Amatuer Photographer

I fancy myself an amatuer photographer now. I try to get away and take pictures as often as possible. In fact I am headed up into the mountains to visit a close friend with the additional plan of taking pictures all the way up there.

I love this picture I took of a pond at a park near my house. The image was nothing special, I adjusted the RGB curve some and gave the sky a blue gradient with Photoshop. I really like it now.

New Deduction!!

On Wednesday Sept 7th at 11:58AM William was born. Is he not the cutest baby ever? I am the last of my brothers to have a kid and every single one has been beautiful it must run in the genes. What can I say we are good looking people :P.

My wife was in labor 23 hours with the tyke, she opted to go Au Natural and took no pain medication. This is an uncommon thing these days in California. In fact the nurse says most folks come into the delivery room backwards. This was a joke the nurses told about women who ask for the epidural at 1cm. My wife is only about 5'2" the kiddo was 10 days early weighing in at 7lbs. 15oz and a whopping 21.5 inches long! My boy was 1/3 the size of my wife. She was a real trooper for going natural.

The picture above was taken not 1 hour after delivery after his first cleaning. Nice full head of hair and already killer looks. Now I know what you are saying most folks say their kid is good looking but most newborns are wrinkly and look like aliens.

I can not wait until tax time I get another deduction, oh yeah and throwing the ball around with the new kid is also high on my list of things :)

Are you ready for some Football!

I love football. I try to watch it as much as I can although I must admit in the last few years I have cut back on my viewing. In part because my team is not doing so well and also due to the fact that football or rather football players are not what they use to be. Players like Terrell Owens have ruined the game. Now that T.O. is no longer with my team maybe I will enjoy the year a little better.

Things although are not starting off so good. I went to my nephews Football practice yesterday. As you can see by the photo above they are little kids, I believe he is only 11 or so. Anyways there I am with my fancy new camera with my newly acquired "paparazzi" lens as I like to call it. It is a 70-300mm lens for my DSLR camera. I love this new zoom lens and wanted to try it out with a few actions shots. So there I am clicking away when I notice that 4 of the coaches are looking at me funny. A few minutes later they approach me and my cousin, they are fairly good size guys mind you I guess they expected trouble as me and my cousin are fairly good size guys. They ask me who we were, my cousins tells him we are here watching his boy practice. Of course I play a semi-smart ass and say I am scouting for the 49ers, they did not see much humor in that. The coaches were concerned that I was out scouting and taking pictures of their formation..... THEIR FORMATION! these are damn pre-teen kids playing football. They can barely keep formation let alone take advantage of other teams formations. After a short grilling and me biting my tongue so as to not cause problems for my nephew they finally left us alone. Not being satisfied I see them approach my little nephew to have him wave at me and call out my name to verify what we were saying.

I wonder what would have happened if I was evasive, were the 4 big bad coaches going to try and seize my camera? They certainly approached like they wanted to. I am glad my other cousins were not there, they would not have taken that so calmly. It is people like this that make the headlines related to parent violence at children sporting events.

Camel Rock

I am back in my old stomping grounds. I lived in New Mexico basically from my sophomore year until 2 years ago. I am 31 now. Above is a picture I took with the new camera with the tripod and everything. I looked like a professional walking up there past all the point and click folks. If only they knew I still shoot in Full Auto mode. My few attempts at setting my own apeture and exposure failed miserably.

This rock is fairly famous in the South West. It is called Camel Rock and is on just about every postcard in any gas station in New Mexico. Camel Rock is about 5 minutes or so outside of Santa Fe on the road to Los Alamos which was where I had to work today. It surprised me to realize how beautiful Santa Fe is. I had lived in the area so long I guess I was immune to it.

No I am your cousin

Lately I have had several conversations related to family and money. If any of my immediate brother and sisters or select friends ask me for money I will lend it to them no problem. I have a policy when I lend money I never expect it back. Becoming a creditor to a family member is never a good thing.

When I went back home last year for my mothers funeral I ran into a few issues when it came to money and family. In an Island Culture our families are very extended. It is not uncommon to be raised by other family members not your mother or father. Uncles and Aunts are considered your mother and father, cousins are brothers and sisters. Many people count family 2-3 degrees of separation off the family tree. There is a lady I call Auntie who's Mother was my Grandfathers cousin. In Western society do most folks know who their Grandfathers cousins son or daughter is? Needless to say when I go back home family comes out of the woodwork. About 80% of the time I am very happy to see and visit my extended family I try my best to maintain that culture. What does become frustrating as I mentioned in a post below is how things have changed back home. Some Islanders have successfully married modern culture of material wealth with old culture of extended family. I make a fairly good living so when I was back home cousins I have never met and Uncles I never converse with started asking me for money. One asked me for some camping gear even before he said hello. Another asked me for a boat. That is right a boat. I told him I do not even own a boat, the response was, well than it can be our boat.
"Our" boat, that is one way of asking for something without really asking for it. Hey you should buy "us" a boat. Or hey can I borrow "our" radio. My father who was an American warned me of this when I was growing up. Do not get me wrong I love my family and our culture but I think a few folks are not able to separate modern culture from ancient ones.

Marshallese people are some of the most giving people in the world. I can literally walk into nearly any traditional Marshallese home comment about how I love how they decorated their living room especially that throw rug on the couch. As quick as I finished that sentence that throw rug is packed up and in my possession to take home. This is the culture of the islands, everything is shared, I am sure this goes back to when resources were so scarce that this was a necessity. I love this culture. What I do not love is how some people take advantage of that. Another example while I was back home, several family members followed me around wanting meals, drinks at bars all night long. If I was to refuse they would turn on me as quickly as I was befriended and bwewenato (Marshallese for talk or gossip) to other family members about how I was a "big shot" and forgot about his family when he made it good. It really is a balancing act with some family members. I do stress some as most were a joy to be around.

When I finally got tired of one person in particular I asked nicely why they needed so many things. Were they having problems, were the kids hungry? Basically the answer I got was, you have money, I need it, give me some. I finally declined and said "if you are in dire need of something I will be more than happy to help in anyway I can". His reply, "what are you some kind of big shot?" I simpled answered, "no I am your cousin" I am sure I was the subject of some bwebwenato. I am used to it, growing up we were always treated differently which I hated sometimes. Not differently in a bad way, but differently like Super Star different. When we visited family we were not punished (most of the time) like the other kids ate more food, had VIP seating in the house the whole works. I never fully understood this.

I plan on going back home for another visit I hope I can spend more quality time with family and less hiding from certain members who ruin it for everyone.

Death of a Treo

I purchased a Treo 650 several months ago. I love this phone it held over 6000 of my contacts allowing me to streamline my day to day activities. It was perhaps the best tool I had for work. Well last night my Treo passed on to the Electronic place in the sky.

I purchased my Treo from Cingular anyone who has had a Cingular phone will know they are slow with updates and patches. In fact every other phone company that had a Treo had already released much needed patches that fixed memory and stability issues. Being impatient I have been hacking my Treo and creating my own Custom Firmware ROMs. This is a very delicate process and has paid off with a much more usable device. Well last night it all caught up to me, using the latest patch that Cingular FINALLY released I decided to create my own custom ROM and remove a lot of the Corporate garbage they put in the phone. After creating the ROM my Treo went into the dreaded Endless Loop that is unrecoverable. Now I basically have a $500 paper weight. My only salvation will be that somebody will figure out way to reflash the device via the bootlogger.

So now I am back to my old Motorola V505 phone, which is a great phone but far from a Treo 650. I ran into another issue getting that phone to work. When I switched from my Motorola to the Treo I went into a ATT Store and they told me they were now called Cingular and to switch to them. So I did thinking hey will have twice the coverage. So thinking that I could just pop my SIM card into the old phone I ran into a problem, the old phone would not register my SIM card. I called Cingular and they said that they do not support ATT phone and that I needed to call ATT. I politely explained that I thought it was one in the same company. Well it turns out that it is not and that I had another brick for a phone but for $120 they would hook me up with a cheap phone. Needless to say I was pissed.

Craigslist was my savor, I found an add from a local person who for 20 bucks would unlock my Motorola phone so I could use it on the Cingular network. Tada, back up and running. Now to pray for a Treo miracle....

Jana's Close up

I am still tinkering with the new camera taking hundreds of pictures and discarding 90% of them. This is a picture I took of Jana last night. It was not a close up picture but since the camera is 8 megapixels I was able to zoom in and crop out a close up. She was just getting ready for bed her hair was a complete mess but I like this picture for some reason.

The excesses of paradise

I took this photo Sept of 04 when I went back to the Marshall Islands. for my mothers funeral. This ship was given to the RMI Government from the US Government. It was a retired Coast Guard vessel that was still in decent shape. The vessel was dry docked at this location so it could be overhauled and painted. Here it still sits a victim of neglect. You really can not tell from this photo but it is completely rusted through and just a pile of junk now not even worthy of the scrap yard.

What is my point? The RMI has seen too much growth since WWII when the US freed us from the Japanese occupation. I am not blaming the US but just making an observation. The RMI Govt. has become corrupt and the society as a whole is bent on material wealth. The most extreme example of this is the island of Ebeye. Ebeye is only 80 acres in size yet there are 12,000 people living on it. The reason so many people live on Ebeye is due to its close proximity to a US Military Base on Kwajalein and the relocation of some locals by the US Military years eariler. Even though Ebeye is such a small island there are literally hundreds of cars.

Where is the local Govt in all of this? The RMI Govt is infantile at best and is unable to manage their own affairs. The ship in the picture is just a small example. Anytime a crisis rears its ugly head our Govt is quick to call the US or Taiwanese Govt to bail us out. The politicians are the source of most of the problems back home taking materialism to a new level. While many of the population suffer from education and health problems the politicians are jet-setting across the world attending conferences and meetings that have very little payback. Secretary Cohen of the US Interior Dept said it best when he he told RMI that we are living above our means and we should settle for a simpler life. This was a controversial statement but I can not agree more.

Diet has completely changed as well, diabetes runs rampant and is a major killer in the islands, candy and high carb foods like rice are a staple now. In fact many of the old ways of gathering food are not practiced in the more populous areas. Many families will go hungry if they do not have a can of SPAM or Corned Beef in the pantry, yet the ocean, just a stones throw away is full of fish. This reminds me of the old saying "You can not expect a soldier to return to the farms after he has seen the lights of Paris" Basically after the islanders have seen the conveniences of the Western world it is hard for them to go back to their simple life. I personally yearn for a
simple life , a life without cell phones, computers and conference calls. One day I want to retire on an island back home with a fishing pole and my health without the hustle and bustle of the city. I fear though that the excesses will run its course and the islanders will either live in the US or on heavily populated islands competing for their own piece of the pie.

New Camera

My new camera came in the other day. I picked up a Canon Rebel XT also known as the Canon 350D. This is my first serious camera, I had well still have a Canon G2 point and click. That was a nice camera but I reached its limits and needed something more serious.

First day of school

It works out very well that my very first post is about Jera and Jana's first day of school. For Jana is it particularly special as this is her first day at Kindergarten. She was very excited to finally be going to school. I took this impromptu photo of them while in the garage, it is not a very good picture I was in a bit of a rush.