Bel Air, MD tea party

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I'm starting to get suspiscious

Background info: We are current Verizon customer with a land line we
don't actually used, but thought we should keep the account because
we've been waiting to upgrade to Verizon's FIOS for Internet and
cable. The line was installed earlier in the year, and we've gotten a
few cards from sales reps trying to sign us up. I knew it would be a
while between the lines being laid to when we could actually start the
service, so we weren't in any hurry to contact anyone.

Current situation: a door-to-door sales rep came by last Friday or
Saturday evening. We signed up for the triple play (phone, Internet,
cable) even though we don't need the phone. But you sign up for all
three then cancel what you don't want later. That's fine, that seems
to be the way it usually works.

So anyway, the sales rep guy needs to use our computer to plug in the
order on the Verizon site, I guess. I thought the whole process seemed
a little weird, and they call a thrid party service to confirm you
have knowledge of this guy placing an order in your name. I thought it
was weird, but I saw he had other filled out slips in his folder, so
we're at least not the only people falling for a scam. So we set an
install date for a couple weeks from now.

Yesterday I got a voicemail from Verizon giving me no more information
than call this number in less that 24hrs or your order is cancelled.
So I tried the number. Invalid number.

I don't know my login or account number or anything for the website,
so I can't really do anything from work. At least this evening I'll
have an account number the plug in and see if the website tells me
anything.

And the weirdest part? The computer the guy used to put in the order
is dead as of two day ago. Wonder if he put a virus on it. Click for full post and comments

Kaput

Desktop computer dead. Probably clogged with cat hair and dust.


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Making my list, checking it twice

I am putting together the list of food items to be at the 2nd annual Maya Papaya BBQ, along with what each item needs. I am moving a lot of the things to be made the day before, which is something I didn't do last year. Let's just say there -- wait -- corn on the cob -- OK where was I. Oh yeah: last year was kinda hectic day of BBQ. There's a lot of dips I can do up the night before; since they need to chill for a couple hours anyway, why not over night? But another reason I want to ease up on the amount of work day of, is there is a TEA party in my town in the morning. I really want to go and show off the Debt Star sign I'm going to make. Judging by the activities of the out "representatives" of the last week, I think there are going to be plenty of things for people to gripe about. I just hope not a lot of people are leaving town that weekend. I think they did it in the morning so it wouldn't get in the way of any afternoon or evening activities we might have planned, so that was nice of them.

Anyway, back to thinking about food.


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Yay Godzilla

(Godzilla is my preliminary name for the super lens)

Anyway, got a chance to look at the moon tonight:

By measuring, it is 30% more moon goodness than from the 300mm telephoto, as yet to be named.Godzilla's autofocus did a much better job of focusing than I did, and I seem to remember the autofocus on the 300mm lens didn't do a super job. I think my must crisply focused picture with that lens came from manual mode, so pretty much by accident.


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No luck

I drove up to where the eagles live hoping to use Godzilla for some nice bird nostril shots. I may have heard an eagle, but with the leaves on the trees you can't actually see them. The water at the dam was high, so that may be the reason I didn't see any out. There is supposed to be a small resident population there, which grows into the hundreds during their migration. But anyway, I didn't see any of the profesionals there, and I'm assuming they know all the good times to be there. I may have seen a heron or two as the base of the dam, but decided to wait for a different time to try for pictures. Maybe there is a schedule of when they release water so I know when the water will be low.

Anyway, back to killing my back cleaning the stupid tiles I put in years ago.

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I don't care about Michael Jackson

Or Farrah Fawcett. Now Ed McMahon, he was honorable. But he died of old age so there's nothing tragic about it. Both Farrah And Michael? both bat shit insane, but for some reason everyone is completely flipping out over this. I say who cares. You know there are still innocent people being hacked to death or pushed off of bridges by their government, right?


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More fun with superlens

I've decided I'm going to need to go up to the eagles this weekend. I also need to find out when the next full moon is or at least when it's visible at a normal hour. Tonight I was trying for lightning bugs again. This time around, though, they're more difficult to capture because they fly out of frame so fast! So the pictures never come out in focus, because I don't have time to adjust it.

Just playing around...

From across the room, 15 feet. Not zoomed at all, so 200mm:

Some lightning bugs, wide open at f/4 and 25sec:

From the deck, probably 15 feet away, zoomed all the way to 400mm:

just a crop, not a new picture:


Another "stuff in my yard" probably 30-40 feet away:

So here's the comparison of 300mm on the 70-300 lens, and 400mm on the 200-400 (red box is field of view):
400 is 25% bigger than 300, so a first level approximation would say that the field of view should be 25% smaller this seems to be true, when comparing the measurements of the two pictures. Learn something new everyday, I guess.

I think I actually had a dream about this lens. This morning I remembered what the dream was, but now I can't recall it. I can't even remember if it was good or bad.

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