Tim’s Ramblings

Woohoo! First full month of photos done :)

Today is the last full day here in Portland. Had dim sum in the morning/afternoon and having people from college that live here over for a little dinner party tonight.

While we were all digesting food, we played a bit of Scrabble. I was actually winning until I got left with these tiles…

So, today’s photo is titled “What the F&$K Am I Supposed to do With These???”

This was taken with the hot 50mm prime that G here had. At f/1.4 it is a bit soft but still pretty damn sexy. I’m getting one… Or the 85mm… Or both. AAAAAAAA….

To all those who I said “Oh no no no…no more lenses for me…yeah…nope…this is it!” Um…I lied…

(-_-)

Today was brunch at G&L’s place and then wine and sake tasting.

It was great.

I bought wine. Lots of wine. Especially since one winery had a “free shipping and 2 complimentary wine tasting with a purchase of over $200″… Ha.

Anyway, for today the photo is from one of the wineries we went to and their presentation at their tasting room.

Today was really really foggy all day so any outdoor shots were pretty much…well…it was difficult. Don’t want to say junk. But difficult.

So some serious post processing will be needed. Below is a before and after with the after being after HDR processing and more heavy processing in LR2.

More coming soon!

First full day in Portland. Had a nice time. Coffee at Stumptown, doughnut at Voodoo Doughnut, walking around the Chinese Garden, and shopping for books at Powell’s. Woohoo.

More photos will be coming soon but in the meantime, this means there are more than 1 photo of the day (^_^)

First off, Stumptown Coffee!

Yummy cappucino and my messenger bag smelled like lovely lovely coffee all day because I bought some too.

On to VooDoo Doughnut. It’s in a slightly seedy part of town. The store is tiny. But the doughnuts are incredibly unique and awesome. Everything from doughnuts topped with cereal to what I got, a maple doughnut with 2 pieces of crispy bacon on top. Awesome.

It was soft and crispy at the same time and savory and sweet at the same time. If I come back there, I would get it again.

The tiny store had a lot of funky art too. I liked this one.

(^_^)

Made it to Portland…a small miracle considering my flight out of Cleveland was delayed for over an hour and a half… The engines wouldn’t start up due to the snow. Great sign… Missed the connection in Minneapolis but managed to make it into Portland only 2 hours or so later than I was originally scheduled.

So…my first photo is my plane as of 6am this morning…

Thankfully once in Portland, it was raining a bit but no snow! Didn’t really need my jacket either! And M took a nice shot of a partial rainbow from the car.

(^_^)

Off to Portland tomorrow!! …well…that is if my flight takes off. The snow is not falling much here right now but they keep saying the snow will be heaviest during daybreak…which is when I’m going to be on the road on the way to the airport.

GAH…

Wish me luck…

In the meantime we got a 2 for 1 again.

First up, I like to call this the “Grave of the CRTs”. For some reason our IS department put out all of the 21″ monitors and some of the smaller ones out on the atrium. These are mostly the 21″ monitors that all of the developers used to have before they switched everyone over to LCD’s. I had my 21″ for a good 10 years. Lasted me well until I finally turned in the monitor along with my development machine…thus sealing my fate into becoming a business man as opposed to a programmer… *sniff*… I tried looking for mine since I had a Dilbert strip and a Power Puff Girl sticker on it but I couldn’t find it. Not that I spent a long time looking…

Once I got home I needed to make dinner but something quick. Thankfully I had 2 bundles of Ohio City Pasta. Mmmm. Perfect. I was talking on the phone with the Japan office while I quickly boiled water with salt and a bit of olive oil and quickly made myself dinner. This was black pepper linguini. A minute and a half in boiling water and it comes out perfectly al dente. Awesome.

Now to finish up packing and go get a tiny bit of sleep!!

I both love and hate Target. Love them because they really do have most things that I need. But hate them because they make me buy stuff…it’s not my fault!!

Went there tonight after the conference call to buy some jeans. Yes. I buy jeans from Target. Why? Because they are cheap and they last freaking forever. The one pair that I went to replace I’ve had for a good 3 years and FINALLY I found a small tear in the crotch. Will I keep wearing it? Probably. Just need to be careful…like don’t go bowling in them or anything….

Anyway, instead of going in, buying my jeans, and leaving…I end up with 3 pairs of jeans, socks, bottled green tea, batteries, a CD, and this cool clock that is now in my office.

I can’t help it. I go into Target and I become like Christopher Lowell (don’t know who he is?…ok…imagine any of the effeminate interior decorators you see on those home improvement shows and make him 100 times worse…). I’m walking around going “Oh, that’s niiiiiice”. “Oh how pretty!”. “Mmmm…that can be HANDY!”

…save me…

Mmmm…breakfast…

Ridiculously large apple fritter from the West Side Market and a good mug of coffee. Yum.

Is it the best? No. I’ve had better fritters especially from the now long gone pastry shop in Little Italy, Presti’s, but it’s still pretty good. Fresh with cinnamon throughout the nice fluffy insides. A bit too much glaze and I wish it wasn’t SO sweet but what can you do…it’s a fritter… And after eating it you do feel a bit “ugh” but…yeah…yummy none the less.

…it’s like 3:45pm on a Sunday…I should probably take a shower and do something with my life… Mmmm…sundays….

Poker night tonight. Been a really really long time since I last played, especially with the guys I played with. It was a good time. Standard no limit hold ‘em with a $20 buy in. Lost both games though. First one I was donig pretty good but then got taken out when I went all in when the other guy got a flush on the river (the last card…). I had him until then. Oh well.

The 2nd game I got taken out early when, again, I went all in since I was pretty much bleeding chips out but the other two had aces…and an ace showed up on the flop. Oh well…

But still had fun so that’s really all that matters.

Being lazy today…had Chinese food and was in a food coma trying to figure out what to take a photo of…

So…another shot from my dining room table as I suffer from photo-block… Couldn’t decide anything until I took another sip of my tea and went “goddamn this is good”. So no, this is not a paid endorsement.

Ito-En is a major beverage company in Japan and is credited for really starting the cold bottled green tea crazy in Japan that is still going on strong. You can now buy it in the US at Target too where they changed the name from “Ooi Ocha” to “Tea’s Tea”. Quite good.

This I found at, of all places, Costco. It’s distributed by Kirkland in the US but make no mistake, this is probably THE best and most authentic Japanese style green tea in a pouch you can buy anywhere. It’s just as good as the real loose leaf stuff that you need a tea pot with. Only takes 30 seconds of steeping because the tea leaves are almost powder and the color and flavor is right on. Comes in a box of 100! If you work with me and you want to try some, let me know. More than happy to share.

Mmmmmmmmmm….

I uploaded a gallery using a new template for LightRoom 2 that is geared very very specifically for iPod and iPhone users. You can go to it with a PC but it won’t look as good.

These are select photos from my trip to Nara last month.

If you have either an iPod Touch or an iPhone, if you can go to the link below with it and let me know how it looks, feels, and works, I’d appreciate it! Of course speed will totally depend on your connection and this probably works best if you have the iPod horizontal though it will work both ways just fine.

Also there is an About page and a Contact form as well that will actually e-mail me without showing you my e-mail address.

Hope it works for you all!!

http://www.timarai.com/naraipod

:)