Presenting... GIMP

February 21, 2011 11:16 pm

The Monday following our adventure in Utah, Feb 7th, I gave a presentation about GIMP to our camera club. A few weeks back the presidency sent out a survey about club interests to help find topics for presentations. On the survey they asked if there was anything you'd be interested in presenting. So I volunteered to give a presentation about GIMP (free photo editing software). Pretty much everyone there uses some version of Photoshop so I wasn't sure what their response would be, but it went quite well. A lot of people were very interested in being able to do the same things they've been doing, but not having to pay several hundred dollars every few years to do it. Hopefully at least some of them like it and end up saving themselves some money.

Recruiting again

10:32 pm

Jess claims I'm the one who's supposed to be blogging at the moment. So here are some updates about our last month.

At the beginning of February we went to Provo for another Career Fair. We were looking for Computer Science students but didn't have much luck. We got a total of 5 resumes from BYU CS students. There were probably over 30 Mechanical Engineering students and a bunch of Chemical Engineering students. Which is fine, the Lab hires those people, but we (the two recruiters that went) are from Computations. So we don't really know a whole lot about what Engineering needs or is looking for.

We did have a whole bunch of CS students from BYU-Idaho show up though. Now, no offense intended, but, if we wanted students from BYU-Idaho....we'd....you know....go to Idaho to recruit them. I don't know anything about their CS program and it's probably fine. The two main issues are that 1) BYU has a good reputation at the Lab; BYU-I has no reputation. And 2) When we come to the Career Fair we stay an extra day to do preliminary interviews with students. BYU-I students leave at the end of the day and we don't get a chance to interview them. So at that point they're really not any better off than just submitting a resume through the website cold like anyone else. From my point of view (in terms of immediate employment opportunities) it's kind of a waste of their time and our time when they drive down and talk to us.

We drove out to Provo on the 1st. The Career Fair was on the 2nd. We had interviews and lunch with professors one the 3rd. And we drove back on the 4th. So it was a very quick trip. But we did get to see Erin and Co. And Mom was in town and we saw her. Jess got to see some friends while I was working and we got to bring back another stock of Jess' favorite bread.

So from a business standpoint it was slightly disappointing, but socially it worked out well.

The travel had its own special fiascoes.

We didn't have any weather problems, so that was nice. Clear skies there and back. Though, when we left Livermore it was ~50 degrees and when we arrived in Provo that night it was 6. It felt very cold comparatively.

Anyway, back to the travel fiascoes. On travel days Jess and I like to swing by McDonald's in the morning for breakfast-on-the-go. Now, for years, my go-to breakfast item at McDonald's has been their bacon-egg-and-cheese bagel. I've ordered this in Connecticut (my SAT breakfast), and several times in Utah, and several times in California. When we drove to Texas for Christmas I ordered it in Texas too. But Arizona and New Mexico knew nothing of this "bagel" I asked for. I wrote it off as a strange regional variation in the menu.

BUT! Sadly, McDonald's has apparently discontinued the bagel breakfast sandwiches nationwide. When I tried to order one in Livermore when we left I was told they don't have them anymore. And we saw signs to that effect posted in a McDonald's we stopped at during our journey. I'm quite annoyed by this.

However, the McDonald's betrayal doesn't end there. Oh no. Halfway across Nevada Jess decides she wants some ice-cream, a McFlurry to be precise. Figuring this shouldn't be too hard we pull off in Battle Mountain (sounds like it's straight out of a video game) and into the McDonald's parking lot. We walk inside and ask for a McFlurry and they say they're out of ice-cream. But they're kind enough to suggest a place down the street that has ice-cream (really it was the only other place that looked like it served food in a 25-mile radius). Fine, so we went in there, which was a little coffee shop place, and looked at the menu. We discover they don't offer what Jess is looking for. So we leave Battle Mountain dejected.

An hour later and we're going through Elko. We figure we'll try again. So we pull off the highway again and into the McDonald's parking lot. We go in and order a McFlurry for Jess and a hot chocolate for me. I know McDonald's redid their hot beverages in an attempt to be fancier or something, and I've tried their hot chocolate once since then and didn't like it; but I thought I'd give it another chance. We get our items and get back in the car. We fill up the gas tank before getting back on the highway. As we're pulling out of the gas station and on to the main road towards the highway I take a sip of my hot chocolate and gag. Not hot chocolate. It's some disgusting coffee disaster.

So I manage to get turned around and back to the McDonald's. The teenager behind the counter who took my order, made my drink, and handed it to me looks at me with a blank stare. I hand him the cup and say, "This is not hot chocolate." He look at the cup and then back at me and says, "It's not? sorry..." and wanders off to remake the drink. OK, no big deal, but it wasn't like the place was busy! We had ordered our food and he walked over, made the drink, and handed it to me. But apparently in the 8 seconds it took to walk to the beverage area he forgot he was making hot chocolate. Sigh.

Anyway, this time it is hot chocolate, but it's still pretty crappy. I guess in order to be "fancy" hot chocolate they also had to make it taste bad. But I guess that's what I get for growing up with the sophisticated taste of Swiss Miss. McDonald's is --this-- close to being on my blacklist. But Jess says I'm not allowed to blacklist McDonald's because she still really likes their biscuit breakfast sandwiches.

On our way back from Utah we decided we'd stop off in Sacramento and grab some Panda Express for dinner. So we find a Panda Express on the GPS which should be just off the highway and start working our way through Sacramento. But, turns out that Sacramento has changed their streets since the GPS maps were updated. It asks us to drive through a set of steel bollards and onto the sidewalk. We decline that option and try to work our own way around to the address, but after 10 minutes of getting stuck at one-way streets and not getting any closer we give up on Sacramento and just get back on the highway. I'd be ready to swear off Sacramento too, but our train is going to leave from there next Christmas.

Playing in the Dark

January 22, 2011 12:02 pm

While Jess was off at Cub Scouts last week I took the camera outside to play around.

I ended up with two images I rather like. I started by taking long exposure shots of the intersection near our apartment complex. I tried some really long exposures like 3-4 minute, but I wasn't particularly interested in the results. As I was messing with settings I heard an ambulance approaching, so I took a guess at how long it would take the ambulance to clear the intersection and snapped this 30-second exposure:
IMGP4143b_Ambulance_sOnce I was done with the intersection I moved into the patio area next to the shopping center. I took some shots of the fountain there and some of the moon rising, but didn't like any of the results. I thought the lamps looked kind of interesting though so I took a bracketed exposure and blended the three frames into this shot:

IMGP4169_70_71a-High Pressure Mercury Vapor_sI believe it is a high-pressure, mercury-vapor lamp which is why it's so green.

Also, the camera club reconsiders everyone's competition levels at the start of each year. In the "Pictorial" category I've moved up from "Basic" to "Intermediate." A fairly large number of other members did the same though, so Pictorial Intermediate is now a pretty large group of people. I submitted two images this past week, but neither placed in the top 4 out of the 23 entries.

Victory for the Dickersons!

January 20, 2011 8:53 pm

As many of you probably recall, Jess and I drove to Texas in protest of the TSA grope-a-thon required to fly these days. Before the new, creepier security screening processes were put in place we had purchased airplane tickets with Southwest. When the change occurred I was particularly unhappy. I called Southwest and asked for a refund, which they refused to provide because "we don't control the TSA; it's not our fault."

So I moved to plan B: I filed a charge dispute with my credit card company (CitiBank) and carefully detailed why I considered the scenario to be a breach of contract. They conditionally refunded the money and sent the dispute to Southwest which had 60 days to reply. The reply just came through and my refund has been made permanent! Hooray!

--------------------

On a related note, an update about the letters we sent to the airlines and government officials. Every airline responded with a written answer. Most were along the lines of "it's not our fault, we can't do anything about it." But the response from American Airlines was very simple and direct:

Thank you for taking the time to contact us about the recent changes that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has made to checkpoint security screening procedures. We are monitoring our customers' feedback on this issue very closely, and we thank you for providing us with your impressions.

They're the only airline that didn't simply deflect the issue away from themselves. I appreciate that. The airlines claim they have no control over the matter and, ostensibly, they don't. However, they do have rather influential lobbying efforts which could certainly be brought to bear on the situation. And that's the goal I'm going for. If they get enough pressure and begin losing enough customers they will find a way to reign in the TSA.

Now for the responses I got back from the government officials. We wrote letters, (physical letters!), to our two Senators, our House Representative, the TSA, the FAA, and the President. We received exactly zero replies. In over two months not a single person, organization, or office responded to our concerns. No form letters, no acknowledgement of any kind. That really kind of bothers me.

The fact that no part of the government could be bothered to even acknowledge our concerns is why I have very little faith that anything will change until the airlines start lobbying for it. I've now learned very poignantly how little my opinion matters to the people who are elected to represent my interests.

Thanks America, you're really doing a bang-up job with that democratic republic business.

----------------

So the scores are:
-1 to Southwest for denying me the refund when I asked for it on the phone.
+1 to Southwest for not denying the charge dispute when I filed it with my credit card company.
+1 to CitiBank for taking care of this for me (using a credit card does have some great benefits).
-100 to the TSA for implementing stupid "security" rules.
+2 to the Dickersons who successfully received a refund from a large company.
+5 to airlines for acknowledging my complaint.
-20 to government officials/organizations for not acknowledging my existence.

Holidays are awesome.

January 17, 2011 9:48 pm

Kyle had today off, so we started out the way all holidays should begin: sleeping in. Then we went to the new Denny's Cafe up the road to see what that's all about. I was happy because I got a tasty breakfast for lunch. While we were out, we stopped at Home Depot for some supplies: a new pot, a set of drill bits, and a hook. Our goal for the afternoon was to hang the windchimes my parents got us for Christmas and to re-pot the rose bush. It had fallen victim to some idiotic vandals (isn't knocking a potted plant off its ledge and onto a cement patio where it will shatter into a million pieces just about the funniest thing you can think of to do on a Saturday night at 11:30?). Anyway, we got the chimes hung (with the help of a ladder we borrowed from friends, though w/o using the drill or hook) and the plant re-potted. Hopefully it's not too shocked to live.

patioIt looks nice, right? I'm not sure how much wind the chimes will get in there, but we'll see. They sound amazing! And here's my handyman:

kyle