Visited the Apple store on 5th, and shot a pretty typical up looking view of the spiral staircase there. Liked the graphics of it, until of course an Apple employee stepped up and told me I couldn’t shoot up at the stairs cause somebody might be wearing a skirt. Now in Manhattan the array of people who could be potentially wearing a skirt is widely varied, so I could understand their concern. But really–all you see are the bottoms of shoes. Do I look that desperate? The guy who complained to me musta had the nuns.

"Musta had the nuns." I like that. Oh, and don't you think someone had already thought of that which is why the glass is frosted? Sounds to me like someone can't think of any other reason to be looking up . . .

Photo by Marc Da Cunha Lopez

However, the longer I drove, the more it appeared to be dangerously close to my house. What is the first thing that would come to your mind if you feared your house was on fire? Your children? The cash you have rolled in a sock in the bottom of your sock drawer? For me it was my photos. I've well over 200GB of digital photos I've taken over the last five years or so. I'm not sure why I'm more afraid of losing the digital photos and don't seem to worry as much about the hundreds of slides I have boxed up. Maybe it's because I have a fair chunk of the slides scanned. On the other hand, it's not anywhere near close to being all of them and they would be just as lost in a fire as the digital files. Maybe it's because my life revolves around the digital world so that's where my mind goes first.

At any rate, I'm getting closer and closer to my house and I'm not getting the reassuring perspective I hope for. In fact the closer I get the more nervous I become that my neighborhood might actually be alight. I was just sick thinking about all the photos I would lose. (In case you're wondering my laptop was with me in the car, so that wasn't a concern.) Finally as I get to my exit I can tell that fire is actually not threatening my neighborhood. Still, the first thing I did when I got in the house was sit down and start looking at on-line backup services: someplace to store my photos that is not in the house.

There are a couple out there that offer unlimited backup space for a nominal monthly fee. Carbonite and Mozy are probably the best bang for your buck. I actually use Carbonite to back up my work files and, while I do have a few beefs with the software occasionally bogging down my laptop, it genreally does a pretty good job and the peace of mind is worth $50/year. The one catch they both have is they won't back up external drives. I've considered buying a desktop and packing it full of a few terabytes of hard disk space just to spite them, but it's not really in the budget right now. There are several others that give you a few gig for free, but when you start talking about hundreds of gig, things get ridiculously expensive. We're talking hundreds of dollars a month. I don't know what they're smoking. For that kind of money I could set up my own co-located server and that would be backed up as well.

In the end I bought two more 500GB hard drives. That will have the photos on three different hard drives, one of which will be kept in a safe deposit box at the bank. Periodically I'll take the more up to date drive to the bank and bring back its mate to sync up. May not be high tech, but I only spent $170 on two Western Digital drives. Most services were charging twice the price for 1/2 the space. And again, the $50/year or so for a safe deposit box will be worth the peace of mind.

Next time it looks like my house is on fire, I won't have to freak out over the possibility I might be losing all my photos.

Tired of feeling fat and out of shape, I've been making a concerted effort at getting to the gym on a regular basis. I started swimming a few weeks ago—at the gym, a full hour workout w/ QUAC would kill me right now—and today I was able to finish a length of butterfly w/o feeling like I was dying. OK, so it's a long way to go until I'm back to doing a 50m fly in just under 32 seconds, but it's progress and a milestone I feel pretty good about. Yea, me!

No, that's not me, but I did take the picture. It's a good friend kicking ass at the IGLA championships in Ft. Lauderdale a few years ago. He took home several medals. I don't remember if one of them was for fly or not. As a matter of fact, a sizable contingent of QUACers is in D.C. right now at this year's IGLA championships. Really wish I was there, but between the whole chubby-out-of-shape thing and the too-damn-much-on-the-credit-card-as-it-is thing, I stayed home this year.

I went into my insurance agent today to update my policy. The two ladies in the office looked out the window and did some probably obligatory cooing over my new car. They liked the color. It's called copper red micah. In the sun it really does have a copper feel otherwise it feels more red. At any rate, the little grandma-type lady who was helping me said it looked like "what's her name's ruby slippers." Now, it really doesn't look ruby ever, but it can sparkle if the sun is hitting right. The other lady exclaimed, "Oh, that's just what he wants to hear. That's not a very manly color!" I, of course, was getting a good chuckle out of the whole exchange and thinking, "Oh, honey. If you only had any idea what either one of you was talking about."

While we were reviewing my policy and the attending kick in the wallet a new car was going to bring, she noticed that I was 10 years accident free. I've actually never been in an accident, but 10 years is all they track. She seemed surprised. "Oh, my that's very good." Really? Is it really that rare that someone can go 10 years w/o an accident? That's pretty sad.

No celebrating spring today. (NSFW/NSFPWTS^*)

^*Not Safe For People With Tender Sensibilities

Went to Capitol Reef over the weekend and rode my first honest to goodness mountain bike trail. A few observations:

• My ideal bike trail is probably somewhere in Nebraska.
• Forward momentum is essential to a vertical orientation.
• Two inches of powder fine silt is not conducive to the aforementioned forward momentum nor the accompanying vertical orientation.
• @&%#@$! clips! Granted it was my first time out and they are probably too tight. However, if you've never ridden using clips you have no sense of what too tight is until you feel like you are falling over in slow motion desperately trying to get your foot free before you hit the ground. Fortunately I landed in the previously mentioned silt and the only thing injured was my ego.
• Have you ever been driving up a mountain road and passed someone toiling up the mountain on a bike and thought, "Man. That just does not look like fun." You know what? It's not.
• At some point it becomes a competition between you and the ground. "I'll be #@#$ if I'm going to &(%#$ me into the dirt!" I begin to understand the appeal this sport has to some folk.
• There were a couple of points where we contemplated turning around and heading back to the car. If we had we wouldn't have enjoyed the above vista from the top of the cliffs. I have to admit it did help ameliorate some of the frustration generated while getting there.
• Was the reward worth the effort? Yeah. Will I do it again? Most likely. Still...I have three letters for you. A. T. V.
• Here is an elevation profile of the ride. It's not terribly accurate as I didn't have the GPS recording our progress at small enough intervals, but you get the idea.

Remember when it was enough to say "Restricted Area. Authorized personnel only?" Does anyone have any doubts about what "security breach" implies? You'll be kissing the iron deck before you can say, "Jack Robinson." (Anyone know who Jack Robinson actually is?)

Every time I fly I am reminded what a joke airport security is these days. I bought two small snow-globes while in NY this trip. We neglected to put them in our checked bag because 1. we just didn't think about it and 2. they wouldn't have fit anyway. They were confiscated. Apparently they were worried they were special Batman snow-globes that would have filled the plane with acrid smoke had I thrown them down on the floor and shattered them. They were in D's backpack, who ended up in a different line than I, so I wasn't there for it. Probably just well. I think I would have had a hard time containing my contempt. I doubt there was even 3 oz. of liquid in each one. One of these days some damn fool is going to use his shoe laces to threaten a passenger or crew member with strangulation and no one will be allowed to wear lace up shoes on a plane anymore.

Is this really what we've come to? Does everyone feel safer now?

This is a cool concept. From the artist:

This is the way I see this city (or this country for that matter). A mix of different races, styles that don't quite fit together yet and don't understand that in a sense, all of them are necessary to fill one piece of the puzzle and keep this thing going on.

Perspective. Our experience colors everything we say and do. Two people living in the same family will experience family dynamics and pressures differently as a result of personality differences, sibling order, possession (or not) of abilities valued by the family and so on. Two people from the same family will respond to the same situation differently. How then do we expect a whole nation to think as one? But we do. We want everyone to agree with us. We want everyone to look like us. We want everyone to act like us.

Would that more people could understand there is more than one way to see/view/understand everything in this world, and no way is necessarily better than another. Would that people would not castigate others for not seeing the world through the same lens as they. Would that people would stop and say, "Really? That's the way you see it? Tell me about that."

Well, I survived the first year of graduate school. It was harder than I expected. Probably has something to do with the sink-or-swim philosophy of the practicum experience. I'm sorry, but I just don't feel qualified to be acting as a therapist to adolescents with some real issues in my first year of graduate school, let alone my first semester. I understand that the best way of learning direct practice is doing, but damn. A little bit of training would have been nice. Out of eight classes only two had anything to do with clinical practice. I also think there are some ethical issues involved, but apparently this is the way of many or even most MSW programs.

My supervisor and a few of the other counselors I got to know seem to think I did very well for my first year. I'm glad they think so. One told me, "You have the makings of a good therapist. You just need to build your confidence."

Well, now I know what to expect for next year, so I'm going to be doing some reading over the summer. I'll be working with substance abuse and domestic violence next year. That's not a clientèle I want to be meeting cold turkey. Some information under my belt would be nice. Confidence, remember?

What does any of this have to do with a sunset photo? Who knows. The sun going down on my first year of school? Or maybe that it's just nice to have the time to be out shooting again.