Recently, I told myself that the month of May will not contain any personal purchases.  I’ll still be dining out and the like, but I won’t be looking at random gadgets and such to purchase.  I’m hoping this will carry into June as well, but the Canon 10-22mm is calling my name now and I will definately buy it (or rent it) before our August trip to the west coast. (Denver and San Fran!).

Why the desire to save?  The ultimate Purchasing Demon:  Buying a car.  I have a sizable list of vehicles that I’d enjoy driving…a few even lie within my price range .  Considering the times when I fully loathe driving (ie: stuck behind a Buick in the fast lane), I’d like a car that I atleast enjoy driving.  My current car isn’t really doing it for me…though I do love beating it up .  So, here’s hopin that I can begin saving a bit more money and silence all the demons except the Car one..as that is actually driving me to save money.

:: New Galleries…

So, I added a few galleries (go go go!).  I also took a 9min exposure last week - here are the shots:

I’m happy with them…kinda.  As I said in the description on Flickr, an F-stop of 11 was too much.  It made me keep the shutter open for so long, giving me a really dark image (the right one).  Ah well.  There’s a Night Photography class I could take, but given how busy I may be in the coming month, and the fact that it is $85, I may pass this year.

:: Weekend Shooting…

Took a lot  of photos this weekend.  I snapped some nice macros of dripping water (Burst Mode, FTW).  Also got some nice shots with the new 50mm f/1.8 (if you have a Canon, GET THIS LENS).  I hope to have some shots up soon.  Must start filtering out my possessions to begin packing as well.

Not enough hours in a day it seems… 

Well, I finished my very basic CSS rework.  Took about 45min.  I sped through the Photoshop/Image Ready work quickly.  I learned my lesson after adding a dropshadow the first time.  CSS is funny with element width and padding, so I took awhile to get a handle on the behavior of changing the padding in both IE and Firefox.

Surprisingly IE behaved itself…

Now, go and enjoy my new iPod lookin’ site

I’m making an attempt to slim down my website and make it a bit more enjoyable on the eyes.  Not that I got any complaints, but I personally had problems with the font size, and the overall width of the site.  No drastic changes right now, but I slimmed it down by 20 pixels.  I then wrestled with IE and Firefox so the two looked the same.  You see, IE and CSS typically get along, but there are quirks that exist within IE (no @$%*, really?) regarding CSS.  I plan on adding the nice dropshadow again, except around the entire site.  We’ll see how that goes.  I’ll have to add a couple more DIVs to the .tpl file for this theme I made.

Got the new Gitzo tripod and Bogen Ballhead - my god…amazing craftsmanship.  The tripod is really quite nice - and extremely versatile.  I gave Jim my old tripod, in hopes of helping him explore long exposure photography without using his dashboard or a sidewalk as a tripod .

Beyond that…nothing exciting.  Jogging @ 5:30am yesterday morning hit me like a freight train around 8pm last nite - when I sat on my ass for a good portion of th evening - still working on getting shots online…slow progress. 

We Canned 

---

Weekend rocked - Tripod/Ballhead will probably need to be picked up @ UPS tomorrow.   Lens hath been shipped’eth (pardon the Shakespeare).  Haven’t really used the camera much lately, I gotta get the other set I took up on the web first.  I don’t like having a ton of images to process, proves to be daunting/time consuming.

Flight 93 Opened

---

I don’t think of myself as a Conspiracy Theorist or anything, more of a person that enjoys reading stuff that goes against…everyone’s thinking.  Such is the case with 9/11.  Pretty much everyone on the planet (including myself to a certain degree) knows/thinks/whatever that a bunch of Militant Islamists came, saw and crashed - Destroying the WTC, putting a hole in the Pentagram…er Pentagon and just making 9/11 an all-around bad day .

I really am finding it difficult to believe what has been deemed "the truth."  I’m conflicted in a lot of ways because there are alot of things that happened on 9/11 and there are a lot of theories that I just don’t have time to read.  I’ll say this:  I don’t think what the general population thinks in regards to 9/11.  I’ve seen video, read blogs/websites, etc.  that make me think someone/some group was behind 9/11 that was more close to home - Government?  Other Agency?  I don’t know.  It makes me nauseous to think that our own Government would plan this - and honestly, George W is too dumb to tie his shoes, let alone have this planned.  

I really hope I don’t start some debate of epic proportions.   I’ve just gather information that has changed my thinking and I’ve formed a different opinion - this is the beauty of this country.  Trust me, I wish I never found out this info, and I wish I never went to loosechange911.com.  I wish I could believe what everyone else believes - I’m finding it difficult to do so the more I read and watch…

Human Behavior 

---

I’m considering making a "human behavior" category where I can just piss and moan about things people do that annoy me.  This can range from work, driving, whatever.  I realize I do things that are annoying as well - as I’m a human..I think…I’ll admit I will be very hypocrital with my posts to the category, but we’ll see if I even created.  My motivation has been a bit on the low side as of late…thanks Red X.

 

Alright, enough babble, I’m outta here…Hope to have new images up soon