photos.ALBj.net

photos.ALBj.net → 2009 → Miscellaneous 2009

Miscellaneous/random shots taken in 2009 which I did not include as part of any other set of photos.

Züca unboxing
Picked up my new Zuca at the office. With this, I intend to not check any bags to San Francisco. The only thing I think that would make it 100% perfect would've if there was a specific place for a laptop. But, it's designed as a suitcase alternative.

Drobo hat
I had thought about buying one of these from Drobo's booth at the Macworld Expo. Glad I didn't. I forgot I'd be getting one for filling out a Drobo survey.

New digs
Crisper's remodeled their dining room. Also new dorky uniforms.

Twittelator's silly new splash screen
Uh, ewww.

Comfort food
Yes, exactly why I eat here every now and then.

Tonight's view
The venue where I'll be the next two hours.

Which room?
This sign was on a big door at the Pt. Charlotte United Methodist Church. Best visualization of planned obsolecence I've ever seen. No, I couldn't look inside.

Basketball choir practice
On the floor of the Orlando Magic's Amway Arena.

Game seat
Not a splendid seat, but I was given the ticket, so I'm pleased to be here. Now, if the Magic will just pull ahead.

Business hours
3290936400_634542667b_o

Oh, poop
3295317523_0c9bfc9d0c_o

A little disturbing
This was a church service prop last week, but I think it frightens me.

Marketing FAIL
Note the expiration of the offer. Today. This came in the mail yesterday.

New blossoms
Don't think I've ever noticed my hedge blooming before.

Scooter crash
Cute visual display. Obviously not a real crash.

WireTap Demo Fail
C'mon, Ambrosia. This sort of thing is foolish. I don't care about installing the demos, and you go part way to letting me choose to skip them, but why am I not able to uncheck more than 3 MB of useless support file stuff?

Mood=unhappy
3502180363_fd3791f65a_o

Free Universal Pass
Universal mailed 1-day, 2-park tickets to a random group of central Florida residents, and I was on the list. There's also a coupon for up to six more people for $50 (normally $65 for Florida residents and either $85 or $90 for nonFloridians depending on if they're purchased online or at the gate. Now just to figure out when to go and who wants to come.

Twoosh Easter Egg
Twitterrific 2 for iPhone has an Easter Egg that not only echoes the audible Twoosh notification from the desktop application, but also throws up this splendid visual Twoosh!

Customized PT Cruiser
Pretty retro. Seen near University of S. Florida.

Twitterrific App Preview
Someone pointed out to me that a Twitter post I made right after the public preview of Twitterrific 2.0 had been used in one of the application preview images after it was made public a couple days later. Probably explains the slight increase in new follower frequency I've been experiencing.

Gallery Eclectic Bistro
Very tasty restaurant in Tampa. Highly recommended.

Fry art
Cousin's son got artistic with his french fries.

Drainage fail at Hollywood Studios
I think Disney has a problem.

Whoopsie
Must invoke powers of zen. The fact that I mistakenly ordered replacement foil and cutter block in black instead of silver is *not* a crisis. Shaver will still operate exactly the same way. Color matches the bottom portion. Not a crisis. Zen. Inner peace.

Waiting
3573248299_c57db6bc6d_o

Close-up tiger
In the tiger pop-up window at Busch Gardens. He was yawning a big mouth, but I missed it before the camera shutter tripped.

New cellular radio for alarm system
After three late or no-show service calls, I'm quite confident my troubles with alarm monitoring are behind me. Old radio is gone. New radio is confirmed communicating with the company. Best of all, the tech who came was an installer with more clout than a regular technician. A tech would have been required to bill me $149 for this radio and I'd have to suss out whether I deserve to pay that with the company later. But this installer didn't bill me anything at all. Yay him.

Playing Wii with friends at Melvin's house
3602337196_9018ba53b0_o

New weird vehicle
The model name said "Cube." Nissan, I think. And I thought the Scion box truck thingie was crazy!

Temporary server home
Finally got around to moving the old Mac G4 which holds my web photo albums into the closet, out of the way, making room at my desk to get the Mac Pro currently set up on my dinette table moved into the den. Eventually, the Mac Pro will power the new and improved photo server, and this G4 will go bye-bye.

Old Opel
Saw this vintage car while driving back to work after lunch.

How to peg a CPU—part 1
The Quad G5 Macintosh is encoding Quicktime DV files to MP4 media to place online. For some reason, Quicktime itself never seems to take full advantage of all the CPUs, but MPEG Streamclip does!

How to peg a CPU—part 2
Meanwhile, over on the dual-core, 64-bit Windows box, Windows Media Encoder is slamming out WMV files of the same videos.

Future video director
One of my best friend's younger daughter. I think she's a natural.

Some people on the other side of the pool are about to get wet
3618131215_78a0e828ef_o

Workspace, at last!
3618951720_b331e9644f_o

Upgrade eligibility
3630303652_b0cd161b3c_o

Render progress
That's 26 files, 31 minutes each, rendering full DV files at 6.6gb per show out to disk. It's been going since a bit before 7pm and it's now 8:30. Maybe—just maybe—it'll finish by the time I go to bed tonight. And then there's 26 more from the first season (this is the second) that I'll hopefully do tomorrow night.

HOT
Officially the hottest my car's outside temp display has ever shown. Actually, it was 109 but dropped a degree by the time I took the picture.

Just got my new edition AP Stylebook
My previous copy was from the late 80s that I had used in college! I was long overdue for an update!

Burn, baby, burn
When you've got the horsepower, you find ways to use it. Averaging 550-600% usage on my quad Mac Pro (virtualized 8-core thanks to Nehalem technology) while encoding DV video files to MPEG-2 required by a broadcast affiliate. Yes, about seven hours total to encode 52 half-hour shows, and it will be churning well into the night—but at a bit more than four minutes per half-show, it's going almost three times faster than my Macbook Pro laptop encoded them last year. Had to re-encode for updated end credits.

Garmin nüvi 775T
Just arrived today. Have wanted something like this for several years.

Nullmart
Though I don't know why two friends with whom I shared this saw "New Customer? Start here" text, Walmart apparently thinks less of me than even a New Customer.

Planter antics
Kids in my community repeatedly foul up the entrance planter.

Very big flag
3684654495_c18a25c88d_o

In position for downtown Orlando fireworks
3688943314_c7d32147e4_o

Sunblock FAIL: I missed a spot!
3692414972_bc6d3e3161_o

This will nicely accommodate all I need for my day excursions in England
3701261241_bb534c9167_o

Oh thank you, GPS, I thought I was off-roading
3702096746_f6fa94440f_o

Location of TJA reunion
3704197677_3ede9410c5_o

Crash and reboot
LOL—the in-flight seat-back entertainment screen for the adjacent passenger crashed just after we landed. Let it never be said Linux never crashes.

It was supposed to have been held
As the confirmation sheet on the left indicates, my mail was supposed to be held from July 9 through today, July 21. This is the pile I found in my mailbox when I arrived home Monday evening, July 20, and some of it had clearly been in the box longer ago than Monday. I have lived at this address for exactly four years and have submitted hold mail requests 5-6 times. Not a single time has the request been processed properly. Even if all this was placed in my box only a couple days ago (probably not), I know for a fact the last time that my mail wasn't held in any way. All prior times I had indicated that I would come to the post office and pick it up, yet each time I arrived, they did not have my mail and said that it was on the truck and out for delivery.

Tampa Junior Academy reunion
3756835514_de6ff1ff5e_o

Crud—something fell from a tree and dented the hood of my car 🙁
3781965958_0f2d072707_o

Permanently closed
3782064457_6c82c8e360_o

Something tells me I might be overdue for a new chair mat
3797387592_8c1ac77c88_o

First three cell phones I ever owned
I'm turning these (plus an old AT&T freebie that I never once used) in for recycling. Totally forgot how HUGE the first two were. Left: Nokia 2160i on Bellsouth Mobility that I only used to make rare outgoing calls. Cell service was expensive back then. I also carried a pager at the time and that was the number I gave out. Middle: Mitsubishi T250 plus the thick extended life battery on AT&T. I bought this one because, at the time, it was about the only one that offered a reasonable screen on which to browse mobile web. Right: Sony Ericsson T68i, the first of three SE phones I owned and I would probably still use SE phones if it weren't for the iPhone. After the T68i I used a T616 that I later gave to my dad but it's now dead and gone. Then I had a S710a that I sold to someone on eBay after I bought the first iPhone. That first iPhone went to my cousin's husband for a time when I got the 3G (not 3GS). I then sold the 3G to Gazelle and now have an iPhone 4. (Yep, I updated this caption one last time for my phone history. Likely won't update it again whenever I upgrade from the iPhone 4. Putting this one to rest. 🙂

Lori's girls are having a good time learning about water current
3804605976_d6e546d75c_o

Alligator feeding time at Orlando Science Center
3804213473_a293ddcd00_o

Petting alligators
3805077150_ca00420259_o

Petting alligators
3805078596_27c39a0ab6_o

Shakers!
"Shakers" refers both to what these are and where I am eating.

Hygene priorities
So let me get this straight: we go around touching door handles, elevator buttons, copier buttons, telephones, ad nauseum, but we install new biometric punch-in clocks for hourly employees and suddenly we need hand sanitizer bottles?

New Sun Chips flavor—yummy
3834367246_422465dd86_o

Yay—got my desk cleaned up finally!
3836421921_2026d2e842_o

I got mine
3864599821_0cfe34742b_o

Lucky odometer reading
3868295758_94698835c4_o

Ready for Winter Springs groundbreaking
3867596025_840e11c85a_o

Installing Mac OS X 10.6
3868752775_067219a963_o

So close, but so far away
It takes a LOOOONG time to copy more than 700GB through USB 2.0. (I'm cloning my Time Machine drive to a new drive because the old one is ailing.) And don't let that elapsed time fool you. It's not 17 hours in. The number reset after one day, so add 24 hours to that. Elapsed time is now actually 41 hours! Hmm, is a bit less than 5MB/sec the expected throughput of a USB 2.0 copy?

Trans-Georgia Express
3913157794_6e02ffd160_o

Geekbrief meetup
3913892624_6cf31deff6_o

Geekbrief meetup group photo
via Neal and Cali's camera

Anybody want me to look for something for you?
3916054882_bf7d2b1c71_o

Inside McKay's
3916201056_4e18c8e03e_o

Cindy Coolidge and John Jones wedding
3916683514_16a7419461_o

Cindy and John getting away in a Studebaker
3917163914_16de5caacd_o

Trackless kids train ride at Hamilton Place Mall
3916658253_511c751b42_o

Doin' that video editing thang again
3947999540_1a33ef30b9_o

See that? That's the day @CaliLewis retweeted a photo I posted. Yeesh! 🙂
It was the photo of a sign in the bathroom at the Alachua, FL Moe's restaurant.

I guess I enjoy torturing myself
3951848013_1be42227f1_o

Looks like we ended up with an unofficial uniform today
3952736335_6c137a666f_o

Here's what I'll be staring at tonight and tomorrow
3954507632_648b393462_o

Kind of delayed, but my notification finally arrived
3955813344_deea52b199_o

My view for much of today
3958398303_1740fb16bc_o

The aftermath
3959912213_7eb8352cfa_o

I can haz car title!
By the way, for those of you kids who've never paid off a vehicle before, this is what's known as a pink. That's right, just like airplane black boxes aren't black, pinks aren't pink.

Very pleased with how this layout came together
3987532317_84f121a235_o

Mmmm Sweet Tomatoes
3987968881_ce9dc5f18b_o

I eat tapes for lunch
3992932173_3262098296_o

Today's accomplishment
4009751438_bb664e66a2_o

Found my favorite childhood book
Have a look at all the scanned pages at flic.kr/s/aHsjDNJoSo

Country Bear Jamboree finale
4021146280_bc842fbd95_k

Two-color Cinderella's Castle
4020387513_bc2eea9207_o

Cinderella's Castle off angle
4020388495_0cfbff79e9_o

Aaaiiiieee! George Scaife is back!! Nooooo!
Who is George Scaife? Only the most overused and most totally bogus name in spam you ever did see!

¡Por favor manténgase alejado de las puertas!
I absolutely love that Disney is actually capable of poking fun at itself! I snapped this last weekend but forgot to upload it. I may have to get one!