Personal

The Photo Album

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I have for years been scanning my images into the computer. I started with camp photos I took back in the summer of 1993. Scanning stuff was my first experience with a mac. I used the scanner at the Mac lab in college. But that is not what this blog entry is about:) Like I said I have been scanning stuff for a while. Because of that I have cleared out most of my backlog of photos. I have a few left to do from my cross country trip back in 1989, but other than that I am good. All my recent photos are digital, so I just upload them to the computer. I have been doing that since 1999.

I have been telling my parents to digitize there photos, movies and stuff for years. My mom doesn’t want to look at them on the computer so she never cared. The problem is most of our family photos are in 3 big baskets in my parents house. These baskets have been near windows when it rained, baked in the sun, and other damage has happened to them. Allot of them are totally screwed up. When you view them after scanning you can see the imperfections here and there. Some images have ripped or bad areas to them. I scanned them anyway because the originals will only get worse. Some of these photo’s are 30 years old and they never kept the original’s.

The first batch of 150 or so photos I did Wednesday I created as TIF’s. Everyone says the uncompressed file format is the best so you can edit or compress the image later. Well a regular size photo at 300dpi comes out to 4.3megs as a tif. I used over 800 megs doing images as tif’s. My entire collection before that was only 2 gigs. I am going to have my dad categorize the photo’s for me and then I am just going to convert them to JPEG. then I will burn the TIF’s to DVD and put them away. No need to keep them on my hard drive. The second batch I did, I used high quality (low compression) JPEG. Each photo is only 2-300kbytes. Much better size. I cannot tell the difference, and I don’t plan on printing many of these photos. if they look good on my high rez 20″ flat panel, then they will look good on most computer displays. I am going to take a few and have prints done, just to see.

Next up is having my dad scan slides into the computer. My Mac does not work with my old HP scanner. Like 1 1/2 – 2 years ago I bought a nice $200 scanner with a slide attachment. I scanned some slides but got busy with work. Now I have a mac and since I never thought I would buy a mac, I didn’t think to check if the HP scanner had OS X drivers when I bought it. I now have a Canon CanoScan LiDE 30 USB scanner for my Mac. My sister has my HP scanner, but doesn’t use it, so I am giving it to my dad to do slide scan’s.

Once the photo’s are done we are going to pay someone to move my dad’s old 8mm film to DVD. That is the really big project, but would be really cool to do. once it is on DVD I can do edit’s on it with Final Cut if I want. With all this scanning and stuff going on my dad wants to learn how to burn CD’s & DVD’s. I forgot his new computer has a DVD burner in it. That will be a fun lesson.

It Was Cold, But Fun

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I had a really good time in manhattan last night. It was dam cold, but it was fun. Went to a really great steak house. Keen’s. It was as good as I was told. Thanks Gus & Tori for the advise. Vindigo wasn’t too helpful about review, but Zagat’s on the Palm rocked. My Vindigo subscription is up, and I am thinking of dropping them for the Zagat’s online subscription. it is more, but I think it may be better.

We saw the tree. It was as cool as I remember it. The ice skating line was huge, so I am glad we decided not to do that. That is a day unto itself.

Went to FAO, and I found out that the store is closing. I knew they were having financial problems but I didn’t think they would close there flagship store. The everything in the store is on sale signs gave away the closing.

While at FAO I saw the really big stuffed animal I wanted to get morgan when she was born. It was awesome. It was also HUGE. My sister would have killed me if I got that thing. Glad I didn’t.

Note to self. I need new leather gloves, mittens, or any other hand covering device!!!

This entry was written while listening to The Great Beyond by REM

Shopping In The City

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I am off to spend the day in manhattan. It is cold, and I am probably stupid for doing it, but I am off anyway. Going to see the tree. If you don’t know which tree, you don’t live in NYC. Then maybe the coolest toy store in the universe, FAO. I have nightmares about the dam song they play there, but it is still really cool.

The hard part is finding parking at the LIRR…

This entry was written while listening to Long, Long Way To Go from the album “X” by Def Leppard

The Company Holiday Party

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Yesterday was my companies holiday party. I unfortunately didn’t go. I wasn’t feeling well yesterday and migraines don’t care that a party is planned. That was 2 days in row for migraines for me. not good.

It was suggested that I need to be at the party, but I just couldn’t make it. I ended up leaving work at 4PM. I figured I was up for one of the company awards they do at these events. I was up for one last year, but didn’t win. I figured if Gus was telling me it was a good idea to show up, that I was going to win something. I won the award for most savings to the company. To us that is a big thing. it is one of 3 or 4 awards. I got some Champaign. Supposed to be really good champaign, but I don’t drink the bubbly. My sister already offered to take it off my hands. I will save it for a special occasion.

I await the video to see how everyone acted crazy at the party. The didn’t allow hard booze this party since one we had in June had allot of people getting really drunk off of many shots.

From what I hear many people bailed on the party this year. Keith had to pack and didn’t go. Glenn our CEO was a no show because he threw his back out earlier in the day.

In any event it was supposed to be a load of fun. We do know how to have a good time when work stops…

This entry was written while listening to American Girl by Everclear

Lazy Day And Hardware Upgrades

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Today was a lazy day. I caught up on what I had on the Tivo. I also did some email and just hung out. I did some food shopping since they say it may snow tomorrow. I had no food left, so I figured it was a good time to do that.

I also installed 512 more megs in my new 20″ iMac. Now I have 768 megs in it. I can put a full gig in it, but apple decided to only include 256 with them machine. If I want to get a full gig, I need to remove that 256 and put a 512 meg chip in its place. The only problem is you cannot get to that memory without going to an authorized repair center. It is sealed within the machine. The other slot is not. So for now I am at 768 megs, it should be enough for now. I also put my airport extreme card into the mac. I don’t have the laptop anymore so I figured I would use it. Since my server is in the closet on wireless, I get no extra speed by leaving the mac wired to my 100megabit switch. I cannot transfer files between the desktop and server any faster than the wifi anyway. Now I just have 1 less wire plugged into the iMac.

In my free time I also imported most of my online photo album into iPhoto. Photos imported allot faster on the iMac then they did on either of my Powerbooks. I need to get photos from my parents to scan and increase my album a bit.

Also today I watched some DVD’s. I just got 2 more shows on DVD. I got Firefly on DVD. It was a scifi show that didn’t last too long on tv. It was actually very good, and I was surprised when it came out on DVD. I didn’t watch too many of them, so I decided to buy it. I also got Buffy season 5. I mocked that show for years, and then Rich gave me season 1 to watch and I actually liked it. Go figure.

This entry was written while listening to Maybe Katie from the album “Everything to Everyone” by Barenaked Ladies

Friday

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Friday was a good day. Work was crazy since justin isn’t around, but Keith and I got by. We had to move 5 people’s desks to get ready for a new guy starting monday. We got 3 of them done, and will do the rest Monday. Keith got the brunt of the grunt work. I had to deal with some Kingston issues, 2 meetings, admin work, and I had to free up disk space on our main file server. All while trying to build a new desktop for the new hire and help keith with some of the moves. It was a busy day.

Friday night the president of our company had a holiday party at his house in Jersey. I didn’t go. It is a really long trip, and I had other plans. Last year I got stuck setting up a wireless network in his house.

I ended up going to a pretty decent italian restaurant for dinner. It was nice. Didn’t know what to do after dinner, so we ended up bowling of all things. It turned out to be a load of fun.

Been Sick Again

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Every year I get 1 or two colds and that is it. 2 weeks out of the year I take Nyquil and complain allot. Then I am fine except for allergies and migraines the rest of the year. This year is not going according to my normal plan. I had a cold in AuGust. I got the flue for two weeks in October and a cold. Now I have another cold this week. I am not pleased. I took yesterday off to try and kick the cold. It helped a little, but I still feel it.

I went from the soar throat phase monday and tuesday to the ears and nose problems Wednesday and thursday. Then today I have the nose and cough going on. What fun.

A Clean Apartment

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Why is it that I clean my place right before the cleaning lady shows up? I don’t dust or use cleaning stuff, but I neaten up. I always seem to do it the day or two before the cleaning lady shows up. It is really weird.

I started cleaning because I needed to tidy up, but I finished because I will probably have company later. I don’t want this place looking like a whole in the ground. Of course it is kind of empty when it is clean and I still don’t have a couch or dining room table.

This cleaning frenzy also got me wondering how to you clean an iMac when the white starts getting dirty? My tan logitech keyboard is greying because of dust and dirt. This iMac is snow white, and I don’t want to think how dirty it will get over time.

Politically Correct Has Gone Too Far

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OK, I am all for attempting not to offend people. I also know that some people are more sensitive to things than others. What pisses me off is stuff like this CNN Article. NO ONE is trying to put down slaver or make any political statement by using these terms for computers. Is the “Slave” server going to get upset? No, of course it wont. If you know anything about computers, the analogy of Master/Slave designation fits in some scenario’s. That is why they use them. In others they may be called Subscriber and Publisher, but the terms are used in different scenarios.

Come on people, aren’t we getting carried away with this stuff? What angers me is that this article said that some tech companies are also listening to these requests. Are we all a bunch of cry babies all of a sudden?

OK, rant over. This was just so funny and stupid at the same time, I had to discuss it. Thanks Keith for pointing this article out. Of course you should have been working when you did find it!!!

What I Said Yesterday

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What I said yesterday is totally true. So I waited till like 3PM today to call and check on my cell number move. Turns out the first guy I spoke with last night didn’t actually put the request in. Luckily I had the guy’s name and rep number. They were able to see that he did stuff to my account, but the number port didn’t go in. The new guy I got I got went ahead and put the request through. I am now on hold to check up on his work. This will be call #4. This does not count the time I tried in the T-Mobile store on monday. This is crazy. Does no one know how to do good service?

On a brighter note I was able to return the Treo 600 today. The moron’s at the AT&T store didn’t give me a hard time. Of course the thing was still in mint condition so they really couldn’t say much. When they asked about why I was bringing it back I told them about their network woes. The lady was like, wow that is the first I have heard about it. I was like are you living in a bubble, or do I look that stupid that you can say that to me with a straight face. I got my money back and I await the T-Mobile version of the 600. If Handspring, or Palmone follows their patter, the T-Mobile version will be out in 2-3 weeks. I am waiting…