The Week in Review

Well, I spent most of this week at home, working on code, only to find out Friday when I was almost done, that Yahoo's RTML doesn't allow you to keep track of an incremental variable, unless you use their FOR loop. And that would be fine, unless you're doing what I am, and trying to run a FOR-EACH-OBJECT loop and need that incremental variable in the html output so I can run a javascript over it. So that's what I get to work on Monday when I go back to the office. I don't know if I'm going to be able to continue to work at home though - I may need to get that re-approved.

Overall, looking back, it has been a calm week - at least the memory of it is. There were some bumps though, like my neighbor during the last issue I had with him, and also a small...scare (?)...more like an "uh oh" when I realized that I gave one of my former co-workers the link to this blog, and forgot that I wrote about my frustrations at that job here also...and she was mentioned. Oops. :-/ Well, because I'm me, it probably would have been better not to point her this direction, but because I did, I'll take whatever consequences arrise from it.

I also spent the week without talking to the girl from college I mentioned a couple posts back. I finally emailed her back late Saturday night explaining my thoughts, in as few words as possible, but trying not to sound mean about it. And she emailed me back, but I couldn't find the words to do another reply. I'm still trying to put the abstract into formulated sentences - it's just that the whole time we've been talking...for the first time, the logic side of me was ready to go, but the romantic side of me wasn't feeling it. She's pretty, smart, and financially stable - which has been a problem with a lot of my previous girlfriends...but without the romantic interest there (not being able to move myself past friends), it just doesn't feel right. I guess that would be a good enough explanation, but is there really such a thing?

Moving on, I went to Downtown Dallas with some Plano friends, and friends my age from Flickr, and we shot photos around the West End area. And, while I wasn't feeling the muse or inspiration, it was still a fun time. I enjoyed seeing Rachel again, and hanging out with Eric as well. It's good to mix energy with other people participating in the same hobby. It shares new or different perspectives and inspirations that wouldn't otherwise come.

When I got home, I uploaded the photos, and was ready to go back out and try it all again the next day. But, that didn't happen. I actually slept in till around 10 or 11, because I was up till past midnight hanging out with Chelsea, Chris, and Beth at Denny's. We talked about all kinds of things, and it was very reminiscent of the times we'd all get together about a year ago at Chris and his roommate's apartment and just hang out talking. Religion, relationships, addictions, idolatry, frustrations, and work were just some of the topics. I really enjoy that kind of get-together, and was ready to go late into the night with it. It brought back memories of being at ETBU in the lobbies or at Waffle House just hanging out. So maybe there will be more of those.

So after I recovered from staying up so late last night, I went to the store, and got lunch/dinner. Tonight, I was hoping to see the speech that Obama was giving in front of the Lincoln Memorial - but by the time I realized that the show I scheduled to DVR was a documentary, and too late for "this afternoon" (which was when it was touted the speech would be given) it was too late. But not only that, the documentary they said would start at 7 EST actually started at 5 EST...so I got there half-way into it, because they jumped the gun. Oh well. I had Brautwursts for dinner, and bought some Chicken, and salad dressing. This is the frist time I've had Asian Salad Dressing, and it tastes a lot like the Peanut Sauce the Thai Restaurant gives us for our salad.

Without sports, Sundays are pretty boring. So I'll probably start finding other things to spend my day doing. But whatever I find, it'll be something slightly different to go along with some kind of new liveliness I found during my outtings this weekend.

I've got more to write...some realizations, some plans, and other miscellanea...but if I put them all here, I won't have anything to say for a couple more days. So I'm off to bed now.

It's been a bit...

Well, it's been a little bit since I posted last, and not even looking back at the journal, I don't know what my last post was about. Probably something emo or frustrating or something...I don't care - it's not important.

I don't have a motive to write this tonight; just thought I'd give blogging a chance once again to not be about anything pseudo-philosophical or ranting about something.

This past few days have been a whirlwind of plans, parties, and excitements. Wizard and Mandy finally got married on Friday night, and everything went according to plan with the wedding...and us guys saw to it that nothing would even be out of order as far as she knew.

One instance in particular, shortly after she arrived at the church, it was time for her to go get changed, and her concern fell on whether or not the music was ready...I knew wizard had worked on it before we left, and that he got whatever he was working on finished - so I said "yes, every thing's taken care of...go get dressed." Then I went back to report to wizard that I told her it was taken care of, so I hope it was. He said "crap...it's not" and sarge started to laugh and say something...but I mentioned to him that "today - if Mandy asks, everything is taken care of...everything is a yes to her - and then we'll go fix it if it's not." He realized what I was saying and agreed, and that's how the rest of the evening went - but there weren't many instances of that happening.

Saturday, I didn't do anything - I sat around in my pajamas at the computer, or watching Numb3rs Season 1 Disc 4 - I finished up the season, as I moved and burned half of Season 2 to DVDs. I have all of Season 2, 3 and some of 4 now. So I should be good for a while. I did finally get dressed at around 11:30p to go get the cat some food, and then headed to bed.

Sunday, I had to go get my oil changed, because I slacked off Saturday. Then I headed off to Dallas Fair Park to attend the North Texas Irish Festival. When I got there, only a few people showed up that I was expecting to see - and the event wasn't all that spectacular, especially for $15. I have a feeling that any paid event out in the open is going to be like that though - and only good for people-pics mainly.

I wore my Chucks out there, because I wanted to get some use out of them, but it turned out to be a mistake, since when I jumped from 2 feet up, I landed hard on my feet and found out quickly there is no padding in the bottom of Chuck Taylor shoes. Ashley and I bailed on the small group when the other two went off to go do something and didn't return for 20 or so minutes, and walked around the regular Fair Park. There was a lot more to take photos of out in the open than there was inside the event area - and I found that stroll to be more enjoyable.

It was noted that day that normally we show up in large groups, and declare a time to meet back up, so we can all go our separate ways and get our own photographs. But when there is only a small group, we wandered around together, and no one really got any of the shots that they would have gotten if they were alone and not trying to be social.

I also noted that I have a lot to figure out about shooting people's photos in public...like how to do it, and still be non-intrusive. I did get some websites and some ebooks from folks on the flickr site though to help with all that, and with how to use my new camera.

I took both out there that day, and tried to shoot double what I saw. I used the Nikon for the closer shots that I knew I could get with the 18-55mm/5.6-36 lens...and used the Sony for inside shots that required more lighting (since it's a 2.7-8 with a 30x zoom. Unfortunately, I shot most of the day on Automatic Mode for both cameras - as it was too much trouble to keep up with the manual settings on the Sony when switching back and forth so much. But I did make an effort to take some manual shots with both (knowing what I was doing with Sony, and trying to figure out what happens with Nikon).

I had a long talk with Mandy tonight about photography and explained my purpose for doing it as a hobby I could turn into a job if I had to one day - just as I have done with computers and programming which was my former hobby. I had wizard and hambone back when I started learning about computers more to help me with that, and now I have Mandy, Chelsea, Chad, and the flickr people to help me with photography.

My Main goal for this year is to learn how to use my new Real camera, and also to get my www.eGami-images.com website up. I already have the domain name, and a page kinda dedicated to it, but there is a whole database and php code that I need to write to integrate it with my flickr account. I also need to learn about post-processing, and find my particular style for my photos. I downloaded Adobe Lightroom tonight, and found out it is a more advanced version of a software similar to Google's Picasa.

So there are some things I want to do, but I just have to find the time and motivation to do them.

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