Moving away to blogger

Due to the limitations of the programs/server setup I’ve been using (read: “good enough” and “crappy,” respectively) to build this-here site, and the direction I have ended up going with it, I have decided to move my site to a “free” blog host: blogger. Why, specifically?

Well in actuality, I started blogging a handful of years ago. I actually started on blogger, before google was even involved. But it wasn’t “mine,” in the sense that it was “random bob DOT blogspot DOT com” as opposed to “randombob.net,” and I didn’t have the freedom to share photos & videos the way I wanted to. Essentially, I’m a control freak at my heart and I wanted control and freedom.

Enter iWeb. Preinstalled on my Mac, I gave it a try and fell in love with the idea of being able to do my site, my way. But of course it’s super-simple, and simply limited in functionality. OK then, enter Rapidweaver. It’s a lot like iWeb, but powerful. Cool, I can do this! I can create a site for my blog/photos/movies/whatever pretty easily.

Then, enter reality. My site turned into mostly a blog with some links to some pictures. Which isn’t bad at all, hey I can’t knock it if I’m doing it, right? Anyway, the problem was that the solution I’d grabbed onto was not optimal, to say the least. Rapidweaver is NOT ‘blogging software,’ it’s web-building software that has a blog functionality. Hosting on MobileMe, while essentially free since I have the service for other reasons, has huge limitations, namely a lack of php and mySQL support.

Note: don’t ask me what the hell these are or why or how they work or the square root of pi, I do not know, I only know that I NEED them to run server-side blogging effectively. Thanks :-)

Now I could continue to host my site myself and “do it my way,” but then it’s going to cost money. First, I have to purchase space on a real server, which costs money. Second, I have to buy a “plugin” or two or twelve to USE a good blogging platform WITHIN my Rapidweaver-created site; these also cost monies. And honestly, it’s not much money. But it’s money, and for what? A partial solution?

Let’s face it: doing a blog is a lot like a popularity contest: you want people to notice you and have something exciting to say about what you’ve shared, preferably “OMG what a MAGNIFICENT POST you totally rock I’m not kidding I’m totally going to follow you and hang on you’re every word you’re a GOD.” I’m not winning this popularity contest. I have nothing super-special to share. I’m but one ‘bob in a sea of literally BILLIONS of websites, and a lot of those are blogs. And a lot of those blogs are a lot more important than lil’ ol’ me. So why should I bother spending money to try to win a popularity contest that for all intents & purposes, I shouldn’t have even entered?

Answer: I shouldn’t. Instead, I should relent, admit my mistake, and sheepishly re-enter the fold.

Done, and done.

Battlestar Galactica Under Review

I was tipped off to the show by a handful of people. Most said, if I liked Lost – which of course I do – then I would probably also like Battlestar Galactica. OK fine, after a few years of not watching it, I figured I’d take a chance and throw it on the ol’ Netflix Queue.

Received and watched the first disc, which was basically just a miniseries. I liked it. The concept of the show and the themes it dealt with were pretty interesting; a story about humanity and our sins and shortcomings, and what it means to “be alive,” and what it means to earn it. I liked the concept quite a bit and added the rest of the discs for season 1.

So far I’m halfway through the 3rd disc of that season. And right about now, it’s starting to lose it’s appeal ever so slightly.



“Frak this”
OK I get it: it’s on a cable channel that doesn’t like to allow cussing. I get it. But? Seriously? “Frak?” And they use it so damned much. I must admit that I’d really prefer they used the workarounds we’re all familiar with instead, so that “I don’t give a frak, ma’am” would actually be easily translated into “I don’t give a crap, ma’am.” See? Both avoid using “F*ck,” but one sounds like something you’re familiar with, with the other sounds like it was designed to make you laugh at its ridiculousness.

This may sound like a strange critique coming from a guy who says “f*ck” instead of “Fuck” in his own site, but I maintain: they’re different. You read “F*ck” and in your mind you’re saying “fuck,” whereas you hear “frak” and you just laugh out loud (lol). So there.


Logical inconsistencies
The humans in this show are running away from the robotic workers they created that revolted. They are faster, smarter, stronger, blah blah blah “I’ll be back” and all that BS. So. They seem to be one step ahead of us and have huge computational advantages. HOWEVER, I just got through watching an episode that contained not one, not two, but THREE logical inconsistencies in just one section. I shall now bore you with the details:

A fighter pilot – human – shoots down one of the robotic space fighters. They collide and both wash up on some moon. The human pilot finds the wrecked – I use this term loosely – robot fighter. She finds it and wouldn’t you know, it’s bleeding. Why? Because they’re alive, which is a clever plot development, EXCEPT that we already sort of know this because they have human-like models, and it’s also enormously stupid. Why? Well if you’re building a being whose purpose is to fly around in the vacuum of space and kill things, you don’t want it to be organic because then it’s for more susceptible to failure and has to have life support systems. The robot army would have noticed this, and would not have made a ship/robot that needed life support systems when they could have just kept it nuts, bolts, and circuits and had it live forever, essentially.

Now it gets worse. This pilot wants to fly the crashed robot fighter back to her ship. The problem? The ship is a being unto itself, it is not piloted by a robot, it is the robot. Now, I’m not a scientist, but I’m pretty sure that a mouse couldn’t crawl up my dead ass and find levers to control functions like my arms and legs and speech; I’m me, there’s no controls for that, the controls are my brain. Well it’s the same with this ship – it’s “alive,” it shouldn’t have controls.


Except it does. Which is utterly ridiculous, because if it has a “brain” to control these functions, it shouldn’t have levers and stuff.

Thridly, let’s not forget she shot it out of space. This created bullet holes. We saw these as she walked up to it. Well, it turns out that apparently you can just stuff a jacket into these holes and properly seal a damaged ship for space flight. With a parka. Seal. A. Space. Ship. With cotton.

… rrriiiiiigggghhhtttt…


But Still
It could be intriguing. I can see why people would recommend it to followers of Lost. And I think that I have the time to spare on my Netflix queue, that I can give it time to develop. More time, that is. See if it finds its stride before I find my blanket and pillow, or worse, my laptop and a long streak of hate to spew.

I’ll keep you updated.

About the new house: the loan

We were notified in the middle of May that the seller’s bank – the ones with final say on the short sale approval – were going to accept the terms of the sale as they were. Great! The next day, we start getting our ducks in a row, signing stuff, getting loan approvals, all that good “buying a house” bullsh*t.

Side note: ducks in a row? Why do we put ducks in a row? Why not a column? Or a group? Eh.

You’re going to crap your pants when I tell you how much the loan rates were when we went to get the loan: 4.875 with no points. Today only. Well it just so happened that today was the day anyway, so we brought all of our paperwork in to get it started.

This, of course, was where we ran into our first brick wall: the credit union would no longer approve the loan due to a couple fraudulent collections on my credit. OK fine. We’ll check with the devil (B of A).

Turns out, B of A can do it, but they’re going to have to go through FHA to do it. Rates are the same, but we need need NEEED the signed approval to get started. The signed approval that we didn’t have yet. That we had been asking for and not receiving. The one that was, I guess, the holy f*cking grail and we were going to have to wait until Indy got back from some f*cking jungle to deliver the thing to us.

Two weeks. Two weeks of bugging our realtor to find out what’s going on. Two weeks. You know what happens in two weeks? Rates shoot up to 5.375, and I turn into a big green monster that you wouldn’t like when you make me angry, that’s what. Yes, I’m very happy about this development, you can tell. Why? Because I desperately wanted to pay an additional $18,000 over the life of the mortgage, that’s why, you silly readers, you. Then do you know what happens next? You loan officers decide that they don’t need those silly signed approval letters to continue and lock your rate anyway, so let’s just get started, shall we?

Now this is where I went from rage, to confused and divided rage; dark green to light green. At first I was pissed the hell off® at my realtor, because for these two weeks, we’d bug him every other day to get something done about this. His response every time was “well they haven’t emailed me. We just have to wait.” When I found out that this two week delay had just cost us $50 a month, I wanted to have him pay for it or something. Shake well before opening, then begin rage – serves four.

Then, the bank went ahead and decided to process it as it was, with just the paperwork we had, which – as you may recall – did not include the signed approval. And I became confused. Who do I hate now? Do I hate both? Do I do this equally? Because if we didn’t need the g0damnedmutherf*ckingpieceofsh!t@sswipesonovab!tch document to lock in the rate, why the hell didn’t we lock the rate at 4.875 two weeks ago?

Anyway. I’m going to Rage-aholics Anonymous and seeing a therapist to try and overcome my anger over the matter. One thing that I’m trying to do to ease the pain is to consider what we’re getting versus what we were going to get initially:

When we first were told to get our ducks in a row in January, we went to secure the loan. Rates at that time? 5.375%. So technically, we’re now paying exactly what we were going to be paying when we initially “bought” the house.

Still, though: $18,000. You feel me.

Four dogs = lots of dusts

Four dogs. Let me say that another way: 4 dogs. And where there’s four (4) dogs, there’s bound to be dust, apparently.

I have been blaming it on The Girl for about as long as I think I can get away with. Hell it could be her, all I’m sure of is that it’s not me (nothing is my fault. Ever). But it’s probably the dogs. You see that picture? Click on it. You know what that is? It’s not a dog. It looks like a dog, yes I know. But it’s not a dog. It’s just dog fur and probably a little dandruff and maybe other stuff I don’t want to envision, but mostly fur.

We cannot seem to get ahead of the dust at our place right now. We dust, we vacuum, we dust, and then we have to dust again. It’s ridiculous, and dusty apparently.

Miles was the culprit. I went to pet him and I ended up having to shave my hand so I figured it was probably time to take the brush to him. Little did I know, right? Every swipe yielded a new dog; I have mini-Miles running around everywhere now and they’re barking and yelping and chewing up tennis balls. And they’re all deaf, just like him, which is fun.

Anyway. New house should be here in a couple of weeks. I have a few updates to mention regarding that, but suffice to say that all seems to be going well at this point, minus a frustration or two.

News to come. Stay tuned.

As Promised: Van Duzen Gallery

A (random) man of my (random) word, I deliver to you now: my newly-updated photo galleries. See? I wouldn’t lie. Much, anyway. And definitely not if I know I’m going to get caught. And definitely not on the internet (that was a lie).

So as it were, I went through some of my old galleries and decided to delete some. I found I took a look at these now and thought to myself why the frick did I put up a gallery dedicated to bunions or something like that. Anyway, what may have seemed like a good idea at the time proved to have worn its welcome, so there’s a good handful or two or three or possibly more that have now gone, gone away.

I did keep some old ones up, though. In fact I just plain changed my plans once or twice, and managed to waffle quite a bit on it all. At first I figured that I’d just set up a few galleries and rotate them. This would keep them more “fresh” and easier to manage in the long run. However it would preclude any direct linking to any galleries, as they would cycle and thus any links would be live and relevant for only a very limited time. So it seemed like what I was doing in the first place was best actually.

I do plan to incorporate one more current idea, though. I had the thought to create a “recent pics” gallery. I will do this. In fact I’ve already created it. It’s not live right now or anything, but it’s ready to go, once I have some pictures that are both recent and not in a newly created gallery.

Yes, that’s right, as promised, I have randomly delivered my Van Duzen gallery. Get to it with that link directly, or go and browse the photos main page and end up there eventually. Your choice.

Quick Update: New Pics to come soon

Not Much to share, if anything, other than the fact that a couple of days ago we went out to the river, and I went photo-crazy. I got some good ones of the puppies, and a good one or two of the surrounding areas. I would have gotten more, but I was trying out a fish-eye lens attachment and wasn’t aware until I got home and inspected the photos in post-processing, that they’re about as sharp as the blunt end of President Bush.

Anyway. I got a bunch of good ones too, so I plan to put them up here shortly. Only real holdup is that with the recent switch back to RAW & Aperture, it will require I rebuild some of my old photo albums as well. Once it’s all up though, I’ll link to it. In the meantime, enjoy the teaser image that accompanies this post.

It’s a really great image actually, and I wasn’t even aware it was going to be so good when I took it. It was one of those, “hey what do we have here,” as I was editing away at my pictures. A few color choices to really bring it out, and wouldn’t you know it? A winner.

Anyway. keep your eyes open for the rest of them ;-)

Conan O'brien is not funny

It’s supposed to be higher-level comedy. Or so I’m told. But holy hell, I just can’t get into the guy. He’s not funny, he’s just awkward. Hell there’s nothing wrong with being tall dude, but damn, you gotta tell some jokes that actually land once in a while if you’re going to be a comedian.

It used to be – in the era of Dave vs Leno – that I’d start the night watching Leno. Yes I’ll admit it, on his own I think that Leno is actually funnier; his monologue is better, and I liked most of his skits better than Dave’s, and loved Headlines especially (Stupid Human Tricks? Not so much, Dave). Then when that second commercial break came, it was off to watch Letterman. Why? Because when it comes to guest interaction, Dave makes every interview fun. Especially the odd ones, the awkwards, the just plain rude & nasty ones.

Now though, Dave just plain has the upper hand. I’m not sure where Conan O’brien fits. But I think it’s definitely not The Tonight Show.

Being funny-looking isn’t enough, Conan. You’re not funny. That’s what’s missing from your act – comedy. Think I’m being harsh? Think it’s wrong to just blithely say Conan O’Brien is not funny? OK then, you made me do this. You made me link you to some good Conan Tonight Show goodness. Enjoy, b*tches.

There. It’s over now. Don’t ever make me do that again. Ever.

at&t Yahoo! users are 64% retarded (republican)

I don’t know why it is, I mean the internet is supposed to be democratizing society. Why then, are the majority of at&t Yahoo! Users so damned republican? go ahead and click the graphic to the right, take a look for yourself:

Talk about shaking my faith in humanity. That graphic is my own screenshot of the unspeakable. I mean, these people are not voting with knowledge on the subject. What has he done so badly with the economy? I don’t want to be an apologist or come of that way, I myself voted “Fairly Well” because I don’t agree with everything that’s been and is being done. I didn’t and don’t agree with the bailouts. I think that the Gov’t should have taken over the companies – temporarily – and removed all the head management, and taken back the majority of their pay to offset the costs of their f*ck-ups. You know, all the guys that try to say their worth multiple millions a year, for the *quality* job they did driving their companies into bankruptcy.

Hell, I can drive a company into bankruptcy. Half the price, guys.

Anyway. No not everything that’s being done is “perfect” in my opinion either. But it’s a change of course, and if they (Big Business) won’t regulate themselves, then yeah, I think WE should. That IS government’s role, after all, to be a regulating body.

How can you have had to deal with bush (capitalization purposeful), and now that we’re making progress, say that it’s all hunky-dory? How the hell did these polled people say that we were on the right track when bush (capitalization purposeful) was in charge and letting all the people with money rob those without and generally letting the economy collapse upon itself under the weight of its own greed, and then when we’re trying to repair that damage, say that Obama is doing a screw-up job?

Faith. Humanity. Shaken.

Working out and warming up: Warming up is working out :-)

When I first started working out “for real,” I wasn’t much into warmups and light sets. The way I figured it was, if I wanted to move a lot of weight, I really needed to hop right to it, before I wore myself out.

This, of course, led to injury upon injury. Eventually I wised up and started to at least warm up before I began my workouts, if only to get my forearms moving around a bit and be generally more limber. However, this didn’t mean that I actually did “warmup sets” or anything, I was still jumping straight to my heavy weight sets right after a few times of going through the motions.

Earlier this year – between an illness or four – I started a new program at the behest of a friend: the “Bill Star 5x5 routine.” The routine was working for me for the most part, save for my arms which managed to lose a little bit of size during the stint, which I attribute to the nature of the beast; it seems it’s more a routine thats focus is the core, not the extremities. However, the thing that sticks with me the most is the work-up mentality of it. You start low, and work to your highest weight, at the last set. I was skeptical at first, but I have to admit that I was able to work my weights up rather steadily using this method.

Which is basically a “warmup” method of working out.

I think a lot. I think a lot about what would be at-the-time very out of place things. Like when I’m walking around at work, I am feeling my muscles work and contemplating the efficacy of things like workout routines. And it has begun to make a lot of sense to me, that warming up makes me a better… well I don’t know that I’d call myself a bodybuilder – I’m a skinny twit with just the inklings of decent form factor – but yeah, for lack of a better term right now, a bodybuilder. Because it makes me more alert. Not just in mind, but in body. Get the blood really going there, work up to the heavy stuff, and when I get there, I’m as loaded with blood and energy at the spot I need them as I’ll ever be.

I’m dumping the whole Bill Starr thing right now. Not because it hasn’t proven effective, but because it’s not allowed my arms to keep pace, which is important to me. I think I’ll cycle back to it or at least to something similar, but regardless, I do plan on taking the experience of the work-UP philosophy with me to other routines.

I’m hoping it will help me grow my arms & shoulders faster than I ever have. We’ll have to wait & see, though.

This last year has conspired against my workouts

It just seems that everything has conspired to work against my workout routines. It started last year around this time, when I decided that I needed to take some time off. “Time off” was supposed to consist of a month or so, followed by a “lumberjack” workout routine for a couple of months, followed by a few weeks off, then back to the grind. However shortly before I was going to start into the new routine(s), we found puppies. Puppies, of course, take time, and though other things gave, so did my workouts.

I decided in late 2008, in talking with a friend, that I was going to start the whole “Bill Starr 5x5 program,” which I decided would begin after a hiatus that would carry me through X-mas and New Year’s. Problem was, right about the time I was supposed to rise up and become a huge, monstrous beast, I instead fell down into a spiral of sickness.

I don’t normally get sick much, at least not since I really started being more physical and taking good care of my temple.

But this year has been hell for it. It seems like it’s a process of get sick, get better, get sick, improve, lather-rinse-repeat. And I’ve been pretty faithful to that process during the first half of this year, too. And it’s not just me. I’ve casually talked with a lot of casual people about this casual subject, casually of course, and it’s been affirmed and reaffirmed (lather-rinse-repeat) that it’s been a bad year for that sort of thing; I’m apparently not the only one that rarely gets sick that’s spent a lot of time sick this year.

Anyway, it seems that once I get over one thing, I get started on another. Just when the sick season is passing, I find myself just too damned tired to do any workouts. Hunter was injured not that long ago, but a side story to that was that I got absolutely no sleep that night. My body is still trying to recover that lost time, too. And with my work schedule and my body’s desire to get up at specified times (driven, I think, by a desire to feed the puppies before they feed themselves), it’s hard for me to catch up. Because I don’t get home until like 10:30pm, so the earliest I’m really in bed by is 11:15, usually closer to midnight.

That was today’s culprit: still catching up on that missing sleep. I feel good though, I think my cat-nap today might be the one that pushes me up to where I’m supposed to be. But darned if it didn’t preclude a workout for the day. But I really need to get back into some sort of groove with this thing. I knew in early January that what I was doing wasn’t working out all that well: my work shirt shirts started to feel loose on my arms. It was the case that I could/would pull them up and they’d stay up at the top of my forearms or the bottom of my upper arms. Now though, it’s gotten to where I have to roll them so they’ll stay. This is not kosher, not at all.

The forecast doesn’t look that good right now, either. We’re scheduled to close escrow on this house we’re trying to buy late this month (we’ll see how that goes). I don’t suppose I’ll be working out much with equipment I have to take apart for the move (it takes forever to put together, taking apart ought to be fun too). Then we move, which will probably push any workouts right off the calendar as well. Then of course, there’s the whole putting the workout room back together thing again (remember it taking forever to put together in the first place?), which will probably put me back on the waiting list for the gym until at least mid July, is my guess. Then, family comes to visit in August.

So. It would seem to me at this point, that merely a year after I was to begin working out hard & heavy again, I will actually get to it.

Just great; a wasted year. Now I won’t have the physique I want until I’m 50 I swear.

Land Of The Lost relents, Forces Will Ferrell Back on Us All

Land of the Lost opened this weekend, to dismal reviews. I just wanna come out and say it: when can we admit – as a people and a nation – that Will Ferrell is just not funny? Look folks, if you wanna pay some idiot large sums of money for having the same stupid look on his face at all times, I’m standing right here.

Stop sending the checks his way, OK? Send them to me. Christ, I’m going to have to put up a paypal donation button on this site, aren’t I? You’re gonna make me do it, aren’t you?

I’ll call it: The Stop Will Ferrell NOW donation fund.

An Exception (or two) to our Organic lifestyle

We do try rather hard to keep ourselves all-organic & pesticide-free, but there is an important exception we make in regards to the pups. Well, actually guess there’s one for us personally, too: cereal. Yeah. Have yet to find an organic cereal that tastes better than wet cardboard. Anyway, neither here nor there.

Yesterday I took the dogs out to the beach. We walked along the shore for awhile, and then we disappeared into the dunes 50-100 yards up the beach, and jogged back to the truck through & over them. I figured it would help keep the pups dry, and they wouldn’t need so much air-dry time when we got home before I could towel them off and let them inside to hang out with me.

However there was a downside. When I got home, in the first hour I was hanging about, I found not one, not two, but THREE ticks crawling on me. Yikes.

So although they’re on an all-natural diet, eat a lot of organic table scraps, and generally are in better health than most mutts, we do dispense with the organic-ness when it comes to tick & flea protection. I mean crap, I’m hairless and had three of them on me, imagine a hairy dog, running through the bush without the protection of Frontline Plus or some similar stuff.

Planned changes to the Videos page(s)

I’ve been contemplating a few organizational changes to the website recently. I’ve already started a bit, mostly unnoticed and unspoken of. For instance, you may have noticed (or, probably not) the addition of a “bios” link in the menu bar. Why “about” and a “bios?”

Well actually, the new “bios” is the old “about.” I wanted to have a page for each person of immediate importance to this site, which was under the “about” link prior. But I decided that I needed an “about this website” page as well, and “about” more aptly describes that, whereas “bios” best describes the whole “hey this is what you need to know about this person/beast/super-awesome truck.”

Anyway. That’s been done already. Now the main thing that’s been taking up some thought time on the side is my videos page. The way it works as of this writing, is that there’s ONE video page – the main page – and I have each “video” play right on that page. Which is cool, except that it means I cannot link to any specific video. For instance, I’ve in the past mentioned the addition of a new video, and said “hey go check out the video on the videos page” and then go on to say “it’s THIS ONE, check out THIS ONE” and do that by name, not by link.

Now I think I will change that. I’m going to set up the main page as a gallery page still, but each thumbnail will link to a specific page with that movie . This way, I can link directly to the movies from other pages (such as this one). This isn’t really an issue of yet, as I have a magical Ten whole videos listed & hosted. But if I do end up with a better camera body, you can bet it will shoot video too, and Hi-Def at that. So you can imagine that I’ll probably be more inclined to share some Hi-Def goodness, then, of our escapades (sorry, no sexcapades shall be posted).

Stay tuned: more changes you don’t care about and will never notice, on the way soon to an internet near you!

Moving back to DSLR will require some website work

Most – oh who am I kidding – ALL of my image files for the galleries on this website were referenced masters held in iPhoto. Since I’m going back to DSLR, might as well go back to shooting RAW as well, which means… back to Aperture. Which isn’t bad at all. BUT, moving my library back over for management means deleting the old iPhoto library to avoid needless file duplication (and save hard drive space). Which means that my website software is choking on the fact that the files it’s expecting to see, no longer exist.

So I’m going to have to redo my galleries, at the whole-gallery level. Because I don’t think it’s going to allow me to add just one or two images to a list of not-present images and actually function.

So, gallery updates will be forthcoming. I’ll let you know as they’re updated. Expect ones of the family to be updated first. Got some good shots of Chase & Hunter whilst ‘testing’ the new equipment, I’ll surely want to put those up first.

First Impressions upon returning to a DSLR

What was I thinking?
So it’s been a solid year & a half since I got rid of my old DSLR. In that time I’ve been trouncing around with a simple Point & Shoot. I knew it could never take pictures the way I could take them with the DSLR, but I figured that it was going to be “good enough” to tell my story. To hell with that last 5-10%, right? Not worth the effort. Or so I thought, anyway.

But when mine & my woman’s camera failed, it brought up these issues once again. I’m sort of a perfectionist, or at least have perfectionist tendencies, so yeah, that 5-10% kept calling out to me.

So, The Girl ended up with the Panasonic DMC-TZ5, and I ended up not going with this, like I said I would, but rather, I went all craigslist on it, and found a used DSLR with a long lens for a good price. Really good. I figured, it would let me “try out” the DSLR setup again without the associated costs. Make no mistake, the setup I have now – should I actually stay with a DSLR – will not be the setup I finish with, but it is acting as a good teaser.

Anyway, onto the images. Turns out, that 5-10% was made for me. I live there. I know these aren’t magazine cover quality images – yet – but I know there’s no way that I could have captured these any other way. The sharpness is a little lacking due to the lack of an Image-Stabilization-equipped lens, but geez, these were taken handheld, with a non-IS lens out to 300mm on a cloudy day (read: higher ISO). The depth of field, it has captured my heart once again. You just can’t get this with anything else:

click for larger versions


So What’d you get?
A guy on craigslist was listing a Canon Rebel XT with a whole sh!t-load of stuff: a 300mm Canon lens, the kit lens (of course), a fisheye lens, filters, flash unit, cards, readers, the works. Yeah, it’s older and doesn’t shoot video, but $300. Hell guys, I figured for that price, even if I used it once and decided “eh,” I could turn around and sell it for profit. I mean, it’s at least $500-600 of equipment.



What Now?
Nothing, really. I plan to get a backpack that will keep the camera at least mildly accessible with the long lens attached, seeing as how that’s how I roll. Got the one in mind already, but I don’t plan to even take that leap until I’m certain – CERTAIN! – that I do want to stick it out with the DSLR; I’m still in the “testing” stages at this point. But with such great new models to shoot now, I am thinking this is more or less a permanent development.

Leer 100XR and the case of the unlatching latches

When we bought the shell for the Tacoma, we selected from three different manufacturers: either it was going to be Leer, SnugTop, or an ARE. We quickly whittled that list down to two, because in talking to the local SnugTop dealer, we discovered that a) he was kind of a dickhead, and b) SnugTops are quite the pricey option for what seemed like the same basic set of features.

The ARE seemed nice and actually had the upper-hand for a good length of time in our 4-day search, as the window option we were looking at was better-implemented on their model. However, once we decided on the old, crappy-looking sliders so that we had maximum airflow, we found the Leer 100XR to be the best value: it had the sliders, a rear pop-out window, and the newer, “better-looking” rear glass panel with the quick-release twisty knob thing in the middle.

Many months later, we have discovered this is a flawed rear glass panel design if you have dogs.

We would go out on our little trips and find that one side or the other was unlatched. We sort of figured that it was probably from the bouncing & whatnot, but still this is not an excuse for the behavior, just an explanation. Anyway, it became an issue once on the freeway when I looked back and discovered that there we were, flying down the road at 70mph with the back door wide-the-f*ck-open. I decided that the dogs had to be culprit, and that it was probably due to them snagging on the emergency release cable.

That promptly got cut off.

So we’re good. No more accidental unlatches, problem solved, where’s my medal, right? I wish I could say that. Some time goes by, we find ourselves parked in a parking lot with a truckload of dogs as we stop inside to get this one thing real quick and then we’re be right back we promise be good puppies, and come out to see that the glass door is again wide open. No bumping, no jarring. No emergency release cable. How the hell did this happen? And thank goodness the dogs are still actually in the damn truck.

For a quick minute we thought perhaps someone had a great idea to try and open the door and steal some perfect dogs, before they realized that these perfect dogs are perfectly guarding the perfect truck with their perfect lives. But it happened more than once in more than one place, and eventually I had to take a closer look at the mechanism.

What seems to be the problem, is that the door latches are spring-loaded pieces of crap that require no more than a bump of the ‘lock mechanism’ – if you can call it that – to unload the clasp. So, take a new Leer shell, add four dogs, and you have the right recipe for an unsafe, unfit travel rig.

Now the ‘bob must put on his creative hat, and figure out a solution. He thinks he has one, but it will require some fabrication, and I might have to contract out that part of the deal. I noticed that the mechanism itself rotates around something that has what appears to be a threaded hole at its center. If it is threaded, then I think I might be able to rig up a guard that is secured there.

Bastards. They probably built that design flaw in, so that they could sell some sort of “guard” in the future for like $50 a pop or something.

My Salomons & The left-foot blister

I’m going to have to get some new shoes. Yes, even though I have gushed all over my faithful Salomons, these newest ones have done me wrong. I think it boils down to a simple case of “if the shoe doesn’t fit.” I need a half-size smaller, I think. Actually to be precise, my left foot needs a half-size smaller. No matter how tight I cinch the thing, no matter whether I pad with moleskin, my left heel will just not stay in the heel cup.

It became a big problem on my first Dolason Prairie Hike, the one with the internet stalker. At the time I thought it was just some debris had fallen into my sock/shoe and was irritating me. But I couldn’t seem to dig it out on the trail. When I got home and got the suckers off my feet, I found no real debris to speak of, but I did find one hellacious blister. Anyway, I tried to pad the back of the shoe with moleskin to take up the slack, but on the next trip to Dolason Prairie, it proved to be no match for the heel slippage.

The blistering was a duesy, too – it left me limping for the better part of a week, regardless of padding and bandaging. So I’m eager to avoid it if at all possible, which it seems should be possible.

The funny – or not, really – thing about this is, when I initially ordered them, I had what would have been the right-sized shoe in my possession to begin with. But I was hesitant and felt like it was going to be too tight, and sent them back for a half-size larger.

Oops. My bad.

Now, with possession of a new camera, I aim to clean them up, list them on craigslist, and buy a new set. That fits.