Amusingly enough, just as this story appeared on my feed reader, the song “Diamonds” by Klint popped up on my iPod.
For those not familiar, “Diamonds” is a catchy tune with a melody tastefully plucked out on a fretless bass. They used it as the opening soundtrack title for the movie “Snatch” – where Brad Pitt and friends steal a 96-carat diamond…
Phoenix the Intrigue is sick… She spent the day today up and the transmission shop. It looks as if sensor has gone bad inside the transmission, causing the computer to think that shifts are taking longer than they are. As a result, the computer upped the hydraulic pressure, which caused the tranny to shift super-hard and damage a bunch of components with long, obscure, scary names.
So now comes the big choice – do I spend $2000 outright to repair the transmission problem? Do I keep running it to the point of non-drivability? Or do I bite my lip, say a tearful goodbye to my faithful friend of four years, and trade her in for a newer vechile and three years of payments?
Since a truly new replacement vehicle is darn near out of my financial picture, the best option for now might be to run Phoenix with her current transmission, and start searching for just the right pre-owned car to take the reins in her stead.
Why do I feel it necessary to personify and wax poetic about about my car?
Of course, then comes the even tougher question: what to search for! I’ve developed quite an affinity lately for the small-to-midsize SUV market; Honda CR-Vs are nice, as are Hyundai Tuscons, and of course there’s always the Toyota 4Runner. Any of them would be a great vehicle to have available as Kelly and I venture into the maze of home ownership – all are ideal for Home Depot runs and canine carting alike.
But there’s something I’d miss. There’s something – more like a lot of things – about slipping into a sedan’s torso-hugging leather seat and feeling the exhileration of a twisty road. It’s the feeling you get when you drop the windows on a crisp, bright fall day and listen to the engine climb through the gears as you whip along a country road – you’re there for a moment, then the leaves settle and you disappear…
So you might say I’m still up in the air – looks like there are tough decisions ahead!
It’s half-past-midnight, and I’m not asleep yet. There’s a beat-you-to-pulp sort of day behind me, and a load of laundry ahead of me, waiting to go into the [currently occupied] dryer.
On days like these, when tasks start to slip and I start getting off my game, I start wondering if all those assertions that I’ve got too much on my plate are actually true. Fortunately, I generally manage to remember that my super-productive days will always balance out the ones like today.
And now, while I’m waiting patiently for the auto-dry dial to decide my clothes are done, I think I’ll go wash the dishes.
I’m not sure why I keep clicking the “Remember Me” checkbox when I log into Blogger. Not like it remembers me or anything. Bah.
Two new photo albums are posted over here! One is from our Adirondack trip last week, and the other contains a few images I shot this morning, just after sunrise…
Since I haven’t gotten the time to resize and upload some photos from our recent Adirondack trip, I figured I’d post a few more textual details before they’re lost forever to my less-than-stellar long term memory… Besides, what good is a journal if you don’t keep track of anything with it?
We started out our weekend on Friday in Hague, NY. There, we met Brien, photo-haji of Brien Szabo Nature Photography. Brien is a videographer-turned-photographer who runs photographic workshops out of his vacation home in the small Northern-Adirondack town. He’s a big guy with a big personality and a hilarious Seinfeld-esque wit. He takes superb photographs, using (alternatingly) a Minolta SLR or a big, wooden 4×5 camera.
After we arrived at the Szabo retreat – our base of operations for the weekend – we met Ricky, our fellow student during the 3-day workshop. He had completed the long drive from Toronto shortly before we arrived. The four of us got acquainted on the stone driveway, then hauled our gear into the pine-paneled A-frame cottage, where we chatted for an hour or so as the afternoon light softened.
Our first shooting session consisted of a series of stops along nearby Brant Lake, where Brien felt out our various experience levels and got an idea of what equipment we had available. We tried out some photos of backlit trees, puffed-out cattails, the local white swans and a few lakeside docks. Afterwards, we enjoyed a great dinner at Eddies, one of the two local restaurants.
Early Saturday morning, we hauled out of bed to target some local wild flowers. After navigating the rough dirt road in Brien’s Pathfinder, we spent a few hours capturing macro shots of purple trilliums, fern fiddleheads, wild oats, wild strawberry blossoms and last year’s cinnamon ferns. Kelly and I also experimented with various textures, exploring the various wood barks and green leaves dotting the young-growth forest floor.
Saturday afternoon was largely spent trying to keep the equipment dry. Despite the rain – heavy at times – we managed to capture some wonderful photos of some area streams and runoffs. After we learned a bit about metering and exposure, we were able to capture some great long-exposure shots, allowing the clear water to take on a nice blur.
After Saturday afternoon’s session, we had dinner at The View – the town’s other restaurant. While the restaurant itself was beautiful, the food and the prices could have been a lot better. It’s no wonder Brien reported the restaurant seems to change hands every year. After dinner was the real treat, however – Brien presented a slide show on spot metering, and how important it is to adding depth to nature photographs.
Sunday morning was spent at Putnam Pond, about 35 minutes from the cottage. After a 20 minute hike, we spent the morning applying our newly-learned spot metering techniques to a gorgeous Adirondack stream. Some of my favorite shots from the weekend came from this final session, after which we closed out the weekend and headed toward Lake George to kick off three days of vacation!
I’m sorry about the notable lack of postings over the last several days… Kelly and I have been enjoying a stay in the Adirondack Mountains (in Northern NY) since Friday. We started out the vacation with a photography workshop that spanned 3 days and where we shot over 1500 images of Adirondack wildflowers, plants, waterfalls and landscapes.
Next, we headed to a B&B in Warrensburgh, which is a few miles outside the resort town of Lake George. We’ve spent the last three days hiking, photographing, eating (holy wow the five-course breakfasts are amazing) and enjoying the local attractions.
I should be able to add some galleries soon, with images we shot during and after the workshop.
There are plenty of folks out there who contend that the majority of spam e-mail originates from compromised PCs. These “zombie” machines are infected with viruses that turn them into little spam servers. Hence, they crank out thousands of messages per hour advertising penis enlargement pills, pushing mortgage scams and “phishing” for passwords.
Obviously, the folks who write these viruses are pretty smart. They’ve created code that exploits known insecurities and user stupidity to propagate undetected through countless computers. These smart little bugs then wreak all sorts of computational havoc, unchecked thanks to the thousands of users who are either too cheap to buy decent virus protection or too lazy to pirate it.
Meanwhile, the security community sits and wrings its hands, publishing virus definition updates, imploring the vast sheep herd of netschmucks to buy their products, and ultimately doing a great job protecting a tiny minority. Meanwhile, everyone still ends up with in-boxes full of spam, and those stupid enough to run Windows still end up with cowputers that are barely usable thanks to all the viruses sucking up processor cycles.
It might sound like I’m about to call for commie anti-virus software – “let’s give away a good anti-virus suite so that people will protect their computers!” Nope. That won’t work…because it still relies on the users to solve the problem. And the users – ARE – the problem.
What we need is for some smart programmers to write an anti-virus virus. Since people’s stupidity opens the door for viruses to flood their PCs, why not combat those viruses using the same people’s stupidity? Create a program that self-propagates – hopping from computer to computer, quarantining viruses and deleting malware. After the host PC is clean, and the “vaccine” gets a chance to replicate onto a few other machines, it deletes itself and leaves no trace behind.
Sure, there are all sorts of “moral high-ground” issues surrounding such a proposal, but remember: those of us who are properly protected against viruses needn’t worry about “catching the vaccine”, either! So let ‘er fly – and kiss DDoS attacks, distributed spam and an epidemic of computer uselessness goodbye!
Maybe I’ve just watched one too many episodes of Dawson’s Creek. OK, for a guy, any number of episodes of Dawson’s Creek is too many. But there’s a small part of me that’s a sucker for a sappy song and an emotional scene – haze filter over the lens, slowing pulling away from the characters as they embrace and share some manner of emotions. Fade to black, roll the credits, enjoy a few seconds more of that song before the 11 o’clock news snaps you back to reality.
Or, if you’re lucky, they cut to a sappy coffee commercial and you get to enjoy 30 seconds more vicarious emotion.
On some scale or another, I think all of us has a need to feel that scenario – the one those characters remind us of as Bic Runga or Shawn Colvin or Edwin McCain brushes our senses just right. We all crave the connection we feel when we stand in the middle of a messed-up week or a messed-up situation or a messed-up life, clinging to someone who loves us, and we know none of it matters as long as that soundtrack keeps playing in our minds and that person won’t let go.
Yes, I know I’m a sap. But that’s part of the deal – it’s OK to admit you’re a sap and that you need this sappy stuff every once in a while. Because we all do. It’s what makes being single so hard, it’s what makes distance relationships to tough, and it’s what makes curling up with a big pillow and a good song so appealing when singleness or distance is what’s causing it all to begin with.
So don’t say anything – just put on Home by Cary Pierce, or Family Affair by Abra Moore, or Sleeps with Butterflies by Tori Amos – doesn’t matter if it’s on the stereo or in your head – and enjoy.
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