http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:DigiM355&section=today deviantART RSS for by:DigiM355 en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:55:43 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/13501978/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/13501978/ Tue, 26 Jun 2007 18:00:54 PDT
Aaron

]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/13162529/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/13162529/ Thu, 31 May 2007 10:33:28 PDT
What is the deal with controlling boyfriends now-a-days? I write this because of, ya, you guessed it... I can relate because of someone I know is or has gone through this. Guys are literally idiots, yes, you did read my profile correctly... I am a MALE. The woman jokes or at least I take it as a joke, when she points out some controlling flaw. I personally call it a re-action to a physical event, but when analyzed, I could see that it could be a control issue.

So anyways, I write this for all the guys out there that may or may not know they are being controlling, attempting to be controlling, or your just a flat out loser and need to read it to figure it out. I also write this for the ignorant women out there that don't know they are with a controlling individual, dating a loser, or harming their family relationships.

#1 Family is family, not by just blood, but by marriage as well. That means that you trust and respect what your family says. You may disagree with them, but don't take it to heart, because they speak it out of love and concern

#2 If your single and looking for a good man, DON'T always pick them up at a bar

#3 If your single and looking for a good man, DON'T pick one that hasn't had a steady job in the past year. If they just got fired/laid off from a long term job, that's a different story.

#4 If your single and looking for a good man, DON'T pick one that thinks it makes him more of a man to say every day or any time he meets someone "I went to jail, because..." or "I was in jail, because...". The clue is... if they went to jail/prison for any reason and feels the need to brag about it... That's a clue to RUN like hell, cause most likely "and of course, statistically speaking", they will be back in jail within 1 year, especially if they are already a repeat offender.

#5 If your single, looking for a good man, and have kids!! DON'T force your kids to be around someone until they say that they want to meet them. There is nothing wrong with DATING for a few months, before you introduce them to your children. That doesn't mean sneak him into the house when the children are sleeping, that means, DON'T bring him around the house PERIOD.

Seriously, there is nothing wrong with dating for a while. If you met someone you like and may like to get to know better, spend good hardy quality time with them, before jumping into bed with them and generating a seemingly long term relationship. Unlike many other things in life, we're use to having and doing things FAST! But you can't do that with a relationship, you need to take it slow... No, you have to take it slow. If you start it fast, it'll end fast. Think about it, now-a-days majority of marriages end within the first 6 months. People meet, fall in love, and get married within a month or 2. 1 year after they actually met, usually most couples are sick of each other. I say, date someone for 3-6 months before you even think about marriage, if you aren't sick of them by then, then think about how you could feel about being with them for the next 5-6 years. If you have doubt over 5-6 years, then let them go. It'll be easier on you and save a lot of heartache.

Of course there's a lot of hairs to split over what I wrote and many different senarios you could throw out there to attempt at contradicting this. But if you apply these bottom lines to a majority of your relationships and date a while before commiting to your relationship, I believe that you'll be a much happier person in the end...

Constructive reply's are certainly welcome...

Even if you disagree, thanks for at least reading!

Aaron

]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/13086856/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/13086856/ Fri, 25 May 2007 09:45:38 PDT
Aaron

]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/12654279/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/12654279/ Thu, 19 Apr 2007 12:07:24 PDT
We've taken a few trips since the last time I've wrote. The best was a month or so ago. We went out to hocking hills state park in Logan, OH. This was a spur of the moment trip, woke up and just felt like getting the heck outta dodge. Got a lot of nice pictures, just haven't spent the time editing them to add borders, etc... and upload to the site. The woman and I have been on and off the rocks. Right now it seems to be more off than on. I'm not going to write much on that, since we've basically not talking about the issue(s). Or what ever the heck it is... Honestly, I'm not even sure... The only thing I can think of, is that it's a trust issue. So I'll just leave it at that for now...

Lately I've been pretty worn out... I've been trying to make some life adjustments; such as, not drinking as much, not spending much time on the computer when I'm at home, unless it's work related or if the womans into doing something on her own, then I'll sneek a little game time in. I'd like to get some more traveling going on! Or at least more experiencing of different city lifes. I'd really like to start doing more projects around the house and stuff, but I find it hard at times to try and please everyone around, yet still accomplish stuff. Been pulling more hours at work as well... think last week I got inbetween 40-50 hours and this week I think I'll be above 50 hours, since we're working at least 5 hours Saturday from 5:00AM till whenever and then probably 9:00AM till 2PM Sunday.

Works been strange the last few weeks. I suppose it isn't so strange, since people have basically been leaving me alone on my own. So I'm making changes, etc... on my own. So it's a good thing that my supervisor, etc... doesn't feel the need to actually hover over me. Shows that the board is really trusting in my capabilities. We've been, well... I've been implementing new Proxy and Content Filtering systems due to growing abuse of websites and our computer systems. In turn, seems to be leading to a lesser amount of people hanging out around the school throughout the day. Plus part of the reason the supervisor would be laying off of me, more. Would be because of the new ohio governor is deciding to cut Private Colleges OIG/OCOG Grants, which affects 200 some of our students. We did get a great response from our school outting yesterday to columbus. But there's still a long fight left, in order to get the funding back on the board for us.

Well, just going to keep it short for now...

Aaron

]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/10259938/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/10259938/ Mon, 02 Oct 2006 13:21:49 PDT U-Decide! Hot or NOT?

You guessed it! Launched a new website with my brother-n-law. We're working hard on getting everything added and making it as easy and friendly as possibly. Please check it out, it's free to join! Let us know what you think about the site and what we could add to better our site.

Thanks,
Aaron

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=DigiM355

]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/10073690/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/10073690/ Thu, 14 Sep 2006 18:32:45 PDT
I suppose if I go much furture that I must say first that I watched a 9/11 video earlier and the first thing out of my head was 9/11/01, what I was doing, who I was looking for, what I believed at the moment of hearing about the plane hijacked over penn., and I quickly seen that the thing I worried the most about was the same thing my woman was is about.

I had something like that before, but I suppose that was just a one way thing. But I look at what I was at the time and I now have the ability to realize that I was also the same thing. The difference is that I have moved on and accept that what happened, happened. Who lied, lied. Being kids, well... That's all part of growning up. But, people all always growning up. They are going or shrinking all the time. What it comes down to, is the fact that we are always kids, but some people think above the so called politcal line, some below, some can float in the middle.

I've now found that everything that I've fought against with my parents, is how I live. Yet, I can say nothing but I love how I grew up, I love what I've become, and I love who I'm doing it with now.

I love you darling! You are my beautifuls!
Aaron

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]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/9882933/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/9882933/ Mon, 28 Aug 2006 09:57:40 PDT
1.) Quiet time is 10PM - 7AM (School Weekdays) 12AM - 7AM (School Weekends). Summer weekdays, quiet time starts at 12AM and 2AM for Weekends.
2.) Must spend 1 - 2 hours outside playing or inside doing reading or constructive activity that does not include playing computer games, XBOX, watching tv, etc...
3.) Must cook or participate in cooking at least 1 meal during his stay
4.) Must be in the house a 1/2 hour before dusk/night
5.) I forget what else was written down...

* Failure to comply with any of the rules will result in having to write sentences, an essay, or losing priv's (No tv, computer, xbox, phone, etc..)

Now, I don't think that those are too unreasonable. I know some of you may look at the rules about cooking and forcing him to go outside and play being screwed up.. But I put those in there because he doesn't go outside at his dads, he doesn't cook, hell, he hardly knows how to brush his teeth or take a shower. So I put in things that I believe a 14yr old should know how to do and should be out doing, rather than being stuck inside 24/7 and thinking that the only thing to life is computers, tv, and game consoles. Plus not only that, but in the future if he's going to continue staying with us for a week or two. The woman and I will need our alone time. The next few days went by alright, he listened and kept the tv down, was in bed by the time I asked him to be, except for last night/this morning. I was woken up 3 times, the first time I just got up and reminded him that he had to be in bed with everything off by 2AM. The second time I was woken up was about 1:30 or 1:45 and I layed in bed waiting for 2AM but fell back asleep. The 3rd time I got up, went out and got a drink, told him to shut everything off, he complained about him just staying up because we're taking him home early this morning and didn't want to be giving mom a hard time getting out the door. I told him too damn bad! Explained if he wants to stay awake till it's time to head home then he can lay in bed and read a book or listen to his radio, whatever... but the tv and computer is going off. So I walked back into the bedroom, layed down waiting for the TV to go off and of course it stayed on. So I got up and stood in our door just in the shadows and waited to see if he was just being stupid or something, trying to find the remote. But he was just sitting there watching the tv still. So I yelled at him to shut it off now or I'll do it and he's not going to like what'll happen if I have to do it. So reluctantly he complied, laid down, listened to his walkman or whatever it is he has and fell asleep shortly after. Ok, so anyways, before that whole ordeal. The woman and I where laying down in bed watching a movie or whatever and I wanted a drink. I got up, started walking to the kitchen, looked at this mirror we have on the living room wall and the monitor faces the mirror so you can see what anyone is doing. And here I see a naked woman on the monitor, watched him close that screen and another gallery of women pics behind that, then I got my drink, walked over behind him and asked him what he was doing. In a shaky voice I hear "Nooottthin, playing *********" (An online 2D RPG game), which of course I can see it full screened on the monitor. I said "No, I mean what where you doing?" He repeats "nothing". Finally I said, "bring back up the webpage(s) you had on the screen when I first walked out of the bedroom, right now" so I can see into his little peebrain head of his, all these l... ]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/9786081/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/9786081/ Sat, 19 Aug 2006 19:45:07 PDT

Aaron

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=DigiM355

]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/9732679/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/9732679/ Tue, 15 Aug 2006 04:50:48 PDT
Well, that's the latest of our lives! Of course we don't have a wedding date and we're thinking that it'll be at least a year from now, but we'll update everyone when we pick a date!

Aaron

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=DigiM355

]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/9611441/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/9611441/ Sat, 05 Aug 2006 20:11:13 PDT you, can say, that can make you feel safe. Everyone thinks that the security that websites and people put in place, makes your information secure. Since you can't find a way around it easily, you think that people can't get around it. Social engineering plays a major part in all of security. People can lie, say that they are your friend and still get to see what you are calling private. I laugh in the face of every one who thinks that your accounts are secure and private. I say, that you and every one you think are your friends, when your real friends are your enemies. Think real hard about what you know about them and about other people who know them. Listen to yourself when you lie to another individual you don't want around you and you say, in some way shape or form, where you might be going, who you might be seeing, and what you want to be doing. I say this, not because I'm trying to strike fear into every individual. That's by far, what I'm trying to get across to any one reading this. I say this because I want to try and make this world a safer place by sharing my knowledge nodoubt. For those of you who watch me and even just read my writings or view my pictures here and there. I am ME! I am, what every thinks I am! I am a person that can manipulate, that can find my own way, that only care about the ones who care for me the most. For those who can't see who they are, they are my woman, my family, my coworkers. and my closest friends.

Just think... think about the user name, the password, and the secret question you leave to recover your password. Don't make it simple, make it something that's a dream. If you want to make it more difficult, make it something in your dreams, since dreams rearly comes true. Not only that, but think about how many people you tell your dreams too. So it's easier to identify who might know that information your using for the password. Combine that with some numbers and you have a more secure password than you might be actually using! damn, how good is that? Better than running a random password generator each time you create a new account on a different server. How hard is it to remember each of those new random passwords?

Ok, so I'm off to go catch up with the woman and see how they are, and to see what's up at motorhead! Hopefully, we'll get to go out and see some races!

Aaron

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=DigiM355

]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/9364397/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/9364397/ Thu, 13 Jul 2006 11:58:33 PDT
Aaron

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=DigiM355

]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/9329465/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/9329465/ Mon, 10 Jul 2006 07:03:07 PDT
Second, just got back from a nice week long vacation and can't wait to start editing some of my images to post. I have a few great shots of a Cedar Wax Wing and I'm a little upset that I didn't get out to the Kirtland Warbler nesting grounds and get a picture of them. I think I seen one but I didn't get a picture and the bird book I have doesn't really give a good picture, so it's a little hard to say if I did or didn't. *Sigh* oh well, just another reason to get back up there by the end of the summer or next summer. Our trip was pretty awesome still, got 4 nice sized bass out of Bear lake in reading, mi. and I caught a good sized rock bass and a 16-18" pike out of mio mill pond. None of them where really keepers, but it was just great to land them. Been a long time since I got in some real good fishing. We also did a 4 and a 1/2 hour canoe trip, down the Au sable river in Oscoda Co. MI. That was probably about the best part of the whole trip, only complaint is that the womans son started having several hissy fits and complaining about any little thing. And yes, I was in the back doing the steering and did 95% of all the paddling down the river, which is about 40 miles. So, you'd think that I would've been the one complaining about every thing. Wish I could've sat at the front of the boat and took a lot more pictures. But I did what I could do and let them enjoy a pretty good ride down the river. Little surprised about not seeing very many minks, deer, or beavers. We saw 1 mink, 1 deer, and 0 beavers. Tons of trout jumping and playing in the river, so I suppose that's a good thing. We never use to see them so active. I also got a pretty nice tan, of course my arms are about the darkest thing on me. The 2nd day up at my sisters cottage I got burnt pretty bad on my back so the rest of the trip I kept my shirt on as much as possible. I'm thinking that I'll be investing in a nice flat bottom boat so we can go fishing a lot more. We could use my dads whenever we want, but he still hasn't even painted his new license numbers and put his tag on yet. That, and I highly doubt he even knows where that information is at, right now... :-/ Plus it's so old that I kind of want something a little more updated and not so beat up. Maybe one that has a 10hp motor fitted to the back, maybe also invest in a trailer for it as well. That's of course a dream, for now I'll just have to kick my dad in his arse to get his set up with the correct license and everything.

Well that's my vacation in a nutshell, now it's back to work and stuff! Hopefully I'll have some new pics to upload by the end of the week!!

Aaron

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=DigiM355

]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/9218370/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/9218370/ Thu, 29 Jun 2006 07:39:21 PDT
Alrighty now... onto what's getting me to write this journal. People seem to be doing quite a bit of what I'll call 3rd guessing yourself. Now it's a good thing to revaluate yourself or your life, maybe even second guess your choices that you've made. But it seems to me, that now-a-days. People are just doing quite a bit of continuously worrying about their choices in life. The problem I have with that is, WHY! I mean, you made the choice. Most of the time you already thought about making that choice before you made it, then you come back and think about why you made that choice and was it the right choice to make? If you make yourself think about those questioning techniques and work through that until you understand what you did, why you did it, and why or why it wasn't a good choice... YOU LEARN!

I suppose that maybe it's because, we as humans are choosing not to think about what we are doing before we do it. So we forget about what we did or what lead up to what we did and therefore we cannot remember the pieces of a choice we made, so we are left with the inability to solve the answers that we so desperately need to be able to, so we can move on with our life and actually live our life instead of stumbling or being dragged through it.

I suppose if someone is reading this that they may feel like what I'm trying to say is written in a riddle. And I suppose that, that person may be correct. So for those who may be lost in what I said, here's a short version...

Watch yourself as you make choices, pay attention to what happens before, during, and after you make that choice. Remember that, and see what happens next. Do this for 3 - 5 events in your life and maybe then, you'll being to see what you’re doing right or wrong in your life. Maybe then you'll begin to get control over your own destiny and be able to live.

Then again, you may be just as ignorant as other humans and can't begin to learn about the errors of your ways.

Hmm, that last line kind of reminds me of a line out of Star Wars... *Imagining yoda speaking that* haha, now that's funny!

Ok, so I'm off to kick some stuff around!

Aaron

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=DigiM355

]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/9217959/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/9217959/ Thu, 29 Jun 2006 06:35:35 PDT
Work life is going good. Spending and Implementing quite a bit of projects that will benefit the students and the school in the long run. Just wish I had all of this stuff at my house!

Home life is going great! We'll be going on another trip this week. We're heading out to my sisters and brother-n-laws cottage for the 3rd and the 4th. Then we'll be heading up to Mio, MI. To do some camping and possibly canoeing. I really want to get down the ausble river in hopes of getting some great shots of the bald eagles that where once nesting down there.

Well, back to business! I'll try to update my journal more often and hopefully start getting more pictures preped for posting here.

ENJOY!

Aaron

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=DigiM355

]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8928777/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8928777/ Wed, 31 May 2006 09:27:01 PDT
So that's my world in a nutshell... I'll update and upload pictures later. Gotta finish this recovery job first..

Aaron

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=DigiM355

]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8775583/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8775583/ Mon, 15 May 2006 06:54:29 PDT

First, I'd like to thank everyone who has been visiting my DA Page. Just crossed 4,600 mark. Seems that a lot of people are enjoying my butterfly and flower pictures I've recently uploaded. There's a sad story about my butterfly pics... We went to the butterfly house and took a bunch of pictures, then we left to go to a park across the street. I thought I copied all of the images to this FotoChute 20GB portable HDD and it didn't, but I formatted my camera card so I could get more at this park we went to. Well, needless to say I had to run data recovery tools on my camera card to get a majority of my lost pictures back. These are only a handfull of what I actually took. So I'm a little upset still about losing so many excellent pictures.

This past weekend, we went out to this park that's in the path of a major bird migration and I managed to get a lot of excellent pictures of different types of birds that are rarely seen in this area. Most of them are warblers, but there are some other ones like wrens and a few great shots of swans. I'm working on editing the pictures right now, once I'm done editing and adding borders, etc... I'll be classifying them and then uploading the best shots out of all of them. I really hope everyone enjoys them. They where quite a treat and a trick to capture them with good lighting and focus. Especially since all of the shots where taken by hand not on a tripod.

Home life is a little rocky, but still great! It's been stressful on my woman and I with her sister moving in close to us and crap. But this week we should be getting back to our normal weekly routines. My work and classes are going pretty good. Last week was our break week and I did a whole network topology and spent last week working with our maintenance person cutting holes in the walls and running new network cables down walls, putting in CAT5e Network modules and faceplates in everyones office. Right now we pretty much have the first Zone wires ran, I just need to punch down the lines on our wire rack and make the patch cables for the wire rack and for the users computers. One full room is completed already due to miscommunications in our department. But this is kind of good that we have this room up on all the new connections. Made this room look almost 100% better. You don't see this ugly network switch mounted 1/2 way up the wall and all these wires running out of it or network cables running along the baseboard in the room. You hardly see any network cables at all in the room now. The only lines left to run in Zone 1 is a few for the existing server lines and a couple into our Academics offices and we'll be done with Zone 1. Zone 2 we'll be starting as soon as we get replacement drop polls for our classrooms. They shipped us 12 and they are all scratched up and look worse than the ones that are already in the classrooms that've been there for 5 years with students kicking and scratching them. So we're waiting on a Rep from this company.

Well... first day of our new quarter and there's some problems... I'm off to kick some things...

Aaron

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=DigiM355

]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8668606/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8668606/ Thu, 04 May 2006 04:54:46 PDT
Lets see what we have planned for this month... The butterfly house opened on the 1st, so I want to get out there and check it out. My moms coming into town this next weekend and it's our graduation day on the 12th I believe. I also have free tickets to headliners that night. I don't know if I'll go to the graduation or if I'll go to headliners, heck maybe if the times are far enough apart I might hit both. Or I might hit the graduation and then go do photos for some of the graduates at their party afterwards... who knows. End of the month we're supposed to be heading down to my moms in WV. I can't wait to get out that way! The colors and animals around here are all very active and bright, it's definitely going to be awesome.

Welp, off to kick things!
Aaron

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=DigiM355

]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8588511/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8588511/ Wed, 26 Apr 2006 05:09:43 PDT
Works good... we are starting on setting up Cable Tray runs which will get all of the cables off of the drop ceiling and hang from the roof. Currently most of the lines are just laying on top of the ceiling tiles and most of the run right over the top of lights or are tangled around electrical boxes, etc... which all of that causes signal lose/interference so it could explain some of our quirky network communication problems we experience from time to time. It's looking like 6,000 ft of cable will only cover the first 1/2 of the building and it's going to take about another 6,000 ft to complete the back 1/2. THAT IS A TON OF CABLING TO RE-RUN! All because some screw balls never did it correctly... what a shame! Well, at least now we'll know that it's done correctly and everything will be nice and neat!

Ok, I'm off to smoke a cig and kick some stuff.

Hopefully I'll get more stuff uploaded soon!

Aaron

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=DigiM355

]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8530697/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8530697/ Thu, 20 Apr 2006 11:13:38 PDT
Home life: Very good, we've been busy with cleaning the house and rearranging it... Don't have any complaints. Still waiting on a call about doing photography for this one candy business. I doubt I'll hear anything about it after I forwarded my pricing to them. But that's their tought luck. I'm might be an ameture, but if I'm going to shoot pics of their products I'm going to go out and buy an entire lighting and backdrop setup for doing it so that's why I can justify charging $100 or more for doing it. Now if they want it ad-hoc bs and don't care about the quality of their pictures... I'll let them barrow my 3MP HP Camera and charge them for renting it for their pictures and they can take them all themselves. That's where I'm at with the whole thing.

We had an outter tie rod end go out on the car yesterday. I'm so thankful that I caught it before the woman went to work with it and possibly have it snap completely on her. That really would've sucked! Especially since today she would've been going on the highway. So last night on the way home I picked up 2 outter tie rods and didn't think about the fact that the sleeve and inner tie rod might not come loose.... So I get home, pull it all apart, and of course the outter tie rod won't come out of the sleeve. Called my cousin to run me down to Autozone to pick up 2 sleeves and 2 inner tie rods and they only had one inner tie rod. Knew I should've picked all that up when I was at the store the first time... STUPID ME! So neways, you can guess that I did get all the parts to finish the driver side tie rod setup and on the way home tonight I have to pick up the other inner tie rod and replace the other side tonight.

Work Life: Things are really going good! Still waiting on our new servers to come in. I got the 5 Linksys SRW-2048 Managed switches in and basically finished the wall mounted rack. I talked us into doing an entire re-wiring job on all PCs. Currently we have about 14 unmanaged network switches throughout our entire building and I've worked up a topology of our current network and what I want the network to be. In the new design we manage to drop all of the scattered network switches and centrally locate the switches in our one building to 2 locations that I'm calling Zone 1 and 2 respectively. We're switching to 48-port managed switches and we'll drop back to about 6 network switches for our one building. This is sooooo going to help with network troubleshooting! Plus we'll get all network lines identified correctly. Now if I can just force all of my people to update the diagram and network tag descriptions when any changes are made. Otherwise we are going to be in the same boat as we are now, 5 years down the road...

Well off to kick some more stuf..

Aaron

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]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8445455/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8445455/ Wed, 12 Apr 2006 05:50:28 PDT
Work life is good... We've gotten the Ok for the 2 new servers so we'll be increasing our storage capacity over 1.4 Terabytes and we've received our new backup solution which is the Exabyte LTO-3 capable of 2.7Tb across 7 LTO-3 tapes. For those of you who don't know the specs on LTO-3 tapes they are 400GB Native and 800GB Compressed storage capacity. Just waiting on ordering our new servers that'll have the hardware to support our this backup device. We currently only have U160 SCSI Cards and you need a U320 SCSI Adapter to use it... So that's a big bummer Finally mounted the Wall Rack for mounting all of our network switches, firewall, and router in... This will help organize the networking cables in our main server room. Also ordered some rack mounted wire guides that'll go in and help keep the cables straightened from the punch down unit to the switches. Ordered Desktop mountable wire straighteners which will hang off the back of our Server workstation desk and help straighten and hold up all the power, network, and KVM cables behind it. I already went through and looped them all up and taped them for the mean time. It's amazing how easily this workstation moves now that there's no cables tangled around it's wheels or under the station! Got a paper tray organizer that's really helping me to be a little more organized. Not so many loose papers floating around our server room. Ordered enough wall brackets and face plates for mounting on the wall behind the workstation so we can run direct patch cables from the wall to the servers instead of having them run all over the floor. The ethernet cables will run up the wall, above the drop ceiling, then back down the wall to our network switches. All of our main servers will now be on 1000Mbit ethernet for backup and standard network activity so we should increase all of our server access times over the network. I'd like to go with Fiber optic links between all the servers, but that's pretty expensive and I don't see us spending that much right now, since we're going to be redesigning this entire buildings layout. Right now I'm about to install a GB NIC in our domain controller so this should help speed a little bit of our backups up.

Well I'm off to kick some things.

Aaron

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]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8381455/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8381455/ Thu, 06 Apr 2006 06:48:25 PDT
Our duckies have been back again today, 2 weeks straight they've been coming. I brought my camera in again today and got a few more shots of them. So hopefully they turned out good and I'll be able to upload a pic or 2.

We've gotten the OK for a LTO-3 Auto tape switcher backup solution that's made by Exabyte. This thing is just killer, remote management, 2.4 terabyte total, 400-800GB Per tape. We also got the OK on 2 additional servers with will allow us to setup a Windows 2003 Domain and migrate everyone over to it during our quarter break. This should drastically improve our performance. I'm still running down pricing on HP, IBM, and Gateway. Our reseller is trying to get HP to price match our quote from Dell. But regardless our servers have to at least meet the following specs.

1 or 2 3.0Ghz Xeon Processors
2GB RAM
3 160GB SATA HDDs
1 SATA Controller
1 SCSI Controller
Redundant Power supply

Just absolutely killer! This sooooooo will knock our current servers out! Plus all our servers will be on their own Gigabit ethernet network so an entire network backup will be done in 1 maybe 2 hours, instead of 8 to 10 hours. Sometimes longer if we have to manually swap out tapes. Also getting this stuff done and inplace before the summer 4 week break will allow us to focus all of our attention on the other areas of the buildings that they'll need our man power for.

Oh well, off to climb in the ceiling to figure out what's making this racket.

Aaron

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]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8371435/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8371435/ Wed, 05 Apr 2006 07:46:03 PDT
I find it funny when people that have little knowledge about something or maybe not a little knowledge about something but has never done that thing and complains about people who actually does those things for a living. I'm sure if you search your own little mind that you can identify with what I'm saying. The one thing that's pushing my buttons is something that I've read several times and just was reminded by a persons journal. I'm not trying to slam this individual or be distasteful in anyway. We are all of course entitled to our own opinions and I just want to get this little bit off my mind. This person wrote about photography "Of course" and how the real pros are the ones who use the standard 35mm SLR Camera's.

Now there are things to be said about those individuals. One thing is that a majority of individuals who use 35mm camera's do not develop their own film. They take it out to their local developer "Kmart, Wal-Mart, Meijer’s, target, One hour photo,...", has them digital scan their pics to CD or takes them home and scans them their selves, and then uploads them to websites, emails, etc...

Next you have the cheap-o-digital camera users who buys a 4-6mp auto-preset system and uses all the default automatic settings, takes it home, uploads to their computer, runs some auto adjusts out of PS, PSP, Gimp, MS Picture Viewer, or whatever their choice is for photo editing software, then uploads to the net, emails, etc... However, there is also something to be said about those individuals who use the cheap-o-digitals. There are a lot of fancy custom cheap-o-digitals like my original Kodak DX7630 that has complete custom operations. Just ask my woman... We went out to wildwood the other day and she's one to use Auto all the time. Well, we're shooting wildlife out the viewing window and she's having a hard time capturing images because it being to bright, to dark, just all and all off. So I tell her to switch to manual, change ISO to 100, shutter to 300-400, and fire off a few shots. She flat out admitted that those few she took where excellent and didn't even have to be touched with an editing program to adjust anything, except maybe add a border, etc... Little stupid things.

Finally yet importantly, you have the Digital SLR (35mm) Camera users. These are the ones that can snap shots in RAW formats to save as TIFs and you develop your pictures digitally, similar to the way that you develop actual SLR Film. It allows for control of exposure, etc... Just like everything, you have to worry about when developing pictures in a dark room with 35mm film. The differences are.. You don't have to try multiple times to get the development process right for an individual picture, you stay clean, you can work in a dark, light, bright, area and not worry about destroying negatives, developed images, so on and so forth.

Now you can go on to break down differences between Digital SLR users. You'll have those that use AF (Auto Focus) and MF (Manual Focus). I find myself mixing quite a bit between MF and AF. I'll use AF when taking shots of kids or people when I'm using the 28-90mm lens or the low mm range with my 90-300mm lens. If I'm shooting still life objects, I'm definitely shooting in MF mode and I've been training myself on MF mode more with living objects/animals/people, etc... since I seem to have a handle on manual settings and effects on the images by different ISO, Shutter, Focal distance, etc.... Also mind you that there are actual 35mm SLR Cameras like Minolta's that allow for modular add-ins for auto focus and such...

So... with a majority of my complaints said... Can you call yourself a photographer by using a 35mm, Digital, or Digital SLR camera... Certainly you can! Can you call your self a professional photographer by using a Digital or Digital SLR? CERTAINLY YOU CAN! Can you call yourself a professional photographer by always running around in auto mode and auto-focus mode? Ehhh... you can get some excellent pics, however I don't think you can call yourself a professional. Is it a scam to pass off a picture that you had to digital enhance the brightness, contrast, etc... as an original non-edited piece of work? Certainly NOT! 35mm SLR Developers do that all the time during developing a perfect image by controlling the developing time and exposure... Can you sum everything up in a couple of lines by saying "Your not pro or good unless you use 35mm SLR cameras and develop your own film"? Certainly NOT!

So, in short... Be kind to your fellow photographers, be they amateur, beginner, novice, or pro's. Share your knowledge, explain the settings, and continue to develop yourself, others, and CONTINUE TO CREATE THOSE MASTERPIECES!!

This is Aaron, putting it out there for the little guys! PEACE!!

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=http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8351657/ Mon, 03 Apr 2006 08:57:47 PDT
This lady is just starting a new business that's making Candy Bouquets that look like Flower Bouquets, but they are made out of clear foil, chocolates, and suckers. They have many different styles for the different seasons and different holiday/events. Well, if you guessed that she wants pictures done of all their designs/creations... YOUR CORRECT! Ok, so here's where my problem is... How much do I charge for doing something like this? Or what do I charge for doing this? My thinking is that you'd charge by the hour + travel pay or I could charge travel + a specific amount per item photographed. Now this is a relative of a co-worker of my college. It's a new business and they don't have a whole lot of money. Plus I'm not a certified professional photographer, so I want to be reasonable with charging them for doing this. Travel pay is going to be the same for my computer service fee which is $45 for locations within 15 miles of my Zip code and it'll be $35 per hour. If you figure in setup (15-25 mins) and then having to swap out each item you can figure about 3-5 minutes per object. They'll probably have between 15-45 items, so it's between 1.5 hrs to 4.1 hrs (100 mins to 250 mins) which will run her $100 to $191. I think those figures are reasonable for the job. If I charge per item it'd be around $2.50 per item which brings the figures down about $10-$20 depending on the amount of items they want pictures of.

Well, give me any suggestions or idea's about how to take the pictures, how much to charge, how to charge, etc... Anything at all!!

Aaron

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]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8312543/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8312543/ Thu, 30 Mar 2006 09:00:14 PST

Ok, so it's back to being a little slow right now. Think I'm going to go try to grab something from the vending machines to snack on since I have a break for a minute. You can just guess by the recent in-flight photo I got of the mallard that it's a nice clear sunny day today, so you can guarntee that I'll be going out to the park today after work to begin capturing nature waking up from it's cold winter slumber. This is about the first real good spring day we've had since the first official day of spring. The weather is currently 60F Sunny and suppose to get up to 64F by the time we'll be out of work. So hopefully it stays sunny and not to windy.

I'm off to kick some more stuff and snack alittle.

Aaron

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]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8301500/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8301500/ Wed, 29 Mar 2006 05:03:05 PST
-- Addition --

Well, apparently there are 3 mallards here. I just went out to try to watch them and track them to their nesting spot. As I walked around the buildings, I came across the 2 and noticed the male that the female is with now, is not the same brightly colored young male that I seen the other day, he was sitting off infront of the building and the other 2 where out in the parking lot. What an exciting thing to watch. As I sat watching them, all 3 decided to fly off, the 2 partners flew around in circles over the buildings and the lonesome male flew off towards some tree lines in a residential area across the street. I'm still just amazed that they would pick our buildings/parking lot to gather in...

I suppose it's not too amazing after reading about an area in CA "I think it was", where they chopped down these certain types of trees on the outskirts of the city, which forced these certain types of birds to find a new nesting spot. Well, they found a new spot now... this time inside of the city where they are literally painting cars with their droppings

-- EOA --

Last night I was able to capture my first shot of a bird beginning flight off of a top tree limb. I won't be posting it on here due to the semi bad focus, the bad over casted sky, and the wrong ISO. But you can still make out the bird and all of it's color. I sooooo can't wait till the migration through crane creek this may and the opening of the butterfly house. This is going to be a very exciting month for photography and will give me a lot of practice with changing up manual focus faster. I'm anticipating having a bunch of junk pictures that'll be deleted while adjusting to this camera and weather/lighting.

Neways, on another note... finally took the time to organize my DA Friends list into groups and eliminate a few that hasn't uploaded anything new or at least anything good in a while or people who hasn't been on in a very long time.

Well I'm off for a while to get some things done around here... Byez for now..

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]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8281555/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8281555/ Mon, 27 Mar 2006 06:09:34 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Alrighty,... so today has been a little bit screwed up so far. I get up this morning and I'm getting ready for work, glance at the stove clock and it says 5:33 and my eyeballs didn't focus right away, so the clock looked like it said 9:33am. I'm like,... surrreeee! Looked again and read the clock right. Then the woman and I where on our way to get her co-workers at the one house, I glance up a drive way, and see what looks like the top 1/2 of a person sitting on a Central Air unit on the side of a house. I didn't get the chance to look again on our way back down the street to see if it was a person or something else sitting on top of the unit or next to it... So yeah, my eyeballs been playing tricks on me all morning. So now I'm at work and I went to the restroom, walked out and headed for the back door. Looked up and there's a mallard duck sitting at the door looking right at me. Of course with all the other silly things I've been imagining this morning I kinda shake my head and blink a few times before looking again. And sure enough, it's a magnificantly colored male mallard duck standing on the cement outside the door just wondering around looking at everything. So, I go out and smoke a cig while watching him just wonder around admiring everything, when here comes a female mallard comes wondering around the side of the building. They meet up and go walking off down the side of the building and around the corner. Today is just a really weird/off day!

I sooooooo can't wait!! Looks like we're going to have the OK for our Autotape loader that's capable of 1.7TB and our 2 new dell servers. Which means we can finally get rid of these old clunker servers. So instead of 6 servers we'll drop down to 3 servers and roll over into a Windows 2003 Domain Model. WOOHOOOO!

Aaron

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]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8253936/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8253936/ Fri, 24 Mar 2006 09:13:20 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Been a long while since I've talked on this subject... actually, I don't know if I've ever talked about this subject on DA but here we go...

The whole thing that's kicking me off on this subject is an article I just read on Security Focus which is the new version of Bugtraq. Bugtraq is a very informative news group that covers all the latest security vulnerabilities. These individuals are very intelligent individuals that make the newest and latest developments in security flaws. Well neways, the eniter thing that just got me going on this is the fact that they just did a coverage on the companies that picked up on Caller ID Spoofing. Now, just to give a little bit of my own personal experience on caller id spoofing. CID Spoofing is fairly simple really... The unreal fake way of spoofing CID is as simple as gaining control over a PBX system that has mail boxes that are able to perform outside calling. The easiest that I've found is the same version of PBX system that the Washington Local School system here in my local city has. There are key phrases that the default voice print will give when you reach an account that hasn't been reconfigured from the default setup. By default new voice mail accounts are setup with no password and by pressing the # key on the dial-pad will drop you right into the account. WLS was lucky enough at the time that I am a very detirmend individual and went through all unsecured accounts, set a generic password on all accounts that I was able to get controll of and left simplistic greeting messages informing them of the hack. Yes, I realize that this information incriminates myself however... it was over 5 years ago that I was able to perform these actions and the statute of limitations should now apply to me and good luck in charging me for something that has already been accomplished. Acutally... I should be requesting payment for securing their voice network. Well regardless of any past criminal activities of myself... The governement is now going after the 5 top leading companies that are allowing individuals to sign-up for CID Spoofing accounts and allowing for on-line changing of the Fake ID that'll show up on the CID's that they call. So, if you happen to use these services... beware that the government is now requesting all records from these providers... so you will be caught

Now let me take you back to the older days. Back in the day, you where able to run a CID Spoofer off your local PC that'd actually overwrite the CID Signal that's sent from the phone company. You'd use the program to call the individual, when the CID was requested the program would send the information faster than the phone company and confuse the remote CID unit and it'd display either fake or unknown caller information.

Well, just a little tid-bit on how much we've evolved from the early 90's to the mid 2k

Aaron

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]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8245132/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8245132/ Thu, 23 Mar 2006 10:59:05 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

Ooohhh the joys of working... so ya, we just had a little incident between some students and a vending repair man that was just completely rediculous. Sounded like a bunch of little children pickering back and forth. Then the repair guy kind of stepped over the line and cussed at them. So neways, word traveled to the president, his supervisor, and he essentially got tossed out of the building. So now I have the lovely job of hunting down the ladies that where involved in the dispute so the president can provide them some kind of compensation for their troubles...

My new radio's battery just died for the first time in about 2 days. I'm really suprised that these things lasted this long.

I official announce that I work with a bunch of crazy ppl. They get into some really messed up conversations. I'm thinking that it must be getting close to that time of month because it seems to be just the women that are acting loopy.

So neways, the weather looks like crap for the next 10 days. Nothing but cold and cloudy, snow showers, or rain..

Well, close to quiting time and I still have a few small things to take care of.

Peace out!

Aaron

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=DigiM355

]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8235601/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8235601/ Wed, 22 Mar 2006 10:47:35 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Alrighty now, not a whole lot new here. Just bored outta my mind and figured there's nothing better to do then to rant and rave on here.

Installed the CD/DVD Drive for the woman and it's working good. Ran a backup of all of our photos that's stored on her computer. She got to take a nap last night so she could stay up to watch American Idol . I, however, didn't get the option to take a nap. I stayed up and watched her sleep, play a little with the DVD Burner, ate, and just entertained myself until she got up around 6PM. Tried to lay down with her after she got up and that didn't last long, we got a call around 6:30/7PM that her ex's uncle died in his van, either returning from some place or trying to get some place. His neighbors or their dogs ended up finding him. I'm not exactly sure which way it went. So neways, that was upsetting for her, she made some calls to other people who knew him or knew about him. We talked for a little bit about who he was and what he's like, etc...

I've been researching different locations around the US that I'd like to go and see. Using MS Streets and Trips 2006 to get mileage, gas costs, etc... just in case we or I decide to go to these places. One place I'd like to go and see is Rochester, NY. But it's so far away that I wouldn't want to make that trip in one weekend. The more I research about the area, it'll take a week to see every place.

Finally Prison Break is back on, suppose to be all new till some time in May. LOST is on tonight at 8 or something. Hopefully I can stay awake till then, or don't forget about it.

Aaron

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=DigiM355

]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8226409/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8226409/ Tue, 21 Mar 2006 11:49:34 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Ok, so I pulled a stupid move yesterday. I got that CD/DVD Burner and I was carrying it with me on my last job of the day before leaving. I stopped and talked with 5 different people and one of the stops, I sat it down and forgot to pick it back up. So I realized this late last night and couldn't find it, waited till today to hunt it down, checked every place I stopped at and couldn't find it. Finally my supervisor handed it to me a little while ago, saying that I left it at the front desk. So.... YIPPY!!! Didn't get lost and stolen.

The presidents husband is running around the college today taking pictures of students doing... well... student things. I find it pretty funny that he's using an Auto Portrait mode and blocking the flash instead of shooting in a manual mode and setting his ISO/Shutter speeds. You can still use the auto-focus mode... I mean, if your going to run around with an entire professional lighting system, I think you might as well shoot in a professional mode.... don't you? *sigh* I don't really blame him, I do similar things while shooting, but that's just to learn the problem I'm having with my manual settings. Maybe some day they'll higher me to do their photo shoots? That'd probably be a cold day in h.e. double hockey sticks. In the mean time... I still rub it in their face that my camera's better! :-D

Life's good, we're getting OK's on doing some big purchases that will make our facilities a 100% better. We'll be going with smartboards in a majority of our classrooms. Should be getting a few new Dell servers to replace our old junkers. Should be changing our classroom management software from XClass to SmartTech's SynchronEyes. We just got brand new Motorola Radius VL50 walkie talkies. They are only 1 Watt radios, but hey.. they do the job and there smaller than our old clunkers. We're also looking into some 1.7 Terabyte backup units that'll really simplify our backups, then if we do go with new Dell Servers, they come with the gigabyte ethernet cards. So that'll really decrease our backup times!

Alrighty... neways, it's about quitting time. So I'm off like a prom dress once again!

Aaron

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=DigiM355

]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8215151/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8215151/ Mon, 20 Mar 2006 09:23:34 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Ok, soo.... Decided to have my work purchase Linspire which is a Linux OS that's basically built by Microsoft. So far I've still been having problems with getting it to connect to our WPA-PSK TKIP WLAN... this is really annoying!! Linspire is a new name for the software. It's original name is Lindows, I'm sure some of you have heard about it before, maybe even purchased a PC with it pre-loaded on it.

Thursday night the womans rear brake line broke. THANK GOD that it basically happened in the morning after she parked the car and she noticed it before leaving work. Sucked that she had to sit around for 4 hours waiting for a tow truck (Stupid brother-n-laws!).

Friday we had to buy a jack and jack stands so I could locate the actual break in the line, then get her mom to run us down to get parts at autozone. The guy wanted to only sell me 10' of brake line and I insisted that he throw in another 3' just incase. Thank god I did that because 10' would have came about 1' short of the mark. Well, that whole just took 3-4 hours but I actually only put in about 45mins of labor. So it really wasn't that bad of a job. After getting it all ran under the body of the car and testing for leaks, I found that one of the segments was leaking.. forgot to tighten it all the way before connecting everything. So I had to pull it back out, tighten all the way down, then reconnect everything and test again. After the re-installation it kind of started to leak some more but it stopped after a few minutes. I think it was just the extra oil I put in to make sure the master cylinder was topped off. So far the brake oil level hasn't changed at all.

Went out to providence metro park on Saturday because it was pretty nice out and there was little wind.... but after you got out on the river edge it was very chilly. I didn't really take any photos worth posting. I pretty much just played with different shutter and ISO speeds while taking pictures of the rushing water. This camera is just the SHIOT!

Sunday we didn't do much either. We both got up early and I took the laundry down to the laundrymat while the woman stayed home, cleaned up the house a little, and spent time with her son. So, while I was out doing laundry, she looked up something new to cook for dinner in this new Silver Spoon Italian cookbook I bought. She found the Penne pasta with Lettuce as a side dish, so I stopped on the way home to pick up the pasta cause we had everything else. Well, a while back we bought a 11pc ovenware glass dish set that's suppose to be safe for use in a convientional oven. We pre-cooked the pasta, place it in the 9x13in pan, covered with lettuce, cheese, and dotted with 2tbsp butter, placed it in the preheated over at 350degrees. About 9 minutes after cooking the freaking thing exploded. Which of course completely ruined the entire side dish! So ya... I took pictures of it... maybe I'll post it on my site... but neways, I pretty much took the picture for proof so I can mail it into the company to get some kind of compensation for this junk crap.

Onto other things... I've been noticing quite a trend with the different age groups at my college and it goes kinda like this... 17-28 Have either a MySpace, DA, or Blogspot account. 29-37 hardly use a computer or think they know it all, and 38+ are just ignorant to the entire computer concept... I wonder if this will ever change? I could ramble on about the styles and maturity levels of each of these groups... but maybe I'll do it some other time.

-- HAPPY SPRING EVERYONE!! -- Today is the first official day of spring. This morning you could really tell... not by the weather at least. But it was 5:50AM and you could see the sun starting to peak out over the horizon!!! WOOOHOOO IT'S BEEN MONTHS SINCE I'VE SEEN IT THAT EARLY IN THE MORNING!!! LOVING IT!!!!

Ok, so Thursday I wanted to get the woman something special... or at least a gift... I don't consider this all that special, except for the fact it's better than any of mine... So I thought she'd think that would be special if she didn't think the gift was all that special... so anyways, yeah... it's a gift and was suppose to be a surprise but after she told me about her being stranded and stuff I had... ]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8176245/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8176245/ Thu, 16 Mar 2006 08:32:32 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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First I have to say that I'm a little upset. I've just uploaded 5 new bird pictures and got quite a few hits on them with people giving them 's and a few comments on each one. But I didn't get a single new pageview from any of them :-\

But on a good note, I've hit close to 50 pageviews for the past 3 days. I don't think I've ever received 3 consecutive days with close to 50 pageviews. So thank you for everyone who has been visiting my site, commenting, and ing my work.

Works going like hell... stupid people did stupid things last night and caused a bunch of stupid issues. What I don't get is... why start a project if your not going to finish it... HOW DO YOU CUT A MAJOR NETWORK SUPPORT LINE AND NOT REPLACE IT BEFORE LEAVING OR UPDATE THE MORNING STAFF OF THE POTENTIAL ISSUES!!!! IDIOTS!!!!!

Let me just say, WOW. I haven't realized how many journals I've written since I've joined. I think I might want to take some time and go back through them and delete old junk that isn't needed anymore.

Ok, well... off to save the world from falling apart! (Starting to seem like I'm the only one holding it together at times)

Aaron

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]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8165502/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8165502/ Wed, 15 Mar 2006 05:09:09 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

Ok, so... been playing with the new 350D and I'm of course still learning little things to do. Like just yesterday I found out how to change the shutter speed when your in manual shots. So I played around with taking shots of cars driving down a busy street by our house. And let me just say... 50-60mph moving car shots make them appear to be standing still. I'm so pleased to have found out that in Manual mode you can spin the jog dial next to the shutter button to change the shutter speed with your eyeball on the viewfinder. Also found out that if you have flash on you can't set your shutter speed over 1/200. Also found out that if you want to take a shot of a video you can use 1/50 and I think I used a 1600 ISO Probably didn't have to use 1600 but I didn't have any lights on nor flash. I'm wondering if you have the auto flash on if you can take 1/4000 shots with it? Suppose I'll have to wait till I get the backordered auto digital flash to test that one out, unless someone reading this journal happens to know off the top of their head?!?

On to other things... I suppose I'm feeling a little better today. My body isn't hurting as much, my heads not draining as much but my stomach is still feeling a little weird. I'm hoping that I can stick it out all day at work today and feel up to making it into class tonight. It's been one entire week of this crap and I'm about done with it. This is wearing me out!

I think I have said this already but... I've confirmed that I'm still needed to take this ladies wedding shots at the end of October (7 months away). Plus she's trying to get this catering business up and going. So she's asked me to possibly help her with some things... She was not very specific about what she'd want me to do for her, but it was something with their website. I am going to assume that part of it may have something to do with taking pictures for her to post on their site. That is about all I care to do for web sites right now. I really don't have the time to sit and create an entire site for her. Website design is not my cup of tea in the first place, even though it is one of my strong points. Suppose I'll learn more as we talk...

Well as you already know I'm really excited about getting back out and taking more pictures, so I've been cautiously watching the weather reports for the up an coming weeks. Right now, it says it's going to snow for the next few days (yuck) and Sunday/Monday is supposed to be sunny all day. I really hope that Sunday is sunny and warmer than it says the high is suppose to be. Right now, it says a high of 35... burrrrrr. But either way I think I'll probably still find some place to go and take a few photos. I want to work on taking action shots of different sorts.. Things like Motocross, Drag racing, kids throwing toys or playing catch with balls or Frisbees, etc... Maybe blowing bubbles... who knows...

Ok, well,... I'm off to kick some things around.

Enjoy!
Aaron

-- Minor Update --

I was looking through my gallery and I just wasn't happy with the flow of each image's border so I went through and trimmed up some of my pics from the pittsburgh zoo. I hope that everyone likes the changes and I personally think that my gallery views are looking a lot nicer now.

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]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8155918/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8155918/ Tue, 14 Mar 2006 04:55:02 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

First I'd like to thank everyone who's been visiting and commenting on my latest pictures. It seriously means a lot to me for everyone to enjoy my photos.

Secondly I'd like to mention that within this past week I've jumped over 200 page views putting me at 4,200+ pageviews. If this keeps up and I can keep up with posting new pics every day, I just might break 5k by the end of this week or middle of next week. This is really exciting to me! Hopefully we'll start getting a lot warmer weather in the next week or so. That way I can really get back to taking pictures. The past week has been so drowsy and cloudy here. Just another week or 2 before the official start of spring and we've been getting some serious rain in the Ohio area, so hopefully we can plan a trip to Hocking Hills and get some awesome waterfall pics, unlike the ones already posted.

Lets see... what else has been going on.....

I'm still 1/2 sick or something. This thing keeps coming and going. I ended up getting really sick after eating yesterday and then I was fine the rest of the night, just really worn down. Today I woke up refreshed and ready for the day, but as this day goes on I'm beginning to feel really drained and just got sick to my stomach a little bit ago while trying to smoke a cig. Yesterday after the woman got off of work we went and got new tires. On Sunday (My bday), I left to catch up with a friend and on the way home the driver front tire went flat like 500ft from home. I risked it and drove it all the way home to be able to work on it there instead of having to run back and forth, etc... Luckily the tire didn't shred and completely ruin the rim before I got home. So ya, spent Sunday night 10-10:30PM putting on a spare. Yep, happy happy bday

Newho, again, I'm glad that every one is enjoying my photography and please feel free to share any critique you may have.

Aaron

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]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8146174/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8146174/ Mon, 13 Mar 2006 05:43:51 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

Don't ask me what is up with the subject line. I don't know what else to put up there...

So neways, to catch up on things. Friday, I started getting really sick again. The woman and her sister went out to the bar and I stayed home. After they left I couldn't get back to sleep so I watched a movie that I had bought earlier that day, and ordered a Pizza. Watched the movie, ate 1/2 the pizza, and then started to feel a little better, so I jumped in the car and caught up with them. A few hours after I got there, the woman started to get a bad stomach cramp, that of course carried over till late Saturday night, so needless to say... we didn't go anywhere at all on Saturday. Sunday she got up and was feeling better, so we went out to the local zoo. Let me just say... That it took all day to get a handle on all the settings. Learning how to change the ISO, WB (White balance), Shutter speeds, etc... You may already see that I've uploaded 4 or so shots from the zoo. I'm still working on doctoring up my images and trying to figure out what I'm going to do for my new DA ID.... The woman took a few shots of me with my old Kodak 6.1MP so I'm trying to do something with one of those photos. We shall see what I manage to come up with.

I hope everyone enjoys my new photos.

Ok, so it's just been a couple of hours since I started uploading photos taken by my new 350D and I'm over 50 pageviews for today. I'm going to assume that people are really enjoying my new camera. I'm so impressed over the quality of the images this can capture. But like I said, it's going to take some time to get all the settings down so I will know exactly what shutter, iso, and WB settings to use with each type of photo and the different lenses. But that means that there can only be improvements to my photography.

Neways, I've managed to find an image that the woman took of me that is really nice and decided to use it as my DA ID for 2007. So far I've already gotten one comment on it. So I suppose I owe my woman some props for taking it. Well I'm off, just wanted to add a little update.


Aaron

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]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8118912/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8118912/ Fri, 10 Mar 2006 06:41:52 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

Ok so... I'm not as bad as I was yesterday. At least my head isn't building pressure. But the bad thing is, that, the woman is now getting sick like I was yesterday. You know it's really odd, usually I'm the last person getting ill out of family or co-workers and now I'm the 2nd person sick one way or the other...

So neways, yeah, kinda goes without saying... I'm not going anywhere today after I get home from work. Not unless the woman starts to feel up to it. We'll just relax around the house and enjoy a nice quite night alone. Thinking maybe, I'll stop some place on the way home and get a few things to surprise her when I get home. Of course it's kinda screwed up... I'm thinking about doing something to surprise her on my way home, yet it's my bday weekend :-\ figure that one out...?!?

Ok well system needs to reboot after this update so I'm off like a prom dress

Aaron

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]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8109970/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8109970/ Thu, 09 Mar 2006 07:17:03 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Alrighty now... I'm going to kick someone's arse. Someone I was around 2 days ago gave me a freaking cold. It either came from a guy at my work or my dad. I felt it kick in around the middle of the day yesterday and I woke up this morning with a major stuffy nose. Hopefully this just stays as a head cold and doesn't turn into a nasty chest cold like the guy at my work did. The worse thing about this is that it's my bday weekend and I want to go out to a bunch of different places to take pictures. But if this gets worse than it is right now I'll probably be laying in bed all weekend. I'm going to try and stick it out today, but I'm thinking that I might be leaving around 1PM. With each passing hour the pressure in my sinuses is just increasing. Right now it's getting hard to focus my eyeballs on stuff. Next is going to come a major headache and hopfully that waits till after 1 to kick in. I suppose if I do have to lay around the house all weekend that it won't be all that boring because I have about 7 days left on my subscription to this online game, so I'll be able to actually play it. I doubt I'll be renewing my subscription any time soon either.

Well speaking of my bday weekend. Here's a list of some things that I've been thinking about doing...

Go to Pokagon and drive around looking for deer and other things to take photos of.
Go to Portage and drive around looking for deer and other things to take photos of.
Go to a park around here, Wildwood, Pearson, Swan Creek, or some other metro park.
Go to Ann Arbor and walk The Galleria, maybe catch up with my brother.
Go to the Toledo Zoo or maybe some other zoo and take pictures.
Go out to dinner, maybe stop by the bar for a drink or 2, and then go to the Movies. Maybe just dinner and a movie, who knows...
Go to a Museum.

I'm sure I'll think up other things to possibly go do. Seeing going outside and taking photos is looking like a bust due to weather.

We shall see...

Aaron

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]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8099782/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8099782/ Wed, 08 Mar 2006 04:15:50 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

Wow, you really just don't know how releaving it is to finally receive the camera. Ok, so I got the 2 batteries with it. One is a 720mah and the long life is a 1300mah. Of course you know I didn't actually charge the 720mah battery for the whole 8 hour initial charge. It charged for probably 2 hours before it flipped the light to green which means ready. So since I don't care to much for the 720mah bat I went ahead and pulled it out, put it in the camera and played a little with it before reading the instruction book. Well... I was playing with the buttons on the back and I hit the self-timer. So I tried snaping a pick of the woman and after I hit the button I was a little dumbfounded why it didn't snap right away. Then the woman said "Stop blinking that light at me" so I'm like, duhhhh... "What little light?" Flipped the camera around and I'm watching the light and it goes to staying lit. Look a little closer and it snaps a picture with flash right in my eye balls. Let's just say...... DOH! That thing has one killer flash! I was practically blinded for about the next 10 minutes. So anyways, I had the woman read off the manual for me while I could play with the functions and stuff.

Now if it just wouldn't freaking rain for the next 7 days would be nice!!! I'm begging the weather not to!!!!

And yes I received the SmartDisk FotoChute. I let that go through it's initial 8 hour charging period before use. So I'm playing with it this morning. This little thing is freaking bad arse! Acts just like a hard drive, doesn't use it's internal battery power to be used as an external hd off my laptop. I'm very interested in what it's going to take to transfer files directly off the 350D to this drive and from the Kodak DX7630. Then I'm going to test the little HP we have, it doesn't say it's compatible with the HP M307 but we'll find out.

Well, of course you know that the woman has basically laid claim to my Kodak 6.1 MP camera. Which I already told her she can use at any time after I get my 350D. Just that I WILL be taking it when I go on photo shoots. That way I'll have a backup incase batteries fail or hardware malfunctions.

So anyways, I'm off to day dream and reveiw some manuals.

Aaron

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]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8095519/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8095519/ Tue, 07 Mar 2006 16:30:55 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

WOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FINALLY RECEIVED THE REBEL XT 350D!!!!!!!!! It's missing 2 items but I just called and they confirmed that the 2 items are on back order and should be shipped by the end of this week. It's only the 2 lens pouches and the Auto Digital Flash. I don't need either of those right now, but it would have been nice to have something in the box or an e-mail saying that those are on backorder.... *sigh* Finally a little relief!!!! GOOD NIGHT :-D

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]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8090433/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8090433/ Tue, 07 Mar 2006 05:14:55 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

I suppose that you can guess what I'm going to rave about. Yeah, you guessed it... my new camera. I'm still waiting for it!!! Checking the tracking site and it says that it left Maumee at 8PM last night and usually what happens is that it gets up to Monroe by 4AM and then gets shipped out for delivery at 5/5:30AM but their website isn't updated yet and the scheduled delivery date is 3/8 not 3/7 (Today). But this seems like it just might get delivered tonight, which would be totally awesome! If it's delivered tonight, then I'll run up and grab it so I can get it charged and play tomorrow. Still watching the weather sites and right now it says that there's suppose to be AM Showers tomorrow and sunny the rest of the day. Still saying that the entire weekend is going to be filled with showers and thunderstorms

--- Update ---

Checked the tracking information a while ago and it now says that it's on route for delivery. Which means that it should be delivered to the house between 4 and 5PM!!!! WOOOHOOO!!!! So needless to say, I'll be leaving here and waiting patiently for the shipping truck to arrive!!! OOOOO I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!

--- EOU ---

*sigh* Ok, so I've been thinking more about this portrait photo shot for the students at my college and I'm not exactly sure if I'll be doing it yet. A few people I've spoken with are interested and want me to shoot theirs. One suggested possibly being able to get a photo taken with one of our horses. I've been looking around online and thought about possibly doing some kind of Chroma Key setup. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's like what weather channels use. It's normally a blue back drop that you can use to overlay an image onto it. I found some companies that sell PS (Photoshop) Plugins that'll automatically do it for you, and of course if you have the lighting set correctly it isn't that hard to just do a selective color replacement to change it to transparent and paste a new image layer behind them. The problem with that is that it doesn't capture the persons shadow onto the background so it kind of throws off the image. Other ways I can do this is to just go out and buy different styles of blankets/sheets and drape them from the ceiling for the backdrop. That's basically what all photographers do, except they usually purchase professional muslins and backdrops. I remember growing up and my mother would take our photo with different styles of bed sheets and the photos would come out awesome. You just have to worry about the lighting, which is always the #1 concern. If you can't set lighting right, then your shadows get off set and that just ruins the entire picture. *sigh* Suppose it's time to visit a few fabrics stores around here and check out some blankets/sheets. Just got done going through eBay for backdrops and found a few that I'm watching.

Ok, one last thing... The WEATHER IS STUPID! Just checking the forcast again and I see that it's now back to saying (Cloudy in the AM and Sunny in the PM) for Friday.... MAKE UP YOUR MIND! Oh well... right now I'm still keeping my Friday morning plans. Oh well, I'm off to work and day dream.

Aaron

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]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8081750/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8081750/ Mon, 06 Mar 2006 08:22:16 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

Ok, so it's getting time to update my DA ID since it states I'm 22 and I'll be 23 in a few days. I just don't know what I want to do for an ID... I'm thinking it's time to have the woman take some portrait shots of me and figure out something to do with one of them. That could be a new project to work once I get my new camera.

I'm taking idea's and suggestions, so if you have any... let me know!

Aaron

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]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8081012/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8081012/ Mon, 06 Mar 2006 06:19:43 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

I'm getting more and more geeked every day about getting this camera and the SmartDisk FotoChute. It's like, the perfect road warrior kit. I can't wait to see the quality of photos this can produce. This past Friday we had that Open House and the Presidents husband came in to take some pictures and I kept hearing that he had a nice camera but no one knew what one he had. It turns out that he has the Canon 300D so I got to take a little look at all the features and I can't wait to get mine because it'll be better than his. Gawd I just can't wait!!! I've gotten the tracking numbers and right now it's sitting in Maumee since 3/4 next it'll go up to Monroe, either today or tomorrow and be delivered later that day. Course with the FotoChute delivery the tracking number showed on one day it was received in Maumee, kept checking it and never left Maumee until late that day I hit the site and it showed the Monroe received and delivered it. But the website didn't update till after it was delivered, so who knows what'll happen. I'm a little upset though... The woman said that it was saying on a weather report that it was suppose to be partly cloudy and warm on friday. But I just checked weather.com and it still says that it'll be raining Thursday to Monday. Talk about a crappy bday weekend I was hoping that we could take a trip some place to take photos but every place I can find within an hour or so of driving are calling for rain *sigh* Maybe I'll just have to wait on traveling anywhere till it's actually spring... who knows...

So anyways, I've broken 4.1k page views. That's just by my current photos, I can't wait to see how much more advanced I can get with complete manual focusing. I'll be lacking macro capabilities for a little while (Unless I use the kodak) until I get a macro lens but I'm thinking that the 600mm lens will probably be the next thing I'll invest in. But that's not going to be any time soon!

Ok, so I'm off to plug away on some problems.

Aaron

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]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8062710/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8062710/ Sat, 04 Mar 2006 06:58:07 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

Just a quick update. As you can see, I've uploaded 2 new pictures of an open house that we had for high school students to give them a motivational speech, have them play team work games, free lunch, etc... They had a good time so that's all that really matters.

One out of two packages received. The SmartDisk FotoChute has been delivered and I've finally gotten the tracking number and estimated delivery date for the Canon 350D kit 3/8/2005 (Wednesday!!!). I'm so excited!!! I'm still watching the weather.com site and right now it's still saying mid-40's for wednesday and thursday is looking like mid-50's to 60's. So you can bet that I'll be charging all the batteries as soon as I get it and I'll be off thursday or friday shooting picts.

Neways, I'm off to get dressed and take out the womans son so he can pick out his bday present.

Aaron

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]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8051154/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8051154/ Thu, 02 Mar 2006 20:56:57 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

Ok, so I'm just patiently waiting for my orders. Still haven't received my tracking number for my camera kit. They tell me that it's been drop shipped as of 3/1/2006 and their e-mails say that I should get a tracking number after they've received all of the payment and after the package is drop shipped. I have to say that at least they have a pretty good customer service. Always get through to them within a couple minutes but all they keep telling me is that I'll get the tracking number today or tomorrow. I got told that yesterday and still haven't gotten it. I'll give them till 3PM tomorrow to get me the tracking number before I call up and really bitch because it's a little rediculous that 3 to 4 days after it drop ships I still don't receive anything about the order and they have $1300 of mine and can't provide any additional information on it.

I've been working on writing up a contract for doing weddings and I've whipped up a little something for students at my college to come out to Wildwood Metro park and get free portraits taken of themselves or of their family. I'm going to revise it a little here and there but I think that it's really good. The only thing I'm waiting on is the seasons to change. I'm watching the weather.com site and it's 3 weeks till the first official day of spring and next week it says that we'll be getting up to 50 something. I really can't wait for spring, you can already feel that it's right around the corner. The sun is coming out earlier and birds are singing in the morning.

Tomorrow is going to suck a little bit, we're having an Open House for High School students. We're going to have the biggest turn-out ever with 240+ kiddies. I don't know the heck they think that they'll be able to manage this many students at our location in the short time span we have. We don't even have 240 college students in our main building at one time. Oh well, the best thing is that they won't be using every computer lab like last time. They'll just be using 2 labs for like 40 minutes so the rest of the time I'll be enjoying watching everyone scramble and try to keep up with these kiddies. *sigh*

So anyways, it's late and I suppose I should try to lay back down and sleep but I'll probably just be staring at the ceiling for the next 2 houes :-\

Good night!

Aaron

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]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8035226/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8035226/ Wed, 01 Mar 2006 07:41:28 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

As you all can see, I'm hard at work trying to get all of my images edited and uploaded. My latest from the Pittsburgh, PA Zoo are



I welcome critique on all of my photography work.

Aaron

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]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8025228/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8025228/ Tue, 28 Feb 2006 06:53:48 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

It's been a long time since I've actually uploaded some of my pictures to DA and today I managed to find a little extra time to add borders and adjust coloring on some of my Pittsburgh Zoo photos. So be sure to check them out, right now it's just 2 tigers and I'm going to see what I can do about some of my Lion shots. Hopefully get those up on the site before I get called off to help with some Tech support. I hope everyone is enjoying my gallery and I can't wait to get this new camera to provide better pictures for your viewing pleasure! Again, Enjoy and let me know what you think... Good or bad...

Aaron

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*DigiM355

]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8016282/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/8016282/ Mon, 27 Feb 2006 19:22:41 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

Happy happy, joy joy!!! Well, another successfull trip to West Virginia. The woman and I travelled down to WV for another visit with my mother and kind of a early bday party for my sister and I. We left early Friday morning after she picked up her check and I got my Fed Tax return direct deposited. Of course my tax return is basically all spent by today. We paid cash for everything and I bought Microsoft Streets and Trips 2006 with GPS Locator. I hardly ever give props to Microsoft on their products, but I have to say that M$ made one great GPS Traveling product. After sales tax it cost my about $137 and it's well worth it! You can't even get a GPS Handheld for that price, since I have a laptop and had it with us on our trip I figured it would be a good investment for the rest of our trip and for all of our future trips since I hardly travel without my laptop and I wouldn't have a problem letting the woman take my laptop with the GPS locator for any long trips she'd be going on alone (Which I don't think she'd be doing without me). If your interested in knowing more about what this product offers, you can visit [link] and there is a Flash Tour you can run through. So anyways, we are very please with this purchase. Surprisingly the woman did say that she was please with buying this. I really should've marked that on the calendar, she hardly says that she likes a purchase I've made.

So ya, while in WV we visited the Pittsburgh Zoo and seen the PPG Aquarium. They have a really nice setup and their adding in a Walrus and Polar Bear exhibit this next month. This summer we're definitly going to have to visit there again to see that. We're going to have to go down and see the Columbus Zoo and maybe the Cleveland Zoo. We of course have hundreds of pictures to go through and edit, then upload to DA. We have some others on our cameras still, but we ended up leaving our cameras in WV so we have to wait till our sister comes back from my moms today to get our cameras back .

I've place my order for the Canon Digital Rebel XT (350D) and it should be received in 7 to 10 days.

Here's all that's included...

XT Body with
-NB-2LH Batter Pack
-Battery Charger
-Power Cord for Charger
-USB Interface Cable
-Video Cable
-Neck Strap
-View Finder & Body Caps
-EOS Digital Solutions Software (Zoom Browser EX, ArcSoft PhotoStudio,...)
-Digital Photo Professional (For converting RAW images)
- Instruction manual, user guides, BRAND NEW

Canon 28-90mm f/4.0-5.6 Lens
Canon EF 90-300mm f/4.5-5.6 Zoom Lens
Titanium Pro Wide-Angle Lens (0.42X)
2 Lens Pouches
2 UV Filters
Classic Pro Wrist Strap
Auto Digital Flash
3 Gigabyte Microdrive (HITACHI)
USB Memory Card Reader
Deluxe Shock-Proof Case
Deluxe Carrying Bag
Deluxe Video & Photo Tripod
Camera/Video Mini Tripod
3 Pc. Lens Cleaning Kit


Again, just missing a few accessories like... Lens Hoods, spare battery(s), Eye piece extender, extended grip, etc... but the only thing that's the most important is backup batteries. So a month or so down the road I'll go out and buy 1 or 2 more so I'll be able to have enough battery life to fill the 3GB of storage space I'll have.

Well, I'm off to go to our MAC lab to play with editing some of my new pictures. Maybe even upload a couple if I get around to it.

Aaron

-- Update --

I placed the order and had to call to confirm the order. When I called them I ended up getting their high life battery suppose to be good for 4hrs of shooting and I changed the 3GB Microdrive for a 1 GB Compact Flash card so I can take faster shots. Still waiting on a tracking number and a final confirmation email but it's actually been a pleasure dealing with this camera company.

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*DigiM355

~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/7951508/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/7951508/ Mon, 20 Feb 2006 10:18:38 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

Just to update a little...

I've been thinking quite a bit today about this whole camera thing. Found a few other kits that are comparable in price and parts. I think that I need to stop into a Camera shop around here and see if they have the few different lens types for the Rebel XT to see which one's I'd like and would be able to use for the types of photography I do. I'll be calling this one online company today to see what the prices on shipping will be to get the actual final sales prices with shipping and handling. I'm thinking that if I do talk to the woman and she agrees to let me purchase this on her credit card so I can get it for this weekend... then we'll probably ship it directly to my mothers house. That way it's already there and they can pull it out and charge the battery so it'll be ready to be used as soon as we get there.

I've finally had some time to make some phone calls to these 2 different sales places and get some final pricing for express shipping (Next day/2nd day) and actually get a feel for their company. Right now it looks like J&K Camera's is the place to go with. They have a 100% feedback rating, individual departments, nice friendly service people, and the pricing is fairly reasonable. Depending on the express shipping method I choose the final price will be around $1270.99. The only down fall about this kit is that there's no additional battery.

Here's a list of what is included in the kit (Much much more than before)

CANON EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT
Canon Efs 18-55mm Lens
Canon EF 75-300mm f/4.0-5.6 Zoom III Lens
Titanium Pro Wide-Angle lens (Not worried about)
2 Lens Pouches
2 UV Filters
Classic Pro Wrist Strap
Auto Digital Flash
1 Gigabyte CompactFlash Card
USB Memory Card Reader
Deluxe Shock-Proof Case
Deluxe Carrying Bag
Deluxe Video & Photo Tripod
Camera/Video Mini Tripod (Not worried about)
3 Pc. Lens Cleaning Kit

I can add in an additional high life battery for $89.99 but I've been shopping around and found high life batteries for this canon for much more cheaper. There's only a few other things that I'd like to purchase for this kit that I don't need right away and that's... Eye piece extender, Lens hoods, Wireless trigger, Macro lens, and a few other little things... But for now... pssh that kit would keep me busy for months on end (Probably not what the woman would want).

I just keep thinking about spring being right around the corner and this is probably the last time we'll be down to visit my mothers place for a while plus now we're planning on going to the Pittsburgh Zoo Aquirum (380,000 gallons of water). So I'd like to have a chance to play with this new camera and get a feel for it before the season actually starts to change. :sigh:

Well neways, besides all that junk. The woman and I just puchased a year membership with the Zoo, so you can most likely bet that we'll be going there quite a bit this year. We purchased it off the Pittsburgh zoo website because they had a $5.00 discount offer so we got it for $55 instead of $60. Which means we'll get free parking and free admission so it won't cost so freaking much to get in, buy food or other things, etc.. Now with a membership we can actually go there and enjoy a few types of animals all day, rather than trying to rush all over to see everything, and get much better pictures. Plus this spring/summer we'll probably be spending quite a bit of time at the metro parks around here. I'll have to remember to ask my mom about the migratory season for Maumee bay state park so that we all can go down and try to see some rare birds for our area. Who knows... maybe by that time I'll have a 800mm lens and can get some really awesome shots. Aight... now I'm just really out there day dreaming. My automatic install routines are probably close to being done now so... Off to busting my arse some more.

ENJOY!

Aaron

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*DigiM355

~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/7903256/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/7903256/ Wed, 15 Feb 2006 05:06:49 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

Ugh, I can just feel today is going to drag bad. Neways... Yesterday didn't exactly go as I planned. Towards the end of work I started getting a huge headache, got home and laid down on the couch to relax and hopefully get it to go away but it didn't and I fell asleep. I wanted to go home, wait for the woman to get home and then take the car to go get her some things for valentines day. Well, she laid down with me after a while and we slept till about 6:30/7PM. Got up and made her dinner, about 7:30 I ran off to the stores to find her some thing fast so I could get back and watch American Idol with her. Couldn't find anything at the few stores I went to, so I just got her a card and bought some warming massage oil to give her a back massage when we went to bed. I never got the time to talk to her about possibly using her credit card yesterday or today to purchase this Digital Rebel XT kit. Since she did read my DA journal yesterday I figured I'd just mention it to her this morning to give her time to think about it so we can talk tonight after work. I had mention the possibility of wanting to get this kit to a few people at work and had a couple ppl offer to let me use their credit card to buy the kit and pay them back by the 27th but I told them that I'm going to talk with the woman to get her on the same page with me and we can afford to buy it ourselves. So neways, I mentioned it to the woman this morning and asked her to let me know what she thought about me getting this and I didn't quite get the small discussion that I was expecting. She just said "I think your on crack" and that was about the end of our conversation this morning. I understand why she said quickly "your on crack", we have bills and other payments that we need to pay off, and I know that I have more debt than her. But photography is a strong passion for me. I want to get a better camera so I can take it more seriously, and right now... is a once in a lifetime chance to launch off a photography career since I already have 2 possible jobs lined up. Not only do I have job offers already but so many people have been telling me that I really need to get back to posting pictures and doing more photography. Also I need to get some other hobby outside of computers. I think I've been getting to swamped with computer related work that what use to be my hobby and passion is now dull, boring, and not worth my time. I think it's probably because I'm around PCs 24/7, I have a laptop, 4 desktops at my house, and around 160 PCs at work not including the 36 Laptops that we just got for all faculty and staff. I need something else and like I said I love my Kodak but there are just some photo possibilities that has been screwed up because of using Digital Zoom unlike a 350D that is all Optical Zoom and the telephoto lens that comes in the kit is capable of 10+x optical zoom so you can actually make out the image of a bird instead of it being all blended together at full zoom. The only thing about this kit is that it doesn't come with a Macro lens or UV Filters but we'll still have my Kodak which I have a Macro lens for and takes excellent Macro photos.

Neways, here's the kits details...

Canon EOS Rebel XT Digital Camera
Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 Zoom Lens
Canon EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III Telephoto Zoom Lens
Kingston Compact Flash 1 GIG Memory Card
Compact Flash Memory Card READER/WRITER
Extra NB-2L Camera Battery
Canon Deluxe Gadget Camera Bag 2400

Neways, the bidding on this kit ends in 2days, so we'll see what happens in the next few days

Aaron

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*DigiM355

~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/7890913/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/7890913/ Tue, 14 Feb 2006 04:50:28 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

Well well, let me first just say HAPPY VALENTINES DAY HUNNY!

Secondly, hows every one been? I'm actually pretty good... Been really busy, doing some major systems overhauls. We have about 160 PCs that are being upgraded to WindowsXP and rolling us over to a Windows 2003 Domain model. I've also been thinking about picking up photography again, this time doing it more as a profession. I have a few people that has asked me if I would be willing to do their wedding. I just don't know if I'd feel confident in the quality of my current digital camera to take excellent photos of someones wedding. I know I'd be pissed if I highered someone and didn't get 20+ good shots of everything going on, etc... So anyways, I'm going to be getting my Tax returns back by the end of this month and I've been thinking that I may just upgrade my camera to the new Canon Digital Rebel XT 350D. Prices on kits of them have been dropping and right now on eBay and some other sites you can get the Body, Lens, Battery, Case, and some with additional batteries/telephoto lens/tripod, etc.. for about $900 tops. And I started breaking down charges for doing a wedding/family portraits, etc.. and for one wedding I could potentially make up to $250 just for 1 hour + Travel within 20 mi round trip and I have 2 people interested so with 2 weddings I could just about pay for the camera and I'd be comfortable with actually doing the wedding, maybe take along my Kodak DX7630 6.1MP as a backup incase the 350D Dies on the job. Well neways, I'm thinking that if, I do decide to purchase a 350D that I'll be giving my Kodak to the woman and then she can sell or give away her HP M307 to someone. She's complained about the start-up time and how long the delay is from when you hit the shoot button to when it actually takes the shot. Plus it's only 3MP so it's not the actual best quality. Oops, almost forgot that it uses 2 AA Batteries and our rechargables have been used so much that they don't hold a charge for long anymore. So I think that regardless we need to at least get new batteries for the little clunker. We could always keey that camera and let her son use it when we go places. We'd only sell it for $40 without a memory card and batteries. Even though I think I've paid $130 for the camera and case.

Well neways, the end of this month I think that we're going down to my mothers in WV. They said that they've found a waterfall walk down there that we can go check out. Tell you the truth.. I'd really like to have the Rebel XT for this trip, but a few of the reason I'd like to have it by that time are basically moot because of the time of the year. Last time we went down in the summer/fall time there was a humming bird that would visit my moms place and I was able to use my Kodak to get inflight shots but their wings move so fast that they where a slight blur. But I believe the Canon would be able to catch it without much blur if any since it can do 1/8000 sec shutter clicks and 2.5 shots per second. I think the Kodak shots I took where at 1/4000 or slower so the wings should be a bit more distinguished with the Canon. That and there is always a bunch of butterflies down there during spring/summer/fall and the canon with a 300mm telephoto lens, I could get nice up-close shots from a farther distance. Where with the Kodak I've had to be 1-4ft away, with the exception of the admiral on a bridge rail.... and some people seem to think that it's glass, but they don't know a damn thing... *sigh* oh well, there will be plenty of time during the spring/summer/fall to get down there and get more Bird and Butterfly shots since I got my mom a Butterfly book that tells her what plants will really attract the types of butterflies in her area.

Ok, so little under one month till my 23rd bday!!!!!!!!!!! Also part of the reason why I want to get the 350D... make it kind of a gift to myself...... we'll see.

Talk more later...

Aaron

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*DigiM355

http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/7561184/ Tue, 10 Jan 2006 05:26:53 PST
With work I have been getting presents left and right for christmas. I got a portable dvd player, 5 mode alarm clock, money, money and more money. I'm getting what one could consider another present from my school, but I'm not suppose to discuss details on it.

The woman and I are doing just great! Still living together, christmas with her was good. Although, just a little bit hecktic. Christmas eve we ran down to my moms side of the family's get together in findley, then back up here for Christmas Eve dinner at my sisters where we exchanged more gifts. Went home and got to actually sleep in a little on christmas day and we took off to her moms and dads, I left about 2 hours after being there to go up to my dads and spend some time with that side of the family. Spent a little time up there and ran back down to the womans moms and dads. I got back down there and her son was being a little brat because he didn't receive very many presents because no one knows what to get him and just gives him money so he can get what he actually wants. Hell, he made out better than I did if you ask me. I got like 100 socks and 2 gallons of colone. Not a single penny to get what I would've liked. But oh well, it's not about the gifts on christmas anymore. It's all about family and sharing with each other. oh well... it's done and over with. Now if you put together everything that the Woman and I received then there's some good ythings we received. Cannon CP-200 4x6 photo printer dock, DVD/VHS player... etc

New years was pretty good, up until the point that the woman and sister got into a little tiff... It was almost entertainment but both where a little out of line. Oh well, there's no reason dwelling on what's in the past... a few days ago I got a call from my dad wondering if I've talked with my brother lately because he hasn't been home in a couple of weeks. So as of right now my brother is MIA and no real clue as to where to look for him other than jail...

I'll be starting classes again this next quarter. Plus I'll be going up for my A+, Net+, and Security+ Certifications. After those I'll be entertaining the idea of going for my MCSE and maybe even a Microsoft Trainer Cert so I could teach classes... well I'll update more at a later date or time.

Aaron ]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/7263892/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/7263892/ Fri, 09 Dec 2005 10:27:46 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

Well.. it's been a very long time since I've last updated at anything at all. We've had a few bdays, a holiday, etc... since our anniversary. Life is going great and I've been playing this new game called Rune Scape. It's actually based off of an old game called MUD but this is a GMUD (Graphic Multi User daemon). Well anyways it's pretty slick. The womans son has been doing bad in class and I was ready to buy him a few months membership on this game since he plays it as well. So maybe it'll be a christmas present but I would have much rather given it to him as a reward for doing better in school. I'll have to talk with the woman before we go doing that. I had a holiday party with my school and ended up winning a portable dvd player with a in/output on it so if the woman and I go traveling with the kid or whatever we can take it along and let him watch dvd's. I'd let him use my new laptop but I haven't even paid $100 on it so... of course I'm not letting many people use it for anything other than work. Of course I let the woman use it to do things but she already knows the commitment I'm locked into with getting it... I'm still debating on what I'm going to get my brother for christmas. I'm thinking that I might give him my actual desktop computer that has an awesome vid card and is an excellent computer setup. Just needs a better HD cause it's a 40GB hd. Then I'll save up and buy my 64-bit system and get the full setup. Plus I still have my older system which is pretty close to what this newer desktop setup is. I just need a new CPU fan to get it running and it has 200+ gb of storage on it... I wish I could find some huge boxes to pack it in. then put each piece in a small, smaller box to pull a trick on my brother... since he did that to me when I was little.

I have many pictures that I should doctor up and put up on this site but I've been so busy with work and life that I just haven't bothered to transfer my pics to my desktop and doctor them up... I guess that pretty much sums up my life-to-date. I'm doubting that I'll update before christmas so Merry Christmas to ALL!

Aaron

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*DigiM355

]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/6912655/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/6912655/ Mon, 31 Oct 2005 04:17:28 PST Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

The subject says it all!! Saturday was the woman and I's 1 year anniversary. We've technically known each other a little longer than one year but 1 year to Sept. 30 2005 was the first day that we started being with each other every day. I look back and I can barely believe that it has been 1 full year. That is just absolutely amazing, this time just seemed to fly by. This past friday we went out to the bar, got a little buzz and then decided to do something a little spontanious and go Roller Skating at Ohio Skate. We spent 2 hours there just having a blast skating with each other and watching all the little kids. Saturday we had to go to her nephews b-day party. So we spent some time there with her family and went home to be lazy and just enjoy each other. Sunday we got up early "Of course, because of the time change", and we did laundry, then went to autozone to get Spark plugs & wires, brake rotors, bearings, and seals. Went up to dads and replaced it all. By then it was about 4PM, we went home, put away all the laundry, I took a shower, we sat down and had a drink while we watched to bull riders, she made us salads and we watched Americas funnest home videos, afterwards we went to bed and just held each other.

And of course today is Halloween, so HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE! Today is going to be a hecktic day. The woman is working and might not be off till 4PM, then we gotta get her son from his dads house, go to her sisters and get her and her 2 kids, then go all the way out to Sylvania for trick or treating. And find some time inbetween all that running to stop at the bank and cash my check so I can get the money to pay our bills that I can't do ePayments on. Which I think is only one bill and that's our water bill and land rent payment. But that's really not due till the 3rd or 5th of next month. Technically due on the 1st of the month but... doesn't matter if it is a little late. I have the car all day tomorrow any ways, so if we can't get to the bank before it closes tonight, then I can just cash my check tomorrow.

Ok, so I got to playing around with my hacked linksys router and found out a way to actually get it to allow my wireless laptop to DHCP off of a different DHCP server other than the one on the linksys router. That solves a lot of my headache that I was having with getting RADIUS communicating correctly.

Well i'm off to play now that I solved this little issue.

Buh byez

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*DigiM355

]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/6852046/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/6852046/ Mon, 24 Oct 2005 05:40:53 PDT Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

Ok, well I know I said I wasn't going to submit any more journals to this page but I just installed some new security features on my webserver and I got everything setup, put strict rules in place, and I start the daemon... next thing I know it locks out the remote system I'm operating from because I forgot to add in the remote service that I was using. So... talk about some good security!! By all rights everyone else should be able to access my site but I cannot unblock any one until later today so e-mail me @ digitalmess_03@hotmail.com if you cannot access the site. I'll of course research my logs once I get home and unblock any address I see as lagit traffic.

Aaron

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*DigiM355

]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/6675282/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/6675282/ Tue, 04 Oct 2005 05:48:20 PDT Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

[link] is fully up and operational. Continuing all posting on that site.

Aaron

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*DigiM355

]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/6633016/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/6633016/ Thu, 29 Sep 2005 10:19:03 PDT Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

*sniff* *sniff* damn today really sucks! This cold is kicking my ass and I've already been told by several people to go home but I need the hours... So I'm thinking that I'll leave a little early today, work a few hours tomorrow and come in on saturday to do some troubleshooting and stuff to make up at least 9 hours between friday and saturday... assuming that it's not kicking my ass worse than today. What sucks is that I felt pretty good this morning, but as the day drags on I'm feeling like crap. Still can't focus on stuff correctly, and I keep forgetting shit that someone just told me not even 1 minute ago. I seriously hate being this sick! If I go home I'm going to go nuts wanting to do stuff and I shouldn't do anything, I should just go home, lay down, pop some strong pills and crash out. A lady that I work with said something about getting losenges "Think that's how it's spelt" and zinc pills. She said that she had a similar cold a week or 2 ago and she did those for a few days and got right over it... Right now I'm trying to just take it easy and hang out seeing if anyone is going to call for technical support. What's funny is the fact that when I'm here in the morning everything runs smoothly and at night everyone is in this huge ass panic, having problems with this and that... hell... when I came in on a thursday night a few weeks ago it was amazing that not a single class or person had a major issue and everything was taken care of with out a single person getting all up tight like they do with my other help around here.... You think that says something about the different skill sets in our department and our abilities to comprehind problems and troubleshoot problems??... Noooo that couldn't prove anything, COULD IT? I'm inclined to agree with some statements that people have been making. One's "The school would just fall apart if you weren't here"... I always just thought that most people where just floating my boat, sorta-say... but I'm really beginning to realize that it may actually be true! That is really said to admit, I know. It makes me sound like I'm concided or something... But I'm really not, I know I'm not the best in the world, I know I have my down falls, I have to ask or search for answers, I think the think that sets me apart from the rest is the fact that I'll scavenge for any little bit of information on a problem and refuse to be beat, especially by a stupid computer that only does what it's told to do and you can see what it was told to do... so it's only common sense to backtrack what it did and figure out what issue is causing the problem. I don't need a specialized tool to diagnose that when you plug in a NIC card and windows starts up fine but after you load the drivers for it, it starts crashing... Duhh... find updated drivers and if that don't work, use a different NIC... Not hard to figure out if something is a Hardware or Software problem. If it's software then Upgrade or Downgrade the software, if that doesn't work then swap hardware, change the hardwares IRQ or put in a different one... if that resolves the issue then you have faulty hardware or incompatible hardware... I just don't understand why people must be baby sat when it comes to diagnostics... it's all simple step by step processing. I'm commonly use an analogy of diagnostics or computer troubleshooting of building a stair case/stair steps... If your building one and you try to take a step and fall through... go back and rebuild that step. If you rebuild that step and the one before or after it breaks and you fall through... then rebuild the entire thing again... track your steps, figure out what order is causing what problems... eventually it'll all point back to a single point of failure and be as plain as day to you. If it's not? THEN GET THE HELL OUTTA THE I.T. FIELD! Well, I'm off to do some walk throughs and see what classes are going on...

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*DigiM355

http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/6631400/ Thu, 29 Sep 2005 05:24:46 PDT Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

Ok, so check it out... enough people questioned and complained about the Laptops not coming with a DVD-RW Drive so they upgraded the drive to DVD+-RW/CD-RW drive which is totally kick ass. Now I don't need to buy a DVD Burner for my home computer which is really nice!! I'll be able to convert my video from Quick Time to DVD instead of having to go to DivX which is still a good quality video but not always compatible on all DVD Players. Plus not only that... It'll be easier to create DVD Backups of their laptops off of the actual laptop rather than having to hook up an external drive and ghost a image to that drive then burn the image created on a seperate computer... I also received an estimated shipping date for the week of October 10th. I'm hoping that it comes a little later in the week so that we'll have like all day Friday and pull a Saturday to complete all laptops and be able to distribute on Monday. My school wants to distribute to the Faculty first since they are the reason that we're actually getting them. But personally I'd like to wait until all of them are completed before distributing them since you know after the word gets out they are all going to be begging for theirs and some people might get pissed about other people getting theirs first. All I know is that I'm getting mine absolutely first before anyone... one of the many perks of my position! Little unfair, but HEY! You know, I think the only down fall of this entire laptop is the fact that the SODIMM (Memory) is only upgradable to 1GB of Memory... Now 1 GB is a good amount of memory for any computer but you see... desktop computers can go upto 2 or 3 GB so I'd think a laptop would be pretty close to it . Like the old addage goes... Beggers can't be choosers.

Well, my big delimma right now is just getting 16x DVD+R or DVD-R media. Blank DVD's are really expensive right now. The best deals I'm find are $59.99-$69.99 for a 100pk w/Spindle. We're going to need roughly 70 of them for doing all of our laptops... I'm thinking that maybe we just make one master laptop setup, run Sysprep to strip the CD Key/Activation Code off the machine so we can easily reghost that image to any one laptop and activate it with that persons cd key. This is going to be a headache and a half to keep track of all laptop cd keys and who's the owner of which keys, etc... well anyways... it's turning out that all of our estimations are going to equal out to the actual price. Each person will be paying roughly $960 for their laptop. That is just such a killer ass deal!! Right now we need to request each individual teacher to submit a request for the software they will require on their laptop and for each individual receiving a laptop to submit their personal information so we can register their all of their versions of windows so they can continue to get support or reset their activation keys. Maybe we'll just register it all to the school so that way any one of the schools IT Personel can contact microsoft but that may cause an issue if and when an individual leaves the school. This is going to be a tuffy...

Ok, enough of that stuff for now... I'm going to the bank today after work and pulling out the money for that Linksys Wireless router so hopefully that'll take care of the issue we've been having with my belkin dsl router... the damn thing seems to be locking up and going on the fritz like every time the woman wants to get on her computer and go online. It seems like if one computer is online it doesn't like to allow the other computer to get out to the network. What can you expect from a piece of hardware you get on clearance for $10 or $15... And yes, I'm still sick as all hell... it's starting to go down my throat to my chest and hopefully I'm able to stop it before it gets any worse than it already is. This decongestant doesn't seem to be helping at all, only feels like it's making me worse. I noticed it yesterday when I first popped the pills... My head was about cleared up and I popped 2 pills and then it got a lot worse... this morning my hea... ]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/6624392/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/6624392/ Wed, 28 Sep 2005 10:36:31 PDT Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

Let me first start off by saying UGH!! Secondly... Now it's my turn to be sick!! The woman got the cold flu from her co-worker who probably got it from her kid or something. She started feeling sick Friday night and got hit bad saturday... now she's feeling a little better and I started feeling a little bit like what she said she felt like when she first started getting it on monday night, tuesday came and I got hit bad with it, felt like my damn head was going to explode because my sinuses had so much pressure on them and stayed home from work. Today I'm not feeling much better but I at least made it into work. Right now my sinuses are starting to hurt but it's around 1:30PM and the woman should be here between 2 and 3:30 to get me. so there's like no point in having my sister come get me and take me home. By the time she got the kids together in the car, gets here, and she drops me off, the woman would be off of work and she's only like 20 minutes from my work and has to pass by there on the way home anyways so... I suppose I'm just going to stick it out and hope that it doesn't get any worse. Just sucks that I missed tuesday because now I have to work friday for 9 hours and fridays there is never anything going on. The only thing I can wish for is that my boss got the orders for the laptops in on Monday like she said she was planning on doing and the happen to get here friday. Which I highly doubt that'll happen seeing that it's an order for 31 possibly 32 laptops with carrying cases and the order gets drop shipped from the manufactures. So that means it can take up to 48 hours for this middle man company to get the product, then 5-7 business days for UPS to deliver.. maybe even longer than that because it'll have to be shipped by truck because of the size of the order and truck shipments can take 2-3 weeks Well, I suppose that I'm about running out of things to complain about. Life is pretty good for the most part. I'm going to be getting a Linksys Wireless Router today or tomorrow and it's a model that they have firmware hacks released for so you can boost the MilliWatt from the factory 25mw up to 240mw... You know what that means!! Yep, you guessed it... I'll be able to boost it to 240mw and walk right over other peoples wireless lans. Their clients will see that my signal is stronger and attempt to use my wireless network instead of their own... essentially jamming their network, unless they are smart enough to get their computer to authenticate to a specific wireless network and actually figure out which one of them is theirs... But... know some people around our place, I'm pretty sure none of them are smart enough... The coolest thing about all of this is that I'd have the ability to take the router and plug it into the car with the AC/DC Converter and have a moving wireless network... this way if some friends ever get wireless for their desktops or get laptops we'll be able to connect to each other on-the-go. Or if I do PC work with people who have wireless I can take along an external hard drive and copier their entire drive over wireless to my external drive and let them use that with another one of their computers or give them a temp computer until I repair theirs... *sigh* I'm 2 smart for my own good....... we'll I'm off to day dream while I re-run network cable lines....

Ok so I got to thinking about stuff while I was running cables. I forgot about the fact that I have a bluetooth usb adapter that I can run off of my laptop when I get it... so... The little problem about being able to use my palm pilot while I'm in the bedroom is kind of solved... If I just put up the wireless access point, get the laptop on wireless and add the bluetooth card... that'll give me enough range to use my palm in my bed room... but of course... if I have a wireless access point and a laptop... Duhhhh why not just use the laptop since it's bigger and can do more.... Plus if I have the WAP and it's stock setting isn't good enough to provide access in my bed room.. it'll be hacked so I can just boost the sig... ]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/6553142/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/6553142/ Tue, 20 Sep 2005 08:54:08 PDT Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

How many of you have heard the old phrase of what it means to "assume" something? Yeah, I know it's old but some people still don't get it... To assume something, makes an ass out of u and me. Well, in many cases lately, people assuming is turning out to them making an ass out of themself. Recently I've choosen not to even both to correct ignorant people, even though between my learning and love style ignorant people piss me off. I'm learning that there is a fine line between ignorant and just plain stupid. Learned a long time ago to take each of lifes encounters as a learning lesson. Learn from what happened, and work on keeping it from happening again. It's turning out now that when I hear assumptions backed by additional assumption that I can't do anything but laugh about how retarted they sound.

I once was told a long time ago a phrase that will forever stick with me and I've recently heard it again. I'll share it with everyone... "If you want to do good in life, surround yourself with good people". Now that can be taken many different ways... You want to be rich, hang out with rich people. You want to be successful, hang out with successful people. Or you want to be a low life nobody, hang out with other low lifes. Now compare and contrast your life against the so called close friends in your life and see where your left standing, compared to where you thought you could be at when you where a kid. Where did you go wrong? Do you find that you stuck up/took the side for something or someone along the road that was where you wanted to go, but ended up causing heartache and pain to something or someone that was dear? I can honestly say that I have done one of those in my life. Although I won't share what that time was, you just think about what that time may have been for you!?!

Just my random mind teaser for the day!! ENJOY!!

I love you (big `ole) baby and hope your feeling better today!

Well, I have a few more minutes to kill before I head out of work and figured that I might as well write some more jibberish. We're giving the staff and faculty more time to turn in their requests for laptops. So we probably won't order till mid-day thursday which means we won't get them till probably thursday/friday next week at the earlest. Kinda sucks... but hey, at least we're still getting them. Their in the middle of a debate on which laptop carrying case to get with them. I'm still stuck on the Kensington Pro 17" case but they came up with this other one by Samsonite. It's a decent case but doesn't provide the protection of the one from Kensington and it's like 1/2 price. The kensington case MSRP is $110+ but our reseller is giving it to us at $59.99 per case and cutting a hell of a deal on shipping and handling. *sigh* It'd be nice if they'd just allow us to select either/or case. Cause some may like the bigger case where others may not use all of the functions of the bigger case and want the smaller one. We shall see as the ordering date gets closer.

Tonight after work I'm going to a second job. I'm going to go tutor this Korean lady at her house and look at some pc issues. Probably end up getting another $200 for doing this, but we'll see. Right now that $200 would come in pretty handy.. but kind of sucks that I already bought this surround sound system. If I had that extra $200 when I bought it I would have gone much much bigger. But oh well, I'm very happy with the system I got. It's one of the first ever to come with a USB Host Port so I can plug any of my cameras, palm pilots, USB Flash Drives into it and view movies, images, or play music in an instant, rather than having to take the time to transfer to my PC, burn to cd/dvd and put it in the dvd player. Very very handy!! Already tried it out with one of our cameras. The slide show kind of sucks directly off the camera because you can't really speed up the next slide delay. Although there may be something I'm missing, but everything I read in the manual didn't work and was more directed towards Music or JPEG CD's and not USB Camera/flash drive... it may be the fact that the camera is USB 1.1 a... ]]> ~DigiM355 http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/6542762/ http://DigiM355.deviantart.com/journal/6542762/ Mon, 19 Sep 2005 04:19:51 PDT Disclaimer: By visiting my website you submit to allow me to publish or post any or all information gathered from your visit to my site. If do not wish to have your information recorded and available as public records DO NOT VISIT MY SITE! Information that is gathered includes but is not restricted to the following data. I also reserve the right to restrict or deny access to any service provider or individual I so choose.

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Finally... my link to my website

H00T!!! Finally it's annouced!!! Our president of the college has announced that we will be able to purchase these laptops and I'm able to share some more information about them.

2.0 Ghz CPU @ 400Mhz FSB
512DDR RAM @ 333Mhz FSB (But you know I'm upgrading that)
XGA Active-Matrix Display with 15" Viewable screen
Intel Extreme Graphics 2 Video Card
40GB HDD (But you know I'm upgrading that)
CD-RW/DVD Rom Drive (You know I'm upgrading that to DVD-+RW)
3 External USB Ports
1 IEEE 1394 Firewire
1 PCMCIA Slot
Integrated RJ-45 (Ethernet), RJ-11 (Modem), 802.11b & g Wireless NIC
Built-in Media Card reader (Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, Multi Media Card, SecureDigital)

One of the longest battery life out of the top 10 laptop companies. Rating at about 5 1/2 hours.

I think one of the coolest features is the little external switch you can flip to turn your wireless card on or off. With wireless being a possible security risk for the unexperienced home user, it's nice to see that companies are taking that into consideration when building laptops and are giving the users nice little buttons to be switching on and off at will, rather than having to hunt through the windows os to figure out how to disable it when they are not using it. Plus ontop of all of this... The school is going to pay $500 off immediately and deduct the rest of the payment out of our pay checks which will only be $20 every check and since we're paid bi-weekly then it's going to be $40 a month for 24 months. Or we can pay more if we want. This is really an incredible deal since we're not even financing the laptop from the school so we don't have to pay Tax / interest or anything. Plus they are looking into purchasing this laptop carrying case for us. Which has the portable laptop carrying sleeve so you don't have to lug absolutely everything with you to your classes your teaching or whatever.

What really sells me on everything besides the pricing and everything is the fact that the carrying case has a lifetime warranty and has enough space to fit all of my other gadigts in, like my palm pilot (w/multiple SD Cards), cameras, pens/pencils, notepads, AND OF COURSE THE LAPTOP!!! I was thinking lately of getting a laptop carrying case just because of all the functionality it provides but never did it because I thought it'd be kind of stupid looking hauling a laptop carrying case around with no laptop in it... But finally I'll have one!! I just wonder how long before they put the actual purchase in. I'm thinking they'll give everyone a week to sign their papers and turn them back in. Unless they end up having a whole bunch of people who already have turned them back in. I know I'm giving her mine the second I see her today. I meant to give her it friday after she announced everything but I was in such a hurry that day I put it down and forgot to return it. We shall see!!!

I'll update more later...

Ok, so I've been talking with my boss about these laptops, possibilities, and when the purchasing will be done and we're going to be requiring everyone to have their orders in by tomorrow afternoon so we can put the purchases through to hopefully have them by the beginning of next week. I'd really like to have them by this weekend so that way I could spend all day friday and possibly saturday getting all of our software here at the school loaded onto the laptops. We're currently estimating about 25 Staff and Faculty purchasing laptop and it's going to take some time to pull 25 laptops out of boxes, hook them up and fully charge them before operating them, join them to the domain, install Office 2003 Professional, Symantec Enterprise Edition Antivirus, and what ever additional software each employee wants installed, like Adobe Acrobat Reader, maybe MediSoft for the Medical Office Administration Teachers, VB .NET for Programming teacher(s), Peachtree Accounting for the Accounting Teachers, yadda yadda yadda... I think the best would probably be, install everything on one of the laptops and then use like Norton Ghost to create an image of the one laptop and copy every... ]]> ~DigiM355