Tonya and PQBON's WebLog
Well after years of trying, I finally killed the washing machine. Over the last 2 years its had a fuse, a chip, 2 timers, and the motor replaced under our Sears warranty. The warranty expired about 9 months ago after the motor was replaced. As it was, it no longer controlled the temperature of the water and our clothes were washed in whatever it felt like. I vowed that the next time it broke I was just going to replace it. Well, that day was today. I washed one load fine. When the second was done, I lifted the lid to find it full of water. Will got it to work enough to get the water out. So after dinner we went to the Sears outlet at the Great Mall in Milpitas and bought a new washer. We're getting a Kenmore Elite HE4t. We got a good deal on it plus we get a $100 rebate on the machine and a $35 dollar rebate from PG&E. The outlet probably saved us $300-$400. Most of the appliances at the outlet are either show room models or were rejected upon delivery for cosmetic reasons. The one we got is actually a new model. It has a couple scratches that are hardly noticeable, the sales person had to point them out to me. So I'm happy with what we got. Its a front loader which is much more energy efficient and uses so much less water. Wasn't really planning on buying a new washing machine this weekend or anytime in the near future for that matter, but oh well.
Rochester news papers put up an very well done flash app about the murder victims in Rochester.
The music teacher at PS22 is a huge Tori Amos fan. So much so that he teaches his students sanitized versions of her songs ans they perform them in concert.
Tori is touring for her new album and took time to meet the chorus and their teacher. She was so moved by their performance that she cried. Then she fulfilled their wish and performed with them.
I have closed comments on the blogs hosted on PQBON.COM. This may change in the future but for now it was the simplest solution for dealing with blog spam.
I will be selectively turning comments on but all archives are set to closed and new entries default to None.
I will change this in the future when I have more time. I will either setup a sql script along with an auto rebuild of the blog or I will move to WordPress. (It is on my list of things to do along with a million other things...)
I hate that it has come to this. I really like getting comments but my blog spam folder has 5580 messages in it, my blog comments folder has 346. That ration just makes comments a loosing proposition for now. I long for the days when the internet was a simpler safer place: Telnet was the remote terminal of choice, FTP was safe for file transfer, SPAM was minimal...
Comments are open on this entry, feel free to tell me how this makes you feel.
On Easter I picked up a third hand Minolta SRT-101. My mother gave the camera to my father for their engagement. My father then gave it to my sister since she too is into photography. She neglected it after she graduated highschool. It sat on her floor unused and unloved. I asked if I could have it since I was thinking of buying a fully manual SLR or rangefinder 35mm camera. Why buy one when you can acquire one through other means. The SRT-101 also has some cachet being older then I am. However, I would bet it has had less then 100 rolls of film run through it.
OK, now that we are all caught up... The day before easter Tonya and I had a bunch of errands to run so I picked up some B&W Kodak 125PX and Illford HP5Plus. The one thing I didn't get was a battery for the TTL light meter built in to the camera. Since I don't have a stand alone light meter I guessed at all the exposer settings for every shot. This was interesting on a film camera where I couldn't check each shot so I had no feedback. I shot the Illford 400 in Folsom at my parents and at a park in the morning and evening with the indirect sunlight. I shot the Kodak 125PX at Tonya's mother's house in the bright sunlight. After 3 rolls of film I managed to only seriously overexpose 1 shot, seen down below. Most shots were a few stops off either way but they were easily fixable. I was able to sort of fix the one seriously overexposed shot in Lightroom and Photoshop. The image has some definite issues but given that the initial frame was over exposed and invisible when the negative was held up to the light. Weather it was luck or intuition I managed to not dramatically underexpose any frames.
E1 5F BB A0 AE 53 5B 33 59 7A EB 95 53 17 81 09
You can not use mine... If you try to use it I will sue you using the DMCA.
Katie is growing and changing every day. It really is incredible. A few months ago we joined the Monterey Bay Aquarium so that we could take Katie as often as we wanted without thinking about tickets or lines or having any patience. We decided on the Aquarium because we liked that aquarium's mission and we thought that the aquarium would be better then a zoo or museum for an infant. We have already gone a few times. Katie has enjoyed it. The first time we went she really enjoyed the shore bird display. She also enjoyed watching the fish. She had the most fun in the kid/toddler play area.
We have gone back a handful of times since. It makes a nice family event where we can relax, eat nice food on cannery row and play on the beach. Thanks to our membership we can be relaxed and chill about when we get there and how much time we spend in the aquarium itself. Recently we went with the Thelen family. Mostly we go just the three of us.
One of the perks of our membership was getting to see the otter exhibit 2 weeks before it opened. Katie really enjoyed the otter exhibit.
Sony's PS3 Sony Executive: "Nobody will ever use 100 percent of its capability..."
If I was as Sony share holder I would be really upset with this statement. As Sony is already taking a huge loss on every PS3 to point out that it is over featured and hard to program seems like a bad idea.
As a SW developer and student of computer architecture I can understand what he is saying, and again, I say it is a bad thing. Sony choose an exotic architecture for the PS3. It has lots of potential but it is also very different from most other architectures. If the PS3 doesn't sell super well it is unlikely that developers will take the time to heavily optimize for the PS3. They will want to keep games as compatible as possible between the XBox360, Wii, and PS3. This will leave the PS3 with a big HW bill and not a lot of bang for the buck.
There are also numerous complaints from developers that is difficult to program the PS3 well. The Xbox360 is reportedly much easier to program and optimize for. Again this is bad for the PS3
I wrote this entry at the time of the comment but I never moved it from draft to publish... I should also point out, I don't care which high end console wins (Xbox or PS3). My vote goes to the Wii.
OK, so I know everyone has seen this already, but I've had this tab open for more then a week so that I could post this. Now I have, better late then never!
This is what happens when you hire big name actors but no directors or writers.