No one seems to want tickets for the 50th running of the Coca Cola 600. My mother received 2 tickets to the race on Sunday, but of course, she does not want to go, because she doesn’t see the point in running around in a circle, I agree. I thought my father might want to go, but apparently going once in 1995 was enough for him. The calls began going out to the family, my cousin didn’t want them unless they were for the speedway club, because his father in-law can get him tickets to any race he wants. No one else related to the family wants them because, well, no one else in my family is a redneck. Next went out the calls the the friends of the family, no immediate friends wanted the tickets. Finally though, my father found a friend-of-a-friend, his nickname is “copper head”, and he accepted the tickets. I thought races at LMS in May used to be a big deal. Maybe times have changed and people are getting more sophisticated? Either that, or we are entering a world of the yuppie redneck who wants to be in the air-conditioned boxes.
Aphid Annihilation
This week I have discovered my absolute worst garden enemy, the aphid. The only problem is they are not in the garden, where it is easy to kill them. This is on the AeroGardens, indoors. Today I have been trying to get the little bastards off of my pepper plants. I started by trying to spray them with water, that worked out ok, but not great, it got a lot of them off. I brought the garden in and let the dead fall off, that took out a few more of them. A few hours ago I became bored enough to decide to kill them off manually. I went after the colony with tweezers, q-tips and a cup of warm soapy water (1 part Dawn detergent to 3 parts water). The big boys that I pulled off with the tweezers I drowned in the water, and then the others I swabbed off with the q-tip soaked in the soapy water. That seemed to do the trick, there are few to none of the demon insects left and I feel a little better about the new pepper plants that are growing in the garden I just started.
Aphids are no fun, but its kinda cool having their corpses chained together in a cup of soapy water.
Textbook Flub
Whenever I am not suspicious of something potentially going wrong and just trust things, then things go wrong. All of my textbooks for Summer arrived on time, and I thought everything was good, until the department chair sent out a memo stating that the bookstore had sent the wrong books to students. I checked, and yep, I’ve got the wrong book for Biopsychology, which pisses me off since there will be an exam next weekend and the first assignments will be due on TUESDAY. I have contacted the bookstore, and they will send my replacement out tomorrow, Friday. They use FedEx, so the package will not actually reach me until Monday. This fucking sucks. My first weekend of courses for the summer semester and I am already behind because of people getting orders wrong.
I only have one thing to ask here, why is the textbook wrong? The textbook is part of the rental program, which means that the instructors and department are locked into a 24 month contract for which text to use for the course. There are no changes allowed until that time is up, and since the program just started last Fall, that could not be the case.
Also, no sign of the new instructor yet, the department chair is covering for him still.
Summer I 2009 Semester Opens
The first summer session at Fayetteville opened this morning. My Stat course opened last night, but my Biopsychology (Physiological Psychology) course was not activated until a few minutes ago. Everything for this semester seemed to be going very well until today. My books for the semester arrived last week and I was able to register in a decently timely manner for the courses (before the juniors were opened). A few days ago the instructor changed from being Dr. Van to being “Tba Tba”. I thought nothing of it, assuming it was interim between Dr. Van and another instructor in the course. When I woke up this morning, the course was still listed the same, but did not appear on Blackboard. I e-mailed the department secretary and was informed very promptly that the instructor is new and that he will be joining the course once he finishes his Blackboard training. A few moments ago the course appeared on Blackboard, but it appeared as having “No Instructors”. The course content is very obviously Dr. Van’s Fall 2008 version of the same course. All of the discussion boards and everything are still present. I trust that the department will get the new instructor, Dr. Steven M. Platek (sounds Klingon) up to speed by the end of the week.
Additional concerns for the semester include the fact that the statistics course in synchronous. Five times this semester I will have to be online to take an exam with my class at 7pm. Also, there is a software package that we must use this semester. It is called SPSS. It is a statistical software. I have access to the software through Citrix at FSU, but I feel about that like I would feel about checking out a textbook from the library, although the software can be almost $200. I can get a copy for 13 months that is very limited (but will work for the course) for $99, or I can spend a little more and get the full package, with no restrictions on the time of the license for $199. I haven’t decided which of the methods I want to use yet (Citrix [free], Rental [$99], or Own [$199]). I do not trust the FSU network for being available when I want to do my labs, so I will likely try to own the software or have it here in some method, even if I have to use a trial or something.
Other than these minor issues, the semester is off to a great start.
Bashing Netbooks
I do not fully understand why people keep reviewing netbooks and trying to determine if they are underpowered. It is true that the netbooks came from things like the One Laptop Per Child program, but the new generation of these devices, produced by Dell, HP and Asus are quite different. I do not believe that these systems should be compared to their full size counterparts at all, but sometimes, you don’t need all of that power. I personally use my laptop and my netbook, each for different roles. My netbook is primarily for things like checking email, viewing pictures and doing classwork. My laptop is for tasks like photo editing, watching videos and doing everything else.
To make this simple, it pisses me off that people are trying to compare two completely different types of systems and try to make something simple and mobile seem like it is an underpowered “toy”.
Lens Envy
Yesterday I went to my 6-year old cousin’s dance recital. It has become the family custom in the past few months that Chris and I are the family photographers for almost every event, so much so that other members of the family now leave their cameras at home. This even partially extends to my aunt’s “extended family”, which includes people who have been friends of the family for many years. Although, for dance recitals, it would be nice to be informed of the reliance ahead of time, as it makes it easier to acquire shots of the desired child.
Now, on to the real point of this post, lens envy. When I was setting up for shooting at the incredibly dark event (think typical dance theater type lighting), in walks the professional photographers of the event. One is carrying a Canon DSLR with a lens assembly longer than my arm, as well as another who is carrying a Nikon D2X armed with a Nikon f/2.8 70-200mm AF lens (or a very closely similar lens). Quite jealous was I. I do not know how I would ever transport a camera that size with that type of lens, I would be terrified to carry it to most things I like to photo.
I think I did OK with the equipment I have, but a little more light sensitivity would have been nice, but I’m not quite ready to spend $1,500 on a lens that I will only have a need for once a year. Maybe next year, if I am in the photography business, I might consider acquiring one. I shot nearly 1,300 images yesterday on the performance. I have only had the chance to glance through them, not really focus much on them at all, so at some point today I have to go through and throw out the absolutely useless images, work on the ones that are salvageable (ISO noise issues, dark, etc), and prepare to distribute anything good. I’m not extremely confident in my photos from yesterday, but I do think it was a good learning experience for me, including learning that RAW is a very resilient format (although too huge for normal use).
Twitter: A Replacement for Conversation
How socially handicapped can a society become? I have been ignoring the recently “twitter trend” of micro-blogging and instant status updates, mostly just hoping that Twitter would pass and then life could return to normal. Unfortunately, when your favorite porn star begins to tweet and speaks of how widespread the disease has become, it gets a little harder to ignore. So I must turn my attention to questioning, what’s the big deal with Twitter?
I blog because its what I do. I have been blogging for nearly 5 years and I have never questioned why I do it. It is a written record of where I have been and what I have done. Do Twits think the same way? To me Twitter seems as though it is more directed at replacing conversation. Instead of writing an email or calling someone when you arrive somewhere or calling to talk to someone about what you did during the day, you just twit and everyone knows instantly. Seems boring and kind of anti-social, and for some people, they will soon discover that no one really cares what they are doing.
Not Enough Time
One may think that with being bored, that any chance for activity to occur would be a welcome blessing. Unfortunately, in my world, things seem to all hit at almost the exact same time. My mother has decided to take the rest of the week off from work and take care of some things in the yard, so of course I am needed for that (since she can barely carry a light bag of mulch). Also at the same time, the boyfriend wants to hang out, and by the time I finished with my mother it was too late for that, and now boyfriend is crushed, and I feel nothing but guilt for the fact that I didn’t put a time limit on my mother, since I did agree to hang out with boyfriend, and the thing with my mother was sort of a last minute thing (don’t even remember agreeing to do it, just sort of got started). Now that I’m done with mother, and boyfriend is upset, uncle calls. I have no clue what uncle wants to talk about, since I have decided to take a few minutes to calm down instead of totally cracking, but whatever it is, it is time consuming, since he only calls when he needs technical advice or someone to fix something that he has broken.
I don’t like disappointing people, especially not people who are very close to me. I often wonder if there is something wrong with me, since I can not manage to avoid getting roped into helping certain people, when I have already agreed to do something with someone else. I suppose in my life there aren’t that many things that require a lot of time and that block me from doing other things. In other words, my time management skills suck, and GITI is by no means able to make things like this work (no stated time, so no way to schedule).
On a positive note for today, I have planted about 16 pepper plants, 8 or 10 tomato plants, 2 hibiscus and an azalea (but I can’t forget the 1 broken heart and 1 ignored relative).
Chicken About Chicken
For some bizarre reason I decided that I wanted to cook a whole chicken. Having my roasting bags and my bird, I set out to begin working on the chicken this afternoon. I thought it would be no big deal, just rinse, season and pop in the bag. I suppose I subconsciously eliminated the part where there are inner parts to deal with. I really grossed myself out by opening the orifice of the bird and looking in. I grabbed my tongs to finish extracting all of the ickies out. I was so disgusted with having to do that part, which is something I don’t easily. I believe at one point Chris was laughing at me while I was fishing for “spare parts”. Fortunately, the chicken cooked well in its bag and is a nice golden color with a smooth texture of meat. A very lovely chicken.
UPDATE (1906): Decided to use the drippings to make a white gravy, it tastes amazing as well 
Lenses of Fantasy
Everyone remember the picture of the lens that looked like a torpedo a few weeks ago? No? Well, here. I went to go see this beauty in person. I went to Best Buy (I so desperately miss Circuit City) and asked to see the lens on a D60. That turned out to be difficult, so I was shown the lens on a D40 (close enough, just a difference of the sensor). The things I noticed about the lens were that it is clearer than my 55-200mm AF-S lens, the extra 100mm of lens DOES matter, and finally, the lens is more light receptive than my other lenses, making it better for low-light situations with a lower aperture. I went to look at the lens because I am giving it serious consideration, and before I got too far decided on the lens I wanted to make sure that the weight wasn’t unbearable with the low weight of the body (which Chris still calls a tank, against his petite Nikon P90). The optics and focusing mechanism of the 70-300mm lens is absolutely incredible. I now understand the cost associated with the lens. Now that I have decided to get the lens I just have to decide where to buy it from and figure out where to find the money (if only my desires came with a built-in ATM).
I do consider the concept of purchasing the lens to be a good investment in advancing my photography, since there is a clear difference in the clarity of the optics.