We’ve also been working on a number of other projects:

I’ve been traveling quite a bit as well. Recently I picked up a Garmin eTrex Legend HCx with the intent of using it to insert GPS coordinates into the EXIF data of my photos along with auto navigation and perhaps geocaching. I’ll post a review of the unit later, but simply having it has been invaluable during my trips.

I’ve been doing a bit more on the photography front than I did earlier this summer. My motivation is returning and I’m beginning to go places just to take pictures again. I think the lull was definitely good for me. I’ll end this post by leaving a few photos and some links.

I went to Porcupine Mountain State Park with my friend Gowtham in July and discovered some amazing scenery. You can find the photos in a flickr collection, but I want to show everyone this one (I think it’s one of the best pictures I’ve ever taken:

I also attended an autocross and took an astonishing amount of pictures. What made it onto flickr is only a smattering of what made it home with me.

My most recent photo expedition was simply a trip around downtown Houghton. I decided I wanted to learn a bit more about black and white photography, so I stuck my 50mm f/1.8 lens on the Nikon and headed out. It’s simply amazing what black and white does for the atmosphere of a photo. Sticking with just the one focal length made me focus quite a bit more on where I was in relation to my subject and my framing. It was definitely a good learning experience.

Well, last weekend was Winter Carnival, Michigan Tech’s annual celebration of snow and alcohol. Melissa came up to see me, my brother Scott was in town and I got to see a few other people that I rarely get to spend time with.

The snow statues this year weren’t as good as normal, but I do have a few pictures to share:

You can find the rest of them on flickr.

Saturday Melissa, Scott, his fiance Sarah and I went to Carrousel Winery a local winery that opened about 8 months ago to order wine for Scott and Sarah’s wedding. We did some wine testing and they ordered a batch of 6 gallons (about 30 bottles) for the wedding. Of course, I walked away with 5 bottles for myself (and I’m sure I’ll go back for more again). I think I’d like to get into wine making some day, it looks like a lot of fun (and fairly easy to do).

Saturday evening there were fireworks, and even though they started early, I managed to get a few photos that turned out pretty well.

And that was pretty much the last of my fun. School is kicking my butt this semester and I desperately need a break (which I wont’ get for another… 3 weeks or so). Ah well, life marches on.

Besides a video camera, I hauled my DSLR along and got a number of shots that I think turned out pretty well:

Saturday night, pretty much everyone I knew headed up to the Wood Gym at the SDC for the Flogging Molly concert. It was incredible. Those guys put on one hell of a show! The second opener wasn’t all that exciting, and I think they were the completely wrong genre of music to be an immediate lead-in to Flogging Molly, but I was more than satisfied when I left. My legs still hurt from all the dancing I did.

This is probably the best weekend I’ve had all semester. Unfortunately, I had to pay for my fun with a rather large amount of homework that had to be accomplished on Sunday. Hopefully I’ll be able to get even more done tonight and maybe even get a jump start on some of these papers I have due.

After the first couple weeks work has been interesting at Resnet (the first two weeks were full of the tedious process of disconnecting nearly 2000 users by hand). Since then, I’ve been installing and configuring Xubuntu on an old K6 laptop we have at the office. All I have left on that project is a couple networking scripts and setting up sudo access for a few commands for the user.

My other project has been setting up BackupPC for the office. Since this is something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while now, I decided that the proper way to learn and test the program would be to isntall it on my home network to learn the configuration files. After a run-in with an rsync error I got it all set up and will be installing it in the office at the begining of the week.

Somehow I’ve even managed to find some free time and this weekend I’ll be going out to see some waterfalls. Life is good.

That leaves my presentation on the unit plan, my Social Problems exam, the final draft of my Social Problems paper and my Military History final for the following two weeks.

All right, my bed is much needed now, hopefully I can get a couple hours before the first class that I need to go to at 11am.

I’ve been poking around at my inbox while sitting in my office (my subnet has had access restored for testing) and things seem to have gone well. During the transition, they’ve removed the nulls from my mbox file (created by accessing my mail in more than once place at the same time), so I recovered about 12 messages that I thought I had lost. That was nice… what wasn’t so nice was their random placement throughout my folders.

Hopefully within the next hour, email should be accessible to everyone again and with any luck, there have been a couple minor problems in the process, but nothing the people in DCS (Distributed Computing Services) couldn’t handle. The only thing I really anticipate having to help people with is why they are seeing email from a couple years in the past (the null problem).

If anyone at MTU is having emali problems after the transition though, they can call 487-0010 and we can take a look at it.

The theme this year was, “Cartoon Art for the Young at Heart.”

You can find all the pictures I took on flickr.

Smurfs

Woody from Toy Story

Shrek

Tale Spin

Yogi Bear

Sleeping Beauty

Look closely at the mirror and you can see a face.

The Flintstones

Captain Crunch

Inspector Gadget

Calvin and Hobbes

Aladdin’s Market – the people in the first picture are about 20 feet in front of the front wall in the picture.

I took some pictures of the statues tonight when I went to campus, however I’m going to go back and see if I can get some better shots. I’ll post a few once I’m done taking them.

Oh well, here’s hoping the next one in the fall, accompanied by the normal number of presentations will generate some more interest.