Worst Job Ever

Today was a big day for plane builder, Airbus, and the German airline, Lufthansa. Two of their new A380 aircrafts touched down on American runways for the first time today, one in New York, and one in Los Angeles. The new double-decker planes can carry up to 550 passengers, fly 560 mph, and travel over 8,000 miles without refueling. Today’s flights were part of a series of “test and demonstration flights” that the plane builder hopes will generate excitement (and sales) for the new plane.

The planes weren’t carrying any passengers, but they were loaded up with 500 technicians to “help balance the plane’s center of gravity.” Here’s the translation of that, just in case you’re not as critically-minded as I:

The gargantuan 239 foot-long airplane with wings as long as football fields flies much like the Microsoft Excel flight simulator unless it’s loaded with passengers whose weight is distributed according to some principal no doubt involving Euclidian geometry and a butterfly flapping its wings in Japan.

Flash forward a few years to when the plane is actually in service. If I were to find myself on one of these planes I’d be mighty concerned, for example, if I looked around to see the entire squad of Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders sitting on the right side of the plane while a sumo wrestling team was seated on the left.

Now I haven’t seen any footage of the technicians disembarking, but I imagine the whole lot of them climbing down the steps onto the tarmac, dropping to their knees, and kissing the ground. I also imagine the next technicians’ union meeting not going so well for the union reps. If the union can’t keep “flight test monkey” out of the technicians’ job description, there’s no way it can expect to continue collecting union dues.

EIEIO 2k7

This past Saturday was the Emerald Isle's Emerald Isle Open (EIEIO) disc golf tournament in Oceanside, CA. It's a great tournament that takes place every year on St. Patrick's Day weekend. This year, as always, it was a fun, well run, and festive event drawing in 90 discers for two rounds of challenging play.

Here are the amateur women of this years tournament. From left to right are Sandy, Lori, Keri, Britt, and myself.

And here are a few of this years winners. From left to right are myself (1st place, AdvancedWomen), AJ (2nd place, Recreational Men), Allen (3rd place, Advanced Masters), Dave (1st place, Advanced Men), Ryan (3rd place, Open Men), Carlo (1st place, Open Men), and Scott (1st place, Intermediate Men). A special extra congrats to Ryan for shooting both tournament rounds over 1000 for a tournament average rating of 1015!

Indoor Exposure

Tried another indoors exposure tonight with the pinhole camera. For the first time, I actually overexposed the shot! That's actually a breakthrough because there's so little light indoors, even with all the house lights on, that previous attempts of multiple-hour exposures have come out underexposed. You can see the touched up shot on the left. On the right is the original, completely untouched shot.

Mechanic Needs A Dictionary

My VW Jetta has about 48,300 miles on it and is under warranty until 50,000. I figured it was a good time to bring it to the dealer and have some minor things checked out while it would still be free. This isn’t the first Jetta I’ve owned, and previous experience has taught me a few things. Primarily that the electrical circuits that control the dashboard indicator lights are a bit shoddy. For example, the check engine light is permanently on, the radiator light comes on and flashes at will and then turns off, and the windshield wiper fluid light will come on once a week or so.

I’ve had the car hooked up to the computer several times and the dealer has told me there’s nothing wrong with the engine. He’ll switch off the indicator light, but it will turn back on when I get about two blocks from the dealership. (Just far enough away that the mechanics can’t hear me blurt out profanities.) I’ve had the radiator checked and it’s in the clear. And there is more than enough wiper fluid. Still, with the warranty window closing, I figured I’d bring the car in for one last look over.

I hate mechanics. I’m pretty convinced they’re out to screw over everyone, but they take special, and conceited advantage of women. Before I left my car in their all-too-capable hands (sense the sarcasm here?) I sat down to explain to a mechanic what the problem seemed to be. I told him the check engine light is on, and that the wiper fluid and radiator lights come on intermittently. He got up and told me to wait while he went to the car to get a look for himself. When he came back, this is the conversation that ensued:

Mechanic: I see that the check engine light is on, and we’ll look into that, but there are no other indicator lights on.

Me: Yes, the wiper fluid light and the radiator light come on intermittently.

Mechanic: Were the lights on when you dropped off the car?

Me: Yes

Mechanic: Huh. Well they aren’t on now. (And he gives me this look like I’m some sort of hypochondriac with my car.)

Me: Yea. They come on intermit….(Ah! I see where this is going. He doesn’t know what “intermittently” means. So I continue…) they come on and go off at random. They were on earlier, but it doesn’t surprise me if they’re off now.

At this the mechanic nods and types into the computer: “Customer says lights turn on and off randomly.”

In my head I think to myself…"Yea, lights come on “intermittently. That's what I said the first time.”

Cactus Garden

Slowly but surely, I'm beginning to figure this pinhole camera out. Here's a picture of the cactus garden in front of one of the houses in North Park.

3 Hour Exposure

I set this up quickly at my friend Sarah's house before we stared drinking mojitos and going out for pizza. At three hours, the original is still underexposed because indoor light is just a fraction of the strength of outdoor light. I still like it though, especially after I fudged with it a bit in Photoshop. Just wish I got more of the orchid in the picture.

More Fun with the Camera

Played a bit more with the pinhole camera again today. Tried a whole bunch of new things but most didn't come out blog-worthy except these.

Portrait of Ryan. Bit underexposed, but I'll keep at it.

Back Alley again. Not as overexposed this time. Making progress

Take Two!

I played around a bit more today with the pinhole camera. There was alot of light leaking in from the seams and where the bottom attached to the canister. (I guess they don't make oatmeal containers like they used to.) I covered up the obvious leaks with black electrical tape to block out the light, and the results so far have been great! I took another alleyway shot and the image is darker, and sharper, and the contrast is much better. I'd say it's a big improvement. I'm going to keep at it and try to make improvements, but so far, I like the possibilities. Here's tonight's shot. The exposure time was 15 seconds.

Pinhole Camera!

I'm sooo excited! Thanks to my current unemployed status, I get to spend my days doing exactly what I want to do. (Provided, of course, that what I want to do involves essentially no money cuz unemployed = poor.) So today, after sleeping in until 9 and going for a 7 mile run in Florida Canyon, I spent the better part of my day making a pinhole camera from a oatmeal container, and a aluminum can (Steel Reserve, 8.1 % alcohol...rocking it ghetto style!) Then I went to the neighborhood camera shop and put together the neccessities for a low budget, in-bathroom darkroom.

The pinhole camera took about three hours to put together. The inside and lid needed to be spray painted black to minimize reflections inside the "camera". (Thanks to Jerry for eating oatmeal and having black spray paint in the closet.) The pinhole was made with a safety pin in a piece of aluminum from a beer can Ryan left on the counter a few days ago. (Thanks to Ryan for drinking Steel Reserve.) I made a makeshift shudder from cardboard and junk mail, then presto, a pinhole camera! Check it out!

In the makeshift bathroom darkroom I have a "safe light" which provides a small amount of reddish light but won't expose the photographic paper. I also have chemical developer, stopper, and fixer. Here's what the "dark room" looks like.

You load the "camera" with a 5X7 sheet of photographic paper. The image is directly exposed onto the paper without the use of a negative. Of course it's inverted colorwise, and orientation-wise, but after developing it, it can be scanned and the colors flipped using a computer image software like Adobe.

So here it is, the first ever image captured with the oatmeat canister pinhole camera. I made the camera and ryan helped with the shudder operation and the development of this one.

It's a picture form the balcony looking into the back alley. It's a bit overexposed, but not too bad for a first attempt. More to come soon I'm sure!

Singing in the Rain

OK, so maybe I wasn't actually singing in the rain, but I was hiking in it. President's Day was Monday the 19th of February and it was pouring out for the entire morning, and well into the afternoon. Rain like that doesn't happen too often in San Diego, so when it does it's a rare opportunity to revel in it. My friend Ryan stopped by and woke me up at the crack of 8 a.m. all decked out in his rain gear. I promptly (though groggily) donned my own rain gear and we set out. First stop: breakfast at Cafe Forte. Second Stop: Torrey Pines State Reserve.

Torrey Pines is perhaps the nicest chunk of undeveloped costal land in San Diego County. It boasts a visitor's center and 8 miles of hiking trails. The nice ranger at the guard station called us "hearty folks" for heading to the reserve in the downpour. As far as I'm concerned, there couldn't have been a better time to visit the park. With the exception of just a few others, we were the only people in the whole reserve. That would never happen on a typical sunny day in San Diego.

The rain came down steadily for the first half of the hike and then lightened up a little. The waves hitting the shore were huge and awesome to watch. We had hiked in with our camping stove and made nice hot tea while we sat on a wooden deck and watched the ocean in the rain. Good rain gear is so great to have. How else can you enjoy such a great day on the shore without getting cold and wet? Ryan brought a polaroid camera and took a few pictures when he wasn't jumping in puddles. Here are some of the shots from the day.

Here's me all set up to make a nice cup of tea.

Here's Ryan Splashing around in a puddle.

Here's an attempt at a self portrait.

The seaside cliffs aren't too stable, especially when it rains!

This is my favorite shot. The crows were perched on the rail. Ryan was sneaking in on them for a picture, but they got spooked and took off. I like them mid-flight better than if they had stayed on the rail.