Year: 2007

Happy Christmas

The jury is still out on the background…

Started down, went up, still up.
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About A Hugh

This morning the Emperor and I went out to buy a paper. We stopped getting home delivery of the Aiken Standard the other week because they weren’t getting here in time for our breakfast reading, so on the weekends I drive over to a local convenience store and buy a copy. Today was my lucky day and possibly someone else’s unlucky day. Sitting on top of the paper box was a copy of the Standard. No one was anywhere to be seen, so not wanting the wind to scatter all that newsprint around I picked up my complimentary copy. And seeing as my pocket was laden with quarters I lightened the load by buying a copy of The State. Other than standing on the threshold of the garage door, Donna hasn’t been outside at all.

What did I learn from all this newspaper reading? Hillary Clinton is coming to town. Do you want to know why? It’s the Aiken Factor – whoever visits town takes over as the Democrat front runner.

Her closet competitor, Sen. Barack Obama, who appeared in Aiken last month, just recently pulled ahead of Clinton by four points in the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll for Iowa.

Watched another Kissy-Poo Movie™ this afternoon, About A Boy, do I even have to tell you the kind of character Hugh Grant played? Didn’t think so. He, like Vince Vaughan, play only one character in every movie they are in. The only change is the character’s name. That’s it. If I was writing an entry for Wikipedia I would be hard pressed to choose which one’s picture should go next to the entry for “One Dimensional.” That said, Hugh is not as annoying to me as Vince is, so I slightly enjoyed the movie.

A movie I did enjoy this afternoon, even though I came in at about 1/4 in mark:

Elizabeth: Parlay. I invoke the right of parlay. According to the Code of the brethren, set down by the pirates Morgan and Bartholomew, you have to take me to your Captain.

That’s right, the Scifi Channel was showing TDPM.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 486

Happy 4th Anniversary

November 24, 2003

In the spirit of getting green, Donna and I have decided to downsize. We have donated our 7-1/2′ balsamus artificialus to Goodwill and have procured a 4-1/2′ antedate illuminate coniferous falsiful to grace an end table in the living room.

For the last couple of years we have been half heartedly searching the after Christmas sales for a deal on a new pre-lit tree with no success, so this year we just went ahead and bought a small one. As always the Emperor was as good as a pickup truck in both carting the old tree to Goodwill and the new one home from Lowes on top of the folded top behind the seats.

Along with all the tree shopping and recaulking the bath tub we still had time to watch 2.2 Kissy-Poo Movies™. The point two was “Alfie“, the Jude Law version, and I think that .2 might have been longer than we watched the Michael Caine version. The other two were “The Upside of Anger” & “The Banger Sisters.” I spent most of that last movie trying to figure out who the actor was that was playing frumpy writer guy, Harry Plummer. At first I thought it was the same guy who played Q on ST:TNG, but it wasn’t. Not until they rolled the credits and I saw the name Geoffrey Rush! Yikes, Captain Barbossa himself.

You don’t know what this is, do ye?… This is Aztec gold. One of 882 identical pieces they delivered in a stone chest to Cortez himself. Blood money paid to stem the slaughter he wreaked upon them with his armies. But the greed of Cortez was insatiable. So the heathen gods placed upon the gold a terrible curse. Any mortal that removes but a piece from that stone chest shall be punished for eternity.

The Incredibles is on NBC tonight. I shoulda bought it instead of Pixar’s stupid rat movie…

Lawyer: Mr. Sansweet didn’t asked to be saved. Mr. Sansweet didn’t want to be saved. And the injuries received from Mr. Incredible’s “actions,” so-called, causes him daily pain.
Bob: [lunging towards Sansweet] Hey, I saved your life!
Oliver Sansweet: You didn’t save my life, you ruined my death, that’s what you did!

Started up, went down, still down.
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Gray Friday

Woods PortraitMy wife and I did not get up early to shop the sales. We slept in until 8:00 AM and after breakfast we walked in Hitchcock Woods for a couple hours.

Afterwards we did go to downtown Aiken and finished up the Christmas shopping. That done, it was time to drag the 8 storage boxes of Christmas decorations out of the attic. The rest of the weekend will be spent placing festive bits into every nook and cranny of the house.

In the evening we went out to eat with friends. Then we went to one of the couple’s house where we were fed desert of frozen strawberry yogurt and a nice slide show of the wife’s pictures from their end of summer trip to Glacier National Park. To be fair we then watched some of the husband’s exploits at Barber Motorsport Park in POS.

Started down, went up, back down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 485

LOCI & LOSVU

We didn’t watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. We didn’t watch any of the 5 DVDs we borrowed (thanks Mark.) Instead, we watched 10 hours of the USA Law & Order marathon with alternating episodes of Criminal Intent and Special Victims Unit. See as each hour of network TV consists of only abut 42 minutes of show, we really only watched 7 hours of L&O with 3 hours of promos for the movie Elf which USA will be showing for the next three nights in a row.

Finally overcoming our inertia, and possibly preventing bed sores from that much time on the couch, we went to the new Walmart in town around 8:30PM. We did some pre-post-Thanksgiving Sale shopping. Bought presents for the Florida wing of the family, some stuff that Donna needed (socks and a purse) and something that I didn’t need (Ratatouille.)

Because this Walmart has been open for less than 4 weeks, it is still clean and bright. Because we don’t get out much, we marveled at the 10′ tall inflatable Santas for $29.87 at the garden shop entrance. Because this is a new greener Super Walmart, in the section they have those vertical frozen food freezers with the motion sensing lights inside. The highlight of our shopping experience was walking down each of the two long frozen food aisles and having the lights pop on just for us as we approached each unit. Now that is something to be thankful for…

…that and we got about a 1/4″ rain this evening.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 482

FITYMI

Fake It ‘Til You Make It or making an High Dynamic Range (HDR) image from just one exposure. I have been playing with three different programs for creating HDR images and one of them, Dynamic Photo has a way to FITYMI, so I gave it a try. I used a recent Post Office picture that really could have benifited from the process, but I didn’t take the three required exposure.

Original Exposure The original exposure with the camera set on auto.
Tweaked The photo after post-processing in Paint Shop Pro.
Faux HDR FITYMI using Dynamic Photo.

In my unscientific selection process I’m leaning towards getting the Dynamic Photo software for a couple of reasons, one of which is this ability to fake an HDR image from one picture, the other is the cost $39. I need to try a real test image first — the same scene shot with 3 exposures 2EV apart — before taking the plunge.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 482

Blogging Avoidance

There is nothing here because I was too busy doing other really important things instead of writing a post. Like:

  1. Reading other blogs
  2. Thinking about balancing the checkbook.
  3. Trying to find a picture to use for the Tuesday Challenge of History
  4. Squashing urban myths mailed to me by relatives.
  5. Celebrating the re-signing of Mike Lowell.
  6. Selecting several chick flicks for viewing over the 4-day weekend.
  7. Updating my list of movies rented from Netflix.
  8. Writing a list of things I’m doing instead of blogging.
  9. Miscellaneous things relating to national security that I can’t talk about.
Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 482