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Walmart Photo Fail

I tried to print out some wedding pictures for my grandmother at Walmart today but they refused to give me the photos (they were already printed) because I didn't have a copyright release from the wedding photographer. Walmart apparently will not sell photos that look like they've been taken by a professional photographer unless you have a signed copyright release.

Seriously? It's a picture of my wife and I! How big of a problem is this? I guess I could have lied and said they were not taken by a professional -- which they would have accepted -- except that I'd answered truthfully before I'd known about this restriction.

What a colossal inconvenience.

Well, lesson learned - avoid Walmart for pictures.

New Toy

This has been a good month for me. First a new cell phone, and now a shiny new GPS unit for my Nikon D90 just in time for our vacation. I picked up a Solmeta Geotagger N1 off their E-Bay store and they were nice enough to throw in an extra power adapter and charging cable.

It's pretty much drop dead simple to use, is light enough to be unnoticeable, and since it has a built in battery, doesn't really change my behavior as far as using the camera goes. Since the data gets embedded into the image's EXIF data, there's no post-processing involved either. My test shot got uploaded to Picasa just fine with GPS data intact.

Time to do some real world testing...

HTC Evo

C's been complaining that I hog her phone too much whenever we're out and about so I finally bit the bullet and upgraded my trusty old Samsung clamshell to the HTC Evo. I'd been tempted to upgrade a few times in the past (particularly when the Palm Pre came out), but it never made any financial sense. I finally managed to reconcile the cost when (a) Sprint introduced a cheap(er) plan, (b) we needed to add another line and (c) there was actually a viable Android phone for Sprint.

Reviews for the Evo are all over the board, but I'm mostly loving it. Battery life isn't great, but it's good enough for me. My only complaint is the camera (for either stills or video). They may claim 8MP, but it's total crap and unreliable for anything beyond candid shots.

Everything else is just fantastic. It's fast, it runs Android, and it has a great big screen. It's big enough that I can type quickly and accurately, something I cannot do on the Nexus One.

More than anything else, it's just fun. It's been a long time since I've had the desire to do any programming that isn't work related, but the Evo and Android is certainly introducing that itch.

Baby Brown 2

I was fortunate enough to be able to fly back to NJ last weekend to meet my newest nephew, Michael Brown. He's amazing and sooo tiny. I can't believe Andrew was once this small. Congrats Jeanne and Jim! I can't wait to introduce him to Andrew.

Temeraire

Just finished reading In His Majesty's Service by Naomi Novik, which collects the first three books in her Temeraire series, and I am thoroughly impressed.

When I thought of how to describe these books, the first thing that came to mind was Anne McCaffrey + Patrick O'Brian (and just a dash of Jane Austen in the first book). And I guess I wasn't the only one with this impression since the blurb on Amazon describes the series with McCaffrey and O'Brian as well.

If you've ever wondered what the world would have been like if dragons existed during Napoleonic era, then you've got to give these books a chance. Oh so well written, and utterly believable.

The good news for me is that books 4 and 5 are already out, and book 6 will be out in July. The bad news is that there are only 3 more books for me to read, and I'll be sad indeed to leave her world.

Palak Challenged

Cooked a couple Indian dishes for dinner tonight: a lamb stew/curry and palak paneer. The lamb dish was a first attempt, and with the pressure cooker to boot (a wedding gift that's sat unused for the past three years). C and I both thought that it turned out very well, and given that there's virtually nothing to it other than throwing prepped ingredients into the pot, it will probably be entering my standard repertoire.

And just so I have a record of it somewhere, here's the recipe:

1. Mix well in bowl:
   • 1 lb. of meat (I used boned shoulder of lamb) in 1" cubes,
   • 1 small onion, peeled and finely chopped
   • 1" piece of ginger, peeled and finely chopped
   • 1 medium-sized tomato, peeled and finely chopped
   • 1-2 fresh, hot green chiles, cut into fine rings (do not remove seeds) 1 teaspoon chili powder
   • 1/4 teaspoon ground tumeric
   • 2 teaspoons garam masala
   • 1 teaspoon ground cumin
   • 1/4 cup plain yogurt
   • 1 tablespoon tomato paste
   • 1/4 teaspoon salt or to taste
2. Heat 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil in pressure cooker and saute 4 finely chopped cloves of garlic till medium brown.
3. Add seasoned meat and stir a few times
4. Cover pressure cooker and cook lamb for 15 minutes at full pressure.
5. Reduce pressure quickly. Uncover and cook over high heat, stirring gently until the sauce is thick.
6. Sprinkle with black pepper and stir again.
7. Eat.

The other dish, unfortunately, was not as successful. This was my third attempt at palak paneer and the best so far, but still no where close to what you'd get at a restaurant. I tried following a friend's recipe this time, but it was fairly obvious as I got close to the end that it just wasn't going to be right. I'm also not familiar enough with the ingredients to figure out how to fix it and get the desired result.

If anyone has a foolproof method of making good palak paneer, I'd love to learn.

Customer Service

Every now and then I get so shocked by a company's customer service that I have to blog about it.

During our remodel, I went with a couple dual flush toilets from Caroma. One of them started leaking recently and continuously released a small but steady stream of water into the bowl after flushing.

Since the flushing mechanism isn't something I can just pick up at Home Depot, I gave them a call to see what my options were. I was dreading an exorbitant fee for a replacement part, but instead, they just asked me for my address and said they'd mail me one right away.

Now that's going above and beyond anything I could have hoped for.

Thanks Caroma.

Pet Peeve

I'm not a big fan of having to create an account on a website in order to use it. I can understand why they ask people to register, but I don't have to like it.

So when I do finally succumb and create an account, I do expect a certain level of... proficiency. And to achieve this goal, they just have to manage one simple thing: DON'T SEND ME MY PASSWORD IN AN EMAIL. This is such a flagrant disregard for basic security that it's likely to make me blacklist the site altogether.

In this day and age, with identity theft such a common event, the lazy developer responsible for this atrocity should be run out of town. If you've implemented such a system and don't know why this is a bad idea, shame on you.

If you don't want to put the effort into designing something more secure, just take advantage of one of the single sign-on authentication schemes like OpenID or Facebook Connect.

Zap

After thinking about it for the past few years, I finally bit the bullet and had lasik performed on me yesterday at the Stanford Eye Laser Center.

Short version: 40 minutes of staring at a blinking red light, 4 hours of itchy/burning tears once the anesthetics wore off, a night's rest, and I currently have 20/20 in my right eye and 20/15 in my left. It'll take a few weeks for my vision to stabilize, so this may not be my final visual acuity numbers. I'm also seeing a bit of a halo around lights, which I hope will improve as my eyes recover from the surgery.

Poor Andrew... There won't be any eyeglasses for him to pull off anymore.

Kindle Double Whammy

I usually buy my books used (pre-loved? pre-read?), but every now and then I don't have the luxury and am forced to buy it new. That's pretty much what happened last week for when we got tired of waiting for a copy of Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child to be available at the library.

What's prompting me to blog about this is that I have a Kindle. If I want both the hard copy and a digital copy for my Kindle, I have to pay for the book twice, and there's no way I'm doing that. With a CD, I can just buy the CD and rip it, and I'd be able to listen to it on whatever system I want. With a book, I don't have that option. I'd be willing to pay $1-2 more for the digital copy, but I don't see that being a choice any time in the near future.

As much as I like the Kindle, I don't see myself only buying digital copies of books. Especially since it would be in a proprietary format so I wouldn't even be able to read it on anything other than a Kindle. What happens if I break it? The idea of having to shell out hundreds for a replacement Kindle before I can read those books again just makes me cringe.

I hope that as the number of people using e-readers increases, these issues will be worked out. I'm hoping the publishers are willing to work out some sort of deal for those who'd like a hard copy and a digital copy of the same work. But I'm not holding my breath...

Year 3 In Review

Our third wedding anniversary has come and gone, and it's time to once again look back and reflect. Unlike the past couple years, we didn't do anything special to celebrate. A lot of factors came into play to produce this outcome, but I'd like to think that it was Andrew that did it, and really, he's sort of a daily celebration in and of itself, so it all works out in the end.

Much of the past year has revolved around preparing for, and then learning to live with Andrew's arrival. Before September, it'd been one of the calmer years in my recent history. After September... Well, sufficed to say that it's been a banner year for new experiences and discovering just how much sleep I really need a night.

Looking forward, I can only imagine how much more life will change once Andrew becomes mobile. Personally, I'm hoping he puts it off for a while, but I'm not too sure he's going to listen to me.

Pop!

Since I had the entire family over for Christmas, I decided to get off my butt and work on a photography project that's been noodling around the back of my mind for a while. Once I got everything set up , it was fairly easy to run everyone through it.

I'm sure I can improve on the lighting, but I was in a rush because I'd procrastinated till a few hours before the east coast contingent had to leave to catch their flight home.

Happy New Year!

Better late than never, right? Happy New Year everyone!

Northstar

Spent the day snowboarding at Northstar at Tahoe, and it was insanely awesome. The snow was great for this time of the year, and the day was just perfect -- clear, sunny and warm.

Andrew's been helping me get in shape for snowboarding too, since he likes being rocked up and down as opposed to sideways. Which translates to lots and lots of lunges and squats.

Tomorrow is C.'s turn to hit the slopes while I stay home with Andrew.

Gender Bias

We took Andrew to Wendy's birthday dinner at Buca di Beppo in Palo Alto where he was pretty well behaved. All was going well until we had to change his diaper... and discovered that only the women's bathroom had a changing table.

Wendy's birthday celebrations continued with ice skating at the Winter Lodge where Andrew had to have his diaper changed again... and again only the women's bathroom had a changing table.

Seriously? Are women still the only ones expected to change diapers in this day and age? Or are these venues just behind the times? I know I've seen changing tables in the men's room before. I just didn't realize how much of a rarity that is.

What do we want? Gender equality. Changing tables in the men's room! When do we want it? Now!

Boo!

I carved my first pumpkin this Halloween! I have Andrew to thank for motivating me to finally give it a shot this year, but I don't think he was terribly impressed.

Last Hurrah

As we get closer and closer to B-day, C. and I have been trying to do the things we love doing but probably won't be able to for a while. For the most part, this involves going to our favorite restaurants. On the top of the list, of course, is Gary Danko in SF.

I'm only going to mention the top three dishes of the night, the first one being the risotto that C. got. Creamy, buttery, delicious... Everything that a risotto should be. This is the second time I've made the mistake of not ordering the risotto (the last time was at Cyrus). The seared scallop was also very, very good, and also ordered by C. I should just let her order for me as well next time. And we both ended with the same desert: french macaron ice-cream sandwiches. How could we refuse? Very much on the sweet side, but they definitely brought a smile to our faces.

Since this was potentially the last weekend we'd have to ourselves, we decided a quiet getaway was in order and escaped to Sausalito. On our way up on Saturday, we stopped at the Hog Island Oyster Company in the Ferry Building in SF for lunch. C. had their delicious clam chowder, while I tried their oyster stew. We both preferred the chowder.

Once we got to Sausalito we just walked around the downtown area. Usually, the only reason we'd be in Sausalito is to eat at Fish. We've only really checked out the town once before.

Of course we went to Fish. for dinner... and walked the two miles from downtown Sausalito to the restaurant. We started with the Fish Parfait, a crab cocktail that C. found a little too spicy but suited me just fine. For our main course, I had the pozole with Alaskan halibut cheeks while C. had the hamachi over pasta. I thought the corn was a little strange, but it was a good dish overall. As for the hamachi, it's a shame that C. has to have her fish fully cooked, because it came out a little dry.

The next morning, we drove to Stinson Beach. After brunching at the Parkside Cafe, we just lazed at the beach for a while before driving up Mt. Tam. By then though it was getting too hot to hike, so just walked a paved loop near the visitor's center before heading home...

High Tea

C. thought it would be fun to try out something a little different and made us a reservation for afternoon tea at the Ritz Carlton in SF.

I had the Imperial Earl Grey, C. tried the Eros. Personally, I much preferred mine... :) Along with the tea, we had a wide assortment of bite-sized snacks. We both loved the scones, but in general thought that the portions were much too small. This probably wouldn't have been such a problem if we went at tea time, but it was serving as brunch and we were both hungry.

Tasty, but not worth the price. I doubt we'll be going back.

McNally Lighting Seminar

Went to a lighting seminar taught by Joe McNally last Friday, and I figured if I waited long enough, he'd blog about it and include some of the shots he got that day. Sure enough, he did.

The class was a blast, and I learned:

• a better way to approach thinking about lighting a subject.
• what the various light-describing adjectives mean. Many times I read about "soft" light or "creamy" light or whatever and have a hard time visualizing it. Seeing McNally slowly iterate through and improve the quality of the light with each shot gave me a better understanding of what they're talking about.
• he really does talk the way he blogs!

Now I just need to convince C to stay still long enough for me to practice on her... And maybe pickup a couple of those Lastolite trigrips that McNally was using to play with.