ALL OUT FAILURE FOR THE WIN

As I walked out into the brisk night, I looked to my left. From my stoop I can see a traffic light, and as I looked I saw it change. This gave me my first idea. I continued to my car, and opened the lightly snow dusted door and climbed in. I started my car and walked about 20 feet towards the signal to get a bit closer. I adjusted my settings for the amount of light that would be allowed to develop and snapped a few in an attempt to get the light as it changed. Failure number 1. I did however get a shot of a car driving through my shot, giving birth to idea two.


I am more and more familiar with the areas that surround my daily routine of school. Believe it or not, but when I ride TRAX, I use the time to look out the window at the passing world. There is a hill that one must ride up to get from the "Trolley" station to the University of Utah. The track begins on 4th south, and transfers to 5th south. This is where I thought idea number two would be ideal, so I hopped in my car and drove through the lightly falling snow.

As I got to 4th south and began my climb to the top of the hill I began to scout my ideal shot. I set myself on autopilot and drove around the curve. Nearly too late for a stop in the first half of the intersection that was clearly giving me the signal not to enter, I stomped the brake pedal. Much to my embarrassment I went about a whole car length into the intersection, but quickly backed out to avoid any judgment from neighboring vehicles. I spent the whole time stopped reminiscing about my foolish lack of attention to driving. I shook it off as the go ahead light came on, and I continued on my photo journey. I got to the "Stadium" TRAX station and stepped out of the vehicle. At this point I had about 13 minutes until the next westbound train would arrive, to I used it as an opportunity to snap a few shots to get my light settings about right.

I set the shutter to 4 seconds and crouched down in an attempt to keep my shaking body as still as I could. If someone had told me I was as steady as a tripod I would have laughed politely in their face. Needless to say, even crouching in the cold, with only a light sweatshirt for protection from the frigged air, I found it impossible to keep a steady hand as I waited for the eternity that was experienced for those 4 seconds that the shutter was open. I got a few photos that were pretty good on the minuscule viewfinder, but as I looked at them at home found them disappointing. I am willing to give a tripod a good home. (Also taking donations)



Now it was the moment of truth. Only 2 minutes until the train was scheduled to arrive. I started the trek to the new location where idea 3 would be brought into action. Since my time was scarce, I found the best allocation of my resources would be to take many photos to get the new locations lighting situated rather than taking 1 or 2 photos with the proper shutter timing. I set it so that it was perfect, then set the shutter to 20 seconds. This was to be my "crown jewel" of my photographs. I had planned it so perfectly in theory. I would use the railing as a dead rest for my camera, set the shutter for 20 seconds, set the ISO to 800, -2 exposure compensation, aperture.... I don't understand quite yet how to take advantage of it so it was unchanged. The train pulled up. It was time to shine. It started to pull away, I pushed the shutter button halfway to focus, and then the remainder. It was going to work out just as I had planned. The train would disappear around the corner just before the shutter closed. Success! Little did I know, when I would review the actual photo a terrible feeling of wasted time would flush over me. Not success, failure number 3. I was downtrodden, but not about to stick around shivering for 15 minutes in the 21 degree air to get a single additional chance. The photo sucks.

DOUBLE DANGER

I love skateboarding. I thought I would take some time to put some photos of myself and Vogan on my blog from when we went to the skatepark most recently. For anyone that is interested, I go to the Freemont Park. As you can see, the mountains are not very clearly visible in the background, due to the terrible "inversion" [according to the news]. Interesting side note: I have been doing most of my physical activities since I was warned about the dangerous levels of pollution. It is so dangerous in fact that schools have been required to do indoor recess. The weather has been helpful in getting the inversion out of here. In the photo it doesn't even seem bad compared to the six or more days before. I was told by my niece, Gracie, that I am in fact an adult. I understand that some of you may not concur with her, but it is what it is, and at very worst I think that we can resort to the legal age of an adult. I exceed the age. As an adult I am fortunate enough to be able to make many decisions, some more clever than others, but decisions none the less. My followers may recall that I am unemployed, leaving me a vast amount of time to spend as I would like. Even now that the new school semester has commenced I find that I have to much time on my hands for my own good. I have digressed. The point is, although the air was dangerous, I choose to do something that needed no extra danger. Skateboarding. It was a bad time to ride around getting my board soggy, but it was one of the best times I have had riding a board around in a long time. I am blaming the double dose of danger. It seems like that was a bit of a ramble. Do you accept my apology?

Entrance (artistic)

Nose Grind

5-0 Grind

Resetting my mind
(after a fall most likely)

Logan and his silly antics

Logan jumping the pyramid
(Nathan, a new friend[?]; background, white jacket)

WELCOME

Mother, I would like to make you feel welcome. No offense to my other followers, but I have to say that I am thrilled the most that my mother is finally following me. Tad, I am sorry I neglected making you a special post, after all you were my first follower. I will take my love for my followers to my grave.

DRAW

The poll ended today in a draw. This is great. I found that this was the ideal way to avoid any voters from flaming my blog with hate messages. However, the fact that I did not have a clear win less than desirable. That being said, I could not make it my decision to go against one group or the other, so this is what happened....


You all failed to make the decision, thus leaving me with little faith in voting that occurs on my blog. Thanks [for trying and failing]. I hope it soon blends back to a style that is more acceptable for our current standards of society.

Double

Welcome to my new followers, Amy (left) and Heather (below) . I appreciate that you are real people. I didn't forget about my old followers so soon though, I will take my love for my followers to the grave.

NO WONDER

I have been wondering why I haven't been getting as many compliments lately....




I am taking a digital photography class this semester at the University of Utah, and will be carrying my camera around, so I will periodically post interesting things that I see traveling via public transportation. Hopefully you find the majority of the things I post humorous as well. I would like to hear any witty comments about the photos I post. I will be awarding points to the winners of the contests.

WELCOME

Welcome to Kimberly, my newest follower. I just want to remind all my followers that I will take my love for you to my grave.

WELCOME

I would like to point out that I have a new follower, qq126nba.
I want to point out that I am very pleased with having a new follower. I will take my love for my followers to my grave. I also want to point out the fact that I know that there are many people visiting my blog and not participating in my polls, or joining my following. It is not to late. Go!

MEMORIES

Tomorrow is the first day for me at the University of Utah. Due to mostly to my no job status I am excited to finally have something that is worth my time. I do not have particularly fond memories of school, but I do remember being excited for school to start when I was in elementary school. I recall laying out my clothes for the first day. Tonight, I did it again.

STILL FRIENDS

As you may know, Alkaline Trio is my favorite band. I love the music now more than ever. I wanted to be a member of the Alkaline Trio fan club. I joined the Pact in April 2008, but received my goods 9 months later. It was a drag to ask every single day when I would get home from work, "Mother Dear, did I receive any packages today?" Each day the answer was the same, I would have to still wait to have my wonderful items. I emailed the help center about my shirt not coming 3 or 4 times and was always told that it was just taking a long time because there was an extremely high volume of new members. I looked online and found some people with the same problem that I was having. Most were complaining about not getting the shirt for a little over a month to about 3 months, so I just waited patiently, but after 6 months I was a bit irritated. I had gotten to the point that I thought that I was getting cheated and would never get the shirt or that someone stole the things from the porch of my house. I finally emailed them with a tone that was more aggressive than my usual pleasant diction. I learned that it is not always the best to be kind, sometimes you have to show the Blood Pact some tough love to get your things. I finally have my gear. It was only about a week after I emailed that I received my things. I was filled with glee when I put the shirt on, it was just glorious.

MY ROOM

By special request I am putting some photos of my room on my blog.
Here it is.

OFFICIAL

My blog is now officially not boring. 76% of voters voted that the blog is not boring. Thank you for all those who voted not boring, for those of you that voted that my blog is boring, I would like to hear any suggestions that you have.

Perhaps this toilet will change your minds.

GO UTAH

Today the school I go to won the Sugar Bowl. I think that this photo says it all.

FAILS AGAIN!

As many of you may know, I am not a fan of New Years Eve. Last night was not an exception, although it was not the worst I have ever experienced. I don't know exactly where to start, but I suppose that we can consider 6:00 PM "Eve", so I will start there.

At about 5:30 Matthew and I began our less than desirable evening. We went to a basketball game at the University of Utah. We arrived at the game, and as students we are permitted entrance to the game when you have your student identification card scanned. Matt had no problem with his admittance, but when I put my card in the paw of the entrance guard I was denied entrance twice. He then told me to go to the ticket window and explain the problem. When I explained the problem I was told that the only thing to do was to buy a ticket, at the student guest rate of $7. I was quite vexed but decided that the benefit of watching the game was more than the cost of the 7 dollars I would have to spend. We watched the game, and it was fantastic. I have never seen a basketball in person that had an ending that was the same. The Utes defeated the 16th ranked Gonzaga Bulldogs. The Utes, as far as my memory can recall, were always in the lead.

After the game we went to Taco Bell, my default location, and home to prepare for the "First Night" celebration at the Gallivan Center. It was very cold so I found my mittens to wear on my hands. Later I would be wishing that I had mittens for my feet due to the numb felling that was tingling in my frozen appendages. Matt had a friend that offered to give us tickets to the event since he had some extras. When we got there Matt called a phone what was unwatched. We stood outside the entrance for about an hour I would guess, just waiting for a reply or to see the friend with the tickets. I suggested that we go bowling instead of waiting around in the cold any longer, and since we are both almost bowling junkies the decision was made with little hesitance. We bowled about what we expect when we go bowling, although Matt seemed to get a pinfall of 9 almost every time, just missing the strike. Many times the final pin would wobble, and taunt us both as it remained standing.

After bowling we drove towards Walmart so that we could buy some things, but about a block away I remembered that the Walmart was not open 24 hours a day at the location we go to. We then drove to 7/11 where I purchased a Slurpee. As we were getting in the car with our newly purchased goods, we saw the employees celebrate. We then went home, watched two episodes of "Futurama" and went to bed.

New Years Eve was a bust again.