I wish more newscasters would do something like this. Kudos for Mika Brzezinski, and it’s a pity she has to work with shmoes like the two guys who just won’t let this drop and keep pushing it in her face.
Blacklight no more.
This note is starting to pop up all over the seagoth journals, blogs, and communities after it dropped into our mailboxes last night:
Hi Everyone – This Friday and Saturday nights will be our final nights at CHAC. Monny & I have decided that we just can’t buck City Hall (we have been getting noise/nuisance complaints since the day we opened the door), and neither CHAC nor Blacklight can afford to pay the exorbitant fines the City Council is contemplating for any infractions by the nightlife in this town. Our contract is up, so we are going out with a bang – June 29th is FabulousFetish Friday hosted by General Bek and DJ Paul Aleinikoff, and of course June 30th is our New Wave Dance Party with DJ Evan Blackstone. Friday we will be upstairs in the showroom, Saturday we will be downstairs in the lower level/lounge. Come on out and dance!
Love, Monny & Shawna
This is really sad to see. While I’ve only been around to see about six years of it, Monny and Shawna have been providing a home for the seagoth scene for the past twenty-some years through the Blacklight, The Vogue (in at least two locations), and it’s quite likely that there were more projects before that that I’m not privy to. Admittedly, while the Blacklight never felt as much like ‘home’ as the Vogue did, it’s sad to see it fold…especially for those reasons. This can’t have been an easy decision for Monny and Shawna.
I can’t really say that I’m overly fond of the forces pressuring them to get out of the business, though. People that move into a hip, happening, club-heavy area of town because they are drawn to the atmosphere, then call in noise complaints against the very clubs that give the area its fun, funky feel. A city entirely too focused on gentrification at the expense of the people and businesses that helped make the city what it is. And, of course, a City Council that seems determined to over-legislate every bar or nightclub in the city into nonexistence.
As long as I’m not too tired after work, I’m going to see if I can make it out both nights this weekend. I may not have been one of the die-hard regulars, and I’m not one of the ‘core’ members of the seagoth community, but through their clubs, Monny and Shawna helped me find some places where I felt at home when I first moved to Seattle, and I met quite a few friends through the Vogue. I’d like my chance to say ‘thanks’ as well.
Wireless
I’ve finally joined the 2000’s — I’m kicked back in bed, typing away on a laptop that’s on a wireless connection.
I mentioned before that last week, Prairie and I picked up a laptop ‘puter. While it came with a pre-installed wireless card, we still had to physically plug it in, as with naught but desktops beforehand, we’d never had any need to go wireless. So, while Prairie was on her trip (where Hermie — named so because, when charging, pink and blue lights glow on the front, prompting Prairie to comment that it’s a hermaphrodite — apparently performed quite well), I picked up an Airport card for my computer.
Theoretically, we should have been able to coax Hermie into picking up a wireless signal from my computer, but no matter what we tried, it didn’t seem to work. As we had a few errands to run, we added a quick run by Target and picked up a little home wireless router from D-Link. Came home, hooked it up…and viola! Wireless is up and running on my desktop and on Hermie.
I am running into one little issue, however — and as I’m just not used to working (er…fighting) with Windows, let alone Vista, I’m hoping there might be some ideas. Right now, in order for Hermie to connect, I have to run the network wide open, with WEP completely disabled. If I turn WEP on, then instead of asking for a password, Vista immediately gives me an error message telling me that Windows did not get a response from the router…however, it pops that message up so quickly that it doesn’t seem to even be waiting for a response. Odd, and a little frustrating. I haven’t tried switching over to WPA yet to see if that works, but that might be my next bet, as all the Google-fu I can muster on the error I’m getting tells me to reinstall the drivers for my wireless adapter. :p Meh.
So far so good, though…
Update: We’re up and running using WPA-Personal. I’m not exactly sure how or why — it took a couple tries and it wasn’t working at first, but for some unknown reason suddenly it got a successful connection. Nifty!
Catching Beads
All without spilling her beer.
The Learning Process
As I work my way through my Solstice Parade shots, I find I have to keep reminding myself that it’s all part of the learning process — because I’m seriously second guessing a lot of what I did. It’s not that the shots are bad, really…just that they’re not as good as I had hoped (and don’t even compare to some of what I’m seeing from other people).
If I’d stood on the other side of the street I wouldn’t have been shooting into the sun, and I’d be using its light instead of fighting it and backlighting everything. Or, if I’d at least used my flash to fill in the shadows, then I wouldn’t have to be blowing out the sky to make the subjects visible.
If I’d set my aperture to the f/2.8 that the lens I was using would do, then I’d have more depth of field separation between the subjects and the backgrounds, and the photos wouldn’t be so ‘busy,’ distracting from the subject.
sigh
Ah, well. On the bright side, at least I am seeing these things (if after the fact), so I’ll know better next time.
All part of the learning process.
Fremont Summer Solstice Parade
I’m in the process of going through my photos from this year’s Solstice Parade — everything’s imported, named, and tagged, but I still need to decide which ones get fine-tuned and uploaded.
In the meantime, while there’s a few thousand photos up already (and it’s increasing by the hour) either floating around loose or in the group pool, this set from ChrisB really deserves to be seen. A high vantage point and a tilt-shift lens make for a look at the parade that’s very different from everyone else’s shots!
Ladybug
Not quite as cute when seen this close up, are they?
Saw this lil’ guy crawling around in the grass at school the other day and wanted to see what I could get. Shot with my 24mm f/2.8 Nikkor reverse-mounted with a reversing ring, somewhere around f/16 or so, 1/8th of a second, handheld, with the onboard popup flash. At full size, you can see the hairs on the ladybug’s legs!
So. Incredibly. Cool. Here’s some more shots.
Summertime!
A number of updates this evening…
- It’s summertime! I had my last final exam today (yesterday was the Chem 101 exam, I e-mailed my Philosophy 100 final paper in this morning, and had my Programming 142 exam this afternoon). No summer classes for me, so it’s time to relax. Yay!
- I actually really enjoyed this quarter. I was a little unsure about the lineup at first, but it ended up working well, and I had very enjoyable teachers. All in all, I’m pretty solidly sure of getting all A’s again this quarter (knock on wood). We’ll see for sure in a couple weeks.
- The relaxing doesn’t actually begin for a couple days, of course (isn’t this always the way?). Prairie will be at graduation activities for her students most of tomorrow, and I’ve got to work in the afternoon/evening. On Saturday we’ll be going to the Fremont Solstice Parade (I was bummed that I missed it last year, and have been looking forward to this year’s for a while), doing our best to exhaust ourselves, and crash out early, because…
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…early Sunday morning I drive Prairie out to the airport for a four-day trip with my mom and my sister-in-law Emily. Mom decided a while ago to have a “WHPUWHM” trip — that is, “Women Who Put Up With Hanscom Men,” (those brave and stalwart women who actually choose to associate themselves with the Hanscom family), and the weekend has come. My aunt Pam wasn’t able to join, unfortunately, but Mom, Prairie, and Emily will be spending four days on their own, commiserating with each other about all the things they have to put up with. ;)
- This does mean that I’m on my own, bachelor-style, for four days, from Sunday morning through Wednesday evening. Even better, I have a three-day weekend from work, with Saturday through Monday off. Now, the chances are extremely good that I’ll merely end up spending far too many hours in front of my computer, but with any luck, I’ll be able to get some amount of socializing in. (Is the Mercury doing anything on Sunday nights these days? Preferably something that doesn’t need a membership?)
- We got a new toy! We’d been batting around the idea of getting a laptop computer for a while now for the two of us to share, as with my continuing on through school and our tendency to travel whenever possible necessitating a portable dumping ground for photos when we’re on the run…and Prairie decided that today was the day to take the plunge. Admittedly, there is definitely going to be a ‘period of adjustment,’ as our finances limited us to a price tag in the $600 realm…which meant no Macbook for us, as Apple doesn’t really have a low-end laptop. No, instead, we’re now the somewhat bemused owners of a Gateway MT6705 Notebook PC (oooh, now how’s that for snappy, in-your-face, can’t-forget-it branding!).
- Getting the computer was a minor pain. Neither Best Buy nor Staples came anywhere close to impressing us with their customer service, but there was a very kind young man at Office Depot who ended up helping us narrow things down.
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The computer itself seems to be quite nice, though I’m not exactly sold on Vista just yet. While it’s all very nice and shiny, I had rather ridiculous issues getting it hooked into our home network…and to top it off, the Gateway tech support person, while very nice, was clueless (to the point of not knowing what “Static IP” was). I eventually figured it out, and after spending some time setting up user accounts for Prairie and I, and spending some more time removing some of the useless adware that comes pre-installed, I’m now puttering away on the new toy while Prairie putters away on her iMac.
- I have a bad feeling my G5 is going to be jealous when I get back to it….
- Lastly, as long as we were setting various bits and pieces up on the new laptop and figuring out how to pull photos from Prairie’s little camera on to it, we also spent some time setting my girl up with her own Flickr account and her own weblog (titled ‘Domesticism’ — a fitting and amusing complement to my ‘Eclecticism’), two things she’d been considering for some time and finally decided to get started on. She’s started off with the story of our quest for our new ‘puter…stop by and say hi!
And…yeah, I think that that pretty much covers it.