Journal entries for October, 2005

I saw the preview today for the upcoming movie, Zathura. As I was watching it, I was wondering if it was obvious to anyone else that it's the exact same story as Jumanji. And sure enough, as the trailer ended, I saw it was written by the same author.

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When I went to Charleston a few weeks ago to visit Jessie, I met a friend of hers who offered to send me a copy of his band's CD. I said sure and, true to my heritage, promptly forgot all about it.

I was quite surprised, then, to receive a semi-anonymous packag in the mail yesterday.

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I spent pretty much every waking hour this weekend reworking the photo gallery. What a sad way to spend my time off — doing exactly what I do every day when I am working.

It's interesting — even as I checked my watch and realized I had been sitting on my bed in front of a computer for 12 hours straight, it didn't feel like work. It was actually kind of exciting, and what kept me going was the desire to see the result. Perhaps it's pretentious, but it really did feel just like a sculptor must feel as he works. It was very satisfying to start with something rough and ugly and steadily refine it, seeing it take shape in your hands, and watching it slowly come to resemble what you have in your head.

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Camera Tossing may be the big fad nowadays, but Bryan has been doing it since before it was cool.

On the subject of camera tossing though, I discovered the other day that Ryan Gallagher, the guy who started the whole cameratoss thing on Flickr, posted one of my images on his CameraToss Blog. That's pretty cool. But man, those parallel lines in some of the other images posted are awesome. I still need to pick up some rope lights :)

After yesterday's outburst about my photographic desires, I realized that my upcoming trip to Scotland would be a perfect opportunity to play with new toys.

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Yesterday was an odd mix of crap and awesome.

A few days ago the air conditioner for the entire back half of the house broke. Which is particularly inconvenient since the entire front half of the house is currently unlivable. So there's currently no habitable place in the house that has air conditioning, and sleeping with no air conditioning in Puerto Rico is not pleasant. It's the fitful, sweaty sleep that makes you mad.

Yesterday morning I got home from work and was watching stuff on Tivo when suddenly around noon I remembered that the Béla Fleck, Jean-Luc Ponty, and Stanley Clarke concert I had paid $70 for was that night at 8pm. That meant I had about six hours to get some sleep before the concert (and after the concert I'd have to go straight to work, so that was all the sleep I was getting for the day).

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• A Holga (a $15 toy camera that shoots medium format film and takes wonderfully imprecise pictures)
• A simple home darkroom (which will be especially useful once I start shooting medium format film and have to figure out how to get it processed)
• A large format view camera (don't tell me a 4x5" viewfinder isn't awesome)

Need a quick way to build adrenaline? Try going out in the street in near darkness and tossing your $1300 camera in the air as many times in 30 seconds as you can. Sure gets the blood flowing. Apparently it also attracts the attention of security guards. Two of the pickup trucks that patrol the neighborhood stopped to ask what I was doing. When I showed them the pictures, they seemed satisfied, but I noticed that one of them parked down the street and kept watching until I left. Maybe I should have just explained that I have a learning disability.

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Ever since the trucker strike a few months ago, and then the hurricane soon after, the price of gasoline has been fluctuating madly. I saw it reach as high as 93¢/litre ($3.52/gal) at one point. For a while profits were fixed by DACO (which is basically the local equivalent of the Department of Consumer Affairs), but recently the head of DACO deregulated the prices but released a statement saying that there was no reason prices should go above 70¢, and consumers should not let gas stations try to gouge them by charging more than that.

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Tonight my family and I had dinner with my grandparents. At one point, my parents were trying to think of other shows my grandfather might like (he is obsessed with Everybody Loves Raymond but by now he has seen every episode twice). As my parents listed show after show, Natalia and I quickly tuned it out. Then my grandmother said, "What about that one show I've heard about, Sex And The City?"

Natalia instantly perked up and said, "Did someone say Sesame Street?"

Hehe, no, Natalia, sorry. Not quite.

A few years ago I read Stephen Hawking's book, A Brief History Of Time, and found it very interesting. Aside from describing the current theories regarding the formation of the universe, it provided a clear summary of the development of science and astronomy in the time of Kepler, Newton, etc.

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The last portion of my birthday present finally arrived in the mail yesterday: The Complete Calvin And Hobbes. My god is it massive. The shipping label says it's 24 lb. I guess this isn't a book to carry around in your bookbag and read on the subway; it's more of a book to sit down at a (sturdy) table with a glass of port for a reading session.

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This was a weekend of failed attempts. The plan was to go fly the helicopter on Saturday. On Sunday I planned to take the ferry to Culebra and rent a Jeep and then drive around, explore, and take pictures.

Saturday when I woke up it was raining. It wasn't a heavy rain, and the airfield is a 45 minute drive away so it's possible it wasn't raining there, but it's hard to drag yourself out of bed with four hours of sleep when there's heavy rain falling outside your window.

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In Puerto Rico, if you go to a Taco Bell and order a Meximelt and they ask if you want to add queso derretido (melted cheese), and you say yes (thinking to yourself, "Isn't that kind of the definition of a Meximelt?"), what you actually get is nacho cheese sauce.

If you go to Flamers (an unfortunately-named hamburger place) and order a cheeseburger and they ask you whether you want American or Cheddar cheese, and you excitedly answer Cheddar (thinking to yourself, "Ooh, real cheese for once"), what you actually get is nacho cheese sauce.

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Last Saturday I finally got back out to the airfield to fly my RC helicopter. It was the first time I'd flown it since December 2004, and I was quite rusty. I only managed to get one flight in before everyone headed home, and the entire flight was spent just getting reacquainted with the controls. I was still able to fly it alone with no problem, but I was very unstable. All I could do was take off, hover, and land again, none of it cleanly; I couldn't hold it in one spot while hovering, and when I tried to land in the X I ended up getting it down about 10-15 feet outside the circle. Still, it was fun and I'm glad I finally got out there again. I plan to go tomorrow afternoon as well.

On Sunday, I really wanted to go out taking pictures. I'm tired of all the typical spots like Old San Juan, so what I really wanted to do was get out into the island and explore. I don't know my way around anywhere outside of the metropolitan area, but I figured if I could find the software for my GPS in my vast collection of boxes, I could install the Puerto Rico maps and just go get lost. Unfortunately, I seem to have more boxes than patience, and the software didn't turn up.

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While reviewing this month's web server logs, I noticed that someone arrived at my site via a Google search for "ass munching crap bat". Intrigued, I performed the search myself. It turns out I'm on the tenth page of search results. I can only imagine the passion that burns in that tragic shell of a man for scatological chiropterans.