1. We just had a nice birthday party over the weekend which consisted of a pool party cookout at my mother in law's condo located on the banks of the Indian River (right across from downtown Cocoa, FL). Of course plenty of family & friends showed up. Great times, plenty of good cookout food (hot dogs, hamburgers, delicious baked beans, you know the works. Oh a nice big thunderstorm did make its way thru the area which precluded some swimming but the huge rainstorm was very much welcome to a quite dry Brevard County.
Oh and in case you're wondering, our lovely neighbor, Lisa (Leslie's older sister) turned 20. I got her a ruby pendant from Arizona. OK so its not quite the same ruby (corundum) that you get in the jewelry store but it is ruby (aka corundum), second hardest mineral after a diamond.
Oh and Laci figured that the dish of Brie cheese needed a little powdered sugar (intended for the strawberries) so she put it on. Which of course made a chunk of that Brie cheese rather inedible.
2. Gigi and Laci start back to school next Monday (August 9th). Gigi going into 5th grade while Laci enters the first grade. At at above mentioned party, we had Gigi's new teacher along with his family at the party.
3. After what, 12 years of service, the old 1998 GMC van has been traded in (wholesaled due to its age) and we bought a new 2010 Nissan. Nice thing about this vehicle, the AC really works swell.
NOTE, the Stang, which spends a lot of time in the garage (being babied) still runnin well. I'll be replacing (whenever I get around to it) the head unit of the radio as the CD player has conked out. Looking to get something that can play digital music (MP3s, etc).
Oh and our lovely 16 year old neighbor Leslie is nuts about the car. Now that she has her license, she wants that "puuurty little black car" so that her and her friends can go cruisin. Great just what I needed, our neighbors at that car-lovin age all wanting my well-preserved car.
(I have been tempted though by the new 2010 Mustang GT with its 412 HP engine).
4. Got the girls (Gigi, Lacy and Ilyanna some really nice native Arizona magnetic jewelry (made by an 84 year old Arizona artisan). The girls all go nuts over it, in fact they fight over who gets what piece of jewelry. Oh the joys of parenthood.
5. I've given some thought to some decent nicknames for the new Browns rookies. Actually somewhat easy this year. How about:
- Joe "Night Train" Haden (that's got a original ring to it eh?)
- TJ "The Assassin II" Ward
- Colt 45 McCoy (geez, can I come up with them or what).
Yeah, I know, real original huh? Hopefully this year's crop of rooks will live up to their draft billing. Seem you could categorize all the "new" Browns drafts from 1999 thru 2006 complete flops.
Of coruse B-Greg has suggest some nickname for all the Browns draft picks from 1999-2006.... "bust", "flopsie", WOM (waste of money), etc.
6. HANK'S GROOVEYARD UPDATE: Well, here's one from the Grooveyard which will get our feet movin,
After Dark by Pattie Brooks:
http://www.discomusic.com/records-more/151_0_2_0_C /
And a dedication to our neighbor Leslie, a nifty song from the soundtrack of Little Darlings,
Shake It, by Ian Matthews.
7. FILM SCANNER UPGRADE: OK, I'm now evaluating a new 110 film holder designed specifically to work with the FH-869G on my Nikon 9000ED scanner. This holder is supposed to work much better with the VueScan software than the earlier FS-816 holder (Why VueScan can't seem to make its software work better with the FH-816 holder is beyond me but I do like this new 110 holder from FilmScanUSA. Running it thru its tests this week, we'll see how well it works.
UPDATE, Well it took a couple of tries but I did get the new holder working and it seems to work as advertised. Thought at first the scan were not as good as the scans done earlier with the FH-816 (using the same 110 frames for comparison). But set the scan passes to 4 and it gets great 110 scans. Plus I now can do 110 frames in batch mode, saving a lot of time.
I'd still like to see somehow if I could also get the FH-816 to work that way as well using corresponding scan parameters. Must keep in mind though when the scanner accepts the FH-816, it thinks it is going to scan 16mm movie film.
(Now whoever at Nikon though there would be such a demand for scanning old 16mm movie frames (those horrid movies we used to have to watch back in junior high and high school)? Hint, there is no demand. How may regular folks have a bunch of old 16mm movie frames laying around as precious memories. Far more old 110 film still around in people's closets and all).
8. AN IDEA FOR PANCREATIC CANCER FUNDRAISING: We're floating the idea to Lisa Niemi (widow of Patrick Swayze) for helping to raise funds for the Pancreas Cancer Center at Stanford University. This consists of getting the movie Skatetown USA (Swayze's first feature role film) released onto DVD and Blu-Ray with all sales proceeds going to the Pancreas Cancer Center.
For those who are wondering, apparently music rights for release on DVD seem to be holding up any release by Sony/Columbia. And the soundtrack to Skatetown USA has quite a few hit songs from 1979 on it which normally would make it quite expensive to obtain DVD release musical rights. Our idea is to approach the musical artists involved and see if they would donate their music rights permissions as long as all resulting proceeds go to pancreatic cancer research. Hey, its an idea and everybody wins.
And that's it for now but I'll probably think of something nice I can put on this week's BLOG update. It will be added later.
Friday, August 6, 2010
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