I am changing web hosts to a much more reliable host. However, in the next 24 hours, email access might be a little unreliable for me, so if you do not hear from me, you can call me or try emailing again.
Thanks for your patience!
Archive for November, 2005
Every year I try to donate to Oregon food bank near Thanksgiving. There are so many people who work full time and still can’t afford food for their family, so as part of thanking for the things I am given, I try to help. A little reminder always helps for me, so I thought I would do the same here.
If you can afford to, please donate to your local food bank this Thanksgiving! Esp. after the Hurricanes, food prices have increased not to mention fuel prices that makes it harder for the needy. Think about how much you will spend on black Friday sales and even a tiny amount of that will make a difference for a lot of people!
Our food bank is:
http://www.oregonfoodbank.org/
Here is a link that has some state by state listing, but the best bet is to search Google with state name + food bank
make a difference! 
Please spend couples seconds and click on the food bank link above and make a small donation, even $10-25 whatever!
Did You Know
* One in four people in a soup kitchen line is a child.
* 30% of the families surveyed were forced to choose between buying food and paying for medical care or medicine.
* Nearly 15% of the total households served by the America’s Second Harvest Network reside in rural areas.
* Four million non-elderly low-income families said they had used a food pantry at least once during the past year.
The largest, and longest running study of hunger in America shows last year nearly half of the people using food-shelves were working, many at full time jobs
If you have sent me email in the last two weeks and have not received a response, it is likely that I have not received it. My hosting company Superb.net, possibly one of the most incompetent ones in the nation, has been having serious server and email problems.
The funny thing is I joined them due to their reliability even though they were relatively expensive. They had decent service for a while. Now it is all downhill. I will be changing hosts very soon so this should be fixed, but in the meantime, please email me again or call me!
I will be in the NW Wedding Showcase bridal show this weekend. I am a bit towards the back but I am glad I managed to get in. I normally do not do bridal shows as most of my clients find me with word of mouth but I want to see how this one will go - I am going to go low key, with a slideshow, some albums with a love seat/coffee table instead of a big fancy display. I am looking forward to talking with brides about their weddings!
So come and say hi!
I was in Canada for a seminar with great Australian photographer David Williams. I got some good ideas about album design and Aussie style portraits. David is a very good teacher but is also a great guy to hang out with too.
I just got back couples days ago. I was not feeling very well there - it was very cold and rainy and my sleeping arrangements were less than optimal. I used to do well even without much sleep but I am not 18 anymore I guess I got to see my oldest friend (of 25 years - I am 31 though I look younger apparently) and had some super sushi at Samurai Sushi at Davie Street (there is one on Cambie as well). I tried an Oyster Motoyaki - crazy stuff!!!
On the way back, I lost a lot of time - got stopped at the border for a random search, and then there was a big rain storm and I-5 was closed for about 2 hours to clear some debris. Came home exhausted to find my garage burglarized so I had to deal with that. What a pain as if I didn’t have many things to work on.
Here are some photos from Vancouver.
There are some places in the world that I really want to see - one of them is the Iguaçu (Iquassu) falls in Brazil. Being in Oregon I am a little bored with regular waterfalls, but these are just incredible.
Other places I would love to visit are:
- Machu Picchu
- Grand Canyon (esp. rafting!)
- Yellowstone
- Great Wall
- Taj Mahal
- Galapagos Islands
- Cuba
- Egypt (Pyramids and Nile)
- Pamukkale (Cotton Castle) in Turkey
- Antarctica
- Other Countries: Australia, Thailand, China, Japan, Argentina, Brazil
BTW, this is a cool list of best places:
http://travel.discovery.com/fansites/worldsbest/listing.html
This is not photo related but is interesting. I missed this when it first came out, but Sony is in hot waters because it installs a virus like program to stop copying music cd’s. The program is poorly written and can crash your computer, or slow it down, not to mention is unethical in the sneaky way it installs itself, much like spyware does. It is also very very hard to remove and might render your cd-rom unusable if you try to remove it. Not to mention DMCA prohibits removing such software. So now you have a software that can crash your sytem or slow it down but it would be illegal for you to remove it. Super (major roll eyes).
It gets worse. Sony is huge. According this Wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_Music_Entertainment , they own Arista Records, Columbia Records, Epic Records, J Records, RCA Victor, RCA Records and many more. And they may have this kind of stuff on their DVD’s as well so if you watch a DVD on your laptop, oops.
and more technical article (that started this all)
Frankly there is so little good music out there lately that I do not buy cd’s much anyways. I stick to my 600+ cd collection and iTunes purchases of songs I like. And I will think twice before buying a CD - why risk my computer?
