March 24, 2009
Weekend Road Trip

White River
Originally uploaded by 007Ben
Friday evening I went to Chris' place and hung out there on on Saturday and played video games.

Sunday morning I got up around 7am to meet up with the Vorpal Images crew by 8am to drive the two hours in some horribly rainy conditions with temperature swings of 20 degrees to our destination, White River Falls State Park. After helping pack some gear into the area we would be shooting, I took a few photos of my own. Then I played human light stand/light monkey for a few hours for a Ben and Alicia. Then after packing the gear out we started our treks home.

Posted by Ben at 12:28 PM
March 20, 2009
Cause I'm a Geek

I picked up a 800Mhz G3 iBook (with DVD/CD-R and WiFi) yesterday from craigslist for only $50, which is less than I was paying for a full tank of gas six months ago. I will likely do a fresh install of the OS when I get back from my weekend adventure/photo shoot. I'm still not exactly what I am going to use it for or do with it, but I've got a few ideas. At the very least it is something for me to kill a few hours of time with.

Posted by Ben at 12:49 PM
March 16, 2009
Photo Ops Plans and Trips.

Early this month I was contacted by one of my flickr contacts to see if I would be interested in assisting with shoots. I said yes and after several more messages and schedules working out we are on for this weekend. I should be going to a shoot this weekend at the Abandoned White Falls Hydroelectric plant south of The Dalles.

Then the next weekend will be flying down to see Kala and stay in Monterey for a couple of nights. If I'm lucky we may have another shoot or at least a mini shoot, if she won't let me I will just photograph the hell out of the area which is also beautiful.

Posted by Ben at 11:46 AM
March 10, 2009
How my G1 saved me $18
T-Mobile G1
T-Mobile G1,
originally uploaded by 007Ben.
Sunday after parting ways up with Kala's little brother and his fiance for lunch, and a quick poke around the city of books. Kala and I grabbed hot chocolates before we headed to the airport we had some time to kill still so I parked and we went to one of the airport bars for a drink before she flew out. Kala had realized that she left some of her stuff in my car so after drinks we wen't back out to the short term parking and got her stuff and then I saw her off through security and then I was heading back to my car so that I could start the drive back to Eugene.

I was about half way back to my car when I started to fruitlessly search my pockets for my parking ticket to feed the machine so that I could feed it money so I could leave. No ticket, checked the wallet, checked all the pockets again, I kept finding my ticket stub from OMSI but no parking ticket. I got to the window and explained I lost my parking ticket, the girl asks for my drivers license, then leaves here little booth and comes back a moment later and asks what I was doing at the air port, I told her I was dropping someone off and was there for maybe an hour. She then said with out the ticket or perhaps a flight itinerary it was going to $24 (the may cost for a day). I grabbed my phone and found Kala's itinerary in my mail box and scrolled to the flight info and handed the phone over to the parking girl. She poked at her computer and called someon on her walkie-talkie and read off my plate number (perhaps someone checking security footage or a automated index of OCR captured plates as they entered the garage maybe?). While waiting for some information to come back she asked if liked the phone, then moments later she got response from the walkie-talkie then said it would be six dollars. I paid apologized and was on my way...

I think that is the first time I've had a phone actually save me money.

Posted by Ben at 09:47 AM
March 09, 2009
Visit from Kala and a visit to OMSI

Kala and I checked the Da Vinci exhibit out at OMSI. Kala had never been to OMSI and I LOVED it as a kid, still do actually. I knew Da Vinci was a smart guy and far a head of his time but I didn't realize how far ahead of his time he was nor the breadth of his studies/work.

We had planned on going back to OMSI later Saturday night to see one of the musical shows in the Planetarium, later we mentioned it just before we fell asleep.

Posted by Ben at 07:35 AM
March 04, 2009
Facebook and Twitter

I get it. I should join facebook. I also hear I need to sign up for twitter. I'm sure there are a handful of other services and sites to sign up for.

Facebook, you must be a member before you can see anything. To me this is a bit like being asked to buy a car with out ever laying eyes on it or driving it, unless you have a someone you know show you around before you decide to sign up. I guess this is one thing myspace has on facebook, you can sort of try before you sign up or at least ave an idea of what its gonna be that your doing/looking at. I'm also a bit more protective of my privacy than the next guy. I'm fairly careful of what I put out there/here. I also like that if a potential employer looks for me on facebook, myspace, google they likely won't find ME, at least not with out some extra work. They won't find me because there are plenty of other people with my first and last name out there to be found and many of them want to be found making not being found that much easier for me.

Twitter, neat idea, I do load up a few peoples pages and read. I just don't care to share all that stuff all the time with the world or even with a close set of people, I can just blast a text message out to a handful of people if I want and get 20 more characters to say it with as well. I also don't think I'd have anything that interesting to tweet, I doubt most if any of you care how long it took me to run two miles on Monday nor what my pulse was an hour after my run, nor that the guys who sit behind me at work are talking about Hanna Montana. Also like I said above, I'm a bit more concerned with privacy than the next guy.

Had these things around 6 or more years ago I would have been more likely to have signed up and been all over them, I know facebook was around five years ago but only for students and I haven't been a student in closer to eight years if you want to count the two courses I took at the community college in Salem, which I don't.

Also, I do think about shuddering this all the time. As I just don't keep up like I used to.

Posted by Ben at 08:47 AM