Original ExistDifferently.com Weblog of David, a Christian Network and Systems Manager, with topics ranging from Apologetics to Worldview, and some crypto, open source, programming, opinion, and daily life thrown in between.

Tue, 2005-04-19 (Apr 19)

Wonderful Hotel Internet :-(

Well, the pictures from yesterday, all several hundred of them, should have been uploaded overnight but the Flickr uploader tool kept timing out. A few uploaded, which you can “see here”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/existdifferently/sets/244083/ for now, I’ll add to the set and post here when I get a chance to upload the rest. Unfortunately the ones that did get posted (since I’m posting in chronological order approximately, at least by memory card) are from the NAB conference, and not from The Strip at night, which I also got a lot of! Some not as blurry this time :-)

We went go-karting last night on some go-karts that look like your average local fun park go-karts, but they weren’t speed-limited and could go up to 40 MPH! We had a lot of fun with those, the testosterone was certainly flowing strong :-) If it hadn’t cost $25 per ride of about 10 minutes or so, we’d have gone a second time for sure. But once was probably good, since several muscles got sore from use even that first time!

I actually got to bed by 1am last night Vegas time, and got up at 8:30 this morning. 7.5 hours…feels good, the last two nights I got just over half that :-)

Gotta go get ready for the day! The show is so huge it’s amazing. Many football fields in size, in each of several buildings!

End of Day Two in Vegas!

Filed under: Blog,General,Las Vegas/NAB2005,Photography,Travel/Trips — David @ 02:49

Well, short post to mention that day two in Vegas, the first day of the NAB convention, is over. I’m going to bed. New photos are uploading, most aren’t public yet I need to go through them. So I won’t link to them now, I’ll give you a link later, maybe tomorrow night, maybe later…depends on when I have time! I only have web access at night, even though I have email during the day (wireless at the convention is $25/day! Hotel is $10/day. Which would you go with?).

Mon, 2005-04-18 (Apr 18)

In Vegas!

We arrived in Las Vegas around 9pm Vegas time, or 11pm home time. Took around an hour to walk terminal, get luggage, rent car…then we drove to the Strip where we’re staying at one of the hotel/casinos (I might post which one after we get back). Quite an amazing drive for three guys who’ve never been to Vegas! So many lights and so much money spent on looks!

We took a walk after checking in to the hotel, didn’t get too many pictures as I forgot to grab my camera on the way out the door at first, but got a few. Oh well, more later. You can “see the pictures here from Las Vegas Day 1”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/existdifferently/sets/241080/.

Walking down the strip, we walked past so many pimps passing out handbills I couldn’t keep count; they hold them out with one hand and try to offer them to you, and do a little flicking motion and makes noise against the paper as an extra attention-getter. Plus, the sidewalk was littered with handbills the size of playing cards, often well within 10 feet of each other (or less) they were so dense in certain areas. Like walking on nearly-naked confetti (but without looking at them closely you can’t make out anything other than they weren’t fully naked, they are playing-card sized after all, and many on the sidewalk were upside-down with just words (phone/advertisement/coupon/whatever) showing, too. Pretty sad. Fortunately I have less than zero desire for such a shallow relationship, not to mention the sin or cost issues involved, being on a church trip…numerous things would keep me from pursuing the adverts even if I were so inclined, which like I mentioned I’m not. What a wasted life for most of those girls and their pimps though.

We haven’t solified things, but we may see “Blue Man Group”:http://www.blueman.com/ at Luxor on Tuesday night! And “Star Trek: The Experience”:http://www.startrekexp.com at the Hilton is on the possible list as well…right down the street!

Sun, 2005-04-17 (Apr 17)

To Las Vegas!

Well, this afternoon (Sunday the 17th) I’m off to Las Vegas! A pastor from my church (the media pastor), the Technical Director, and me are all going to “NAB2005”:http://www.nabshow.com/ (the National Association of Broadcasters trade show/conference). It’s going to be fun, and we’ll hopefully pick up some good pointers for what we want to do in the future with our video/media. The show is Monday through Wednesday, and we’re coming back on the red-eye Wednesday night and should be back in town Thursday morning (fortunately I have Thursday off). My girlfriend Ruth is taking a couple of hours off work early on Thursday so I can see her soon when I get back (and finish sleeping Thursday morning, depending on how good the overnight flight goes), she’s so awesome :-)

Depending on what kind of internet access we have in Vegas, I may be posting some pics online while I’m there or perhaps when I get back, time permitting. I may shoot a few good ones over to this blog, but you could watch my “Flickr photostream”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/existdifferently/ directly for any new ones coming down the pike!

Also, in case anyone’s interested, Fuji has a nice $50 rebate this month on their “Finepix S5100”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/S5100/S51A.HTM SLR-like digital camera! It’s 4 megapixels with a 10x optical zoom, among lots of other good features, which you can see by reading the review the name is linked to. Best price I’ve seen (it’s where I ordered mine) before the rebate is from “ButterflyPhoto”:http://www.butterflyphoto.com/ and you can “see the S5100 item listing here”:http://www.butterflyphoto.com/shop/product.aspx?sku=FUJIS5100. Just $249.95 before the rebate, or $199.99 (yes, that’s less than $200!) after the rebate! This camera was at least $275 before shipping at the cheapest location I’ve ever found for it, back a couple of months ago when I bought my “Finpix E550”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/E550/E55A.HTM (buy it now for “$247 at ButterflyPhoto”:http://www.butterflyphoto.com/shop/product.aspx?sku=FUJIE550 which is over $60 less than I paid for it!) which is another awesome camera but more along the point-and-shoot lines (but is VERY nice for that type of shooting, and I’ve taken over 2,000 pictures with it since I got it around two months ago!). Anyway, I ordered this last (Friday) night and it should get here either next week around when I get home, or at the latest the beginning of the next week. I already have a second 512MB xD picture card to use in it…best price on those is “eCost.com”:http://www.ecost.com/ecost/ecsplash/shop/detail~dpno~269806.asp as far as I’ve found (free shipping, small handling fee, $10 for overnight shipping). The xD picture cards are a bit more expensive than traditional flash storage cards but the data transfer rate is much higher unless you buy a high-speed card of another type, which would likely be priced the same. But all xD cards are the same high speed, no need to double-check :-)

Thu, 2005-04-14 (Apr 14)

The Park – Yellow Flowers and Trees

Filed under: Flickr,General,Photography — David @ 01:55



Yellow Flowers and Trees – DSCF1347

Originally uploaded by ExistDifferently.

Went to a city park this past Saturday and took some good pictures out on the hiking trails. This one in particular was of a really nice area covered with yellow flowers among the trees, right next to the trail!

The rest of the “park set”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/existdifferently/sets/230616/ can be found on “Flickr”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/existdifferently/.

Wed, 2005-04-13 (Apr 13)

Lego Jewelry

Filed under: Funny,Tech (General) — David @ 00:25

“ForeverGeek”:http://forevergeek.com/gadgets/jewelry_for_geeks.php has quite the article about “Lego Jewelry”:http://www.jacquelinesanchez.com/gallery_n.html (click the Forever Young gallery name). I’m sure I’d never get any of this (right, you know who?) but it is somewhat fascinating :-)

At least people won’t bother me for not posting now. Ha. I might even post a picture next! I have some good new ones.

Fri, 2005-04-08 (Apr 08)

Stale Night-Water

Filed under: Blog,General — David @ 11:47

“Funny post”:http://coffeetalking.blogspot.com/2005/04/will-you-eat-this-one-mr-blogger-man.html over at “It’s Just The Coffee Talking,” where the author mentions that she can’t drink water left on her nightstand more than about four hours because it’s stale. I wasn’t aware of anyone else that suffered from this issue as I do, although I don’t know if I had my “stale” time figured down to four hours. If I’ve fallen asleep and then wake up, the water is pretty much stale. I think it’s from the dust in the air settling in the water :-)

Mon, 2005-04-04 (Apr 04)

Yellow-Striped Butterfly on Yellow Flower

Filed under: Flickr,General,Photography — David @ 00:59



Yellow-Striped Butterfly on Yellow Flower

Originally uploaded by ExistDifferently.

One of over 500 pictures total taken at the White River Gardens Butterfly Exibit on April 2nd, 2005. I just have a few online right now but they’re all nice and captioned/commented. This is one of the better butterfly pics I’ve got online so far. The better flowers and butterfly shots are also together both in a set available on my Flickr homepage, and also a Group for the Gardens with just the best, most interesting nature-related photos.

Fri, 2005-04-01 (Apr 01)

And to think there’s worse…

Filed under: Blog,Christianity,General,In The News,Personal,Worldviews — David @ 03:12

A “blog entry here”:http://coffeetalking.blogspot.com/2005/03/little-bit-of-everything.html links to quite a story: “False Imprisonment”:http://www.dmregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050331/SPORTS13/503310395/1003&lead=1

It’s worth reading all the way through. The sad part? I can tell you from personal (not my individual, but I was one of three people second-most affected) experience that what happened in this case is NOTHING compared to the true injustice in the, um, “justice” system in this country right now (try taking that story, drag it out to about seven years, and make it two separate false charges and two false or forced convictions…and that’s just for starters). Even sadder? That we have the “best” system of it’s sort on the planet. And some people are optimistic! And by that I mean utopian…they thing everything’s going to get better as we “evolve.” I don’t mean to say that you shouldn’t be optimistic about some things, such as God’s plan for your life and such, but don’t be optimistic about the world as-is getting better any time soon. It’s pretty much headed down the toilet, for the time being at least. Either Jesus is coming back first, or it will get worse until the next turn in the cycle mentioned by the book “The Fourth Turning”:http://www.fourthturning.com/ (which notes that it’s gotten bad like this (well, not exactly like this, but worse than we might usually imagine, also “see the book on Amazon”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/055306682X/davidsworldva-20/002-2086300-3510456?%5Fencoding=UTF8&camp=1789&link%5Fcode=xm2 and also note that I haven’t read the entire book, nor is it written from a Christian perspective)) in the past, but that history always seems to repeat itself, particularly in a four-part cycle identified in said book). Original sin brings us all this, and crushes utpianism, at least until God returns, and at that point “utopia” is just one of the two!

But I digress slightly :-)

Also, this is worth considering: “Iniquity Abounds”:http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Basics/iniquity_abounds.htm

Time for some sleep, even though there’s no work tomorrow (yay!). I wish well those of you who may perhaps have to go to either work or school and stayed up a bit late ;-)

Tue, 2005-03-29 (Mar 29)

Top of windmill…chinese restaurant…Holland

Filed under: Flickr,General,Photography — David @ 00:41



Top of windmill outside of chinese restaurant in Holland – P6060010

Originally uploaded by ExistDifferently.

This isn’t my coolest picture by any means, but it did kind’ve strike me as nice when I ran across it when looking through my Flickr stuff. So you get to see it here. I’ll probably start posting more Flickr stuff here, since I can post to my blog right from within the Flickr site from any image. I can only include that image specifically, but I can compose my post and everything and wham, bam, thank you ma’am…posted! Now to weed out my more creative pics over the next few weeks or so, to keep my blog up and running :-)

Trees and “tucked” setting sun closeup

Filed under: Flickr,General,Photography — David @ 00:27



Trees and "tucked" setting sun closeup – DSCF1329

Originally uploaded by ExistDifferently.

This picture is one of my favs from the trip I took with my small group to a cabin an hour away from the city in February. Lots good nature pictures from the trip, some of which I’ve made public on Flickr, but this has to be right up near the top of my favorites! It would probably look even better given some tweaking in an editing program.

Words, Words, and Few for You!

Talking is cool. Both online and in person. For me, when I get enough talking one-on-one, apparently I can’t come up with anything worthwhile to post to the general public here (and by “general public” I mean, the two or three people that read this regularly and anyone else that stumbles through from Google or something :-)

Not that that’s a bad thing. Unless you want to read more stuff here. But hey, it’s my blog, so you’ll just have to live. I do respond to comments occasionally, especially from commenters that aren’t, um, regulars :-) Or I would, if there were more than three such comments on the whole site. And one of those is from someone I know in person.

Of course, if I posted more interesting stuff here that was actually worth commenting on, I suppose I might then expect more comments. Catch-22 really. Or maybe the most important things I have to say right now aren’t meant for you to hear. Or you. Or you. Safe bet: if you don’t know if it’s you or not, it’s not you :-) On the other hand, if you do know what I’m talking about, feel free to ignore what I’m talking about, it doesn’t apply to you :-)

Do I get a prize? You know, for least content in three paragraphs? I should at least get runner-up for this one :-) What do you know, I did want to talk. Just not about anything you’re probably interested in, here at least :-) If you’re feeling left out, give it time (sure for this post to sink in or something (like it ever will…ha! Like the blonde that died in the shower when the shampoo bottle said “lather, rinse, repeat” ;-), but what I mean is come back later and perhaps eventually I’ll be able to post something more interesting in such a public forum :-)

Um…”Mozilla Firefox 1.0.2″:http://www.getfirefox.com/ is out. It’s cool. Get it. Um…[looks at multitude of tabs open for something interesting to post]…I found a site called “LinkedIn”:https://www.linkedin.com/ the other day that I hadn’t seen before. Interesting stuff, but I haven’t signed up yet. Still, the tab remains open since I’m curious about it :-)

Also, “Magix music products”:http://site.magix.net/index.php?id=471&no_cache=1 are good stuff…try the demos sometime. Music Studio 2005 is really good and at less than $100 is very powerful, the main limitation I run into is not being able to edit the audio while recording at the same time, which you can do in their premiere “Samplitude”:http://site.magix.net/index.php?id=15648&type=2 product (although it’s $1,000 more expensive :-)

If you have an extra $79 laying around (and who doesn’t?), “Amazon Prime”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/subs/primeclub/signup/main.html/002-2086300-3510456 is a nice program to get into if you like Amazon.com and want to get fast, free shipping (or faster, cheaper shipping). Details are right there on the site, I think you can read it without me :-) Free two-day shipping on over 1 million items, overnight for $3.99, for a year. Yep, I told you anyway! Get over it!

Ran into an interesting site while searching for something (I don’t remember what, a how-to on something) the other day. It’s a computer help site called “Bleeping Computer”:http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/. I get a kick out of the name and wish I’d gotten to that domain…like I need more than the 30+ I have :-)

If you’re looking to buy something computer related, first check out “eCost”:http://www.ecost.com/ because they have a lot of good deals. LCDs and camera memory cards are some of their best and most often discounted items. But they have lots of stuff. Also, for general, daily updated deals (lots of Dell deals that link directly to Dell, sometimes with coupon codes, but plenty of non-Dell, and some non-computer related, like “Overstock.com”:http://www.overstock.com selling down comforters and bedsheets really cheap) are awesome over at “GotApex”:http://www.gotapex.com/. I watch that site several days out of the week to spot good stuff. Not that I buy that often, or I’d be much poorer than I am (although they’re one of the reasons I’m as poor as I am already :-)

For example, GotApex is listing right now that Amazon.com has a “Canon PowerShot SD110 Digital Elph 3 megapixel 2X zoom”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0001G6U9I/ref%3Dnosim/gotapex/002-2086300-3510456 camera for just $159! If I had the spare cash I’d jump on it, the Elphs are awesome because they’re so darn tiny while still be high quality. And usually high priced. But I don’t :-)

And, my last item for this post is “my Flickr page”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/existdifferently/ which, if you’re not on my friends or family list, still has a lot of pictures that I spent all night last Friday night (until 8am Saturday morning) tagging with metadata and making public. I have over 3,200 images uploaded to Flickr, and am nowhere near getting them all sorted (probably never will be) but I like the ones I have available now :-)

Goodnight!

Update: I do find it somewhat ironic how long this post ended up being, and how much info I included, given the title. So much for intent! :-) But aren’t you glad I got around to some actually useful information after all that stuff at the top?

Mon, 2005-03-28 (Mar 28)

To sleep, or not to sleep?

Filed under: Personal — David @ 02:00

Yep. You didn’t guess it! To sleep :-) This time…

[possibly shortest post ever, even with this postscript!]

Fri, 2005-03-25 (Mar 25)

My Kind of Alarm!

Filed under: Blog,General,In The News,Personal — David @ 17:48

I should probably look into “this alarm clock”:http://coffeetalking.blogspot.com/2005/03/are-you-alarm-hitter.html at some point. That, or move my alarm clock across the room. But I tried that before, and got so ticked off about having to get out of bed to turn it off that I just moved it closer :-) This one actually moves so it is next to your bed the first time, and if it moves to a random part of the room so you have to look for it, it could be helpful. Of course now I just sleep through my current clock (well, I did today, but I actually woke up to it a few times this week!), so it might not help much :-)

Update: Original article with pictures (it’s ugly at the moment!): “right here”:http://bicillin.media.mit.edu/clocky/

Tue, 2005-03-22 (Mar 22)

Microsoft’s Vacuums

Filed under: Blog,Funny,General,In The News — David @ 14:25

While browsing, I stumbled upon (geez, will that cliche ever go away? :-) a funny quote I haven’t seen before, at this “article on usenet posting”:http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html. Specifically:

“The day Microsoft makes something that doesn’t suck is probably the day they start making vacuum cleaners.” — Ernst Jan Plugge

Not to say I buy that hook, line and sinker about Microsoft, but they certain do have their moments :-) But, I do work with a lot of their products and, when configured and used properly, they do actually work sometimes, and sometimes (gasp) better than the alternatives! But, that doesn’t make the quote above any less humourous!

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