I thought the gloom of yesterday would pass. I was wrong. I still feel like poop today. This isn’t usual for me. Usually, I get up and it’s a new day and I feel hopeful. Today, I’m just down.
Something encouraging though: It’s been raining all night, and I have what look to be wet footprints on my hummingbird feeder.
I didn’t get the job. She said they’ll keep the application on file “.. because I think you have some great qualities…”
I just feel like crying about it. 
While the computer was down, the cameras were up. Here’s what I couldn’t update:
I got some petunias for the garden: clicky.
Aphids infested my daylillies: clicky.
Christine bought me a skirt: clicky.
We bought Stumpy a laser pointer: clicky.
It lives! Thanks to a new moherboard, I’m back up and running. Running XP, I might add… ick. It’s actually not as bad as I’d figured. It’s got an awesome image viewer that acts as a slide show for the whole folder. I open one and click ‘next’ instead of opening each file. Yay!
Job: I went in for my test run today. It was so much fun that I stayed an hour over what I was supposed to. She just called back. She’s happy I had a good time, but she’s got a few other girls on the line as well. I’ll get another call back early next week. I sure hope I get the job.
It’s the motherboard.
I can’t for the life of me figure out what the hell I do to them. This is the third in five years! It’s not like I regularly attatch magnets to it or something. I don’t use it as a footstool or a kitty bed. So… yeah. I need a new one to the tune of about $200. Damn damn damn.
I’m waiting with bated breath again. It’s that time of year. Hummingbirds could conceiveably make it here within a day or two. I’ve got my feeders filled and waiting. Check the migration map!
So. It’s not the CD’s either. It’s now narrowed down to a hardware issue (whopee). It’s not the RAM, but it may be the power supply or the motherboard. I’m betting it’s the motherboard myself.
Update on phone thing. John and I are now on Verizon’s IN network. Sprint can go stick it. E-mails with new number will follow to those of you who need them. Leave a comment if you’d like to be included in the list. John’s number remains the same.
Grrrr… It’ll be longer than anticipated. It seems that after 5 years, the Windows 2000 setup CDs have begun to lose some data. I cannot re-install my OS until I get some new disks. At this point I’d even be okay with a much-hated copy of XP. Uhg, I hate XP.
Are you on Verizon? Let me know!
I downloaded a really nasty virus last night. It’s caused my computer to totally shit itself in the course of about 2 hours. What do I do? Backup, Format C:
So, it’ll be a while before I’m back on AIM or even on my own computer.
Job update: She called and wants me to come in for a preliminary room test run. I’ll be observed, and I’ll be seeing if I like it or not. I assume she’ll actually offer me the job based on what she sees. Since I’m the world’s most awesomenest teacher ever (and modest too!) I’m not too worried.
Off topic: If I have your phone number, please leave a comment if you use Verizon. I want to know who is on the IN network. If I or John and I both switch, I want to know who we call that will be free calls. 
I’ve been having trouble with my Sigma 70-300mm lens. I keep getting photos like this out of it.
Not very sharp at all. I was begining to think that I’d never be able to use the darn thing without a tripod, which would be very sad indeed. Then my photo-geeking neighbor, DavidB, told me somehting I’d read somewhere and then forgotten. He said “Use the middle F-stop.” For those of you unfamiliar with cameras and lenses, here’s a quick bit: lenses have blades or plates, which open and close to let light in. Each setting of these blades is called a ’stop’ or an ‘f-stop’. The 70-300mm lens stops from F/4 to F/29, making the middle stop of this lens F/11 or so. My 50mm Macro goes from F/2.8 to F/44, making it’s middle stop somewhere around F/22. It’s different for every lens. So, I decided to do a bit of an experiment. Is the 50mm lens sharper than the 300mm lens, even when the photo is enlarged? If I could get away without taking the big 300mm to Arizona, I’d be happy.
The 300mm is on the left, the 50mm enlarged is on the right. Pretty darn sharp, even when compared side-by-side. These shots are from a tripod mounted camera, which means that there’s no shaky hands making the camera’s pictures fuzzy. If I wanted to drag a tripod around the whole vacation, this would be great. Me, I’d rather hold the camera with my hands and turn myself rather than picking up some contraption to follow a hummingbird. Since I have notoriously shaky hands, I needed to know if I could get a usable photo out of the 300mm at all, or if I should just hope for the best with the 50mm.
This is a hand-held shot of a pair of doves I just took. The doves were about 20 feet away from me. Nice and harp! Yay! The middle stop works quite well for hand-held shots in bright sun. Not so well for shady areas though. But, I think I can safely take it with us and get a few good shots out of it, at least at the zoos and feeders. Wheee!
Nope… Bats. I found a blog from someone in Tucson while looking for hummingbird photos. Instead, I found photos of bats at the feeders. You don’t believe me? She got lots of photos. Wow! Not only are the bat photos neat, but her whole blog is a wonderful read if you’re interested in plants and wildlife. Which I am, so her blog is now linked on the right side there in ‘Internet Freinds’. It’s fun to see in photos what me can look forward to seeing when we get there in May.
