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There's just nothin' like starting the day out with a fresh coffee stain on a pressed white shirt. Ooolahlah! Other than tip-toeing through some powerful images, my morning has been a series of lackluster meetings that, although necessary, lack meaning to the short timer I like to call me. I feel like the week can't pass fast enough as it becomes clearer that attitudes are changing... others and mine. I feel uplifted at the thought of new opportunity with a sense of adventure while exhausted in my final days here. I can't get enough sleep. I could sleep for days. There are things I need to do that slip through my fingers. I tell myself to make a list. I make a list. I lay down in the evening and realize I forgot the list. I didn't do anything on the list. There must be some psychoanalytical explanation besides senility. I'm only 33 damn it. This domain, by the way, may have a service interruption while I sort out the transfer of service shit between the ghetto host I currently use and some yet-to-be-selected home of said blogournal. Lunch is dangerously approaching. If I could chase down a wild antelope and feed like a Serengeti lion, I would. I'm hungry enough to eat a small child with no ketchup. Tick tock. My tummy roars.

I submitted my resignation today.

Still sick. It severely sucks. I struggle just to finish the day without giving up and going home. I have an appointment tomorrow morning at 10:00, so I probably won't go into work. I long for the weekend where I can just sink into a comfortable numb and heal without interruption. On the way into work this morning, there was a spot on the radio about the AIDS Walk Houston this weekend to benefit AIDS research, etc. They claim that there is statistically one new infection every 8 hours in Houston on an annual basis. Amazing, eh? A friend of mine from work was in a nearly fatal automobile accident on Sunday. He has been on and off the critical list a few times now and operable stability is questionable. Everyday stuff... nothing special... on the way to the grocery in the rain and the car hydroplaned out of control. So, this day has come to an end.

I'm sick. Coughy, stuffy, sneezy, miserable sick. It started out as a scratchy throat last week and has spiraled slowly into this crap over the last 4 days. I could tell it was coming to because I was so unmotivated and antisocial all weekend. Poor EL... she has to put up me. I think I am one of the most miserable people to be around when I'm sick. I'm really needy. I'm one of those guys that has to be taken care of... I was going through a few more photos last night. It's hard to believe these were shot in shorts/t-shirt weather in February. Mild winters are something I'll miss when I leave Texas someday. I know it's going to happen... just a matter of when... me thinks. Colorado is the place. EL and I were originally supposed to be on a ski trip to Steamboat this week, but it just didn't work out. There are too many things going on here with work and finances. EL finished our taxes and found out that I was grossly overtaxed this last year. I am schedule to get a huge return. On another note, prospecting for new jobs may prove troublesome on the short term because the rumor is this years performance bonus payout will be at 100%. This means, in short, if I'm not an employee the day the checks are cut (probably sometime in April), I don't get a check. That hurts. My status hasn't changed in either direction, so everything is up in the air at this point. I've renewed behindthelens.org and will try to set that up this week sometime. I need to search for coffee. Have a great day. Ciao.

It's ironic how a minor change in perspective can effect a person's position on something. I have been the sole support person for my companies network disaster recovery testing about three years or so as a collateral duty to my normal job function. Over time, the issue has been raised about "what if" something were to happen to me and I wasn't around to support DR. The obvious answer is to spread the love and get more people involved in the role. Every time it has been attempted, within a test or two, it falls back on me. Everything is non-tasking and completely cake until your are the one doing it. Heh. So anyhoo, I really have been slacking on the photo development. In my own defense, I'm out of hard drive space. I've whittled down this and that, backed up a lot to DVD, uninstalled software that I haven't used in a while... all to no avail. When I shoot, I shoot completely in RAW... and I don't mean I'm naked... or even commando. RAW images are or image data that are written as just a continuous string of numbers. There is no compression or encoding so they are not really images readable by standard viewers supporting TIFF, JPG, yadda yadda yadda. In order to work with the data in a useable image format, it must be converted from RAW data to one of the standard image file formats. RAW image data files are analogous to film negatives. They must be "developed" to create a viewable image. So, where am I going with this? Hard drive space. Each frame that I shoot in RAW is roughly 10MB give or take a meg or two. When I export the RAW frames to the PC, I select the frames I want to "develop" and use a RAW converter to "develop" them into Photoshop Documents. I have used Capture One Professional in the past to convert to TIFF, but since I do all my editing in Photoshop CS, I find that using Adobe Camera Raw (the CS plug-in version) is more efficient to my workflow. Here is where my problem comes in to the picture... no pun intended. Each frame, when saved as a 16 bit .PSD after RAW conversion, is about 150MB. Obviously, that adds up. So, as I either back shit up to offload the drive or purchase more storage capacity, I'll work through more photos. Unfortunately, that is just the pickle I'm in right now. I smell an external high density drive in my future. Oh wait, that's just coffee.

By and large, the funniest discovery for me in a long time.