I Hope This Groundhog Day Is One I Don’t Repeat

Happy Groundhog Day.

Four Guys At Five Guys
After work last night I met up with three of the usual suspects for dinner at a Roswell location of Five Guys Burgers before heading to the Roswell Photographic Society meeting.

Last night’s RPS was interesting in the fact that I didn’t feel as if I was one of the youngest people in the room, though I’d guess I fell in the bottom 25%. The meeting started with a member showing off photos from her trip to Vietnam last year, but I was rather disinterested in her shots so I caught up on web surfing with my iPhone instead. After that presentation one of the members demonstrated the use of Adobe’s Camera Raw and Photoshop to enhance/alter photos. Oddly this man constantly referred to his two books on this subject yet also continually mentioned that this presentation was not given in an attempt to sell more books. You may rightfully assume that I had my doubts.

Let’s Get (A) Physical
Today is the day that I finally go for my somewhat-annual physical. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure I want to know what things are wrong with me, but know that I need to find out what’s wrong with me — in a physical way, the mental side of the house refuses inspection.

My physical is scheduled for 10am which means that I’ve had nothing to eat or drink since 10pm last night. I’m sure that I’ll be a bit peckish by the time the measurements are taken, blood is drawn, and I’ve been violated in the name of medicine.

To inflict further pain an suffering on myself I’m considering getting stress-tests (like those done on athletes) done. Does anyone out there have a recommendation for who I should see to have this done?

ITP Flickr Pic
This morning I thought “Shit, I have no new photos for the blog today.” Behold, art from the relatively-new archive.

This is the interior ramp at the High Museum.

Damn You TextExpander, Why Do You Work Sporadically?
I’ve come to rely on TextExpander to make writing this blog easier. When it works TextExpander magically converts “snippets” into longer phrases. For instance, if I were to type

htmla

TextExpander would immediately change that to

<\a href="" target="_blank"><\/a> (without those backslash characters)

But for some unexplained reason TextExpander only seems to want to work when it feels like it. Often when TextExpander refuses to do its job a reboot of my Mac will rectify the situation, however this morning this did not help. I’d expect this sort of behavior from free, Open Source software, but I’ve paid $30 for this application which does this one thing — for that I expect it to perform its task each and every time.

I’m Saying No To Rosetta
When Apple moved from the PowerPC architecture to an Intel architecture three years ago it essentially obsoleted the collection of software which was developed for the PowerPC. Initially Apple developers converted their applications to Apple’s “Universal Binary” format which would allow them to run on either platform. For those applications which were never recompiled Apple offered an emulation application called Rosetta to allow PowerPC applications to run on the Intel architecture. After three years I think it’s long-past time for developers of current software to get off their collective asses and make software that runs natively on Macs. I refuse to install Rosetta to my Mac in order to satisfy their laziness.

It had been some time since I encountered a Rosetta-dependent application, until about a few weeks ago.

When I updated my National Association of Photoshop Professionals membership I thought I was making the wise decision to accept to receive digital copies of their Photoshop User magazine instead of the printed version. Even though there was no financial reward for doing so I concluded that receiving the digital version was in line with my desire to purchase no physical media. When I received my first digital copy of “Photoshop User” I was shocked and dismayed to find out that I needed to install a reader application from a company called Zinio in order to read it. I was even further disappointed when I found out that Zinio’s reader requires the installation of Rosetta in order to be run on modern-day Macs. WTF?

On Sunday I attempted to use my old Canon CanoScan LiDE 50 flatbed scanner with my Mac. I had never attempted to use this scanner with my Mac, and even though its a good five years old I was hopeful that it would “just work” because it’s a USB device. It did not. So, I went to Canon’s website and downloaded their Mac driver for this scanner. Guess what, their driver required the installation of Rosetta. Fail. At least in Canon’s defense they probably stopped making this scanner prior to Apple’s conversion so the support of an OS X driver for this device might not make financial sense for Canon. Whoa, in getting the link for this blog I’ve found out that I purchased this scanner in October of 2003 and that Canon may still sell this scanner (for $50 MSRP).

Paulie’s Freecycle Is Rolling Again
My Canon CanonScan LiDE 50 scanner is available for a dinner, or a beer, or for free. This scanner requires the installation of Rosetta on a Mac in order to get it to work properly; I cannot tell you how well it works with current Windows operating systems.

Stats & Goals
Daily
Current Mood – pensive
Current Music – listening to the (possibly soon-to-be-removed-from-my-iTunes-subscriptions) “Jordan, Jesse GO!” podcast
Website Of The Day – So you wanna be a chef? Check out Guide To Culinary Schools to see what options you may have.
Mode Of Transportation To Work – my car
Exercise (b)Log – nothing
Morning Weigh-In – didn’t check this morning
Pages Of 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die Read – 48

Monthly
Foot Mileage – 0 miles, Wheel Mileage – 0 miles
Pushups – 0, Situps – 0
Consecutive Days Of Bed-Making (Longest Streak) – 2 (2)
Vegetarian Days – 0, Carnivorous Days – 1
Marta Rides – 0

February Goals
– Not get fired from my job

2010 Goals
– Reduce my weight to 185 pounds (starting weight was 198 pounds)
– Completely read the book 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die
РEarn at least $150 through photography sales in order to cover the cost for the renewal of the Jalape̱o Beach SmugMug account I opened the other day.
– Save $500 for the sole purpose of donating to charitable organizations of my choice
– Attend at least one professional photography workshop
– Enter no fewer than three photographic competitions / gallery showings
– Get the Black Sheep stats out of Excel and online
– Ride in no fewer than two 50 mile or 50K bike rides

The Unmeasurable
– Continue backing up all data, including the off-site storage
– Become a proficient programmer in PHP and CSS
– Do not create a solution for something which is not a problem

Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]