Knuckledragger

No, that's not what I was implying at all. Serenity is a wonderful series, tragically cut short by idiot Fox executives. Just as one is really getting into the series, the last disk ends.

That's great for anyone who's managed to avoid watching the series thusfar. For the rest of us...

Today I made it to the sodding audio repair shop before they closed @ 5PM, got home and unloaded two McIntoshes (including a boat anchor of a monoblock) and still had time to grab my camera and chase the sunset. I ended up using my EF 75-300mm F/4-5.6 USM III tele-zoom, which is largely regarded as the worst in Canon's entire line. It managed to get a couple shots nearly in focus enough that I could use them. I processed these two as RAW files in Photomatix, and then worked them over in Photoshop. A while back there was an amazing combination of sunset and fog in my yard, so I went out and snapped a few pix. Idiot me had the camera on landscape mode, which oversaturated the colors and looked like ass. Fortunately, after the first dozen shots I switched to RAW + jpeg, so there are some I can salvage. I've been putting off editing them forever. I still haven't distilled jpegs from the RAW files, but I did run one through Photomatix and make a pseudo HDR image. It required much cleaning in Photoshop and is still kind of messy, but the end result is at least okay: I set the saturation levels very low on all three of these shots when I tonemapped then in Photomatix. My goal was to avoid as much of the cartoony aspect of HDR as possible.

Ran a bunch of errands including picking up my two bits of McIntosh tube kit from the repair shop (pictures Real Soon Now). Managed to get home in time to grab my camera and get a few shots of the fleeting sunset. Discovered that the refurb'd PSU I got from PC Power & Cooling as replacement for my dead unit is also dead. Re-installed my old 420W supply. Spent two effing hours futzing with the IDE cables, jumpers, power connectors and bios settings before I had a machine that would boot from CD and recognize the new system drive. Now I am listening to a techno mix a friend sent me and editing HDR images while I wait for the the Windows installer to finish formatting the drive.

Where's Dom when you need him?

An alternate soundtrack to Koyaanisqatsi. Nice and relaxing while I reinstall windows on my PC.

Green tea tastes like ass when made with fully boiled water. I use the scientific approach of boiling the water (on my stove) letting it sit for a few minutes to cool down, forgetting about it, coming back to find it's too cold, turning the burner back on and starting again. This is why I drink Earl Grey.

Paid for the repairs to my My McIntosh MC-75 mono-anchor and one of my MC-22 preamps.

Whoa. I made a thread an didn't even know it. These blackouts are getting serious. Why is there blood under my fingernails?

*snicker* Remember Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard | The Onion - America's Finest News Source? This is a still from it:

A monk: 'Monk:

Got up pretty early for Sunday (10AM) mostly thanks to the ever-chipper contractor who called me ... to let me know that he received the message I sent him four days earlier. Decided to light the wood stove for the first time in two weeks. Had some wood inside, but went out and got two baskets anyway. Noticed that it was snowing. Dug out my film body and walked around in the snow and shot twelve frames on the roll of ISO 400 B&W film that's been languishing in the camera since the middle of December. 11 frames were done with my 17-40mm superwide zoom and one with my manual focus 135mm F/2.8 Orestor (which is older than I am.) I cleaned the snow off my car just as it was getting dark and went out and bought a replacement bulb for the wannabe lava lamp my friend knocked over when he was drunk. Fortunately, the bulb wasn't terribly exotic or expensive ($6 for two). Visited my friend Steve at work and shot the shit with him for a while. Fun fact: Steve's nickname is "Stax" -- after the record label, not the headphone company. Came home, called Ricardo to confirm that he'd be home around 11:00PM. Drove to NoHo, picked up my PC and helped Ricardo pick out a digital camera (Canon SD1100 IS Elph for $150-ish). Also gave Ricky a mastered copy of the Saturnine mix. Drove back home and concluded I'm too tired to set up the PC tonight. The Saturnine mix will have to wait until tomorrow.