ET's Info-Stew

Today is the second biggest turning point in my life. The first is when I moved from Colorado to California when I was 12. Sixteen years later, today, we have made it official that we are moving back from California to Colorado. We have been planning this for a while, and today I made it official by telling my employer. I wanted to wait to tell everyone until after telling my boss, out of respect for him, Sandia, and the opportunities they have given me. Well, it turns out they keep on giving.

Though my body says it's 10:50pm, the clock reads 1:50am. I'm in Orlando and in less than six hours I'll be waking up to start my SANS class. I would have liked to get to bed sooner, but then this blog post would not be nearly as interesting. Let's start off by saying, I'm INFURIATED!!!

Today we made the flight to Harris Ranch, and we had fun doing it. The total flight time was 3 hours, which is my longest distance and duration round-trip flight. We had hamburgers at Harris Ranch, which were quite good. And we found our 100th cache! So this flight was something special for us. At $125 per hour the flight cost a pretty penny. Combined with the Cal Airways member dues, a balance I owed, and the food, the whole thing cost $500. So, it was a $500 hamburger.

I've planned a fun flight this Friday for Jenny and me. We're going south to Harris Ranch for lunch. The route goes from Hayward (KHWD) to Tracy (KTCY), then nearly direct to Coalinga (3O8). The flight comes from a recommendation by Jenny's friend Crystal's parents, who fly there occasionally for breakfast. Mike Nichols is the guy who (probably unbeknownst to him) encouraged me to stop putting off my flight training. I have some pictures with us flying his Ercoupe.

Do you know what a "non-duplication of benefits" clause is? If not and you think you have double coverage on your benefits (medical, dental, vision, etc.), you better learn. I learned the hard way. You can learn the easy way: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0903/is_n10_v11/ai_14244221.

Jenny and I went skiing with Patti and Carl a few days ago. I tried snowboarding twice in the last four years, and both times I sucked, barely able to stay up for more than 10 seconds. I've only ever skied once before, probably ten years or more ago, but I remember that I was able to ride quite a bit. This time I left my snowboard at home (what a stupid buy...hello craigslist) and rented skis.

Today I flew for the first time in 2 1/2 months. With such a long break I was worried I would be very rusty, in organization, communication, and landing technique. But I actually did rather well, especially since it was the first time I've flown in a Cessna 152 in 5 1/2 months.

Today Jenny and I watched Bender's Big Score. I had to watch it a couple times to understand a couple things, and I've come to realize a problem in the story line. Don't read on if you don't want spoilers.

"The Threshold Alpha command converts semi-transparent areas of the active layer into completely transparent or completely opaque areas, based on a threshold you set, between 0 and 255." That's what the GIMP documentation. Whoopee! So what?

You almost can't seem to find a tutorial that doesn't use gaussian blur. Of course, it blurs surrounding pixels so they bend together more, causing a de-focusing effect.