August 17, 2006

• Here is your update for the last couple of days.  I'll start by telling you an interesting late night story....

  If you are like me you often find yourself flipping through TV channels at night while you are waiting to fall asleep.  Often times my late night flips end up on infomercial's or food programs (History Channel, TLC, or The Food Network).  How many times do you find something on one of these programs that make you absolutely CRAVING for some type of food?  In the last two months I was hit by two of these cravings....the first one was during this candy program and they had all this old fashioned candy (think Taffy and other homemade stuff).  One of the candy shops that they featured is from southern Indiana, and I'm seriously considering making a trip down there to check it out sometime.  Granted the trip will not be just for the candy store, but the candy store would be a stop in the area.  The second craving was during a program covering how ice cream became a national phenomena in the US.  It was pretty darn hard to watch because all the ice cream looked so darn good!

  Well, the other night I'm flipping through and I stop on some show.  A few minutes into the show they start talking about pistachios and boy did they look good.  I was going crazy and then I realized that I had a bag of pistachios that I bought back in April or May.  This bag was tucked away in a box for months...and I actually was able to get a food to satisfy a craving without getting up and driving someplace in the middle of the night.

  Well, it's now 4:30 in the morning, I just woke up and realized that I left this post half complete when I fell asleep.  I'm going to try to finish it real quick and then get back to bed....

  On Tuesday I bought something that I've wanted to for years.  I bought my first digital camera (1.3MP) in '99 or '00 and have been using one ever since.  Back in '02 or so I sold digital cameras at a big electronics store.  While I was working there I really loved playing with the fancy cameras, but they were just too much money to buy.  I received from Amanda's mom a few years ago (like '02) a new 3.1MP digital camera.  Using the little insurance policy from the store I was able to upgrade quickly to a 4MP, and then two years ago or so, I upgraded to a 6.1MP. 

  Throughout all of this I was never quite happy with that I was doing.  I have taken some pictures that I really like, and I have taken some pictures that I think are quite good by anyone's standards, but overall I was still wanting something more.  I was limited by the camera, even though I had been using a decent prosumer camera.  When I was trying to take pictures at indoor sporting events I was constantly dealing with tons of noise or dark pictures.  Not to mention that to change anything manual (aperture, shutter speed, white balance) it was often a chore to go through all the menus. 

  All this time I was always looking at digital slr cameras.  I'd stop at stores and play with the latest and think "someday".  Tuesday I finally decided that I should make that day come.  I called Amanda and told her that I was about to splurge, and then I did some finalization of the model that I wanted by doing some research online.  All the research that I did just confirmed the model that I saw about 6 months ago and have liked since I saw it. 

  I picked up the camera that I wanted and it came with two lenses.  Now I have a nice digital slr, 2 lenses giving me a wide range of zooms, a 1gb compact flash card, and a new case.  I have a sinking feeling that I'm going to have to pick up another CF card when I catch one on sale, but I'll stick with that one for now.  This camera takes 8MP pictures, with a myriad of different compressions, including tiff and raw formats so I'm quite excited.  The pictures at full resolution with the minimal jpg compression are pretty big, about 5MB+ each.  If I shoot in tiff mode (no compression) they come in about 12 or 13MB each.  It also has RAW format, which I've never dealt with, but I'm thinking about shooting in it.  This format comes in at 23+MB each.  I am able to simultaneosly take a jpg and a raw image at the same time which allows me a nice small(er) jpg to quickly use and a raw image for long term archival purposes. 

  I haven't been able to get out and about to take pictures yet because I've been pretty busy doing out processing, but I have been taking pictures in my room to test out the various features.  So far I'm very happy, but I do have a lot to learn since I now have a good camera with a lot of features at hand.  One of the things that probably will happen is the question as to whether I take enough pictures to justify using a dslr.  To answer that I checked the number of pictures that I have on my computer...I've taken over 4000 pictures since I've went digital, compared to a couple rolls of film in my first 20 years.

  I'll still have to take my 'old' prosumer point and shoot with me at times because sometimes it's just unwieldy to take an dslr with you, but at least I now have a camera that fits a need that I feel that I've had.  Tomorrow (errr today) during out dining out (it's a formal military dinner) I'm debating about bringing the camera with me.  It might be nice to get some final pictures of everyone while we are all together and looking sharp in our dress uniforms.  I think that I may bring it, but we'll see.

  Thursday I need to pack because I have to check out of my room before our graduation at 10am.  I also have a two final stops for out processing and then I'm all wrapped up.  Our dining out begins at 5:30pm or so.  I have my new dress blues all ready to go.  I wish that Amanda was here, because I think that they look pretty sharp and that we'd get a good picture together. 

  Less than 48 hours and I'll be home...and with that I'm off to sleep my final hour or so!

  • 5:10 am
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