EngelFish.Net

I thought  I would have plenty of time to post this week, but I was wrong.  There is way too much to do and far too little time to do it.  That said, this will be a short post. 

We are gearing up for the Raleigh Flickr Challenge: Portrait, which I have been plotting.  I am really looking forward to both the shoot and the show.  Tomorrow is the Happy Hour gathering where we will be assigning teams and locations.  Next Saturday is the shoot, and the following Tuesday we vote for our portfolio images.  Once the portfolio is nailed down, I can work with the gallery owner to set the show dates.  Read the discussion thread at Flickr if you’re interested.

My website find of the day is “that girl emily”.  My gut says that the whole thing is a hoax.  The blog has no history and begins only in late June.  Every single post, without exception, contains something related to the “cheating husband” story, even those prior to her “discovery” of his affair.  It feels staged, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find out it’s some kind of viral marketing or “art” project.  I guess we’ll see as the story plays itself out. UPDATE: The site has been exposed as a hoax.  Read the comments below,or go here.  Thanks myKiko!

IMAGE: The rebuild of my PC is almost complete, and while cleaning out the cobwebs I sifted through my virtual shoebox of pictures.  This snapshot, taken one night when some friends had come over for a drink, astounds me. It was only six years ago, but I can’t believe how young we all were, and tanned, and thin, and … young.  Not that we aren’t still *really* good looking (~cough, cough~).

We’re on a roll here, and there’s no stopping us now! LOL. I’m slammed here at work, and it doesn’t look like there’ll be a reprieve by the weekend. It’s good though, because I’m in my “zone” and being pretty darn productive. That’s always a good feeling, which it would be good to have more often.

I’m in the middle of planning a Flickr meetup/challenge/show for the Raleigh group. It’s quite a bit more effort than I originally expected, but I’m enjoying thinking it through and making all the arrangements. I won’t discuss the details here, just in case any RFG folks actually read this. Speaking of which, who is reading this blog??? Drop me a comment with your name and location, as I’m curious.

IMAGE: I’ve not shot for a day or two, and thought I’d throw up this “filler” to show folks what kind of environment I work in daily. What’s your workplace look like? (visit this photo’s Flickr page to see a few “notes”)

Well, the weekend proved too full to get around to rebuilding my PC. It’ll have to happen this week. I’ve been able to keep things together and get lots of work done though, which makes it a good weekend. We took in two movies, the new Pirates of the Caribbean installment, and Superman. I enjoyed both, but wasn’t blown away by either. I was more excited by seeing the trailer for Spiderman 3 that ran prior to Superman. PotC was fun, with great special effects and strong acting, along with pretty good action. It was definately fun and worth the cost of a ticket. I enjoyed Superman as much for the return of the franchise and the familiar characters as anything else. The acting was pretty good, although most of the storyline was a bit weak. The strong point, in my opinion (~spoiler~) is the discovery that Lois Lane’s son is Superman’s. That has terrific potential for future story lines.

As I’ve mentioned before, I need to work on several projects and “clear the decks” of lingering photo assignments. As such, there wasn’t much photography this weekend. I plan to correct that next weekend by executing a project idea which Taryn came up with a while back.

IMAGE: I realized that, although we have 3 cats, there were no pictures of them anywhere in my Flickr photostream. There was a set of pages dedicated to each of them in the previous incarnation of this blog, but that has gone the way of the Dodo. I decided Sunday to make at least a few good shots of each over the next few weeks. This is the first of the series. Casey was abandoned by our neighbors when they split up and moved out. His brother/sister disappeared from the neighborhood almost instantly, but Casey hung around our building and looked really lost. We took him in and, through his chip, tracked down the owner. She refused to take him back and asked us to either take him in, turn him loose, or take him to the pound. As you can see, this past year in our home has left him completely stressed out.

In haste and carelessness, I’ve managed to allow a virus to infect my computer (a.k.a. the blackbox). I wrestled with it until after four this morning, and have been fooling around with it sporadically today. The resident IT guru, Rob, thinks it’s time for a clean slate and I’m inclined to agree. I don’t relish the idea of spending a few hours of this weekend blowing it away and reinstalling everything, but it’s better than the ongoing agony of popups, browser hijacks, and possibly compromised data. I may be offline all weekend, but hopefully “bb” will be feeling spiffy and sprightly come Monday morning. I really need to build another PC though, with more storage. Digital photography may save on film costs, but having to constantly buy additional drives to hold your archive is bloody expensive (no I don’t feel safe having archived copies on DVD… I need two copies to sleep at night).

Tonight is a dinner out for Taryn’s birthday. We’ll be dining and drinking at Humble Pie, along with 10 of our closest friends. If you’re in town, I hope you’ll be there!

IMAGE: This is from the last trip to SA, and it’s a scene I shot from the car window as we drove back home from Gran Blakeman’s house. Acacia trees and red dirt. Both unique and familiar. The trees remind me of how different Africa is from home, and the red dirt is so very North Carolina.

Today is it, and I have *no idea* what to do for her! So everyone, please call today and wish her a happy birthday (she started her day off with a call from Gran Blakeman, which is always good)!

This past weekend was relaxing and enjoyable. We got lots of errands and projects done, and I managed to get and get rid of a virus on my computer. Fun stuff. We also went to the DBAP to watch the Durham Bulls play Syracuse on the 4th. It was a Flickr meetup organized by Sean “BigDiesel” Birdwell. We all had a great time, in spite of the heat.

IMAGE: This little girl was sitting with her father in the stands behind us at the game. She was far more interested in looking at the crowd than the game.