Portrait Perfection

In good tradition, this post is a bit of a read (although not as bad as some), so get yourself a cup of coffee and prepare to read every mundane detail of my weekend.

Update! I’ve uploaded all the pictures for your viewing pleasure. Check them out here.

I’ve known Cody and Becca since January 2006 (wow, has it really been more than three years!?). They were our Neighbors when I lived in Elk Grove and came over to see what was going on the night we got a little crazy with some rum. From that night began the summer of nightly BBQ, wonderful weekends and perpetual tom-foolery (see examples here and here).

Since then they have been able to buy a home in Elk Grove, and start their family and while I was over for Dinner about a month ago they asked me if I would take some portraits. I was flattered and shortly we made plans to go up to the Hoffman cabin at Donner Lake for a weekend to have some fun and take the pictures.

I took all of Friday off so I would have time to get all my stuff together and take care of a few other nagging things around the house. I ended up  on the phone, going through emails and taking care of some paperwork though so I still worked part of the day. I made a trip up to my parents house as well to pickup my Camera (which Chadd had borrowed) and to show my Mom the Blog I setup for her (http://tracysnotes.com, more to come on that later though). and left from there straight to Cody and Becca’s house.

Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t what we hoped for when we planned the trip a month ago and it rained the entire drive up, we even had a few miles of light snow as we crested Donner Summit (~7,200 ft). Once we got to the cabin, and were settled, Cody and I passed time playing some board games and I did some reading before we turned in for the night.

We woke up fairly early Saturday to cloudy skies without rain and made a point to get out and start taking some pictures. We did have some very light rain (almost a mist) to deal with, and snow on the ground but I think overall we were able to get a lot of great shots in. I did a preliminary processing job on the photos so far, but they aren’t ready for prime-time yet, so I’ll save all that for a later post.

After we wrapped up our multi-location photo shoot we headed into Truckee to get groceries for the rest of the weekend. Cody and I stopped in the local bookstore and did some quick perusing, but didn’t end up finding anything interesting. We all headed back to the cabin for one last set of pictures (indoors) and lunch. Becca made fabulous sandwiches while Cody and I played a game of Arkham Horror. I did some more reading, and played more games. Cody and I even managed to play one round of Axis and Allies before dinner. Again, Becca made a delicious Pesto Ravioli meal while Cody and I played (noticing a trend here?). We all played Coloretto, Yahtzee and watched SNL before going back to bed with the rain pouring outside.

I got up Sunday morning around 8am and intended to make a pot of coffee, but all I could find was decaf and a bag of Peet’s coffee dated Aug 2007 so I gave up, and decided to read some more of my book. When Becca got up a little later she ended up making some of the Decaf (turned out to be all there was) and scrambled eggs with toast for breakfast (by the end of the trip Cody and I were feeling pretty guilty that she kept doing all the work while we played). Cody and I played a few more games and after lunch we packed everything up to head home.

All-in-all it was a great trip in spite of the rain. We were able to get the portraits done that we wanted to do and I read a few chapters in my book but mostly I had a great time relaxing with friends.

Virus Hoopla thanks to Conficker and CBS News

“OMG! Did you hear about that April Fools Day anti virus, Conficker. Am I protected from that?” I’ve heard this question or something like it at least a dozen times today and my answer was the same every time. What have YOU done to protect yourself.

Let me start by saying from what I’ve seen, the conficker virus that was featured in a CBS news story today is no better or worse than the rest of the virus’ that have been around infecting computers for the past 5 years. For those who missed the news, conficker is a worm that will turn your computer into a zombie, doing more or less whatever its creator wants it to do, usually send out spam.

While I admit I am not a typical computer user, I don’t think its all to hard to avoid these problems with some simple common sense and a little thought about what you are doing and what you expect your computer to do in response. And before anybody makes any comment about Apple computers being “immune” to viruses, save your breath. You are not immune either so pay attention.

First, and this is so obvious I hate to put it to paper, but get an anti virus program. If you are a home user (IE, your computer is in your house) then you have some free options at your disposal. To keep things simple, I generally only recommend AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition. It is far and away the most popular of the free anti virus applications. It is a simple, but thorough anti virus application, exactly what you need in your home. And unless you still use Dial-Up Internet any modern broadband Internet uses a service called NAT and a network masquerading that keeps your computer hidden on the Internet like a firewall would.

If your a corporate user, chances are you already have anti-virus on your computer, and a full hardware firewall and if you don’t you should call your IT department to ask them what they are getting paid for. Don’t have a support department? Find a local consultant group (like Airtop) that can get you on track.

So that covers the first base, but is probably the least important part. The next portion of safe computing is all about you, and your computer habits. I don’t mean to say you have to be paranoid all the time, but pay attention to whats going on. One of the more mischievous tricks I’ve seen lately (related to the Vundo virus) creates a web site that mimics a scan of your computer (it’s basically a pre-recorded video) telling you that you have some number of viruses and should download their “free anti virus software” to get rid of them. In this case, the program it wants your to download IS THE VIRUS. If you just pause and think about what you are doing before you panic you likely will realize that on your own. You should get to know your anti virus program. Know what its called so that when a window pops up and claims you have a virus, you know if its legitimate or a farce.

While “think before you click” more or less covers everything I want to point out that there is one area of the dark underbelly of computing that nobody talks about but nearly everybody knows about. Peer to Peer sharing is a means of sharing data between multiple people anonymously and is synonymous with applications like Napster, Limewire, Bearshare and others. This is a lurking beast in the peer to peer system though. If you have one of these programs just un-install it. There is little you can do with it that’s legal anyway, and likely nothing you’ve done with it was such. But the bigger problem is that its full of more viruses than a Chicago alley of hookers and crack addicts. If you do a search for anything, you’ll notice that nearly immediately you get 5 or so results with names that match what you searched for (go ahead and try it, I’ll wait). I would venture to guess that every one of those initial results is a virus with a name that’s dynamically created to match your search results in the hope you download it. But even the results that take longer can, and often are, viruses that people have knowingly, or unknowingly downloaded and now are sharing out into the P2P networks. Coupled with the legal implications of using the P2P networks with the higher than normal chance of doing something dumb just make theses programs a cesspit that I personally want no part of.

If you think you already have a virus or you know you do I typically use the trial version of a tool called Malwarebytes Anti-Malware to do a full scan of the machine for anything and everything unwanted. As soon as the scan is done, and you’ve removed anything that was there, you still need to install an active anti virus program like I recommended above.

In summary, get anti virus software and think before you click. I remove viruses from clients computers on an almost daily basis and nearly every time they either didn’t have any software to protect them and/or they did something they realized was dumb when it was to late to go back. Finally, don’t let old ladies on CBS scare you away from using your computer. Its a machine like your car, take care of it and it’ll serve you reliably for a long time.

Bachelor Shopping

Mike White came up to visit today, unfortunately we didn’t have anything to drink or snack on when he got here. So Kerry, Mike and myself made a quick run to WinCo Foods to stock up on the essentials (Beer, Soda, Chips, Queso and Cocoa Puffs).

Apple’s New Shuffle … Loosing sight of reality?

I doubt I’m the first to say this but Frankly I don’t even know when the shuffle was announced. I just stumbled on it today and while I like the mini-ness of it I think there is a serious issue.

Portable music players, since the original Walkman, have always come with headphones. I’ve always expected them to be crap and never have I been disappointed in that. In the past, they were a thin metal headband and scratchy foam cover, now you can expect a hard plastic in-ear set that leaves a lot to be desired. Over the recent years I’ve settled on Sony’s relatively in-expensive in-ear buds. They are comfortable, with a rubber surround and have good sound quality. I have a set of the headphones that came with the iPod Nano and they are the typical garbage. Apples standard headphones are made of hard plastic and hurt my ears after less than an hour of listening so when I bought my iPhone I didn’t even take the headphones out of the box.

Now though, we come to the point of my ranting. The iPod shuffle has no buttons on it. None, nada, zilch, zero. So in order to control the volume, or even skip a song you MUST use Apple’s P.O.S. headphones. If you loose the headphones that came with your shuffle, or they break, you’re going to be out $30 to get a new set. That’s nearly half the cost of a new Shuffle people.

“But Kyle, Apple has better ones you would like”. They do, your right, but they are $80, the same cost as the device. Personally, I have a tough time spending $35 on the set I like, $80 is too much.

The whole thing reminds me of this very old Foxtrot comic. Before the advent of USB drives and wide spread email. Floppy disks were THE way to move data from one place to another.

Apple, I’m sure you thought this through and have a plan. But I wont be buying it, nor do I recomend it to anybody.

Kerry’s New Title

Its official! As soon as the El Dorado Hills site opens up, Kerry will be up there as Assistant Director.

Rugby Sevens

Here is the full report on my vacation. I do have to warn you that it gets a little bit long winded, but it does after all cover three days. I will split the post up into some pages and there are plenty of pictures for those who don’t like to read. So click on the “Read More” link and join me for a recount of rugby, beer, nachos, snow and very long drives. Read more

Too Tired to Post

Its only 10:30 at night, but I’m tired, and sun-burnt and don’t have the enthusiasm to make a full post as is needed. So for now, I’ll hold you off with this slew of pictures I took today. Sorry for the poor processing job, all I have on my laptop is Picasa, which isn’t usually my first choice for processing images. Just click the “read more” link to see the pictures. Read more

To San Diego

So I mentioned in my last post about the snow that Kerry and I were headed somewhere, but I didn’t say where. Every year around this time is the USA Sevens tournament and this year Kerry and I are joining the rest of her family to go to San Diego and watch the tournament. Read more

Snow!

Kerry and I woke up early this morning to get a jump start on our drive down to San Diego. We had planned to leave around 7am, however not to long before we had planned on leaving Kerry got a call from her parents to let her know it was snowing in Cameron Park. For anybody who doesn’t know the area, Cameron Park gets snow maybe once every 10 years, so its pretty rare. Needless to say, with Kerry’s addiction to snow we made a detour.

Valentines Day is Approaching

What are your plans for valentines day? Kerry and I will be headed down to San Diego to watch the Rugby Sevens. It will be nice to get away and take my first vacation in about a year, even if it is just down to souther California. Admittedly, I’m not any kind of Rugby fan, but Kerry is, so this trip is for her although I have no doubt it will be a good time.

Also, a fun side note on the same line; When I came into Prudential NorCal Realty’s office this morning I was greeted by heart shaped, pink dough-nuts. They usually have something every Wednesday morning, since thats their weekly stafff meeting, but this was unique and deserved an iPhone snapshot.