They got the sirens loose, I ran right outta juice

Went up to Jacksonville this week. Barely spent any time IN Jacksonville though, as out of my 3 days there I spent one day in Daytona, and one in Tallahassee. This was my first time in Tallahassee ever. The drive over from Jax was nice, mostly 2 lanes but in nice tree-laden straights, with a few hills. Being from South Florida, land of flat and medium sized trees, these super tall trees always catch my attention.

This was my first time doing the store visit in Tallahassee, and it was nice. Smaller store, but it's laid out nice and the staff was very excited to have me there. They were all very cool and down to earth. Wish they were closer so I could visit more often!

After the visit I got to spend some time with Dana. I hadn't seen her in quite a while, and I came to realize that I had never actually hung out with her, just her and me. Carolyn was always there. It was nice! We drove around a bit and explored. She showed me Lichgate, this hidden little park with a huge sprawling oak tree and some community gardens. We also did the Museum of Florida History, a free (donations suggested, but not required) museum of natural history related to Florida. It was surprisingly nice! There were some very cool displays, including the inside of a Florida orange house, a 2 floor steamboat, and an upstairs area called "Grandma's Attic" which is full of many things for kids to play with. There's a surveillance camera that shoots a feed to an old style TV downstairs so that parents can watch their kids play without having to go up. After we drove out west a bit, and explored some neighborhoods. It was getting slightly foggy, so it was pretty cool!

Of course, I ended up leaving my Sunpass transponder in the rental car. I do too good a job hiding it behind the rearview mirror so I don't see it while driving, but it makes it so that I keep missing it...second time this happens! Thankfully they have it at Lost and Found and they will be sending me it this week.

Productivity...maybe.

I managed to finish editing the photos I shoot this week, today. And spent an hour organizing my scheduled Flickr uploads with loadlater. The website is cool, but like FlickrQ has some drawbacks. I'm very annoyed by the fact that the description field stops about 3 sentences in and you cannot write anymore. Also the interface has potential but is executed very poorly. It's too hard to see what's going on, especially when you have more than a few photos in the queue.

I might have to end up going with one of the desktop schedulers if they have a better interface that's easier to use. I'm still put off by the fact that the computer HAS to be on for it to work though. It limits me to posting only when my computer is on and online, and there's also the headache of which computer to use...since I won't have my home computer with me when I'm traveling for work, but my work one I dislike working with for photos. Not to mention that now Id have to actively take a step to have the photos upload (namely having to turn the computer on, especially on days I might not be using the computer in question) which sorta defeats the purpose of using the scheduled uploads. We shall see.

Angry cop was angry.

So I just had an interesting encounter with a very angry police officer.

I was driving on 75, when I passed a vehicle. I was not the fastest driver on the road, and frankly I was going about the flow of traffic speed. Said vehicle was following close behind another car. As soon as I pass the vehicle (and this passing was not done close the other car, nor at a fast speed), the car pulls out quickly behind me and turns their police lights on.

Great.

The guy is ON MY FUCKING ASS, driving like an asshole, as I'm pulling over. I can't slow down as fast as I'd like once I'm on the shoulder, because he's ON MY ASS. So I come to a stop, and instead of getting behind me he pulls up next to me. I figured he's gonna yell at me and drive off, or maybe tell me my back light is out. I roll my window down and get greeted with "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING" yell at me in the most unexpectedly abrasive and angry manner. I am very thrown off by this reply, and it takes me a moment to say in my most humble, yet confused, voice "I'm just trying to get home sir."

At my comment, rage explodes on his face and he grabs his radio, and yells at me "I'm on the way to an accident call, but I'm going to call another officer so he can take care of this." He calls but waits and gets no reply. He starts yelling to me again: "I'm on my way to an accident, and your stupid ass decides to blow right by a state trooper car. What the hell is wrong with you." He looks at me and I have nothing to say, because I am truly dumbfounded by this insane amount of animosity this guy is throwing at me. I'm also at a loss for what to do or say, because while I've been able to talk my way out of tickets before, this guy just opened up with hostility and irrationality. So I don't say anything but he immediately responds with "ANSWER ME!" I say "I'm sorry officer" and he doesnt let me finish talking, interjecting with "OH LET ME GUESS YOU DIDNT KNOW HOW FAST YOU WERE GOING." I reply (VERY calmly) that I did not say that. He said something else which I forgot and I reply again with "Officer I'm sorry but I never said that." He flips and screams "I cannot believe your goddamned attitude" and opens his door, slams it and comes over and asks for my ID. He takes it (doesn't take insurance or anything else and gets back to his car). He radios for a check on my license and starts mumbling to himself outloud again about how he cannot believe my attitude and how I'm wasting his time and he has an accident to go to.

At this point I'm starting to realize the internal war being waged in this guys mind...should he continue to fuck with me and make my life hell because I happened to pass his car (even though there were other cars driving the same speed and faster) while he was in the middle of having a titty fit, or get to the accident that he has already responded to. Those 20 seconds or so took forever, and he finally gets out of the car and hands me back my license.

He ask if I've had any tickets in the last 6 months. I say no, and he goes "Well you better damn not be lying, because when I check later if you do I'm going to issue a warrant for your arrest." He slams his door again, and then cuts me off as he gets back on the road.

If I'm going to get a ticket, I'm going to get a ticket. Like I said I've gotten out of them before but it's just inevitable sometimes. This guy has some serious anger issues, and I really hate the fact that people like this are out there enforcing laws. Obviously I caught him at a bad moment...but no police officer should ever allow those emotions to run so wild as to misuse their power. Granted, this wasn't a big deal and he left me alone, but I am just talking in generalities.

Here we go...

In the midst of my 3 weeks of constant traveling for work, and having attempted to switch over to blogger from wordpress, I've neglected my blog duties.

Needless to say I've been a little stretched thin BUT it's been ok. Nothing too mentally or physically taxing. This coming week I go to Jacksonville. I've put off working out my schedule after that, but now I need to wait til Monday because depending on how a meeting goes will affect the schedule. The last week of August I will be going to Memphis for a summit for work. This time I was able to rent a car, so no car sickness for me!

$5 days at Miami Metrozoo! (Zoo Miami)

Paola mentioned she wanted an adventure day this week. I had been thinking of many different options, but it’s just been too damned hot out for anything adventurous! I thought about Rapids, but it’s $40. Thankfully in the midst of my research I was reminded that the zoo was doing $5 days this week for 4th of July.

I had seen the promo before but all that popped into my head was “ugh that’s going to be so full” haha. This worked for adventure day though, even if it was packed it was only $5. Plus, I’d be able to get some photography done. So, having secured Friday off by working on the 4th of July, we made our way down to the deepest depths of South Florida. As anticipated, there were a lot of people. It was mostly manageable though, with the exception of the inside of some of the small buildings. I seriously don’t under stand what compels these idiots to bring a damned STROLLER inside a tiny room that is packed. Mind you, there is no child in the stroller, they are just rolling it around.

The heat was pretty bad most of the day, but through a mix of staying in the shadows and drinking a LOT of water (brought my Camelbak…but forget my cooldownz! boo) we managed to stay alive. Zoo was a lot of fun. As can be imagined, a lot of the animals were hiding because of the heat. The aviary was, as always, awesome.

*breath of relief*

This week was VERY much needed, for my mental and physical sanity.

Not only was I home the entire week, but I was fairly caught up on most of the things I’d fallen behind on the last few weeks/months. Granted, this now created a whole bunch of new things to be backed up on but…it just felt good. Relaxing. I was able to be more productive. I fell into a few bouts of laziness/distractedness, but I think it worked out well because I was truly getting a lot done the rest of the time.

I also started a soda diet. Regular exercise, via routine, seems to be harder and harder to accomplish with my schedule. It’s hard enough for me to focus on anything as it is, but with fact that I’m always going everywhere, mixed in with the fact that it’s been the hottest summer ever, it’s been hard to keep up with exercise. So I figured it was time to start working on the diet aspect of it. I’ve been doing pretty well with it…day two I messed up because I went to my grandmas to eat and she served me Coke and I didn’t realize what I was doing til halfway through the drink haha. Last night, day 6, I decided to reward myself with a Lipton Brisk iced tea as incentive to get a few things done. Otherwise, it’s been mostly water. Unfortunately, most of the juices and other drinks I’d want to drink instead of Coca Cola seem to have just as many calories/carbs/sugars AS coke. Shame.

A dilema of photographic proportions...

So I find myself in a dilema...or at least, until last night, I did.
I've been going through a lot of old albums since my mother passed away last year. Honestly, this trip down memory lane began at least a year or two ago, and came about in an attempt to connect with my childhood Walt Disney World memories. I dug up what photographic proof of my early bliss at the parks, and it made me happy.

These photos and memories took on a whole different significance after my mom passed away. The hours/day after she died were spent by me going through all of the albums in the front closet of her house. It was my immediately way to cope, I was not only reliving beautiful memories (which is what she wanted...she was very against sad wakes and everyone being sad) but also had something constructive to do, as I was going through these photo albums and loose photographs and sorting them.

I came upon the realization that I needed to have all of these photos scanned. I'd given it thought before, but the daunting task of digitizing thousands of photos always dissuaded me from taking it seriously. It still pushes me away. First off, the expense. There's a lot of photographs in here, and I don't really want to pick and choose...especially since I want to do this for the rest of my family as well, and there are tons of photos of all of the family in there. Second issue, is the quality of the scans. I've heard horror stories of getting tons of photos scanned by a company, and they ended up doing crappy auto-exposure corrects on them, or did a poor job of scratch and dust removal.

The third and biggest issue for me is the fact that these photo albums were not just a random collection of photos thrown into an album, but in many cases pieces of art, excellent displays of scrapbooking before scrapbooking was even anything popular. In short, these are the only tangible creations that I can remember my mother by. Sure...we have the memories. We have myself and my brother. We have all of the people she made smile in her life. We have all of those things to remember her by. But there's just something about having something to hold...something you've grown up with...that just makes such a strong impact...and this is it for me.

So if I were to take the photos out of the albums to photograph, a few things would happen. It would obviously be a much more intense and arduous process than just scanning the photos themselves. I tried to scan the pages but that didn't really work too well, the plastic sheet that protects the photos distorts the image a bit and the scanner light reflects off it. Another issue is that, with the older albums, once you unstick the plastic from the photos, the album pretty much falls apart. These things are 30 years old in some cases.

What I've decided upon doing is this: for starters, I set up a little rig to take photos of the albums open, so I can have a record of what they looked like. It's not perfect, I don't have the gear or the knowhow to make it look great and without some flash flare. But it will serve the purpose of having something to see thats a copy of the album. Then, I will have to take the albums apart and take all the photos out. I tried taking them out 2 pages at a time, scanning, and putting them back in, but it takes way too long and with the older albums just does not work.

I will be doing a few of the albums I have on hand, BY hand...that is to say, by myself and not some outside company. The dust/scratch aspect has me a bit worries, so I think I'm gonna keep that to a minimum. I will have to get the rest of the albums from storage and pick out the ones I want to photograph. Then destroy the rest as i de-photo them and send them off to be scanned in mass.

Online photo hosting: a peek into one of the worst designed concepts at the moment

Seeing as though it's the main reason sites like Facebook are as popular as they are, that there would be a myriad of wonderful choices in the web photo hosting world. Let me tell you, there are not.

To me, one of the biggest issues that ALMOST EVERYONE has, is a complete lack of true organization. This manifests itself mainly through the lack of any "folder within a folder" options (Skydrive now finally has this option). NONE of the online hosting sites offer this! Why is this important? Well, let's say I want to have a folder that is for photos of my Family. Cool! But how about I have the option to ORGANIZE the photos inside that folder, according to events? How could one do that, you might ask...why, by having the option to create SEPARATE folders inside the main FAMILY folder. Very simple, cut and dry. You might argue that some sites like Flickr let you use TAGS on your photographs, and that you could sort your photographs that way...but there are two issues with that argument: 1) I shouldn't be denied the option, especially since 2) There is no clean way to easy organize subsections of photos using tags on any website.

And speaking of organization...most of the websites seem to favor Facebooks bullshit assertation that what matters is what just happened...namely, that organization will be base solely on a matter of WHEN something was uploaded, not anything of the users discretion. Flickr falls into this too, where if you go to look at my SETS they show up in reverse chronological order, not an order in which I deem to be useful.

While I understand that there are a lot of disorganized people out there, this lack of an option to have a clean archive of your photos online is not helping the matter at all.

Another big issue with these sites is the lack of vanity URLS, which makes it harder to share these things. On facebook you can direct users to your profile with a vanity url, but not one for individual albums. Instead, you get some random bullshit ass # that's 20+ characters long. Ease of use in this case, is eschewed in favor of poorly thought out url schemes.

I think I'm going to test out Skydrive for now, for my bulk photo uploading needs. Here are some notes on why i didn't like the others:

Facebook: bad album organization, too many ads in the new photo viewer
Flickr: not good for large sets since it's set up more like a gallery for individual photos. Poor album organization
Google Plus: good image viewer and album views, but album organization itself is poor, and Picasa Web Albums is a huge mess. No vanity url
Skydrive: Some cool features, including album in an album. Photo viewer is pretty good. Only real complaint so far: no way to leave a comment on the photos.