In less than 24 hours we will be on our way to Japan. I’m very excited about the vacation - not so much about the flight time/jet lag but my teleportation device is not yet fully operational (meaning, I don’t have one…sigh)

I plan on blogging as much as possible, but we’ll see if I actually do. I’d like to keep some sort of journal as I don’t think we’ll be back there for awhile if ever..

With all the things on my to-do list before our marathon flight to Japan (6 days!), getting a new job was not on there.  The whole process was very quick - resume submitted at noon on Thursday (10/18), interview scheduled three hours later for Friday (10/19), received word they wanted to hire me on Monday (10/22) at 3:30 PM.  Quite possibly the quickest interview/hire process I’ve ever gone through.  I wasn’t looking either - the job description intrigued and confused me and the rest is history.

So after we get back, I have a few days to finish things up at my current employer, celebrate Thanksgiving, then start the new gig.  All in all - a very exciting November awaits!

Well, after about a week of using the lens and getting a handle on just what makes the image quality go downhill, I’ve decided to keep the lens.  Stopped down to f/4 or f/5.6 this lens rocks and is nice and sharp.  Is it Canon ‘L’ sharp? No, especially at the long end.  At 150mm f/2.8 the quality suffers a good deal and the focusing is usually off, but f/4 and above, it improves (as it should).

I also spoke with Sigma and after Japan (10 days!) I will send in the lens, a description of the problem and a CD of images (requested by Sigma) showing what the image quality is like under “poor” circumstances.  It was nice that Sigma requested the pictures - very promising.  Really, the weight, size, focal range, aperture, etc, make this a great lens for a crop body - really nice lens to use.

So it has been announced that PAETEC’s corporate headquarters will be moving in where Midtown Plaza is.  Firstly, I am both happy and saddened by this.  I’m happy that the area will be put to good use, but I am saddened to see yet another corporation head downtown.  Yes, the new building will bring jobs, something this area needs (but what type of jobs?).  I suppose I was looking forward to having a new…”something” to go to.  Not sure what that something is, but I do know that as of 6:00PM on any given weekday, downtown is closed.  I was excited by the idea of having some sort of entertainment facility go into that area.  Unless there is to be some carnival rides in the lobby of PAETEC’s new building, it’s anything but entertaining from my perspective.

Flex your literacy muscles with the article here.

I can’t recall where we left off in our last installment of “Adorama Drama” but I have since received the replacement lens and it performs much better than the last copy.  The lens does mis-focus when you approach the minimum focusing distance but I’m thinking I’m going to keep the lens and send it off for calibration after Japan.

There is also the mild temptation to return the lens all together and get the Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro.  The macro lens is 1:1 and has a better working distance and I’ve been wanting a better macro lens for awhile now.  The macro lens is cheaper than the Sigma, but it is limited in functionality.  The Sigma is a useful zoom lens, but I haven’t gotten to test it out thoroughly and I worry that I’ll ultimately regret keeping this lens - it hasn’t sold me 100% on its performance as of yet.

I plan on (hopefully) getting some better test shots with this lens later this week.  From what I see so far, I’m pretty satisfied but I want to try to nail down exactly what the limitations are before taking a lot of bad pictures in Japan.