Gary's blog

Denise and I have been shopping around to buy our first house, and the entire process is quite a bit more stressful than I initially expected.  We already had one deal fall through as a result of the inspection, and currently are making an offer on another house. 

In fact, I've begun to compare the entire process to that of having children...

Over the past few years, I've spent quite a bit of money on the internet.  In 99% of those cases, the items I've ordered have been delivered either by FedEx or UPS.  Today, I encountered, yet again, the typical delivery experience with FedEx:  unreliable.

In this case, the shipper decided to use FedEx ground, but no signature was required.  In addition, it was shipped to my home address.  As is normally the case when I get FedEx ground shipments, the package never arrived when FedEx claimed it would.  In this case, however, the package was specifically marked as not requiring a signature.  Why is this significant?  Because the so-called delivery exception this time was "Customer not available or business closed."  In truth, I happen to know that FedEx actually didn't attempt delivery. 

At the time that the delivery was supposedly attempted, I was sitting about 3 feet from my front door - which was wide open (thanks to the 70 degree weather we are having this evening.)  As well, my door bell works great.  I checked, and the numbers above my front door showing my street address are clearly visible.  Finally, I have two small dogs that bark like mad if anyone (or anything) makes any noise whatsoever within 20 feet of my front door.  In other words, there is no possible way that ANYONE attempted delivery at ANY time between 5pm and 6pm - though the FedEx exception report shows a time of 5:47pm.

While at work (the job that pays my salary, that is) I'm unable to edit photographs, upload them to the website, etc.  However, if things are slow, I am able to do some minor changes to the code that runs the Forever Young.  Today, I managed to add a couple changes (but don't tell my boss.)

First, if a photo appears in multiple albums, this information will now be shown when viewing the photograph.  Just something that says "This photo also appears in" that is followed by one or more album links.  (If the photo isn't in multiple albums, then nothing shows at all.)  This might be useful for someone browsing an album like "Mommy's Picks" or "Newest Photos" that contain photo's which are often in other places.

Life, as usual, has been keeping me overly busy.  Having two young children is quite the task...  Unfortunately, it's kept me from updating the website for a few months.  Right now, I still have photos from NOVEMBER that I haven't gone through and posted.  That's pretty sad.  However, I HOPE to start catching up this weekend...

Before I update any photos, though, I need to do some hardware work on the server that runs the website.  The machine has an extra hard drive that used to do nightly backups (and from which weekly backups are made to an external device.)  Unfortunately, that drive has been having problems lately, and was causing the server to crash.  As a stopgap measure, I've disabled that drive (and the nightly backups) until I can figure out whats going on.  My current theory is that there's nothing wrong with the drive itself, but it's not getting enough power.  This weekend, I hope to power down the server and replace the power supply in that machine.  With two children in the house, thats a major undertaking.  Imagine having computer parts spread across the floor with a 2 year old wanting to "help."  

As promised, here are some details on the equipment I use to take photographs of Daniel and Laci (and anything else.)

The camera body is a Canon 20D Digital SLR.  Previous to this body, I used the Canon 10D.

Usually  attached to the top of the camera is a Canon 580EX flash, or an older Canon 550EX flash.

I (currently) have 4 lenses (listed in order of most used to least used)

• Canon 24-70 f2.8L
• Canon 70-200 f4L
• Sigma 55-200 f4-5.6 DC
• Sigma 12-24 f4.5-5.6 EX DG HSM

The 24-70 used to be a Sigma 24-70 f2.8 which I was quite happy with.  However, the Canon "L" focuses so much faster, which is really useful when trying to take photos of children that don't stay still.  As well, its much easier to "tweak" the AF on the Canon lens.

It's been over a month since I've had a chance to post anything to the blog, but life has been anything but slow lately.  I'm surprised I actually have time to use the bathroom anymore.  I haven't made much progress on the website, either.  In fact, the old "laci.garyndenise.org" site is still active, though I haven't updated it at all.  I need an hour or so to set up the re-direct to this site.  I few people have sent me messages asking what camera I use for the photos on here, so I'm probably going to write a couple of blog entries describing the equipment

More improvements and updates to the photo albums...  The "Newest Photos" album is back.  That album will always show two "pages" of the most recent photo's uploaded to the website.  It's also updated every night automatically.  In a couple months (if I remember) I'll be changing it to show all the photos that were uploaded in the last 45 days (regardless of if that's 10 or 10,000 photos.)  However, I can't do that right now, as all the photos were uploaded to the current albums at the end of September... (so they'd ALL show up as newest photos.)

I finally got several hours work into the web site!  If you've been checking the new URL recently, you'll notice that the entire theme has changed, and that the photo galleries (albums) also look very different.  The overall theme is an attempt at functional as well as something "childish."  I'll probably be adding more crayon effects and background semi-transparent images over the next few weeks...

The photo albums are nearly 100% acceptable to me.  There are only two things (that I can think of right now) missing.  The first is the ability to ove