Time-lapse Project

Day In, Day Out is a project of mine to capture a typical day in Downtown Sacramento through time lapse. It will likely take me a long time to get the whole thing done, I’ve estimated it will take a little less than 50,000 shots to complete the entire length of the video. Anyway, last night I started sketching out some of the shots to get the timing and ideas “on paper”, and went a little bit overboard so I wanted to share:

Its a very short clip, in case you can’t tell (which is very likely, Adeline could have drawn better sketches than I did) the first shot would be a time lapse of the sun rising over the capitol, a shot which I hope to be able to capture from the Penthouse balcony of my building and the second shot is looking down at the corner just in front of my building (from roughly the same location) at 7th street, and the Light Rail station as people board the trains.

Let me know what you think, and if you have any ideas for some cool time-lapse of downtown sacramento. If your interested in helping with this project too, let me know it might be fun to have a couple people doing time-lapse and join it all together into one continuous movie.

My Summer Vacation

Do you remember in elementary school, after summer break when your teacher would have you stand up in front of the class and explain what you did over the summer? Me either frankly, but its so cliché I couldn’t avoid brining it up since it leads right into my post today.

I want to actually start this off by saying I’d love to get some input back on this, tell me what you did over the summer. A lot of the people I’ve grown up with are just getting their families started while others aren’t done exploring the world. I’d like to know where life’s path has lead you.

As much as it irks me to admit it, Facebook is great for keeping tabs on old friends, but it lack any personality, its nothing more than a list of milestones. Facebook lacks the telling of a complete story. And I know this sort of thing is often left to a letter in a Christmas card, but frankly the Holiday’s have enough things going on, I think its time to go back to elementary school when we updated our friends at the end of the summer. So without further adieu, My Summer Vacation, a report by Kyle Klaus:

I’ll admit, 2009 started out on a bit of a sour note. But I ended up having a great new years with Matt Lockyer, his girlfriend Kelly and brother Travis in Oakland. It was a bit of a foreshadowing event, but more on that later.

2009 marks the fifth year of this blog (through various forms) . While its not much of anything to celebrate, and to say its been constant would be a lie, I’ve still enjoyed putting my musings, ramblings and ravings to ‘paper’ and I hope to continue. This post actually makes number 316 over those five years for anybody who is counting.

In February Kerry and I (as well as the rest of her family) made the long drive down to San Diego to watch the 2009 Rugby Seven’s tournament. It was only the second time I had ever been to a rugby game, and this was on a whole different level. I had a great time and took a ridiculous number of photos of the event. Also, before we left to San Diego we spent a brief amount of time enjoying the very very rare snowfall in Cameron Park.

In April though, Kerry and I split up. Without trying to be too much of a downer, there wasn’t much love left there and it was just simply time to move on. Unfortunately, our lease wasn’t up until the end of September, so we stuck it out and continued to live together until the end of our lease (not really something I would recommend, but we managed it OK).

On a better note though, I started taking tests towards my MCSE certification. The link does a better job of explaining fully what that means than I will here, but basically its a Microsoft certification that says I know what I’m doing when it comes to managing computer systems and, bottom line, is a meal ticket to higher pay. I still have 5 more tests to take to finish my certification, but with the tests I’ve done so far I can officially call myself a “Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP).

I also was able to spend a brief time with the Hoffman’s at Cody’s parents cabin. We went for two reasons, one because the place is awesome and a great way to spend a weekend, but more importantly Cody and Becca wanted some portraits of the very beginning of their new family.

In September I moved out on my own! This is somewhat of a highlight to the year for me. I’m living on my own now in Downtown Sacramento. Its only a studio apartment, but its comfortable and makes me feel très chic. Keith (my brother) only lives a few blocks away, so we’ve been able to work more closely on a small project of ours called Flublub (more on that when its closer to finished). Being able to walk to family, friends and the downtown life has been a gift I don’t plan on wasting.

In case you thought I forgot to mention work; I’ve been working for Airtop Technology Group since February ‘08 as a Technology Consultant. Its a small company (only four of us) but we have some big plans. Most of my time is spent with clients providing proactive service on their servers and workstations to make sure they continue operating 24/7. Its sometimes a thankless job, and that can wear but if I’ve done a good job, nobody knows I was there in the first place, so in a way its a complement.

So that brings us to about now, where I’m enjoying the cool crisp air of the night, listening to my eclectic collection of music and composing overly lengthy posts. Now its your turn, tell me what you’ve been up to. You can email it, post it in a comment below, or put it on Facebook somehow.

Until next summer my friends.

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.

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).

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.
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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.
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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.

This Makes me want a D90 … Bad

The new Nikon D90 has the ability to do 720p, cinematic 24 fps video captures. Combine that with somebody who know what they are doing behind the lens and in front of a video editor and this is what you get.

Scion United Homebound

Our last day at the Scion United event was fairly un-eventful and felt really long. I stayed up late the night before putting the pictures and post up about the event so Kerry woke up before me at around 8am. We got dressed and headed back down to the cafe for another breakfast of sausage egg sandwiches and coffee.

We took a small walking tour around the hotel. They have a botanical garden, beach and doc that we hadn’t seen yet (Kerry took pictures, but I don’t have those pictures yet). So after the short tour, we headed back up to the room to finish our packing, checked out of the hotel and headed down to where our last bus ride was going to take us to our cars. We waited for a short time for our bus to get up front, boarded the bus and … waited.

30 miniutes past, an hour, finally 2 hours of waiting on the bus and we are told we are finally going to go. Turns out, the computer system that the marketing company uses to track everything (including who’s cars are where) was down and it made for a serious mess at the event site. Our bus was held at the hotel because at least there we could use the bathroom in the hotel, get food and drinks from the cafe etc. Some people weren’t happy about it, one pair of guys called a cab to take them to the event site (which was funny, because they only got their car one or two people ahead of me).

My car was parked up in the same area that we had the event in and if rumor has it, my car was in the group that actually got filmed/photographed for the ad campaign. It was covered in a nice healthy coat of dust, but otherwise unscathed. I heard a lot of horror stories about people with massive scratches, dents, dings and general damage but to be honest I didn’t see any of it, so I’m not sure what to believe and what to pass as over-reactions.

I was however, out of gas. I droped the car off with about 240 miles on the odo and a quarter tank of gas. When I picked it up, I still had around 240 miles but was completely out of fuel. I’m still not really sure why they had it idle through a couple gallons of gas. I heard some speculation that they had headlights on or something to that effect for shots, but my drivers side low beam is out so you’d think that puts my car out of the running, or perhaps they just used the high beams.

I was able to make a stop and take some better pictures of the Scion xD “Hot Lava” RS1. I also spent some more time talking to the couple from Pennsylvania. They both have Scion’s, and both scions got picked to attend the event, but they only drove their BSP tC (represent!) because of the prices of gas.

The wheel in the last picture is not the wheel that will come on the RS1 off the lot though. The RS1 will have plastic wheel covers instead which is really lame. Kerry really liked the xD so I think I’m going to have to give Damon (of Elk Grove Scion) a call to see what we’d be into if we traded her aging Passat in on something (probably a used xD if any exist).

On the way out of the event they gave each owner a numbered badge (to be stick on the car I assume). I ended up number 243 out of 500 (I’d be interested to hear from #1 and #500). We left the event site and stopped at the first gas station to fill up on fuel (for both the car and us). I wasn’t paying attention to the pump I drove up to, and it wasn’t until I went to put my card in that I realized this was not an average pump. There must be a race track or drag strip in Boulder, because the gas station had 100 octane gas (for $5.999 per gallon).

After that the trip was fairly un-eventful. It was almost 2:30 by the time we got on the road so we knew we were going to be getting back late. We stopped and had lunch in Primm (a town on the Nevada side of the border with a casino, fashion outlet and some fast food places.

For a while along the way home I trained with a couple of other Scions but eventually they all pulled off onto other highways. We had dinner in Fresno, and finally arrived home a little after midnight.

In all it was an awesome trip and I’m glad that I was invited. I’m still waiting to see the event pictures posted up on Scion’s website. And I’m looking forward to seeing the commercials pop up. So keep your eye’s open for my car on TV in a few months!