March: In Review

It seems that spring is right around the corner, and I'm totally ready. Work has been steady, I'm still working 6 days a week, and I'm still there. The longer I work there, the closer I am to full time! The internet went out again, so I was forced to spend some time outside. The township dug a massive hole next door, which quickly formed into the county's biggest lake. It's been a good month, but I'm ready for some balmy April days!

We Play!

Tonight, being the last day of the month, is usually reserved for my "Month in Review" series. However, I had something cool to shoot, so I'll put that off for tomorrow.

Our good friends Cory and Harmony paid us a visit today. We had a good grilled chicken dinner (Steph had a soysage), talked for a while, then played Wii for the rest of the night. What a blast! It's great to get four people together and play bowling and tennis. Everyone had a great time.

Harmony, laughed in every shot except this one

Me (Jason)

Cory, Nice form!

Steph, Bowling Ninja

DHC

This is a product from Steph's new favorite online retailer, DHC. They're a beauty product company that gets their products from Japan. This is their hand soap, and it comes out as a foam. I just thought the bottle was interesting.

Pizza! Pizza!

This thing is awesome. The Pizzazz Pizza Oven is one of those few random, odd appliances you may buy that you'll actually use more than once. We got this for Christmas a couple years ago, and we've used it ever since. Usually, when you buy something like this, you use it a couple times, and then it collects dust for the next 10 years or so. Not in this case. I highly recommend it.

Well, I got some bad news and some good news at work last night. Next week, about 35 more people are transferring to our plant from Syracuse, NY. This pretty much means that 35 people in my situation, so called "Enhanced Temporaries", will be shown the door. Fortunately, none of these people coming to the plant are going to my department. That's the good news. At the same time, I was told that I have been "bumped" from my current job. It really doesn't mean much, since I'll still be on third shift and doing pretty much the same thing, but now they have the ability to plug me in where ever I'm needed. That's the bad news. Well, after reading that, it doesn't seem so bad after all. Never mind, there's no bad news....

We Have Flowers!

Huzzah! The first of our flowers for the spring! Too bad we're taking them out this year. We've decided to take out all the perennials this year and put in some bushes. Much lower maintenance, much more concealing of the ugly foundation. I will miss seeing this every spring, but I think we'll probably transplant some of them. Anyone want some Lilies?

Outage! Again! / Favorite Shots #2

So here's the deal. Our wonderful ISP, Mediacom, decided to take about 16 hours to fix our internet outage. It seems like every time we lose service, it takes an inexcusably long time to get it up and running again. Anyway, I was so irritated about not reading my email, checking my RSS feeds, etc., that I forgot to shoot a picture. Meh. So here's the second in my "Favorite Shots" series. This one's entitled "Local Growth". It was part of a series I took for my photography class where I was trying to illustrate the over-development of our area, and from this, the destruction of the "family farm". My teacher, who's lived in the area his whole life, was actually getting visibly angry/irritated looking at my shots. I guess the message got across! I got an A. :)

By the Shores of Lake M.C.

This is what happens when you dig a massive hole in the ground then leave it for the next two weeks. The open pit next to our house is obviously still there, with no fill to be seen. It's beginning to look like a small pond over there. As I sit writing this, I can hear frogs out there singing in the night. I really feel like I'm near some kind of lake or something. It should be great if they don't fill it before mosquito season.

Third Shift Annoyance #5: Sleeping the Day Away

Wow. What a beautiful day. A balmy 74°, I was only able to enjoy a few hours of it. By the time I get up, around 5 pm, the sun is already starting to go down. I did, however, enjoy the time I spent outside.

We let Punkin go outside. We do it every summer. It does wonders for his attitude. He's usually the kind of cat that tries to wrestle with the other cats, even though they don't want to, he knocks stuff off of tables, tips over the garbage can, and generally makes a nuisance of himself. In the summer, that all goes away. If we let him outside for an hour or so every day, he's a completely different cat. I highly recommend it to anyone who has a cat like Punkin.

Groceries... again

Our Saturday night ritual is still intact. In addition to our groceries, we pick up some stuff for Stephanie's Grandma Johnson, who lives here in town near us. Additionally, this week we decided to get groceries for two weeks, so this massive pile of bags are what we were left with.

One more thing, in yesterday's RR Star, there was an article about charges filed by the Local Union regarding the hiring of "tmeporary workers". Yes, that's me. Basically, they filed charges with the NLRB against Chrysler Corp. because our "contract" directly violates the collective bargaining agreement that they ratified with DCX. This case is now going to arbitration. As far as I can tell, this is a really good thing. It means that I may actually learn my fate at Chrysler much sooner than I anticipated. I always thought I'd hear something closer to September, when the international contract negotiations begin, but now we may hear something much sooner. Keep your fingers crossed!

Night Shots

Since my sleep schedule's a little off kilter, and my sunlight time is limited, I decided to take my camera out tonight and play in the dark. Night time photography is tricky, and digital camera usually don't do so well in the dark, but these shots turned out pretty good. I really like the above shot the most, but I was pleased with this one as well:

Mii and Me

I got my Wii back! The Nintendo Wii has this really cool feature called the Mii Channel. It allows you to create virtual representations of yourself, to be used in various games like Wii Sports and Wii Play. Here's mine! I also have great ones for Stephanie, Jon, Justin, and Dad. Dad's is DEAD ON.

Oh, and for the record, even Miis will blink when their picture is taken.

Remnants

Hi, my name is Jason, and I used to play Magic: The Gathering. I've been an addict for 10 years. I've been "sober" for about a year. Now it's confirmed, I'm a huge geek. I know that many of you have had your theories about it, but now it's absolutely confirmed.

Yes, I used to play Magic. I gave it up about a year ago. It just lost its appeal. It used to be so much fun, but when they started releasing a new set of cards every three or four months, the cost just became too much. I used to play in tournaments, and actually won a few of them. When I decided to quit, I sold all the rares and some of the uncommons on eBay. I actually made a good amount of money on the sales. Now, I have thousands of commons and uncommons in boxes in my office, still looking for a home. Still interested Cory?

Favortie Shots #1

On days like today, when the weather isn't agreeable and I'm quickly running out of things in my house to shoot, this blog can be a bit frustrating. I've decided to dip into my collection of shots I've taken over the last few years, and start a new series called "Favorite Shots". I promise I won't do this often, since this is supposed to be a "Photo a Day" blog, but sometimes, when you have these average days, finding something interesting and relevant can be very difficult.

The first in this series was taken at my former employer, Belvedere USA Corporation. I left Belvedere for Chrysler about 9 months ago, and I spent nearly 12 years there. This shot is of our welder, Hassel Byrd. Hassel is a great guy. And old salty Virginian, he always has a smart-ass comment on pretty much every topic. I had a good time working with him. This shot was taken originally for my photography class, with Kodak TMAX 100 black and white film, and I printed it myself. I have the original hanging in my office. This is one of my favorite shots.

Covered in Cats

Poor Stephanie. She can't sit down without her two cats, Bear and Chloe, climbing all over her. Bear's the one on the top of the couch, Chloe is on her lap. This is pretty much a nightly ritual.

Well, I heard some promising news at work last night. The Union Steward told us that right now, the buyouts Chrysler is offering are making the rounds through the company. He said that eventually, they will come to our plat. This is great news for me, since if they're buying people out, they surely won't be laying anyone off. Hopefully this is one step closer to full time employment.

Before & After

I decided to play around a little with Photoshop today, and show some of you that aren't familiar with the software an example of how a photograph can change from the original shot. The photo above is what I started out with. It's a pretty lousy shot. The color balance is off, it's underexposed, and pretty boring. Just so you know, this was intentional! I'm not a horrible photographer! After about 1/2 hour in Photoshop, this is the result:
As you can see, the end result is far different from the original. This is just one example of the many, many things you can do in Photoshop. I only spent 1/2 hour on this, and took a pretty boring picture, cleaned it up, and made it a bit more interesting. Obviously, I could've spent far more time on this, and made it really great, but for the sake of time, I didn't. You could literally spend hours on one photograph, but the end result would be stunning.

Outside!

I'm sooo happy we moved the clocks ahead. It's nice to actually see the sun again. I really enjoy outdoor photography, and especially love shots like this. There's so much complexity is something as simple as the bark of a tree, when you look at it like this, it's really pretty amazing. I love to take something you see every day and try to show it in a completely different way.

Okay, I know I said never again on the cell phone shots, but I saw something today that I absolutely had to share. We were at the grocery store, and I saw this display for these horrible new drinks obviously targeted at kids. They're milk drinks that are flavored like candy bars and Starburst. Wow. My teeth are rotting just thinking about it, and oh! Wait a sec! Yep, I just gained three pounds. Anyway, here's the display:
And as you can see, whomever made the sign obviously has a great sense of humor:
Any parent who gives these "milk" drinks to their kids should be rounded up and summarily executed.

Pez

Every year for Christmas, mom gets us Pez dispensers. Call it a tradition. This year, we got another, but as you can see, it is about 12 inches tall, and dispenses full packages of Pez instead of individual pieces. Pretty crazy.

I hate working Saturdays. For me, working 3rd shift, tonight is my Saturday. We generally work three Saturdays in a row, then we get one off. It sucks pretty bad, but at least I'm still working.

Spectral

As I've said before, I have some sleep issues. Today I had an odd dream that really inspired this shot. In my dream, I was coming up my basement steps, when I saw this dark, ghostly image hurtling at me from the top of the stairs. It was clearly some sort of spirit or ghost, and its intentions were not good. When it hit me, it was like a gust of frigid wind passing through me. That's about all I can remember. I don't know why I was in the basement, or why the spirit wanted to harm me, but it scared the hell out of me. Pretty odd, right? Anyway, when I was thinking about my photograph for today, I recalled a shot a guy did for our basic photography class very similar to this. His shot was slightly different, but had similar results. I guess maybe I need to lay off the hallucinogenic drugs right before sleep....

Baseball Fever

I've caught it. Every year is the same thing for me. New hats, new shirts, the occasional video game, this awesome jacket, I can't get enough. I love the build up every year that precedes the MLB opening day. I was just watching the Sox pound the Brewers in a spring training game, and I thought to myself, "Why am I watching a spring training game?" 19 more days!

Spring Breeze

It smells so good in our house right now. We've had some amazing weather the last couple of days, and today we had the windows open all day. There's nothing better than having those windows open for the first time in the spring. I guess that could be another of my unofficial starts to spring.

They did some more digging today next door, but I think they are all finished now. Naturally, being in a small town, all the neighborhood kids had to come see the hole. It makes me a little nervous seeing them climbing around near such a dangerous area, but I'm not their parents, so I keep my mouth shut.

Excavation

We have a great house. It's just the right size, it's in good shape, and the price was right. It has the worst location imaginable. To the north, two lots up, is the town's bar. You'd think that would be great, right? Go have a couple drinks, then you can walk home! Not so much. It's not great at all when the drunks are leaving at 2 am. To the south, about two lots down, are railroad tracks. When we moved in, those were my main concern. It's actually not as bad as you'd imagine. The lot in between the tracks and the house is the subject of this shot. The lot is basically empty, except for some buildings that are no longer in use. There used to be a fertilizer plant here, but that's no longer the case. We received a call last week telling us there would be some work done on the lot. When I got home this morning, there were about 6 trucks lined up in the street, and this backhoe tearing into the earth. When I woke up this afternoon, there is now this massive hole about 70 yards long. Apparently the owners of the property have to remove the soil in this area due to contamination concerns. Makes me feel great, considering we have well water....

I've added a link to the webpage where my images are hosted, Flickr.com. If you'd like to just view all the pictures I've taken to this point and in the future without going through the entire blog, you can use that.

Digital Black and White

No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, you will never get the quality of true black and white film from a digital camera. There are a lot of tricks and tweaks you can try in Photoshop, but wouldn't it just be easier to shoot film? This procedure is probably the quickest one I've found recently to convert color digital images to black and white. You could just desaturate it, or set your camera to "B&W", but what you generally end up with is a washed out, low contrast image. When taking photography classes, we shot Kodak TMAX 100 exclusively. We developed our own film and printed our own images in the darkroom. The shots I took in those classes are some of the most beautiful photographs I've ever taken. I'm really looking forward to shooting film again this summer.

Spring Ahead

Tonight we set the clocks ahead. This, to me, is one of the "unofficial" starts to spring. The picture above is another. I love seeing the first of the perennials start to push through the frozen soil. I'm a big fan of tulips, and while I know these are daffodils, I still get pretty excited. The post office in our town is usually the first to have stuff like this, but we do have some ourselves. We have some tulips around our house, but mostly our perennials are lilies and irises. We also planted a lilac bush in our first (or second?) year living here. I love lilacs, but the blooms never stay around long enough. Oh, and in case you're wondering, the official start of spring is April 2nd, the home opener for the Chicago White Sox.

Packing My Wii

Well, I'm sending my Wii off for service. I bought my Wii on launch day, November 19th. The unfortunate reality of buying a launch system is that at some point, there's a good chance it may malfunction. Just ask any long time Xbox 360 owner! Luckily, Nintendo provides a 1 year warranty on all its hardware, so I'm not paying a dime to have it fixed. I'm also sending my DS Lite for the problem I mentioned previously. I'm already having Nintendo withdrawals!

New Growth

I really don't know what to write about today. Today was one of those average days that just go by without notice. I went to work, I came home, I slept, I ate, now I'll go to work again. In ten years I won't remember today. It amazes me the simple fact that as you go on, days like this slip in to obscurity, simply because they were not extraordinary. I suppose it's a function of the mind to forget these days so the important ones are remembered. It just seems a little sad to me.

You can add this shot to the daily growing series, "Random Stuff In My House". I'm actually pleased how this shot turned out. I'm a big fan of onions....

There has to be a change, I'm sure
Today was just a day fading into another
And that can't be what a life is for....

A.Duritz, Counting Crows
Amy Hit the Atmosphere
August and Everything After

I Love Shooting Zombies!

I love unique tees. One of my favorite sites for shirts like this is Threadless.com. All their designs are actually submitted by users, then voted on by customers. The most popular designs are made into shirts! Here are a few I've bought from them:
Dark Side of the Garden
Are Trees Electronic?
Shadow Bunny

Another good site for geeky tees is Thinkgeek.com. Here's one I bought from them:
Viva Miyamoto

I have about 7 or 8 really geeky cool tees. I'm always on the lookout for more!

Spin the Black Circle

We have a modest collection of records whose sole purpose seems to be to collect dust. In an age where you can fit hundreds of these large black platters on something that can fit in the palm of your hand, to say records are obsolete is an understatement. However, there is something comforting and nostalgic about the feel of music played from a record. The warm sound, the hiss and pops, it has a personality that an mp3 file can't replicate. I guess that's why we'll have these records and the player around forever, but the cassettes and 8 tracks are nowhere to be seen.

Wii-motes!

You have no idea how long I've been looking for these. Ever since I bought the Nintendo Wii on launch day, November 19th of last year, I've regretted not getting the maximum of four remotes. I've been looking in the stores for more every chance I get. Until Sunday, no one has had any. For some reason, retailers are holding the stock they get until Sunday, then they put it out for sale. This essentially means unless you go to the store on Sunday, you aren't going to fins these or the system. After reading several rumors online about possible availability this Sunday, I decided to call our local Target. As you can see they had them in stock! My wonderful wife Stephanie was kind enough to stop in and pick a couple up for me.

On a side note, Steph was quick to point out the absolute stack of clothing she was able to buy with the same amount of money spent on these two hunks of plastic....

Podcasts

Since I got my iPod, one of the things I've really enjoyed is listening to podcasts. Podcasts are audio files, created by everyday people like you and me, that are basically talk radio programs. For virtually very topic you could think of, there's a podcast about it. Here are some of my favorites:

This Week In Tech
1up Yours
Diggnation
Short Attention Gamer
EGM Live
Retronauts
NPR: Technology

As you can see, most are tech/video game related, but if you go to the iTunes music store, you can find a podcast that falls in line with your interests!

Open 24 Hours / Horray for Woodman's!

This is the greatest grocery store ever. It's one of those places that has everything you could possibly think of, and some things you've never heard of. It has the greatest liquor store in the area. Hundreds of different wines, every micro-brew beer under the sun, and even though I'm not a hard liquor man, every type and brand imaginable. Oh, and did I mention the prices are the best in the area? Not to mention it's open 24 hours! Perfect!

It's a pretty good time to get groceries. At 10 pm on a Saturday, the place is a virtual ghost town. The only drawback is the kick-ass liquor store isn't open past 9:00. I love to go there and just pick a new kind of beer to try. Lately I've been getting this micro-brew out of Chicago called Goose Island. The Honker's Ale is their "basic" beer, and is really good. I'm also a big fan of the Nut Brown Ale and the India Pale Ale. If you're local, give it a try!

Insistent

This cat is crazy. Every morning, while brushing my teeth, he completely loses his mind. He sits on the toilet, absolutely demanding I pay attention to him. His eyes glaze over, his tail puffs out to twice its size, the hair on his back stands up, and he climbs all over me until I pet him. This is bizarre behavior for this one, since he's usually the anti-social type.

We had some crazy weather again today. We didn't get a whole lot of snow, but we've had 30+ mph winds, and it's been pretty cold, so most of the roads were covered in ice. The snow was blowing so much that it completely obscured my vision a few times. I was nearly run off the road by a bright yellow moving van, filled to the brim with Mexican musicians. True story. The trip home this morning, which usually takes about 25 minutes, actually took me nearly an hour. It felt odd to drive 35 - 40 on I90, but after seeing about 6 cars in the ditch and a semi jackknifed about 1/2 mile away from my exit, it was obviously necessary.

Outage!

I should have titled this post “Outrage” instead. I’m writing this on March 1^st in Microsoft Word, because my internet has been out for about 16 hours now. Once again, the Midwest has been hit with a series of pretty nasty storms, and surprisingly, this is the first time we’ve suffered an outage of any kind. The “Outrage” comes from Mediacom’s piss-poor customer service department. I called to try to find out what the problem was, and waited on hold for about 20 minutes. Funny thing about their recorded message when you’re on hold, it gives you about three different things to try to re-establish your connection. Unfortunately, two of those things require AN INTERNET CONNECTION! After finally reaching a rep, I told him what the problem was. He asked for my phone number, then said, “You’re part of an outage right now.” That’s it. All that time on hold so he could tell me what I already know? I asked, “How long will it be out?” To which he replied, “I don’t have that information.” That’s 25 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.

*Update
So obviously, they fixed it. Think they'll credit me for the 16+ hours of no service? Nah, I didn't think so either....

February: In Review

Well, I'm now two months in, and I can honestly say I'm ready for spring. I never thought I'd "run out" of things to shoot in my house, but it seems I'm getting to that point. I've decided that the last day of every month will be a little "break", and that I'll be posting my three favorite shots from that month, and recounting the major things that happened.

The Bears lost the Super Bowl. Boy, I'm so glad to be thinking about that again. That was probably the biggest event for me this month. It was really great to see them there, and to spend that day with Dad watching the game.
I also learned this month that Chrysler's cutting 11,000 jobs. They haven't really said much still, but they have announced the buyout packages. If you have 1 year or more of service, they will give you $100,000 to walk away. How crazy is that?!? Too bad I'm not eligible....

Here's my three favorite shots for the month. Bring on March!!

The True Cost of Bottled Water

From treehugger.com:
"In summary, the manufacture and transport of that one kilogram bottle of Fiji water consumed 26.88 kilograms of water (7.1 gallons) .849 Kilograms of fossil fuel (one litre or .26 gal) and emitted 562 grams of Greenhouse Gases (1.2 pounds)."

Pretty stunning stuff. I read this article the other day, and I had to share it. Fiji water, which this bottle is not, is the second highest selling imported bottled water behind Evian in the United States. It's pretty amazing the price people are willing to pay for something that comes out of your sink for free. For the record, Steph buys one bottle per week, then re-fills it about a zillion times. Wouldn't want to look like a hypocrite, right?

Source

My Tools

This is the camera I use primarily to take my photos. It's a Nikon D70 Digital SLR. 6.1 Megapixel, with a 18-70 DX Zoom Nikkor lens, and a SB-600 Speedlight. Quite a step away from what Grandpa used to use, right? I also have a Kodak DX6440 point and shoot camera that I take with me most of the time, but the results simply can't compare to what I get with this.

I think it's important to note that even thought digital cameras have dominated the market in the last 5 or 6 years, and the megapixel levels keep climbing monthly, no digital camera will ever compare to what you can do with film. Some of my best shots were taken with my Nikon N65 and a roll of Kodak TMAX 200. Hopefully, once spring gets here and I actually have the time and motivation to leave the house, I plan on taking some shots with film. I probably won't get them on the blog right away, but they'll find their way here eventually.

My Grandpa's Tools

Just a camera, right? No. This isn't just a camera. This is my Grandpa's camera. This is the camera he carried with him all across Europe during World War II. This camera has traveled more than I have my entire life. Grandpa decided he wanted me to have this when I became interested in photography. When he gave it to me, it still had film in it that had been used! Unfortunately, when I had it processed, the film had been exposed at some point. It would've been amazing to see what was on it. Grandpa has a photo album he's showed me a couple times with photos from the war. He had a friend who was a photographer for the Army who took some seriously disturbing shots. He has copies of some of those, and another shot of a ship absolutely filled with soldiers. Somehow, Grandpa managed to actually find himself in the shot, and has circled the location. I really wanted to shoot with this camera, but unfortunately, you can't get any film that will fit in it. I'm really honored he wanted me to have it.

Movie Night

Well, Illinois weather kicked us in the butt again. We're getting hit with a pretty bad storm, so Steph and I stayed in tonight and watched a couple movies. The Prestige, which is based on a book I read a couple weeks ago, was fantastic. The other movie we watched was Thanks for Smoking. That was alright, but nothing to rave about. We also have An Inconvenient Truth, but we'll likely watch that later. Steph, the first shifter, can't stay up all night like some of us....

Dodge Loves Crackdown!

I recently bought this awesome new game for the Xbox 360 called Crackdown. I won't go into specifics, but basically you're a genetically engineered superhero running through this open city, fighting against organized crime. The first day I played, I ran across this billboard! It seems DaimlerChrysler's marketing department decided to advertise the car I build, the Dodge Caliber, in this game! You can also see billboards for the Dodge Nitro. I just thought that was cool.

Insomnia

God, I can't sleep. This happens to me about once or twice a week. I'm tired at work, tired on the way home, tired when I get home, then about 8:30, I wake right up. I gradually get tired again, but by that time it's about 11:00 and way too late for me to be going to bed. Steph usually wakes me up at 6:00, so I get less than 7 hours of sleep. That may be enough for some of you, hell for some of you that may be a lot of sleep, but for me, that's a disaster. I really need a lot of sleep in order to function.

I'm going to try to go to bed. Wish me luck.

Nap Time!

We don't let the cats sleep with us. That would be total madness. Since Steph and I work different shifts and are sleeping at different times, the bedroom is really only open for about 3 hours a day. As soon as Steph opens the door to get me up, at least two of the cats immediately get on the bed and go to sleep. This is typically enough to get me out of bed. We used to keep the bedroom open when we slept, but Punkin doesn't seem to understand that when I'm sleeping, I really don't want to pet him/play with him. Pretty annoying at 3 in the morning.