philly

Lens Under Warranty

I just got off the phone with Nikon and found out that my lens was indeed being serviced under warranty! They received it the 22nd, started working on it the 23rd and I should get it back around seven business days afterwards, so, in a week or so since they were closed for Thanksgiving on Thursday and Friday. I'm just relieved that the repair is under warranty. Yes, I only had it for all of three weeks when the ring inside the front element broke, but still.

Sweet!

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

Ghost in the Shell and its sequel Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence are two of my favorite anime films. I had heard of the television series version, but never had the chance to watch it until last night. I caught Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim late night.

While it didn't have all the gore as in the films and it was dubbed instead of subtitled [I very much prefer subtitles to dubbing], but it was still pretty good. There are fifty-two episodes of the show, I've read, and I'd like to see them all. Cool to see some of the characters from the films transferred to the show.

Your New Drug Dealer

Just read this NY Times article on how Big Pharma is recruiting former/current cheerleaders to be their drug dealers. They recruit from the big cheerleading schools like the national champion University of Kentucky squad. They're perky, enthusiastic, athletic/fit and generally good looking and overwhelmingly female.

Onya, pictured above, is a pharmaceutical sales rep and Washington Redskins cheerleader.

Gooooooo PHARMA!

Photo: Redskins.com

Laurel Hill Cemetery Photos: Graves 1

I've posted the third set of photos from my outing with a troupe of Philly photobloggers to Laurel Hill Cemetery, they are of some of the beautiful graves at the site.

My second set of photos [the second set of landscapes] included one shot of the sculpture/statue/grave that I really went there to find. It is of a mother and twins. I first read about it here and was determined to find it. I found it in the furthest south section of the cemetery on the riverside. From the site:

...The monument is a statue of a mother holding her infant twins. It was carved by her husband and the twins' father — a professional sculptor — and overlooks the spot on the Schuylkill River where the babies drowned. For years, cemetery guides believed the mother and her children died together in a boating accident. But cemetery records show the children were buried March 6, 1855. The mother was interred on July 27, 1857.

The husband and father was Henry Dmoghowski-Saunders (or Sanders), a Polish sculptor whose busts of Thaddeus Kosciuszko and Casimir Pulaski are on display in the U.S. Capitol. There are a lot of unanswered questions about the deaths and not much is known of the Polish sculptor, except that after finishing the sad monument he returned to Europe and never came back to America. Time and the elements have done much to erase the details of the marble monument. There are inscriptions on three sides of the base in Polish and English.

The most poignant of the inscriptions for me is this one:

WE LIVE IN DEEDS NOT YEARS
IN THOUGHTS NOT BREATH
IN FEELINGS NOT FIGURES ON A DIAL
WE SHOULD COUNT TIME BY HEART THROBS
HE MOST LIVES
WHO THINKS MOST
FEELS THE NOBLEST
ACTS THE BEST

My initial edit of sixty-one photos up in a flickr set.

AOL City Guide Jobby Job

I got the AOL City Guide contract in the mail last week just before Thanksgiving. I read it over and filled out everything last night. I gotta make a copy it all at work and then mail it off. Once all that is processed, I'll have my Purchase Order number to included on my monthly invoices. The jobs should start in January. Sweet.

PowerPoint is a Bitch

I helped Lady out finishing up her project. No, I didn't help her cheat or do her project for her or anything. She just needed a little technical help doing something in... PowerPoint. What a bitch of a program. Yes, it can be quite evil and I've read countless times on how it is a tool that is almost single-handedly dumbing down America and beyond with its bullet-point laden presentations that distill things into fifteen or fewer word explanations. But I digress.

I had to imbed some sound clips onto a slide. It took quite a few attempts and different methods involving sound file transformations, file locations, imbedded objects and links. In the end, I got it all to work from a CD. Hopefully everything will go smoothly for Lady in class somewhere around 5p.

Good luck Lady!

And as a barter, she baked me some yummy brownies.

Cool Coatrack

This weekend we headed over to one of our favorite stores in Philadephia, Foster's Urban Hardware [3rd/Arch Sts] to get some shower curtain rings and look for a coatrack for the back of our front door. We have a couple of bulky winter jackets that take up too much room in our closet and there's no room for a free standing coatrack, so Lady thought a set of hooks on the back of the door would suit us best. She was right and we got the one pictured above.

I'm also semi-obsessed with shower curtain rings. How odd is that? When I lived at home with my parents, I replaced the dinky plastic ones with rings that had bearings in them. They stayed put better. We already had a set of these in our downstairs bathroom, so we picked up another set for the upstairs one - which now needs a new showerhead. Now where to get a new showerhead.

We both like the stuff Umbra makes. And most of the stuff at Foster's will appeal to one of us. Everything in there is either brightly colored [Lady] or silver/black with aluminium or chrome accents [me].

Also in the store while we were there on Saturday afternoon was a gigantic doggie. It looked like a cross between a Weimaraner and a Bull Mastiff. It had the Weirmaraner silky grey short hair coat and the floppity ears, but it was huuuuge and with a gigantic Bull head, not as pointy as a Weimaraner's, but without the droopy cheeks of a Bull. It was taller than my hips and probably 175lbs or so, as thick as a Great Dane I'd say. Never seen anything like it before. Before I could ask the owner what kind of a dog it was, he left the store. I have no idea how that gigantic dog turned around in the store to get out of there.

Two more shots of the installed hooks, unopened:

And opened without anything on them:

It attaches to the door with three four screws. You measure the screw positioning and then slide the entire coatrack thingie onto them. Pat and I miraculously measured and screwed the screws perfectly on the first try. We were both quite surprised and happy. Great to have a friend with a lot of cool powertools!

Glasses and Christmas Stuff

My glasses broke last week. On the right side where the top meets the nose bridge. Just snapped. I've been Krazy Glue-ing it back together, but it keeps snapping every few days. It's annoying. But I only wear them late at night, I very much prefer my contact lenses. No money for a replacement pair right now with Christmas shopping to do and making sure I have the dough to make it back and forth to NY for family stuff twice - Christmas and New Year's Day.

I also still gotta put together an album of wedding photos for my sister and new brother in law to supplement a monetery gift of some sort on top of a small Christmas gift for the both of them. They did mention that they hadn't yet seen Fahrenheit 9/11 just yet and they very much wanted to see it - that may be it for them. I think my sister in law emailed me a wishlist for their kids, haven't taken a look at that just yet. Mom, Dad, Grandma, Aunt/Uncle and cousins plus Lady! I think I have an idea of what I'm gonna get Lady though. Hehehe. That should be enough to start making her squirm around to try to figure it out.

Eating Ice Cream

I enjoy eating a heaping bowl of ice cream at 2.30a and then immediately going to bed.

Laurel Hill Cemetery Photos: Landscape 1

The first set of final edits from my outing to Laurel Hill Cemetery is up. I've divided them up into two sections each of Landscapes, Graves, Sky Towers and one set of Tombs. Seven sets in all to go up over the next week. Twenty-four images total that I really like out of the 200+ shots.

My initial edit of sixty-one up in a flickr set.

Pictured above is our Philadelphia area organizer Alec Long of Shutter and Pupil and his Mamiya RB67 Pro-S on a nice tripod and his trusty D70 strapped around his shoulder.