June 30, 2007

Gadget Envy, Decoration, and Light Hauling.

Looks like the iPhone made a big splash yesterday. I don't have one yet, but I think I'll take the plunge in a month or so to replace my aging Motorola v551. It was pretty funny to see a local pseudo-celebrity make a complete ass of himself for the 11PM newscast; when I knew him seven years ago, he was Johnny shit-on-Apple.

Yesterday we spent a good bit of time selecting, refining, and printing some photos so that we could finally hang something on our living room wall. A few days ago we spent a pile of money at IKEA for some black frames in assorted sizes and came up with an arrangement that would make a design professor proud. Guests who've visited must think we're strange because our house has featured virtually nothing on the walls in the main living areas—no pictures of us, no posters, wall hangings, tapestries, or animal pelts. I admit, that is pretty weird. After all the hard work we've put into this dump, it's great to finally put our personal mark on the walls and see familiar faces looking back at us.

Finally, in preparation for the Fourth of July celebration (and to take advantage of the relatively balmy weather), we did some cleaning in the yard around the woodpile, which was threatening to swallow the southwest corner of the yard. Two trips and eight boxes of dead wood later, we reclaimed a good portion of our lawn from the creeping english ivy and dead brush. This makes absolutely no difference in the condition of the lawn back there, which looks like a patch of the Kalahari desert—my attempt at tilling and reseeding failed miserably. I've recently come to the sad realization that the only thing that will help our back lawn is about five cubic tons of fill dirt and a truckload of sod. And I'll hire someone else to handle that project, for sure.

Posted on June 30, 2007 9:29 PM | link to this entry

June 28, 2007

Conspicuous Consumption.

Shopping carts tucked neatly away under the stairs at the College Park IKEA this afternoon.

Posted on June 28, 2007 11:13 PM | link to this entry

June 27, 2007

+ | -

OK, the D70 dark image issue mentioned elsewhere is fixed; at some point I set the exposure compensation to -2.0 and never returned it to 0.0.

Apparently exposure compensation is a global setting, meaning when I used it in Program mode and switched over to Aperture Priority, for example, the EC setting was still -2.0 and didn't reset itself like my Canon does. While annoying (all the photos I shot in Curacao suffered from this oversight) it's another thing I've learned and won't forget again.

Posted on June 27, 2007 1:17 PM | link to this entry

Grape Arbor.

Our grape arbor is covered with bunches of fruit, a far cry from last year, when whatever it produced was devoured by birds in one afternoon. The lack of water and steady heat has been perfect for growing grapes, along with Jen's judicious pruning earlier this year; now we just have to figure out how to protect them from varmints (a large bird net has been purchased already) and when to harvest them properly.

Posted on June 27, 2007 8:42 AM | link to this entry

June 25, 2007

Weekend work

I rented a 40' ladder to finish painting the siding on the house this weekend. I painted the house blue three years ago, and the west peak (the highest point on the house, at nearly four stories) was still grayish-white because my 28' ladder won't reach. It's nice to not have that hanging over my head anymore—literally.

The photos are shit because the light meter in my D70 is messed up somehow...more on that later.

Posted on June 25, 2007 10:22 AM | link to this entry | Comments (14)

June 21, 2007

Flickr Gadget Testing

Huh. Pretty cool, eh?

Posted on June 21, 2007 12:24 AM | link to this entry

June 18, 2007

Do The Numbers.

Number of junk emails received since Friday the 8th: 1,557

Number of days without our luggage (and toothbrushes, shampoo, deodorant, etc.): 2

Number of days without being woken to the sound of waves crashing on the beach: 2

Number of times I wanted the cabana lady to bring me a fresh alcoholic beverage since returning: 17

Number of LOST episodes viewed since we returned: 4

Number of tasty Maryland crabs consumed yesterday while watching LOST: 6

Average Curacao temperature today: 88° (heat index 102°)

Average Baltimore temperature today: 90°

Average Curacao water temperature: 82°

Number of pictures taken in Curacao: 228 (an all-time low record)

Posted on June 18, 2007 10:26 AM | link to this entry

June 17, 2007

Blue Curacao

I started writing this from my hotel bed on Wednesday, in front of the Tonight Show, because I couldn't get to sleep. It wasn't because I was having a bad time, or that I wasn't relaxed, or that there were college students having a kegger in the room next door. It's because I had a cup of very strong European coffee after dinner, and I was waiting for the caffeine to wear off.

Curacao itself is the largest of three southern Caribbean islands (Aruba and Bonaire) off the coast of Venezuela, and features a full-sized runway, which avoided the need for a puddle-jumper connecting flight. The hotel we chose, the Mariott, is situated away from the center of the island's largest town, and has been a quiet oasis where we both regressed to levels of sloth not seen since the height of the Roman Empire. We had a few requirements when we were looking for our destination: Jen wanted a beach where people would serve us drinks while we sunbathed. We both wanted a hotel away from civilization but with enough amenities to make it feel like we weren't doing time in the joint. We also wanted to have a vacation where we weren't focused on going and doing and seeing and learning, but sleeping and drinking and napping and sunning. I'm proud to say our longest hike was the one from the beach back to the hotel room (or maybe to the restaurant on Friday night. Oh, the horror.)

Everything about the trip was fantastic. The flight down featured a surprise, which made rising at 3am for the taxi worthwhile: the only remaining seats available were in First Class, so we suffered the comfy seats, ample legroom, warmed mixed nuts, multiple wine refills, and jealous glances of the rabble in steerage on both legs of the trip southward. It will be hard to go back to Economy.

The weather has been perfect-we lounged on deck chairs under brilliant blue skies all week, and got more sun than we probably deserved. The beach at the hotel featured soft, tan sand and crystal blue water; the wind blew steadily across our chairs hard enough to warrant weighting down our towels, cutting the heat and humidity of the day back to a pleasant warmth. And yes, after an hour or so, a smiling woman stopped over to offer us cold alcoholic beverages. Perfect.

Curacao is noted for its diving and snorkeling, and we saw some breathtaking fish 20 feet off the hotel beach (but couldn't be bothered to schedule a snorkeling trip-this was about the leisure, after all) and enjoyed cooling off in the bathwater-like ocean. At one point, I was surrounded by a cloud of striped grunts and sergeant majors, watching a small yellow wrasse clean the mouth of a queen parrotfish as a long, narrow trumpetfish floated above us, nose down, surveying the rocks and brain coral below. Out over the sand, yellow goatfish quietly schooled as needlefish patrolled overhead. Instead of spending time getting certified (or re-certified), we were happy to snorkel at our leisure, and that was perfect.

Wednesday we broke down and left the siren song of the beach and the pool to explore Willemstad, the main city on the island, which is a pleasant mixture of European sophistication and island charm. In the central section of town, we found palm-lined streets lined with open air cafes, and after wandering the streets and alleys for a while, we stopped to have a cold beer.

After a while, the people next to us struck up a conversation, and as it turned out, the woman had lived in Baltimore for six years until moving to Texas earlier this year to be with her new fiancee. So we had a lot to talk about, and after agreeing to meet up in town for dinner the next time they visited, we parted ways and continued our wandering.

Our hotel was a perfect mixture of convenience and solitude; the ability to find something to eat at 11PM was only tempered by the fact that it was hotel food–a few crucial steps above eating out of vending machines (which I've done.) After sampling pretty much every offering at the hotel, Jen suggested we try a restaurant down the street called Hook's Hut on Friday, which turned out to be an open-air beachfront establishment with a run-down repair shed vibe, but which served excellent seafood and cold drinks.

The following night we tried a place called Sjallotte, a european-flavored restaurant conveniently located across the street but hidden within another hotel's grounds. Once we'd found the actual hostess desk, we were seated near the kitchen (which was not a bad seat at all) and enjoyed a delicious meal in the cool evening air.

Everyone on the island couldn't be friendlier, kinder, or more helpful. Our final days were filled with a mixture of happiness and sorrow as the hours ticked down until we had to leave.

Postscript: Avoid flying through the Miami airport, especially if it's an international connection. Saturday evening, we got in from Curacao and had to go through border security, then pick up our checked baggage, drag it through customs, and then attempt to figure out what to do next. We were technically outside the airport with our bags, so we had to re-check them and go through security again before walking across the airport to reach our connecting flight. Predictably, they lost our luggage, so we caught a cab home and filed a claim over the phone.

Posted on June 17, 2007 1:19 PM | link to this entry | Comments (3)

June 8, 2007

On the road

Posted on June 8, 2007 4:52 AM | link to this entry

June 7, 2007

Out With The Trash.

The setting: on line in the local Bank of America lobby. A young woman, between 20-25, pushes a stroller containing a sleepy-looking toddler directly behind me, and places a call on her cellphone.

Hey baby.
Hey, baby.

Where you at?

At the bank. I have to move some money around, see what I have, you know.

I'm in the lobby, on line.

It's nice in here. It's cold.

So how is it in your car? (laughing)

Baby who you talking to?

Baby, who you talking to?

Baby, who you talking to?

(pauses)

So, baby, are you H-O-R-N-E-Y [sic] for me?

I wanted you so bad last night.

I wished I could have come over there and been with you, but I didn't want to get all [indistinct] on you.

At this point, I looked over at Jen, whose eyes were as big as dinner plates, and made the gun-to-my-temple motion as the woman pushed the stroller over to the teller's window.

Hold on, baby.
Hold on, baby.

(to the teller) Yeah, I need to know how much I have in this account?

(into the phone) So, you have to go to the Wal-Mart?

(the teller asks her something from behind four inches of bulletproof glass)

(to the teller) Hold on.

(into the phone) What do you have to get there?

(to the teller) Hold on.

(into the phone) What?

(to the teller) [indistinct]

(into the phone) You should get that at the Wal-Mart, baby. They give you more pills there.

(to the teller) [indistinct]

(into the phone) Yeah, but at the Wal-Mart, they give you ten pills for free.

It was at this point that I left the line and tuned the moron out so I could count my cash and lament the end of cultured, modern Western civilization.

Posted on June 7, 2007 4:24 PM | link to this entry

June 4, 2007

DeSoto

Posted on June 4, 2007 2:44 PM | link to this entry

Phone Lust

Yeah, well, even though I've bitched at Cingular here before, I'm glad I still have the service, 'cause now it's AT&T again, and they have the iPhone. I'll have to wait a month or so before I can actually afford one, but if the commercials are to be believed, it's the single appliance I've been waiting for to finally replace my iPod, long-deceased Palm, and Motorola 551.

Posted on June 4, 2007 1:20 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

June 1, 2007

Not So Personal Injury.

Jen has been fascinated by the story of the quarantined tuberculosis patient for the last two days, and she and I talked about it at length this morning. A few things in this story stand out to me/us:

Why didn't the CDC tell the guy straight out not to fly? I realize they have limited powers over citizens, but I'd think that they would have developed protocols by now to deal with potentially deadly patients/carriers of rare diseases. Report the guy to the Feds and have them haul him in, for god's sake.

"Speaker said he felt as if the CDC had suddenly 'abandoned him.'" No, asshole, they were afraid you were going to contaminate even more people. They wanted you to visit a hospital, where your illness could have been treated or stabilized before you got on another plane.

" ...the U.S. border inspector who allowed Speaker back into the country, disregarding a computer warning to stop the man and don protective gear, has been removed from border duty." That's Homeland Security, folks. I feel safer already.

Why didn't his wife tell him to stay home? Her dad works for the CDC, researching tuberculosis, and his dad, a lawyer, was there when the CDC interviewed him. While I freely admit that our government is poorly managed, and most likely gave this man conflicting information, if I knew I had an airborne-spreading illness, I wouldn't get on an airplane.

"...Additionally, Speaker, a personal injury attorney, could sue the federal government for being quarantined on the basis of federal regulations that some scholars see as unconstitutional." If that happens, I hope the federal government lets each and every one of those other passengers sue the shit out of this guy.

From CNN: "He flew from Prague to Montreal, apparently in order to sidestep a no-fly order that could have stopped or delayed his return to North America. Once in Canada, Speaker and his wife drove across the border to New York, where he was treated at a hospital..." Sounds to me like he and his family knew exactly what the score was, and decided to put their own self interest (and wedding) in front of everyone else's health.

He's a personal injury lawyer. It seems to me that he'd have an even greater appreciation for the consequences of his actions than many other people, who might just claim honest ignorance. The fact that he went ahead anyway shows that the ethics classes he might have taken at the Naval Academy and the University of Georgia didn't stick too well.

Reasons to postpone a wedding, the short list:
1. Realization your soon-to-be-partner is in love with someone else.
2. Alien attack.
3. Death in the family (has to be nuclear, because Aunt Sadie is too far off the tree to count).
4. Being called to military service.
5. Typhoon.
6. Global thermonuclear war.
7. The check for the reception bounced.
8. Unexpected delivery of a child.
9. Infection of an airborne, possibly resistant strain of communicable disease.

Astounding.