Swirling

Plopping, icy, white...

The days are clicking off to the end of March after marching past the first day of spring, and yet... I woke this morning to find snow falling. Snow, changing to sleet and then to rain within a few miles of my house. Gray drizzle continued, and then it started snowing again. Big plopping chunks of white came raining down, wet flakes that seemed to be at least an inch across, maybe more.

The first picture? That was my attempt to capture the snow flakes. Those big gray blobs? They aren't spots on the lens; almost all of them are snowflakes! Yup, that (big) gray splotch over the tree branches in the corner is a water spot, but the rest are snowflakes.

Spring is really coming, isn't it?

smug slides

My photo galleries are hosted at SmugMug, and smug recently introduced a new full-screen slideshow. I like the look, so I've enabled the new show in my galleries. Just press the > slideshow button for a voyage through my photos, and enjoy!

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A couple of hints, since the slideshow will take over your entire screen...

There are two ways to return back to your normal computer environment. Look to the bottom right of the screen, and you will see a link labeled Return to Gallery. Click there, and you will be back in familiar territory. Or, if you'd prefer not to look on the screen for that link, just press the Esc key.

A slash of purple

Do you suppose someone is wandering with a very thin paintbrush, decorating flowers?

WAH

Acronyms seem to be the words of today. I've always been more comfortable with "real" words, and yet... I'm working at an acronym-happy company. People are constantly throwing combinations of letters around as words. In fact, it seems to be the language of the company. I suppose I need to treat these short combinations of letters as just another puzzle to solve.

Today's revelation? I received an email from a colleague on the other side of the ocean. The subject was a crisp "WAH tomorrow". What? WAH?

Oh no! I looked at the email, shrugged, and moved on with the task at hand. Just a few minutes later I looked back and thought, WAH? Working at home! Is it a good sign or a bad one that the acronyms are sneaking in to my brain?

Color delight

Excessive?

What do you think about this packaging?

Today I received the CompactFlash cards - the memory for my camera - that I ordered on Saturday. I really expected to find a relatively small padded envelope containing the cards. Instead I found a box, small, but larger than expected given the fact that I had just ordered 3 CompactFlash cards.

Each card, in it's little protective case, is 2 inches by 1 5/8 inches by 1/4 inch. Tiny. And yes, I do understand that these little cards need to be packaged so that they aren't lost. Each of the cards came in its own box. That makes sense since they are sold by the piece. What doesn't make sense to me is that each box was 4 1/2 inches by 5 3/4 inches by 1 1/4 inches.

Hmmm... that means that if I just filled the box with CompactFlash cards that the box could have easily held 4 layers of cards, each layer containing 6 cards. Yup, I could have fit 24 cards in the space that was used for one.

Do you see something wrong with this picture?

Open water

Open, and opening... the smaller ponds are clear, the larger ponds still wear some icy jewelry. Spring really is on the way.

Crocus!

The howling of the wind started to subside today. It didn't touch yesterday's "hard to stand up in" winds, but it was still there. It was a day for walking, a day of crisp blue skies, a day of looking at landscape dressed in "not yet spring" attire.

Walking, walking, and then - just as I was almost home again - I saw a hint of purple peeking out of the brown. Crocus! Ah, beautiful...

Feeding my camera's memory

I travel without my computer but with a very active camera, so I need to make sure that I have the right amount of memory cards with me. After all, I'd hate to miss any pictures!

When I rode across the states in 2002 I was carrying a small hard drive with me. That worked, but it's too small to support my current camera habits. I suppose I could buy a larger drive, and I'll need to deal with that at some point in the future as I move beyond one or two week trips. For now, I try to carry enough CompactFlash cards to feed my camera.

Today I wandered over to B&H to pick up another card. Hmmm... the cards I like (made by SanDisk) are out of stock. OK, I'll check Adorama, my second choice of the New York photo stores. Wow - there is a SanDisk rebate program in progress there. And I snuck in under the wire; the rebates end on March 30th!

I tend to buy 2 gigabyte cards, but I'll consider 4 gigabytes too. Let's see, the prices today are $32 for a SanDisk Extreme III 2GB card, and $79.99 for a 4GB Extreme III card. The fact that the 4GB card is that much more than twice the price of the 2GB card seems more than a little crazy to me, but OK, I'll buy 2 2GB cards...

I ususally buy the SanDisk Ultra II, which are good quality cards just below the Extreme III, but today's price has the Extreme cards at lower than the Ultras. OK, I'll buy the higher quality card, no complaints!

Back to the rebate though... If I buy one 2GB card, the rebate is $10, for 2, the rebate is $30, and for 3, the rebate is $50. Let's see, that means if I buy 3 cards at $96 ($32 each), I will get a rebate of $50. That means that the cards are just over $15 each. You're absolutely right, I did just order 3 more 2GB cards! Happy...