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photos.ALBj.net → 2022 → Miscellaneous 2022

Miscellaneous/random shots taken in 2022 which I did not include as part of any other set of photos.

#LeavesForDays #StraightOuttaMyYard
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Well, there’s a custom vehicle you don’t see you every day
Apparently this is a heavily modified 1948 F5 fire truck.

The Christmas storage shelves are at last back in order and put away
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Working smarter, not harder (see Flickr description)
For nearly 4½ years, I've unloaded one or two dozen cases of copier paper every couple months into the niche where I store them. Inspiration struck today when I suddenly realized I could simply drop the entire pallet into the niche! Granted, I had to slide the entire production copier to the left about 12 inches to give enough clearance for the pallet jack to make the 90° turn, but it works!

Favorite gas station (for now)
In spite of having numerous pumps that work VERY slowly (I can confirm pump 8 speed is good), and a horrible color to the overhead lighting (this photo is color corrected), this BP is my preferred place to get gas because they're always a day or two delayed in hiking prices after everyone else has jumped (e.g. about a 25¢ hike last night). And yet they don't really delay at all in reducing prices when everyone else comes down.

I would tell you to not be a dummy, but even dummies know how to do social distancing—what’s your excuse?
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I realize it’s coming in just a plain brown paper bag, but I know for a fact she’ll love what’s inside, and might love what’s NOT inside even more!
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My sister-in-law found an addictive little game in the Marshall’s clearance section—Shut the Box
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A beautiful Saturday afternoon at Liberty Park in Lake Mary
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Managing graphics and videos this weekend up at the camp—so glad my station is isolated in the translator booth in spite of fairly strict mask enforcement
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Paper shortages are real, y’all—a job tomorrow will basically use up what’s left here, then I simply can no longer do full bleed 8.5x11 booklets
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Saturday afternoon scenery at Camp Kulaqua—King Chapel
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Saturday afternoon scenery at Camp Kulaqua—Prayer Place
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Saturday afternoon scenery at Camp Kulaqua—Outdoor Chapel
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Saturday afternoon scenery at Camp Kulaqua—beautiful day for a boardwalk stroll
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If you ever hear me say I have to move a ton of paper, please believe me when I say I am really not exaggerating
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Another 1,000+ copy impressions today
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Having a splendid day trip for church retreat weekend
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Technology success story
After I left the communication department in 2017, I no longer had my 1-2 visits quarterly to the magazine mail service way down in south Orlando which I would often use as an excuse to have lunch at one of my favorite restaurants located nearby. Upon helping another department use this mail service this week, I offered to drive the postage checks down to the location and, of course, enjoy the restaurant for the first time since October 2019. I got all the way down here and was suddenly brokenhearted to realize I had taken the work truck and mistakenly left my wallet in my car back in Altamonte Springs. 🙁 And the restaurant unfortunately doesn’t accept Apple Pay. BUT—there’s a Bank of America diagonally across the street, and nearly all BoA ATMs now let you use an Apple Pay device instead of your debit card. A quick $20 withdrawal, and I’m now enjoying a helping of the best beef brisket in Orlando! (Sorry, 4 Rivers, Cecil’s has you beat, no contest.)

Thank you, BJ’s Wholesale, for the gas price break!
Most gas in my area right now is between 3.89 and 4.09. BJ’s Clermont was already good at 3.77. Offer for this month is 50¢ off per gallon after $100+ purchase in the store (which I needed anyway). 3.27 per gallon is great!

Peeps driving Twinkie race cars
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Another great weekend at Camp Kulaqua for Florida Conference Camp Meeting—I get to work with a fantastic media team crew
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Monday morning vibes—it’s been a minute since I’ve dug out my 60s/70s/80s playlist
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Before and after
One of the most satisfying parts of my job is when I can take an existing item produced in house for one of my office’s departments and dramatically improve it. (Please tell me you can see the difference!)

I may not be fond of mandatory equipment upgrades, but I want to keep my Spectrum internet alive—and the new box is admittedly tiny and cute
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Farewell to the two-decade legacy that was iPod
My 5th-generation iPod battery will never hold a charge again, but when plugged in, it still works just fine. I also still have my 3rd-generation iPod in a storage box, but it has refused to boot up even while plugged in for many years now.

Arrived this morning to discover the Extron input scaler having a conniption, so we had to improvise
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A van full of audio and lighting tech for coworker friend’s wedding reception tomorrow
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Time for the >6-hour monthly prison ministry newsletter job
Meanwhile, the other production copier is running 11,500 men's ministry certification cruise flyers!

Mom is gone, passed this morning—came to Tampa house and later saw this on the dining room table; I can’t even
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In spite of grieving the loss of my mother last Wednesday, Lori, the girls, and I enjoyed Father’s Day lunch at BJ’s with my dad who’s staying at my house the next two nights
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This many members of our family coming together is a rare treat—I just wish the reason for the gathering wasn’t because an important person is missing
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If you knew my mom and happen to be near my office, you’re welcome to stop by and receive a little gift treat and a copy of her life sketch and program booklet from this weekend’s memorial service
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How it started…how it’s going
My preferred paper is still suffering shortages. I HATE the brand I’m having to use as an alternative. Constantly jams.

We really need to talk about the elephant in the room
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I have been driving for 37 years; marking today as the first time I’ve had to crawl over to the driver seat from the passenger side because some doofus parked only about 12 inches from the driver side door
I’m just glad I had the van instead of my car—not sure I could’ve gotten across the car’s center console.

My and my dad’s birthdays (5th and 11th) are close enough to Independence Day that our parties tend to lean on that theme
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RIP Mophie hip/belt phone holster—you gave almost a decade of faithful service
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404 error: fossil fuel not found
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I’m not especially fond of dried berries, so I was amused—not annoyed—that this otherwise tasty snack literally only contained three blueberries
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Step one of voting #DeathSantis out of office
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Black Jeep of the family
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Working in the dungeon
I had fixed the problem with our HDMI>Ethernet baluns and thought I was all set for this night. Alas, some of the control room equipment still didn't like the balun signal, so I had to control slides isolated in a room away from the main auditorium. At least it was NICE and COOL in the room (mid 60s) rather than mid 70s in the auditorium!

Home for three of the four nights of the South Florida schedule of regional pre-session meetings of our constituency session
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That’s a wrap—celebrating completion at Applebee’s!
Marathon travel to eight locations all around the state for regional meetings is complete and a success. Thanks to Abdiel for treating staff to a late night dinner.

Pure unfiltered rottenness
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Spine-printing success (mostly)
Ever since my office acquired the booklet finisher, I’ve wanted to experiment with printing specifically on the square folded spine portion. Finally got the chance to do that today. It’s not perfect alignment, and the designer didn’t account for where the staples would go, but overall not bad at all.

Blanket buddies
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This is why you want a square-fold feature when you print booklets
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Whew—today is going to be a day
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I *love* the page programmer!
Customer wants sets of copies with different page-range sections printed on different paper colors. In the past, I'd have had to separately copy each color section, then manually collate. But no more—now I just define a range of pages to pull paper from one of six trays, each loaded with a different paper color.

I literally LOL’d
Many (all?) iOS apps have a description for why you’re being asked for your passcode. I guess the Publix pharmacy app developer just felt like being blatantly literal.

The dog strong-armed her way into her favorite spot, and I can’t tell if the cat is enjoying the snuggle and the pillow, or if he’s about to unleash terror
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Oh 60lb Cover weight Hammermill in 18×12 size, I have missed you sorely—welcome back to my print shop!
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Didn’t observe any appreciable damage in my neighborhood except for two large trees down and a third losing a major limb; all three in the park and didn’t hit any buildings—literally missed smashing a picnic table by two inches!
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Stumped trying to get left edge bleed with InDesign's Print Booklet tool
This post is for my friends who understand the printing industry. I am completely stumped. No idea how to solve this. I have a 12-page half-letter-size booklet set up in InDesign. I go to use the Print Booklet tool to automatically impose the pages into printer spreads. The booklet has ⅛ inch ink bleed, so the printer spreads are actually 11.25x8.75 (printed on 12x9 sheets) which gets trimmed to 11x8.5 then folded to 5.5x8.5. The problem, visible in the photo, is that the bleed only happens on the top, bottom and right. The ink stops on the left side right where it's supposed to trim, which usually leaves a teeny thin white line on the edge because trimming often has a millimeter or two margin of error. I have checked every setting I know to check and keep coming up dry. My only workaround is to manually impose the pages into a 12x9 document and print normally instead of using the Print Booklet tool. It's so frustrating.

My view today—operating graphics and videos for my office’s business meeting
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Awesome dinner prepared by my stepdaughter
After a very busy (but very good) day, it was a splendid treat to enjoy this dinner. My stepdaughter is studying culinary arts, and she plussed my idea for basic steak and baked potato into this masterpiece all with her own seasoning blend. And the she used a nondairy heavy cream to make the potato purée so my wife could also enjoy. I’d have never been able to guess there was no dairy (or gluten) on this plate! (Photo by my wife because I was too hungry and eager to snap one of my own!)

Today just keeps on giving
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Well-stocked once again
It’s a wonderful thing to have these shelves filled again with plenty of paper that is somewhat still scarce. And as for my favorite 12″×18″ Hammermill 60lb. cover weight sheets which is still very hard to find and that I normally only buy 3–4 cases at a time, my vendor found me an entire pallet that I got approval to buy—so I currently have more than 35,000 sheets of it!

Cute marketing tchotchke—a mini pallet full of sticky notes
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Nothing left but a memory
Spent the majority of a 22-year span of time in the building that used to occupy this lot. For the last few years, it was piled up with construction equipment for the I-4 expansion project. But that’s all gone as well. Now to find out who buys the lot from D.O.T. and what new business goes in.

Turkey 2022 was a success
My late mother was always the source of my holiday turkey fix. This year, my culinary school-enrolled stepdaughter stepped up and knocked it out of the park!

Oh nothing, just printing 14 *thousand* flyers to be distributed around the state
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Loads of fun at today’s office Christmas party, in spite of now being thoroughly sore and exhausted from A/V duty
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Milestone odometer reached on my car
Yes, the image is cleaned up in Photoshop because there was dust all over the plastic cover and a bit of camera shake blur. But no, I did NOT edit the numbers to create 88888.

Will you permit me to boast for just a second on my packaging tape box-cornering skill?
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Immortal umbrella
Four Graphics hasn't existed for many years, but I'm still friends with my rep, Debby. She gave this branded umbrella to me more than 20 years ago and it still serves me well. I've never known ANY other umbrella remain useful and undamaged after two decades!