Turning Mistakes

On the weekend we made a trip out to Costco to grab a few necessities (and a few other items too). After Costco we had to head across Millstream Road to buy some dog food at Petsmart.

The intersection is a pretty busy one, and the lights are regular green lights. If people are turning left, they need to yield to people driving straight.

Well, that didn’t happen. Some dude in a white Ram turned left, following some other vehicles, not seeing me. I honked at him for cutting me off.

I get it that people make mistakes, but at least own up to them. This guy just ignored me, and that made me mad. Pay attention while driving!

Parking Watch

I read a ridiculous article on Canada.com today. You can read it for yourself here.

The gist of the story is that the author feels like parking tickets are hurting downtown businesses.

I absolutely could not take the author seriously after she wrote “I’ve had a few in my day — probably 10 a year since I moved here in 1989”. She has received approximately 200 parking tickets in downtown Victoria. What the hell? Did you not know you need to put money in the meter? It’s not that hard to get back to the car before time runs out. Do you not own a watch?

She even complains about one ticket she got when she parked, then went into a store with a sale without putting money in the meter. Well, duh, I think you deserve that one.

The whole point of the parking meters is to keep people flowing. You come to downtown, you do your shopping, then you leave. Without the meters people would park their car and leave it there all day thereby clogging downtown. No customers could get to the shops.

Personally I don’t see anything wrong with the current system. I’ve lived in Victoria since 1993 and I have had two parking tickets that I can recall, neither at parking meters. Both were in Robbins controlled lots. Something tells me that Jody Paterson is doing it all wrong. It is ridiculous that one person could accumulate that many tickets.

Safety Wrapped

Seen a few minutes ago, the least safety conscious thing this week.

One of the maintenance people for the office building I work in is using a leaf blower to clean out the gutters. He is standing on a roof top leaning out. His safety mechanism is a length of rope looped over a railing that he has wrapped around his wrist. The fall would be about 20 feet to a marble covered courtyard.

Rough Sick

I’ve had a rough go the last couple weeks. I’ve had this cold that just won’t go away. It was fine up until this past Thursday. Thursday morning I felt horrible. Unfortunately I was very busy at work Thursday and Friday so I couldn’t take a sick day.

On the weekend, both days I had a nap, which is unusual for me, and I slept perfectly fine both nights.

Today is the first day I have felt almost normal, but the cough is still lingering. The cough is really, really annoying.

Course, now that I am feeling better I want to get on with life. Wednesday I have Ulti, and it is a double header. Too early to tell if I can play, but if I do play, I will only stay for one game.

Theatre Starting

I was out way, way too late last night. The plan was to head to Spinnakers for dinner then get over to Silver City to see the 7:20 showing of Transformers 2. After eating an excellent dinner, we drove over to the theatre and quickly discovered that the show was sold out.

Bummer. I checked the movie board out and we reluctantly chose another movie to go see. I’d heard the Hangover was getting good reviews so we bought our tickets. It was a pretty funny movie actually. The three of us had lots of laughs, and I know that it was the kind of movie that is best seen in a big audience.

As we were leaving I glances at my watch and noticed that the late showing of Transformers was starting in 20 minutes. Hmm.

I made the suggestion that we stay and see it. Surprisingly everyone was into the idea. Yikes. The movie previews ended around 11 and the show itself was 2 hours 20 minutes. If you like action movies, and you liked the first Transformers movie, then you will like Transformers 2. Lots of fight scenes, lots of action, lots of robots, lots of excellent special effects, and lots of attractive scantily clad women.

I finally crawled into bed at around 1:40 am.

Yoshi Spoons

That dog did it again. Yoshi shredded an empty cereal box today. Beet was playing with it this morning and we didn’t think to put it in a safe place before we left. Yoshi also chewed up a couple of Beet’s spoons. More items added to the list.

When will we get around to building that dog a padded white room, and locking him in it during the day? Every time something gets wrecked I blame ourselves.

Busy Options

I had a busy morning. I took the car in to get some new tires installed. While that was happening I wandered down to All-Season and priced out some different bike racks for the CR-V. Lots of options, and I am close to making a decision now.

I then stopped at the mall looking for a metal rack to make a shelf in our freezer. When I got back to the car some kind samaritan had left a sticky note on the window saying the insurance had run out. Off to get that renewed, then pick up some contact lenses for Sue.

Back home I fixed up a toy of Beet’s, then some lunch. This afternoon, once Beet is up from her nap, I think we will head out to look at some outside drying racks for laundry (no clothesline at the new house).

Tonight we have some friends coming for dinner. A busy day, but quite enjoyable.

Fireworks Focus

After everything else I did on Canada day, I also went out to watch the fireworks. I got a new vantage point this year as a friend took us onto the military base that was directly across the bay from where they were firing them off from. This was awesome to not have any trees or houses in the way. Sometimes having those in the shot can add some depth to the images, I wanted to see what I could do without them.

Some tips for shooting images of fireworks.

  • use a tripod
  • use a cable release
  • go full manual (set the aperture, use the bulb setting, manual focus)
  • take a flashlight
  • get to the sight early (at least 20 minutes I would say)
  • take a few sample shots to test exposure using the cable release and guessing the exposure time, but also look very closely at your focus and make sure everything is sharp

When all of this is done, you are ready to watch the show. When using the cable release you can still watch the show and snap shots while doing that. If your camera is setup as I mentioned, there isn’t anything it needs to do other than open the aperture. It doesn’t need to focus, or adjust any settings.

Play around while taking pictures. Vary the exposure length. Re-compose the scene every once in a while, zoom in, zoom out, rotate the camera 90 degrees. If you watch carefully you can see the rockets firing up into the air. When you see this you can start your exposure before the burst and get some lovely light trails. Try to predict what is going to happen.

Take your luck to the shoot, but most importantly enjoy yourself since this is supposed to be fun. When it is all over, expect to throw away a lot of shots. Try cropping them to make them more dramatic.

Here are my shots from last night.