The Bailout

Please contact your Senators & Representatives about the proposed $700 billion bailout. This is what I wrote:

This is in regards to the proposed $700 bailout plan being discussed right now. Please do not make the mistake of throwing billions of dollars of taxpayer money to the banking industry in a desperate hope that it will cause more good than harm. I am against any plan that uses taxpayer money, or puts us in to debt to relieve these financial institutions of the unmarketable securities. I am livid that this type of irresponsible action is even being considered.

I understand that standing back may seem to be to ignore the problem, but taking the course of action proposed by the President will have consequences that will haunt us far beyond those we are currently facing. I do not want to be forced to pay for the mistakes of those greedy individuals who should have known better.

I would be in support of government backed insurance of these securities as a tool to free up the lending market. I believe there are some Republicans in the House that have presented this as an option. I would also be in support of temporary modification of the Sarbanes-Oxley mark-to-market rules.

I have voted for you in the past because I believed you had the wisdom to handle situations like this in a responsible matter. I hope that I can vote for you again.

Reason of the week to use Firefox: FxIF

I know a lot of you dabble in photography, so I think you'll find this little tool very fun. Here's how it works: Say you come across a photograph you really like, and you'd like to know how they got the shot. What camera did they use? Is it a long exposure? What was the aperture setting? A lot of times that information is embedded in the picture as EXIF data. With the Firefox add-on FxIF, all you have to do is right-click on the image and select Properties and you get a little window like the one below.

To install FxIF, click here.
If you haven't installed Firefox yet you'll need to do that first: click here.

Elise's Date With Daddy

We got the idea of doing "Dates with Daddy" with our girls from Brad's parenting series. I haven't been the best at being consistent with these, but this past weekend Elise & I went on a date.

Ever since Labor Day when she saw the planes flying around with advertisements in tow, she's been asking to see "planes go fast". So we went to Lunken Airport. We couldn't find a great view there, so we headed up to Alms Park, which overlooks the airport.

Elise liked to wave at the planes and say hi to them. Apparently "Hi" in plane language is a high-pitched shriek.

In between yelling at planes, she enjoyed walking around, and I enjoyed taking pictures.

It was pretty, but not that pretty. (I made the sky a little bluer and the grass a little greener.)

After looking at planes we walked over to the park and she played on the playground.

After that we went to UDF for some ice cream, then headed home for a much-needed nap. I think Elise slept too.

Michigan: Part 4

OK, one more picture of Michigan. I hadn't really noticed this one until I was showing some pictures to Brad Spence, and he liked this one. It's pretty simple, and I guess it never really stood out against the other 400 or so pictures I took that week, but the more I look at it the more I like it. It's a 10 second exposure (with a tripod of course) taken after the sun had been down for a while, so it looked a lot darker to the naked eye than it looks here. The water was pretty calm anyway, but the long exposure makes it look even smoother.

ISO: 200
Exposure: 10.0 sec
Aperture: f/14.0
Focal Length: 18mm (35mm equivalent = 27mm)

The Firefox One Week Test Drive

If you're reading this, I'm going to jump to the conclusion that you use the internet. I also know that statistically, most of you (about 66% at the time of this writing) are using one version or another of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE for short). You're probably using IE because you simply are not aware that there's a browser out there that's faster, safer, more useful and just plain better. It's called Firefox.

Until a few weeks ago, my wife was an IE user, and despite my best arguments for her to use Firefox, she stuck with IE. Then one day (after getting rid of a virus that we had gotten while using IE) she said she would give Firefox a try for one week. Now I realized that this was probably just to get me to stop bugging her about it, but that was OK. I set up a profile for her, so she could have her own set of bookmarks and features, and the trial began. The first day or two was the break-in period, getting used to the different layout and features. By the third or fourth day she announced that she was starting to like it better. A week or so later, and she is a convert.

"So what about me?" you ask. "I don't have a nerdy husband bugging me about what browser I use, so why should I switch?" [sorry about that; I've been reading Lou Priolo] That's a great question, but there are so many great answers that I can't fit them all in here. So I''ll be doing as series of posts highlighting the advantages of Firefox over IE. If at any time you want to give Firefox a try, just go to firefox.com.

Follow Me

Google is always introducing new things, and they're usually pretty good. Recently they came out with this thing called Following for blogs. It lets people keep up do date with your blog, and lets you know who's interested in your blog. So if you really love me, you'll click the Follow this blog link to the right.

Michigan: Part 3

While on the lake I had some fun with fire and long exposures.

We built a fire on the beach one night.

When you throw balsam branches on the fire, you get a lot of sparks.

Here's a shot of those sparks flying through the air.
1.6 second exposure

More flying sparks. Click on the picture to get a closer look and you can see large "ribbons" of light from some larger pieces of ash that flew from the fire.
1 second exposure

My brother waving a burning branch in the air. (don't blame him, I told him to do it)
5 second esposure

This is a shot of the dock illuminated by the fire. I used a tripod and did a 10 second exposure. I used automatic ISO so it was taken at ISO-560. I should have manually set it to 200 (the lowest setting on the D40) which would have resulted in less noise in the image.

Picture of the sky. Click on it to see the large version, and you'll be able to see the stars.
30 second exposure

Michigan: Part 2

Here are some pictures from our trip to Michigan.
I'll try not to post any that Katie's already posted.


This is the view of Wilderness Bay from the end of the dock.
You can see the Sheppard's dock that I mentioned in my last post.

The view of the bay from the base of our dock.

Thought this was a cool picture of the sun glistening across the water.

The american flag at the base of our dock.
This is an un-retouched photo. The sky really was that blue.

The sun setting across the bay.

Another shot of the sunset from the end of the dock.

The afterglow.

Michigan: Part 1

These are the Les Cheneaux Islands, where we went on vacation last week. It's a group of islands on Lake Huron in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, part of the towns of Hessel & Cedarville. I've been going up there since I was six months old (and lived there for a year and a half then). The biggest island is Marquette, which is where we stayed. If you look real close you'll see a white box drawn around part of the island - the next picture is a close-up of that area.

As you can see from the satellite images, there's not a lot of development on the island, which is really nice if you like natural stuff. There are no roads, just walking trails through the woods You may be able to make out a few lines running through the island that look like roads, but those are the clearings cut for the electrical power lines. Again, we're going to zoom into the liitle white box to have a closer look.

The only access is by boat, so most every cabin has a dock. In this picture you can see our cabin, named Foxfire after the glowing wood that can be found in the surrounding woods. In the upper left of the image is the Sheppard's dock & boathouse, which can be seen in a lot of the sunset pictures I'll post later. As a point of reference, the docks are roughly 400 ft apart. It this image you can also clearly see the distinct drop-off in the water. So that's the background info, soon I'll post some more interesting pictures.

Another Biking Milestone

Monday, on the ride home of my 16th day of commuting, I experienced a biking milestone: I passed another biker. He was not stopped to take a brake or fix a flat, he was not hauling a huge pack, (and no, he wasn't going the other way) he was just another bike rider that was going slightly slower than I was. This has never happened before. I am now officially not the slowest biker in Cincinnati!