Name Guessing

Three and half weeks to our grandson's due date and I've been thinking hard what his parents will name him. Albert seems to run in both sides of the family, but I doubt they'll use that one.  But there are lots of variations, like Alan, Alberto, Alfie and my favorite Alistair.

On the other hand, "J"'s seem to be popular for our grandchildren...we already have a Julia and a Jacob so perhaps Jameson, Jesse, or Joshua?  

Royally; William, Harry or George could work.  I do like Anthony too - having a "Tony" in the family would be a lot of fun!  Cooper is fun to say, but I think the kids at school will probably give him a nickname that rhymes with that one.

Whatever his name is, I know I'm going to love it!

PS:  Too bad "Gilbert" is already taken.

Happy Birth Season!

It's that time of the year again - close enough to my birthday to begin celebrating.  It is also time to upgrade my camera and couldn't be happier with this selection by sweetie. He spent a lot of time researching my next camera.  This one is definitely ahead of the curve in the camera innovation market.  Only downside is it is coming from Japan, so will take about 6 weeks to arrive.

Check it out!  The reviews are fantastic.

FUJIFILM X100S | Fujifilm Global

http://www.masonmarsh.com/blog/2013/6/fujix100s

SPAM

Do you have a special folder for SPAM emails?  I do. Yahoo does a pretty good job of filtering these junk messages for me.

Daily I select "all" and delete them permanently. However, I've noticed myself doing this more than once a day so I decided to let them accumulate for a week to see just how many show up. This past week 150 emails showed up in my SPAM folder. That is more than 20 a day for crying out loud!

Today I sorted this list by "sender" to see if this was being caused by only a few senders. It turns out there are 70 different "senders".  But...that is only what it looks like.  Actually what appears to be duplicate senders are not - the spammers use a slightly different address each time they send a message. What a pain!

Yahoo allows me to BLOCK 500 addresses from even getting into the Spam folder.  I'm up to 126 after this week.

2013 State Fair Winning Photos

1st Place
Tropical Flowers

1st Place
Wisconsin Landscape

2nd Place
Fruit & Vegetables

2nd Place
Apples

2nd Place
Weather, Snow

2nd Place
B&W Seeds

3rd Place
Eyes

4th Place
Weather, Fog

4th Place
Forks

2013 State Fair Winning Photos, a set on Flickr.

If you're visiting the 2013 Wisconsin State Fair, these will be displayed in the Horticultural Building, but I'm never sure quite where...its a scavenger hunt!

There's a hammer in my back pocket!

At least a year and a half of my life is gone...let me explain.  Photography is a passion since retirement. I spend an enormous amount of time on it.

Because my laptop computer is ancient (9 years old) it is unable to store the photographs taken with my new camera.  Each photo that I don't delete right away, is saved as a RAW file, and a corresponding JPEG file.  In addition I process most of the RAW files to create a second JPEG and sometimes a TIFF file with edits.  Lots and lots of memory is necessary for storage.

To get around the memory issue of my ancient laptop, a year ago I purchased an external hard drive (XHD) for storing all of these huge photo files.  This XHD has lots and lots of memory. I have moved all photos previously on my laptop prior to January 1, 2013, as well as all the RAW and TIFF files to the XHD.

The sad news is the XHD has just crashed and burned. The good news is I download many photos I like to Flickr so all is not lost. Nevertheless I'm going through the grieving process.

Step 1. Denial and Isolation

Day one: My first reaction when discovering my XHD would not load like normal is to deny the reality of the situation.  I'll simply forget about it not working tonight, and try again tomorrow morning. 

Step 2. Anger

Day two: Upon discovering the XHD would not work on my laptop, or sweetie's laptop came intense emotion.  I'm angry!  I didn't do anything different! Why did this happen to me?

Step 3. Bargaining  I need to regain control

* I'll try a different power cord

* I'll send an email to the manufacturer asking for help

* I'll order a new adapter - surely that will make it work

Step 4.  Depression 

Day three: Manufacturer response indicates the XHD is "toast".  It is under warranty so they'll replace it - but what about all the photographs?  Data restoration isn't covered in the warranty.   I'm so sad...perhaps I need a hug.

Step 5. Acceptance  Not there yet!

Sweetie is still looking into the issue but I've got a hammer in my back pocket ready to smash the device to smithereens!  The “ancient” laptop will be next as soon as the new one arrives - it is on order.