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Veterans Day... I remember.

Come on clock! I'm ready to fly, fly away!

Fried. Fried. Fried. Fried. Fried. Fried. Fried. Fried. Fried. Fried. Fried. Fried. Fried. Everything for lunch was fried. The only way I could jam more deep fried greasy badness into my body would be to deep fry my Diet Coke (true irony) and shove a Crisco filled caulking gun up my ass. Fuck. Why did I just do that!? Fried. Fried. Fried. Fried. Fried. Fried. Fried. Fried. Fried. Fried. Fried. Fried. Fried.

Rough morning. Incompetent boss. You know you have grown up when the spoon full of sugar to help the medicine go down has become the glass full of liquor to help the bad man go away. I need a flask at my desk. Heh. The day is absolutely gorgeous outside... following in line with the beauty-during-the-work-week-and-shit-on-the-weekend trend. I am planning to take tomorrow off. Veterans Day.

In case you care... Last week's events caused excitement, but this week was positively historic. The largest explosion ever recorded in our solar system occurred Tuesday, November 4, when an X28 class flare exploded from sunspot 486. The flare erupted as the giant sunspot was about to rotate from the visible disk. This means the blast wasn't aimed at earth, but was in a great position for taking images. The eruption saturated X-ray detectors on NOAA's GOES (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites, and was so strong that the X28 measurement had to be estimated, as did the solar flux for November 4. The flare saturated observing satellites for about 13 minutes during the peak of the event, according to Christopher Balch of NOAA SEC, who spoke with Tomas Hood, NW7US. The measurements stopped at X17.4. The level of the flare was estimated by analyzing data from HESSI, the High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager. The last time a huge flare saturated X-ray detectors was in April, 2001, and that one was X-20, the biggest recorded at that time. Keep in mind that there aren't any accurate records of flare intensity before about 30 years ago. Sunspot numbers for October 30 through November 5 were 293, 266, 277, 174, 76, 79 and 32, with a mean of 171. 10.7 cm flux was 271.4, 248.9, 210.4, 190.4, 166.9, 168 and 114, with a mean of 195.7. Estimated planetary A indices were 162, 93, 21, 18, 10, 31 and 9, with a mean of 49.1.

Another Monday is already upon us... where does the time go? EL and I had a pretty uneventful weekend of enjoying each other’s company. Friday night we went out for Italian and this new little place EL found. It was very cool... the restaurant was family style and the atmosphere was great... quiet little rooms with cute, candlelit tables and live Italian music. I felt ill all day Saturday with a borderline migraine headache and upset stomach. I managed to drag my ass out of bed and go take a few photos despite my physical discomfort... the last photo outing with my 10D. The day is pretty much a blur after going to see the final installment in the Matrix saga. I think we crashed out early like an old married couple instead of going out. Sunday was a day of drinking beer and being goofy. We hit a few buckets of balls over at the range and went to Harry’s for some football on his giant HDTV. Speaking of golf, I forgot to blog that EL and I ran into Tiger Woods and his girlfriend last Tuesday night when we stopped for food on the way to poker night... small world, eh? I suppose it has something to do with the PGA thing going on down the road from our place, but it was still cool. I spent some time on and off this weekend working through a CiscoWorks problem unsuccessfully, so I suppose that will be a hot item for me to fix today. My boss and I had a misunderstanding on Friday afternoon that may very well lead to me leaving this joint finally. Long story, but the synopsis is: he is deluded. I am so ready for some morning coffee. I am fixating. I’m typing this on the bus in the overcrowded HOV lane to be published when I get jacked back into the net. It sucks. The bumps make for a lot of typos, so enjoy. Ugh! I’m stopping this circus.

Cool link from Greg.

Sellin' out. If you're interested. update: sold

The scenic lunch revisited...

Matrix Regurgitations sucked... not even worth matinee price.

Cool morning... cold front. There seems to be a lot of daddy long legs in the woods today. I wonder where they all came from.. odd. I reversed a Pentax 50mm f/1.7 on top of a Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 using a 58mm to 52mm step down ring and a 52mm male to male macro coupling ring to get this extreme macro mug shot of a daddy long legs. Ambient light was overcast, so I used an external Speedlight 550EX in manual (1/1) with no diffuser and took this photo at f/20. Say cheese!

Yeah. I know this is old... but it demonstrates why children should be illegal.

Cool. I'm glad it's Friday... now, if I can just make it through the day. Heh.

Let me testify that a freshly clipped first E string on the geetar will pierce your skin like a hot knife through butter. Effin ouch.

For such a productive morning, my afternoon was shit. I've been fighting with rectifying configuration archive discrepancies and our CW2K box is a hunk-o-shit despite it being a quad processor behemoth with a gazillion gigz of RAM. You see, the app uses a lot of java and java makes shit run through cement. Anyhoo, the day is almost over and I need a nap. Go straight to bed... do not pass go... do not collect $200... nap. N - A - P.