Another Word for Nerd

This is the first picture I ever saw of Amy, before I was able to meet her in person.

An old friend of Amy contacted me today, as she’d just heard about what happened. Amy had been a bridesmaid in her wedding four years ago, but they’d dropped out of touch. However, she had some pictures!

Of course, Amy is in the back wearing blue.

Update: Nancy sent me two more pictures.

When I tell people that I was a country radio DJ for four years in high school instead of flipping burgers, they tend to not believe me.

Well, here you go. 103.7 FM KRPT, Anadarko, Oklahoma. This was 1993 or so.

Thanks to my very good friend Cassandra for the picture, which she sent along with many others taken when we were dating sixteen years ago.

Thanks to a kind soul, I’ve been fiddling around with this since earlier this week:

A Dell Mini 9, refurb from the Dell Outlet. 1024×600 screen, 16G solid-state disk, and an Atom N270 CPU. I’ve upgraded it to 2G of RAM, and just today installed the “US-International” keyboard to have a more “standard” layout.

I used this method to install Mac OS X on the system. It runs great – for the sort of things that I use it for, the performance is just as good (not as fast, but “just as good”) as my circa-2006 Core Duo 13″ MacBook.

Apple does not condone “hackintoshing”, but I would buy an Apple portable in this form factor if they would release one. I’ve owned thirteen different Apple systems in the past ten years.

The Mini 9 was discontinued a few weeks ago, but Dell replaced it with the Mini 10v. Three guys from my Masonic lodge have now ordered Mini 10v systems after seeing my Mini 9 earlier this week.

Today I was the designated picture-taker for the Installation of Officers at Gray Lodge #329 for the 2009-2010 year. One of the Brothers brought his Nikon D60, and I used it instead of my Canon S3 IS. This was my first time using a SLR camera, and I’m smitten.

The pictures are here. I took right around 300 pictures, and ended up keeping most of them.

Now I really really want a Nikon D40, but can’t afford one for 2-3 years.

New old stock, found at a Houston stationery store.

The actual purchase was a bit annoying; the seller insisted on counting the number of cards and basing the price on that, rather than just giving me a flat price for the entire box that had obviously been sitting on a shelf unsold for at least 18 years.

I took some pictures of the inside of the Museum / Library / Lodge building today while I was there meeting up with a brother Mason.

Got some really good shots of the Lodge room proper, and I was able to make panoramic views from each officer’s position in the room.

I’m really proud of this shot:

Did some experiments with the new DIY clamp light / diffuser setup today and was pretty happy with the results. Will have a nicer arrangement on the dining room table sometime this week and can do more testing then.

Upgraded the disks on my home setup today. Went from a pair of Hitachi 500G Deskstar drives to a pair of Western Digital WD10EADS “Green” (power-saving, cooler-running) disks.

One disk is primary external storage, while the other is the Time Machine backup disk for both my internal hard drive on the Mac Mini and the data on the other 1T external disk.

Tomorrow’s project is to move my Windows gaming PC back into the “lab” room where it belongs, clean up the dining room, and then setup the clamp lights I bought today as a cheap DIY photo studio for experimentation.

Got some camera goodies in the mail today – a 58mm lens adapter and a PL/UV/FLD filter kit for my Canon S3 IS. As soon as I stopped by Houston Camera Exchange to get a 58mm lens cap, I was off to take pictures!

My first stop has become a tradition with any new camera gear – the AT&T Central Office. You can see the other two sets here.

I then drove fifteen miles down Westheimer and got some great exterior shots of the Masonic lodge that I’m a member of.

I’m really happy so far with the $25 worth of filters and adapters, although I will probably replace the filters with glass versions at some point.