Hand Coding

Back in November, I walked out of Kroger to discover some small cracks and paint chipped off the left side of my rear bumper. I wasn’t pleased, but I chalked it up to a rogue shopping cart. And, figuring that it’d be below my deductible anyway, I wasn’t in any particular hurry to have it fixed (it was only a cosmetic issue and didn’t affect the car).

Earlier this month, I decided that I should get it taken care of since I’d have to get it fixed sooner or later anyway. I recalled that Scott Secrest mentioned a repair shop during the DFWBlogs Cocktail Event at Cosmo’s. So, I e-mailed him about that and it turns out that it was the Service King near Plano Dr & Kingsley.

I went there for an estimate and it was about the same (or a bit less) as other estimates I had. But, I decided to give it a shot since they appeared more professional than some of the other outfits. I scheduled the appointment for Monday.

I brought my car in and, conveniently, there’s an Enterprise car rental in the same building. I was almost expecting Enterprise to take advantage of its “free customers”, but they gave me a good rate as well (about $24/day).

They estimated that my car would take about four days and it was finished today (four days). I went to pick up the car and the workmanship was top-notch. I wasn’t certain, but it looked like they may have even washed my car as well (a nice touch). I can see why Scott recommended Service King — they did quality work and the staff treated me professionally.

If you need collision repair on your car, I’d recommend Service King. If you’re looking for a specific name,the guy I dealt with was Bruce Williams.

On Friday, I wrote that it looked like I had found a roommate. Well, Mike and I went over to the leasing office and signed all the papers on Monday. So it’s official now — whew. Not that I was expecting any problems, but it’s a relief to have all the Ts crossed and Is dotted.

It’s also nice to have a couch once again — Jason took his futon with him when he moved out, so I had nothing to sit on for a while. But, Mike has a blue L-shaped sectional couch that is much more comfortable than my floor ;).

As I was going to check my e-mail this morning, I found that the screensaver wouldn’t wake up after shaking the mouse. I then noticed that the PC was off and the power switch wasn’t having an effect either. I had a hunch that it was another dead power supply.

I dug out my power supply tester and, sure enough, it was dead. Dead power supplies are fairly rare, but I was especially annoyed that this was the second time this brand had died on me. Around this time last year, my original power supply died and I replaced that with a 300 watt power supply from JGE. Then, that replacement died only a week later and I replaced it with the same model.

That replacement last until today, apparently. But, I wasn’t going to be fooled again. I wondered about JGE’s quality control at the time and I’m now convinced that it’s not very good. So, I drove down to Fry’s and selected a 350 watt Kingwin power supply (I would have gone with 300 watts again, but the 350 was about the lowest wattage I could find.)

So, $50 later, I had a new power supply. I took it home and installed it: voila, a happy PC once more. Interestingly enough, a sticker on the box said “Silence”, but I figured that was just marketing hype. However, it was actually markedly quieter than my old power supply.

So far, I’m pleased with Kingwin. And, it’s bound to last more than a week ;). In any case, I won’t be buying JGE again.

I went to Katie’s party on Saturday night and I had a good time — it was just what I needed after moving things all day (I helped Leia move in the morning and my new roommate Mike move in the afternoon).

Katie lives in a large house in Highland Park — she doesn’t own the house, but she’s staying there to fulfill some insurance requirements for one of her friends (somone had to stay in the house, apparently).

Each room was decorated in a theme based on a country. For instance, the foryer had a Japanese theme (complete with a giant kimono encased in glass hanging on the wall). That room scared me a bit, but some of the other rooms were more tasteful. As I headed out for the evening, Katie suggested that I blog about the food. Sure, I can accommodate that :).

I first had some mini double-chocolate Oreos. Yeah, both the cookie and the creme-filling were chocolate. Don’t get me wrong — I’m a a chocolate nut, but chocolate-filled Oreos didn’t quite have the same creamy essence as the original vanilla creme. Perhaps if the filling was dark chocolate rather than milk chocolate, they might be even better.

There were also some iced sugar cookies. Yeah these were the regular sugar cookies with thick pink icing that you can find at any grocery store. But, they were very tasty (as always). I think I had two of these.

In the freezer were some Blue Bell ice cream sandwiches (the small kind). These were obviously fresh from the creamery, as the cookie was still crisp. I didn’t mind that, though I suppose I’m more used to having ice cream sandwiches with more of a soggy cookie. Fresh ice cream sandwiches have more of a crisp cookie because the cookie is completely dry and crisp when ice cream sandwiches are made (like a graham cracker). But, over time, it absorbs some of the moisture from the ice cream and softens. (I learned all this from Unwrapped on the Food Network.)

This party was well-stocked with snacks. It’s not often that you’re offered iced sugar cookies, and you can’t go wrong with ice cream sandwiches either. It seems that the major snack-categories were all covered. Snackarific.

I’ve been looking for a roommate for a while now and I may have found one. Since Jason moved out, I’ve been signed up with several roommate-finding services (Roommates.com RoommateAccess and RoomieMatch, to name some of the more useful ones).

As usual, the services would send me matches every day based on my location and the apartment’s rent. I’d look over of them, and send messages to people that I thought would make for a reasonable roommate.

So, among those, I sent a message to Michael yesterday afternoon. He stopped by to check out the apartment yesterday evening and today we’ve agreed to become roommates. We’re going to the leasing office tomorrow to fill out the paperwork. It all seems too easy ;).

If all goes to plan, Michael will be moving in this weekend (since he has to be out of his current apartment by the end of the month). I’ve offered to help him move, so this may be the second move I’m helping with this weekend. It’ll be good exercise, so I don’t mind.

I discovered the Dallas Camera Club last month and I’ve been going to their meetings since then. They have meetings on the 1st and 3rd Tuesday of each month; the 3rd Tuesday is their regular meeting while the 1st Tueday is the competition meeting.

Not having much interest in entering pictures, I didn’t give much thought to competition meetings. However, at the last regular meeting, they had to finish some business from the last competition meeting since they ran out of time. So, I had the opportunity to see what went on at a competition meeting.

In addition to participants handing in images for that month’s competition, each competition meeting also includes commentary and results from the last competition. When the photos are turned in, they’re sent off each month to a judge such as a professional photographer or a photography professor. He or she then scores each photo and records some commentary on an audio cassette.

The pictures are mailed back to the club and the commentary is presented with the images. The room is dimmed, with the exception of a lit easel in the front of the room and, timed with the commentary, the various photographs are displayed.

So, of course, all of this happened at a regular meeting and I was pleasantly surprised — I had in mind that the competition meetings would be fairly boring as people turned in their photographs and received their scores. On the contrary, it was fascinating to hear the comments of a professional on such a variety of photographs.

The audio commentary really made the photo sequence much more interesting. And I now find myself really looking forward to the next competition meeting (August 5th).

My brother Adrian and a couple of his friends decided to make the most of their time off to drive from our house in Pittsburgh to the Grand Canyon. And, Adrian thought to take his new PowerBook along and write a log, uploading it from time to time via free WiFi that they happened to come across.

Andy, Dave, Randy and Adrian all went to high school together and they’re good friends. The PowerBook is Adrian’s so all of the entries are his, with the exception of the occasional entry from one of his friends. They also brought along more cameras than people and they took plenty of pictures (some of which are included in the log).

They started the trip last Sunday (July 13^th) and made it to the Canyon by Wednesday. But, instead of turning around and heading back, they decided to head on to Las Vegas — and from there, on to LA.

One twist is that Dave is part of the ROTC program at Virginia Tech (in the Navy, in his case). So, the four of them had to get Dave back to Blacksburg by midnight on Saturday in case he was called to a ship. So, you’ll see references to that from time to time.

Adrian’s not a blogger, but I enjoyed his writing style. And, if he wanted to try blogging, I’d be happy to setup something here on HandCoding.com for him ;).

My brother and I both took many pictures during our vacation in Greece. I’ve posted some online and Adrian has uploaded some as well. His photos are in directories sorted by film type (b&w, print, and slides).

Adrian brought along two SLRs and two lenses (this way, he could load one with slide film and the other with print film). One of the lenses was a wide-angle which made for some striking shots (and I’m now tempted to get the wide-angle attachment for my camera). I don’t want to incorrectly write-up about the bodies and lenses, but perhaps Adrian can leave a comment with more specifics.

The pictures are perhaps best enjoyed just perusing through them on your own. But, I'll provide a few comments on some in particular:

• Theater.jpg: This was the shot that Adrian took on self-timer — you can see him preparing for the shot in this picutre from my Gallery.

• Airplane.jpg: My brother got this errie shot of the airplane cabin through the pleasant accident of completely underexposing the film. It was taken with ISO 50 film — but the camera happened to be set for 200 ISO.

• DadsShadow.jpg: Here’s a shot with a door and a shadow, but that description just doesn’t describe it well. It has such intense colors that I’m not sure if the shot would be achievable with anything but slide film.

• Afternoon-Alone.jpg: At times, we didn’t all go to the same place. And, in this shot, Adrian found a quiet bar and some time for reading. I can really feel the tranquil atmosphere coming through the picture and the idea of an occasional afternoon with a good book and a cold Warsteinersounds rather sensible to me.

(no spoilers) I went to see Terminator 3 on Friday with Cyrus (one of my good friends from high school). In the end, it may not surpass Terminator 2 but there were times during watching it that I thought it just might (it’s that good).

In a HHOS kind of way, I’ve noticed a pattern that Guns + Explosions make for a good action movie; I was not disappointed on either account. The 66 score at MetaCritic indicates generally favorable reviews and if you liked Terminator 2, I’d recommend this one. I wouldn’t even mind seeing it again sometime.

I’ll be vague in the rest of this paragraph, but if you’re really concerned about spoilers, you could skip it. My favorite scene: the manhole sequence (I’d watch it again just for that). And, my favorite line was Arnold’s “I.K.Y.” to John Connor (I haven’t spelled out the acronym so as not to spoil it, but if you don’t get it I can elaborate).

Oh, and T3 probably has the second best movie chase sequence this year ;).

I went to the autocross on Saturday held by the BMW Club of Texas (yeah, as long as you pay the fees, they allow any car to participate). They have one every month (well, for nine months of the year) and they’re usually at Mineral Wells airport.

An autocross, if you’re not aware, is a timed event around a course. The BMW club sets up orange cones early that morning (and they have new course each month). Typically, the runs last around 100 seconds; there are four in the morning and four more in the afternoon (all for $25).

Depening on who you talk to, the airport at Mineral Wells was either last used for WWII training or for helicopter training for the Korean War. In any case, the tarmac is no longer used for airplanes ;). So, there is some gravel here and there and the occasional tuft of grass growing through a crack in the pavement. But, it’s still very drivable.

Since getting my new camera, I was looking forward to getting some shots at the autocross. In particular, I wanted to try panning — following the action in order to blur the background while keeping the subject in focus (this is typically done by forcing the camera to use a lower shutter speed than it would normally select, to ensure the blurring).

I took 116 shots, of which I’ve posted 6 in the Gallery. Yeah, that may seem like an unusually low number, but this was mostly due to the continuous-shutter mode that I was making use of.

In high-speed continuous mode, the camera take three frames per second (while low-speed continous takes three frames over two seconds). And, the camera blanks the viewfinder LCD as soon as the shutter is depressed — so I’m able to frame the first shot in a series but I’m flying blind after that.

I took all my photos during an afternoon session while I was corner-working (people who are corner-working pick up any toppled cones and call in the 1-second penalty to the timing station via FRS radios). I was standing at the center-point of a hairpin turn and so I had to pivot quickly to follow the cars. Because of that, I ended up with quite a few “air balls” where the shot consisted only of pavement ;).

I set the camera on shutter-priority and locked the shutter at 1/250sec — my goal was to blur the background as I panned, while keeping the car in focus. And, that actually worked too well (the wheels were not fully blurred at that shutter speed) so I adjusted to 1/125sec after a few shots. You can see the difference in the Gallery — earlier shots are at 1/250sec while latter shots are at 1/125sec.