Mama and Finn and I went to the Columbia Mall last night so I could find a new dress shirt and tie combination for my suit. I’m headed up to New York City to shoot photos at a fundraising luncheon featuring Hillary Rodham Clinton as a guest speaker, and a video I’ve had a large hand in producing.
Walking through the mall, we noticed several display advertisements for the University of Baltimore featuring the same look and feel that I designed two and a half years ago.
What better way to start off summer than with a date for tea with Mama and sushi for dinner with the family?
The weather in Columbia was perfect for walking around the lake, and we took full advantage of it.
Saturday was busy as well. We spent the day in the yard, cleaning up the hedge, weeding the garden, playing in the fort, and getting things done. In the afternoon we went up to our friend Jen’s ice cream party in the county, where we caught up with friends, chased bubbles, and enjoyed the sunshine.
On the way home we stopped off at Big Bad Wolf for dinner, something we don’t normally get to do given the location. Once we had sated our appetites with barbecue, we headed upstairs to start repainting Finn’s room.
Between the three of us, we got all but one wall done and cut in; we’ll hit the walls with the roller one more time and touch up the edges, but it’s almost done.
March 12, 2012
June 8, 2014
I found this little guy (or girl) in the garage the other night when I went out to find a part for the Scout, hiding under the engine block. Thinking it was some kind of gruesome Horned Widow Jumping Copperhead Recluse, I admit, I smushed it. Then I measured the span of its legs: FOUR FUCKING INCHES. I found out later it’s most likely a wolf spider, harmless and beneficial. Hopefully this one laid lots of eggs and left a family behind to patrol. I promise will leave future wolf spiders alone.
So the Mac Pro I wrote about yesterday looks like it’s a done deal. Tomorrow I drop off a check and roll out a 44-lb. hunk of aluminum on a hand cart. I spent my short lunch break flattening the drive and installing 10.6 from a thumb drive, and updated that to the latest point release. Then I went to put Mountain Lion on it, but got stymied by its age; it’s too old to support 10.7 in any form, apparently. Which is kind of fucked up, because it was the most powerful machine they sold at that time. There is a workaround to install it, involving a new graphics card and some bootloading trickery, but I think I’ll pass on that for now.
Either way, it’s a better solution than the G5s we’re using now; it has 4 internal drive bays so I can consolidate a handful of external drives into one enclosure. It should be much more stable than the current machine and I’ll bet iTunes is actually functional in 10.6 (the one we’ve been using liked to corrupt its own database like a baby pooping its diapers), which means reliable audio streaming might be a reality again. We were using the G5s as print servers, because everything past 10.7 doesn’t support AppleTalk. This workaround allows us to talk to our ancient LaserWriter 4000N, which doesn’t support IP printing; I’d never thought of using HP JetDirect before.
Right now we have a 1TB and a 2TB drive working as file storage and backup, respectively; I’d like to buy a new 4TB drive and consolidate files spread out all over creation, as well as have some room to put our burgeoning video library.
And, with aluminum prices being what they are, I can gut one of the G5s and make the purchase price back by recycling it.
Normally, I don’t repost stuff I see on HuffPost, but I like a lot of what this writer says: 10 Things I Want to Tell My Kids Before They’re Too Cool to Listen.
Figure out what you love and own it completely.
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes.
Right on.
From the Guardian: D-day landings scenes in 1944 and now. I love this stuff. I could spend all day looking at these.
My Flickr account stats spiked last week, probably because I shared a bunch of the weekend’s photos with friends. Yesterday I got another strange spike, this time from the r/AbandonedPorn subreddit (don’t worry, it’s safe for work). There’s a lot of nice stuff on there, and someone added this photo of mine:
It’s a shot I took of a diner in 1990 or so on 35mm film, somewhere on the west side of the Hudson by the Bear Mountain Bridge. Commuting to my parents’ old house in Putnam County, I used to find different ways to get across the river when traffic was backed up. At some point, I stumbled upon this place and had some film in my camera.
In the meantime, I inquired about a castoff Mac Pro at work today, and found that I can purchase it for a reduced price as a piece of depreciated equipment. Which means I’ve got a possible replacement for two balky 10-year-old G5s at a nominal price.
The Library of Congress Wants to Destroy Your Old CDs (For Science): To absolutely nobody’s surprise, scientists now say the CD format is less resistant to age than previously thought.
After a long two weeks of work, the yard sale went off this Saturday without a hitch. We drove around Friday night putting signs up amid the neighborhood, and by 7AM on Saturday there were people stopping to look at the stuff we hadn’t put out yet. Finley was very excited to help with the sale, enlisting Mama to bake brownies and muffins for her to sell along with a collection of My Little Ponies. She made a sign and set aside 10% for charity.
It was hard to see so much of her childhood disappear down the road; the guy who bought my backpack tried to talk me down from my price, but considering he’d gotten bargains out of me before that (and was not so subtly trying to send his wife away, who was prepared to pay full price), I held firm. He wound up wearing it home—they filled their car to the brim with other stuff—which was a fitting way to send it off.
Finn was the consummate saleswoman for the whole day, and got great responses from everyone who stopped by. She was out of brownies by 10AM.
People seemed to come in waves. There were few times when nobody was here, but every half-hour or so we got a surge of tons of people at one time. Most of the big stuff was gone by 10 but lots of odd stuff left too—things I never thought we’d sell. I was pretty lenient on haggling with people but a few came in so low I immediately played hardball and kept the price firm. $5 for something marked $40? Fuck off, lady. One woman asked if we took checks. An Asian fellow talked me down from $3 to $1 for a watch, then wanted to throw a $.50 shirt in for free. I made him dig through his pockets for the $.50 on principle.
Most people were very nice, however. At 11:55 a lady stopped by with her mother and waded through clothes for the next half-hour, finally stopping with a huge pile and the rest of Finn’s lemonade. It was so beautiful outside, we didn’t mind staying open an extra half-hour. We sold more stuff then, too.
Speaking of Finn, by 11AM she was sold out of everything, save one pony. Her total take was $19, which means the cuteness factor force-multiplied her sales by roughly 300%.
After cleaning up, we putzed around the yard for a couple of hours before going to the neighbors’ for a cookout, beers, and ice cream. All in all, a great Saturday.