Isn't She Cute?!

This may look like a studio shot, but it was actually taken on a playground in Tenino, WA. The blue background is a plastic plate behind the slide that Lily is sitting at the top of. I really like the way this shot turned out. I played a lot with exposure compensation, white balance, and then used the "Glow" and "Soft Focus" effects in Picasa2 after doing a LOT of sharpening in Photoshop. Isn't she cute?! 

Lily at the Park

I took this shot at the same park as yesterday's post. Lily crawled around on a blanket while Mikayla played on the playground. Lily can really move now!

Swing

This is Mikayla at a park in Tenino this weekend. She had a blast! Expect to see several shots from this weekend on my blog this week. But, I am running late this morning, so off to work I go! Happy Monday!

Rambles on a Friday Morning

I took this shot a little over a year ago at Otter Rock. When I first got back, I wasn’t happy with any of the shots. Now that time has passed, I see them a little different and there are a couple that I like. Maybe it’s just me, but I thought I’d share this one.

Sorry for no post yesterday, but I’d rather not post that just posting simply to have a post show up everyday. I mean, why post if there isn’t anything to say? Today I have a lot to say. I’ll probably break it up a little and save some for the weekend.

It’s Friday! This has been a long week. At my office, we have one person on vacation this week and we are training someone new. The trainee takes a lot of time and at this point isn’t help. I’m sure that will change with time, but it makes for a little bit of stress. Hopefully since it is Friday the day will just fly by.

After work, we are heading up to Olympia to visit Krista’s family. It should be a fun weekend. Hopefully I will return with tales of poker and photos.

Okay, here is the weird link of the week. I have no idea if this is real or not, but it is weird. These guys kill a goldfish and then bring it back to life. I don’t know if it doesn’t really die, if it’s trick photography, or what. But you’ll want to watch this video. As of right know it has 1023 diggs, so it must be true, right? ;)

Hopefully I’ll have a chance this weekend to post about the Canon 5D, Google’s talk, etc. But as for now, time to go to work.

Have a good Friday/weekend everyone!

Pocket Rockets Fall to 96os

Last night was Lefty's Poker Night and I managed to go. The night started off well and only 25 minutes in I peaked at my hole cards and they were Pocket Rockets (AA). I kept my poker face on, but inside I was jumping for joy. To make things better, I was the big blind. Everyone folded except the little blind, he took his 50 he had in the pot and made it 100 to call the big blind. I raised it (making it 200, that's the only raise I could make playing limit hold'em) and he called. I didn't put him on great cards. The flop came 995 rainbow. This was very good for me, unless my opponent had a 9. Now, being the small blind (and chip leader at the table), he could play a 9, but I thought it was unlikely. He checked the flop and I bet and he called. The turn was a 2 and the small blind bet, I raised, he re-raised, and I called. I was worried that he may have made a set of two's. Now I was pot commited - I had 900 of my 1475 chips in the pot. The river was useless (but no straight possible, no flush possible) and he checked, I bet, he raised, and I called. I lost 1300 chips to a 96 off suit holding AA. It was sickening. I blame it on the limit poker as opposed to no-limit and my inability to lay down good cards when I should be scared by the cards on the table. I'm barely a no-limit player and I am most certainly not a limit player. On a positive note, I was home by 8pm.

Bill Me Later

I was browsing at RitzCamera.com, looking at flash units, when I noticed something. A "Bill Me Later" option on purchases over $250. You've heard of the no payments for 90 days thing before, but what makes this one different is that they are promoting it as a secure way to buy. Nevermind that each purchase is an 18% credit line at Chase Manhattan Bank, it's secure! All you do is give them some information to verify (address, last 4 of SSN, etc). No credit card numbers or bank account numbers given out, you just get a bill. And better yet, you don't have to make a payment for 90 days! And, ontop of all that, RitzCamera gives you 10% off your purchase of $250 or more if you use this payment option.

I think this is a low blow and an ingenious marketing technique. Companies want people to buy more and put it on credit. People want to feel secure online. Bingo, in steps Bill Me Later. I know this isn't the first time that a company uses the fear of ID theft, fraud, etc. to make money, but it's the first time I've seen it as a shopping cart option on a site I frequent. I think we are going to start seeing these things more and more. Anyone else seen something like this on a well-known website?

Future Plans

I took this shot of Mikayla on Saturday morning. Krista’s parents were staying with us and Mikayla was showing off. Her latest thing is those goggles. She doesn’t use them in the water, just around the house. I had to get a shot of her proudly wearing them.

This was a long weekend. Saturday we all were going to go to a wedding down in Eugene (1 ½ hour trip – one way), but Lily got sick. I ended up staying home with Lily for the afternoon/evening. Then yesterday Mikayla had a birthday party to go to, so I watched Lily again for a few hours. I have a new appreciation for what Krista does. It is a lot of work taking care of one (sick) baby. I can’t imagine being home alone with two kids 5 days a week. That is a lot of work. Makes my job look easy.

This weekend I began doing a little re-structuring. I will eventually be moving my blog as well as making some other changes. As of right now, there is only one new thing, Mikayla has a podcast: http://kaya.billenglish.net. The first episode is up, but it’s only 1 minute long. It’s basically a test of my new iPod mic, Audacity (my audio software), and how I am going to be putting up the podcast. The RSS feed needs some work. According to WordPress (the CMS that I am using for her podcast), if you include an absolute URL to an mp3 in your post, it treats it as a podcast. Well, I did this and it’s not putting the right stuff in my RSS feed. If anyone out there knows anything that would help me, please e-mail me! I’m doing a lot of research, but there is just so much information out there.

Eventually, www.billenglish.net is going to be my webpage. It will link to my business site (www.ouralbumonline.com), my blog (melange.billenglish.net), and much more. It will have my resume online, contact info, etc. I need to make time for all of this though. One step at a time is my approach. The first piece is Kaya’s Podcast. I am looking forward to publishing 3-10 minutes a week of her latest vocabulary/songs/words/etc.

After a bit of online research, I decided to get the Griffin iTalk. It’s an attachment for the iPod that allows for voice recording. It has a built in mic (that I am not at all happy with), but it also has a jack to plug in another mic. I hope that the audio quality of plugging in another mic is good, otherwise I will be looking for another solution for capturing Mikayla’s audio. I also need to learn how to disguise my iPod. It’s all Mikayla wanted to do – “hold daddy’s music?”

Update on Lily (right now!) - she just barfed on my side of the bed...man!

My Dad Has a Blog!

[Link to my Dad’s blog]

My dad now has a blog! He has some great photos of my girls and the rodeo up so far. Be sure to add his RSS to your reader or bookmark his site. I am really looking forward to seeing photos he has taken.

Having said that, he is on vacation and not near a computer until Saturday, so don’t expect an update until next weekend.
Hope you all are enjoying your weekend!

Not enough time in the day for all these podcasts!

[No photo today. Go visit Krista's page and see my cute girls there!]

I just discovered “KFI’s Tech Guy”. It is Leo Laporte’s radio show that he also broadcasts as a podcast. It’s a GREAT show. I love it. The only problem is, it is twice a week at 2 hours each. Add this to the 1.5 hour TWiT podcast once a week, the latest 45 minute sermon from Covenant Life Church, a 40 minute weekly episode of techPhile, a 30 minute Diggnation, and a 40 minute Mike’s Tech Show, and a handful of other random < 15 minute podcasts….and WHOA happens FAST. I’ve easily got 10+ hours of podcasts to listen to a week. I pretty much exclusively listen to them in the car, so that limits me to about 1.75 hours a day, M-F. And to make matters worse, I doubt I am done finding good podcasts. Here are my recommendations:

• TWiT (This Week in Tech)
• TWiT is basically a round table style meeting of some of the top geeks in the US just talking about technology this week. Leo Laporte, Kevin Rose, Patrick Norton, John C. Dvorak, Roger Chang, and more!!

• KFI’s Tech Guy
• This podcast is basically Call For Help on radio. It’s very fun to listen to. I love Leo and there is a lot of good information given out on this show.
  

• Diggnation
• Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht chat about the top digg stories of the week. Very informative and fun to listen to.
  

• techPhile
• Another technology podcast. They talk about all kinds of stuff; Xbox 360, politics, IE 7, Vista, podcasting, etc..
  

• 2 Minute Photoshop Tricks
• A podcast in its infancy, but VERY good. They could use a better host (voice), but the content is great. I learned something new about Photoshop just last night!
  

• Covenant Life Church
• This is the church that Joshua Harris pastors. It’s way over in Maryland, but all the sermons go online and podcast each week. I’ve heard two now and I’m hooked. It’s a great mid-week listen to on a lunch break.

• Mike Tech Show
• The Mike Tech Show is good. It’s not TWiT or KFI’s Tech Guy, but it’s good. If I have to end up cutting a show, it will probably be this one. I have really enjoyed it though, so the thought of cutting it is sad.
  

I don’t have time to listen to all these. I’ll probably keep downloading them and just archiving them for the day to come that I can sit down for 800 hours in a row and catch up because that’s the kind of person I am. I have said it before and I say it again, I have a disease. I just simply can’t throw things away.

Well, I didn’t get home at 6 last night. It was 7pm before I got home. The lady I am training at work was out of balance and it took a LONG time to fix it. I don’t like talking about work on my blog, so I’ll stop there.

And now, for all 2 of you that haven’t given up trying to read this terribly long post…I was finally able to download the World Series of Poker episode that aired Tuesday night. It was put up yesterday. I know I can’t complain, but I’m going to anyway. That is a long time in between airing it and when it went up for download. During the regular TV season, shows would be up within hours of airing. I guess some people are just slacking off during the summer.

And now I say farewell to the laptop. My parents are leaving for vacation today for a week and my brother is meeting up with them. He wants them to bring him his laptop. I have used it a lot the past two weeks and it makes me want a laptop more than ever. It is so nice to be online outside, on the couch, etc.. But, I’d need to spend at least $1000 to get one I’d like and that is a little much right now. Maybe I’ll come up with an idea for a book to sell on Lulu.com and buy a book with the profits…not likely. Me? Write? Ha! I can’t write. This blog is a testimony to that.

Rocks, NES/Excitebike, Norton, and Cookies

I enjoy taking pictures of odd signs. “Rocks next ½ mile” is not a funny saying and is by no means profound, but I love the image that goes with it. I am building a collection of funny/interesting/odd signs.

Well, yesterday I found the Nintendo. It was in a box in the garage. Unfortunately, I realized that I did not own Excitebike. I packed up the NES anyway in hopes that Salem would have Excitebike accessible. Somehow even after the garage search, I had enough time to hit Starbucks yesterday morning. I really needed that triple vente caramel latte.

On my lunch break I headed over to Gayle’s house to download and install Norton SystemWorks 2005. I didn’t end up finishing it on my lunch, so I went back after work (5:45 to 7:15) to finish up. Why did that take so long? Symantec puts you on hold for 20 minutes when they forget to “complete the order” after it’s paid for. For some unknown reason the Symantec downloader only downloads at 30 Kb/s on a 4 megabit internet connection. A 1.2 Ghz processor should have more than 128 MB of RAM when running XP home. But, I got grilled sandwiches and a half a watermelon to take home.

After the Norton nightmare I stopped by Game Crazy in hopes that they would have Excitebike for the NES. Sure enough, they had multiple copies. And, such a great deal too! Only $12.95 for a 1980’s NES game. *dripping with sarcasm* But, they had it and now Eugene has it for his object lesson and I have it to add to my collection of NES games.

It was a long day. I got home at 8:15pm, had dinner, ate cookies, talked a bit, and went to bed. Hopefully this evening I’ll make it home by 6pm.