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I got a reply from one of the Rangers at the Orange County parks department:

Fortunately the firefighters were able to spray fire retardant foam on the majority of the buildings in the canyon, and I am happy to report that the house and outbuildings are still standing. The meadow, as a clearing, provided a good amount of protection, as well. The grounds at Arden look remarkably good.

Minor I know, compared to the massive losses people have experienced down there, but very cool just the same.

I posted about my last visit to Modjeska and I recently updated and tagged some of my images from that trip on Flickr.

Well after almost 8 years and 140,000 miles, my well worn 2000 Subaru Outback got dumped Sunday for a new 2008 Toyota Matrix.

The Outback never really recovered in my mind for leaving me stuck in traffic twice last year (in addition to other less fatal but more expensive issues) and since then every time the idle dropped low I’d have a small panic attack. Recently it started to run hot driving up the grades around where I live so enough became enough.

That and pulling ~22 mpg on a 350 mile/week commute kinda sucked.

The Matrix should pull over 10 more mpg and while I lose the All-Wheel-Drive I’ve discovered that it’s not all its cracked up to be anyway (note: because your tires say they’re M+S doesn’t mean they work worth a damn in the snow).

The Matrix also harkens back to my younger days of sporty Japanese 4-bangers. I could never imagine upgrading the suspension on my Outback, but I’m pretty sure without looking there’s a respectable aftermarket in performance parts for the Matrix. There’s even a hint of that performance 4-banger rasp in the Matrix that I haven’t heard in a while. So basically I’m getting all set up for mid-life crisis.

Oh, one more thing: The car buying experience, which I normally rank somewhere below spoon-based castration on a scale of enjoyment was actually… well… great. Yeah, no kidding: great! For the record, Magnussen’s Auburn Toyota was outstanding. Really no pressure and a refreshing honesty about the whole process. Heartily recommend!

Where yer spurs? — Reno Nevada to New Jersey, in Buckaroo Banzai

Just got home from Reno, Nevada. We were wanting to take Ryan on a vacation and he’d been wanting to go to another state. Seemed like a cool idea so we decided to go to Reno… Reno, Nevada.

Well more specifically we went to Circus Circus in Reno, because with the exception of a foray out to see Ratatouille (not one of Pixar’s best) we pretty much stayed under the Circus Circus tent.

Let me just say, those damn quarter sucking midway games, well, suck quarters. You think you’re in the protective kid-safe zone, but noooo, you’re wrong. Like little kid-safe harpies the machines call to you. Ooooh, drop a quarter in me and you’ll get some tickets! Get more tickets and you can redeem them for cool stuff! It’s only later you realize that you’re missing $100 and have a mountain of tickets and you can redeem them for… a cheap, Chinese, probably lead paint lined, knockoff toy.

At least with a slot machine you can have fleeting dreams: C’mon, Papa needs a new camera lens *shtick tick tick tick tick* Damn!

The other thing I noticed about Reno, and I know of no delicate way to put this, was an odd prevalence of fat people. I mean, damn! I’m a little over weight, but I fit in the freakin’ scrawny category up there. Ya know, I never bought into that obesity epidemic BS you read about. I few pounds of lazy does not equal “obese”. Then I went to Reno!

As if feeding the problem (*snicker*) Circus Circus ran this tram between their two buildings. A… very… slow… tram. It was quicker to walk, seriously, I timed it.

WALK PEOPLE!

Anyway, we have a few more stuffed animals now and Ryan can say he’s been to another state. Me? I think I’m gonna go for a run.

More photos…

Stupid Review-Journal, thanks for hiding your obits so well. I finally guessed.

It’s almost like I work at a newspaper.

Gil Martin

When my son, Ryan, was born 3 months early back in 1999 I “blogged” the near daily updates. I kept the site live, frozen in time, on my various web servers over the years until recently, when I got the wild hair to update it to the 2007 blogging world.

Old school meets new school.

Back then I shot some photos with my employer’s 1.2 megapixel Kodak DC120 camera. I wrote a quick and dirty “gallery” page, but that’s not 2007. A few days ago I uploaded them all to Flickr.

I also shot some video and posted it in the then state-of-the-art Real Media format. Well no one uses Real today if they can avoid it. Converting that format to something more mainstream was a huge pain but I finally prevailed and got the small video snippets I shot way-back-then uploaded to the way-now YouTube.

And finally, I moved all the daily posts into my WordPress blog, back dated them and here we are.

More photos…

After a long fight with COPD my brother-in-law, Gil Martin has passed away.

I remember last year at a family reunion when Gil — on his second troubled year after a lung transplant — came walking slowly up the path, oxygen in tow. This was just after a pretty serious scare and someone said, “It’s good to see you!”

After a pause, and a breath, he replied, “It’s good to be seen.”

A while back I found an old Kodak PhotoCD with some shots from my tour of Kuwait in 1991 (“…in support of Operation Desert Shield/Storm”). I uploaded a few (the ones that didn’t suck) to Flickr.

It’s interesting to look at them now. The images show some light leakage on the edges and scratching from the film plane. I remember carting around the camera (an F3 that I still own) and film (what’s film, Dad?) through the dust and s*** for 4 months. I don’t remember seeing the damage before.

In the spirit of Memorial Day, I thought I’d share.

I have no earthly idea what I’m doing out there. — Me.

My lovely wife got me a Spectator Racing package so I spent a few hours yesterday at All American Speedway pretending I was a NASCAR driver…. and apparently I suck at it

The briefing began with: “Lots of things can happen out here, you can lose arms and legs and even die.”

Cool.

You race these full size, tube frame deals that you climb in and out of Dukes-of-Hazzard style. I’m sure I looked like a complete noob banging all manner body parts on all manner of car parts but I got in tho. They sport 10″ race slicks and a Ford 4-banger (1.8 liters I think). They say they can go over 100 mph but on the quarter mile track you’re “only” averaging 70 mph. No mirrors, no gauges, no lights, just a 5 point harness and your butt in the seat. Sadly, the cars don’t sound very cool. They vibrate like hell and were (for me) hard to gauge engine speed and whatnot. They didn’t even have a cool “lope” at idle either, bummer. Generic race video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQxO4886Fc8.

You start with 10 laps of “familiarization” where you just tool around the track to find the line and get accustomed. I got accustomed to a 101 degree track temperature and a flame suit over my blue jeans and my sweaty head in my sweaty helmet.

Doing the math, 10 laps takes about 2.3 seconds. Well, at least that’s what it felt like. “Wait, checker flag, I’m done… already?!?”

After familiarization you do two laps “qualification”. It’s not like you’re kicked out if you suck or anything (a good thing!), it’s just for position in the 15-lap “main event”. There are supposed to be two cars, spaced a half lap apart on the track, qualifying at the same time. Thing is, they sent me out somewhat close to the guy in front of me and I actually caught him (yep, he sucked more!). I wasn’t sure what the heck I was supposed to do so I kinda wondered for a bit… then I decided to pass him, I mean duh!

I was a little concerned because I was pretty sure he didn’t know I was there and I came up on his inside as he came wide into a turn. I had an image of him drifting to the inside (remember, no mirrors) and me creaming him. He stayed where he was and I felt, for a few seconds, like Dale Earnhardt. It was all good and fun, but my lap time was a good 1.5 seconds off the leaders, which put me in the back 1/3 of the pack. I blame that other guy

The “main event” was fun… until I got bumped, actually I got bumped a few times. I was coming out of the turns fast and was starting to slide a bit. That was cool and all but the thought of sliding into the wall (and paying for the car) didn’t really appeal to me so I started braking hard into the turns. I’m thinking that was not the best approach as someone hit me pretty hard from the rear… so, no, probably not the fastest way around the track. After that I started to drive more conservatively which, based on the number of cars that passed me, was not the fastest way around the track either.

Lessee someone spun out and threw a bunch of dirt on the track. I found that having your visor open lets a nice breeze in but you also get a facefull of dirt in the eyes too. We ran under yellow for quite a few laps while they cleaned it up.

All in all a good time was had! I’m a bit sore and tired today, but that’s always good on the day after . I think the soreness is more due to the contortions needed to get in/out of the cars, than say playing tag at 70 mph. Either way, I could definitely see doing it again.

So in my family when you start methodically cleaning and/or organizing, something is wrong somewhere. It’s called, “controlling your environment.” A snapshot of what I have going on:

• Redoing the home network. I’m pulling a lot of my unused development machines and generally simplifying (relatively speaking).
• Gonna redo the garage. I made some mistakes in the way I set up shelving and my workbench in the garage, getting time to fix those.
• Wanna upgrade my Mac Mini G4 to better handle photo work. Kinda pointless (like squeezing water from a rock) but it would help some. Real upgrade sometime next year.
• Looking to ebay a lot of my old Nikon gear to get new Nikon gear.
• Oh and probably something else I may have missed…

And this is all secondary to Family and and Work of course.

Ok, so my birthday was a few days ago and I’m just now getting time to pontificate about it. I got some very cool swag this time around thanks to the wonderful B&H wishlist feature.

From the wife and kids I got a Nikon SB-600 Speedlight (a “flash” to most people) and an MB-D80 battery pack.

The strobe (er “flash”) is just way cool. It has this wireless mode that lets you just set it somewhere off camera and it knows what to do. Back in the day I hardly ever used a strobe on-camera if I could avoid it. Now not only are there no cables, but through the magic of god knows what, all the automatic gobledy-gook works too. Simply amazing.

The battery back was kinda frivolus, but kinda not. I have big hands and the D80 alone never felt quite right. The battery pack adds enough to make the camera feel right, and it makes you feel like it’s an F-series behemoth to boot :).

But wait, that’s not all….

Today I bought my gift for myself. I got the Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED-IF AF-S VR DX Zoom-Nikkor (man what a name). It turns out that good old Action Camera got two of these insanly hard to find beasts in last night and I got the second of the two.

I haven’t had the chance to shoot much with it yet, but I’m thrilled to note that it visually appears sharper than the 18-55 kit lens that came with the D80.

All this has made the little D80 into a wrist snapping monster that interestingly just barely wedges into my old Domke F3 bag.

Niiiice.