italian reduced fat salami for a snack at about 4, keeping automation guy company with his late lunch.

Home, took a nap. Woke up at 8:30, shampooed some carpet high traffic places. Salami made its presence felt in dramatic fashion, good thing I was home and near my Immodium stash.

Been playing around on a Thai singles site, $70 for a membership which will last till my trip. Most of the women contacting me are ignoring my English/Thai note that I'm not interested in women with children living at home. And most of the pings are from women who are from the one part of Thailand which is not in my list of places I am interested in. They also have no way to turn off the "available for chat" feature, so I get to be rude. I did chat with someone tonight because she is from Sri Chiangmai, which has a special place in my heart. Her English is surprisingly good, she credits her Peace Corps high school teacher. But she was only 11 when I was in PC. Her photos did not grab me. Nice conversation, though.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
?

Today at work reminded me of George Burns' famous line about his wife: "I asked her 'how's your brother' and she talked for 20 years". My next door neighbor likes to come over and ask me things about American culture, languages and other stuff that he figures I know more about than him just because he didn't grow up in America. And I tend to branch off into stream of consciousness mode. For instance, today he wanted to know what a "bird's-eye view" was, and half an hour later we were comparing the use of tone marks in Thai vs. Vietnamese.

Other than that, it was dead boring. I tried to read the presentation on test automation, but hit a snag right off when the slides didn't match at all what I saw on my PC.

Had a 4 pm appointment at Kaiser to be in an info session about sleep study. The Homestead campus parking is a nightmare. It was not designed, it just kind of fell from the sky. I finally found a place in the hospital's parking garage, which is a considerable walk. I was 15 minutes early but there was a long line. Bottom line, the classroom filled up most of the way, about 50 people. Very few fat folk, no one who took up more than one chair. That surprised me.

They gave us a form to fill out, but it wasn't collected until after, and won't be used unless/until we take the study.

The doctor gave a pretty good presentation, and surprised us all by telling us they don't do the test in a clinic, they set us up with the equipment, send us home to sleep, and the next morning we return the stuff and they download the biometrics and take it from there. The theory being we sleep better in our own beds. Which makes sense until you consider that we are all there because we can't sleep for shit in our own beds. I did learn a few things about sleep apnea and snoring which I did not know. At least two of them were not true. But in his defense, the doctor prefaced these items by saying they were not true for everyone. Some people with sleep apnea don't present any of the classic symptoms, some who do don't have the malady.

But he hit enough buttons that I wanted to be tested, so I joined the long line again, and the best I was able to get was 12/15 at 3 pm. You would think they would  be scheduling evening appointments. Oh well. My main concern is it's no picnic getting there when the diamond lanes are enforced, and when parking is its most difficult.

By the time all that was over it made no sense to go back to work, so home it was. There were four boxes waiting for me:
Two new automatic litterboxes
The high-powered steam cleaner
The RMA batch of calendars from Vistaprint

That last was my first project. Looked at every page of all 25 calendars, and all the images were ok. One calendar had been trimmed wrong, the loops which are supposed to hold the spiral binding were clipped off. But I'm letting that pass since they printed 25 to replace 15 bad ones, so I'm still ahead by 9.

The litterboxes are parked in the study until the ones in place now need a change of refills.

Put the steam cleaner together, and there was a mystery moment when it looked like there was a hose piece with nowhere to plug it in, and no mention of the piece in the quick assembly guide. The full manual had the clue - this is the high end model and the hose is an optional attachment for cleaning furniture. So I set that aside, filled up the tank, and took a few swipes at Poo Corner, which went well, so then I attacked the high traffic area in front of the cats' food & water station. Excellent. I am pleased. Now I need to haul the old cheap one out to the trash, and that huge box too.

All that was done on schedule - I wanted to wait till 7:30 before going to Walmart across the bay, which is now the closest one to me. It's also a newer, nicer store with slightly higher class clientèle. W*M is my preferred purveyor of body wash, shampoo, conditioner, lotion and (depending on the price) ding dongs, donettes, and other Hostess goodies. Got what I came for, plus a couple of other items which were on my "pick them up if you see them" list.

Home again, put everything away, made a microwave dinner, munched on some of the pistachios I picked up at W*M, and watched a little bad TV. How come all the repo reality shows are populated with the ugliest, stupidest repo agents?

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Shift some cardboard to the dumpster
??? 

Been thinking about posting something about this for years. I've mentioned parts of it here and there.

When I was going to grade school in the mid-50s, I loved to read, but was slowed down enormously by what my teachers said was just a lack of concentration, but which I know now is two forms of dyslexia. Make that three.

The first symptom was not being sure if "d" was D or B and if "b" was D or B. q and p were also confusing but not as much because q is not that common in a grade school reader. Unlike many dyslexics, I did not see R as mirror image, but I did have trouble remembering which direction to start writing an S and an e.

Another symptom is I would write words with the letters out of order. Teachers said I was thinking faster than I could write. Maybe so, but it was another form of dyslexia.

And the third one came later in life, and is getting worse as I grow older. I do not touch type. I tried to learn once, but by that time I could "hunt and peck" 100 wpm and 5 wpm the "right way" was very frustrating. And I am not good at memorizing things like keyboard layouts. What has been occurring more and more is I will look at the screen, and discover that the keys I saw my fingers hit were not the keys they actually hit. I *knew* I hit the right keys (or wrong keys) but different characters would sometimes appear on the screen. Sometimes I catch it before it happens (the last three times I typed "dyslexic" my finger went to the s instead of the d). Backspace is my friend. Spellchecker is my savior.

I still read much more slowly than most people I know. Sometimes whole words shift positions in a sentence. Often the word that I want to see (a word I like better) takes the place of the word on the page. It's always a similar word. I will lose my place on the page, and have to hunt around for it. I may be a line off, or several paragraphs away.

When email made the @ sign popular, it took me a year or more to be able to draw one by hand.

This is a sour grapes entry. I know if I had been born 10 years ago instead of 60, my kindergarten or first grade teacher would have caught the dyslexia, I would have been given extra help reading, and would read faster and with better comprehension and retention today. My whole life might have turned out completely differently. But that's a sci-fi novel in iteslef.