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Yesterday, we received our first photographic backdrop. We’re fleshing out the studio and getting serious about taking more pictures. We’ve already done one shoot this month, but it was outside. Now, we can do good portraits inside. We even have another shoot scheduled for this weekend.

So, without further ado, here is a shot of our new backdrop:

Since we had it set up, we took some sample shots of my friend Raffe:

Now, we’re ready for business!

Filed under: Photography on November 20th, 2009 | No Comments »

No, not the U2 song, but Friday, I turned 40. It’s an eye-opening experience and I frequently wonder where the time has gone. I mean: I don’t FEEL 40… except after I work out too hard.

This year, after saving up lots of money by selling off old books, I was given a gift card to make up the difference and purchase a Kindle! For those who don’t know, it’s an electronic book reader which will store tons of books and even automatically download new ones.

Here’s a card Laura put together for my birthday which shows a picture of the old generation one (and a little Photoshop manipulation):

So, it’s been ordered and I’m eagerly awaiting the new device. I’ve even queued up some free e-books to have them downloaded when I turn it on. Book like Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea” and Doyle’s “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” are public domain now and free for downloading. If I were to just read those free books, I’d likely never finish before I turn 80…

But, I’m getting rid of my old paper books and going for the new, easier to store e-books.

Then, Laura can use my old, empty shelves like she wants…

Filed under: Life News, Technology on November 2nd, 2009 | No Comments »

Upon arrival back from our trip to Houston, it was good to arrive back at the house to see that our basement work was complete. The wall was done and painted, the wall trim installed, and the door put in place.

It looks like it was always there. Here are some pictures of the inside:

So, I’m pretty excited about the room. Tonight, I’ll be moving the servers into the room, so the site will be down for a bit.

Filed under: House, Site News, Technology on October 29th, 2009 | No Comments »

This week, we’ll be modifying our basement. We’ll be walling in a nook to contain all my servers and networking equipment. It’s the latest phase of getting our basement set up for photography. This will allow us to move all the excess computer equipment out of the main basement area into a closed room. In this room will also be some shelving for storing other unsightly materials. Here is a pictures of the nook [after we moved all the servers away from it]:

Previously, there was a desk [and then a table] holding printer, monitor, CD filing units on top and computer part holders and a server or two beneath it. It was quite messy.

Over the next few days, there may be some few outages as we move wiring and other things around to accommodate the new space.

Not that I’ve been posting anything recently… I know: I’m a slacker.

Filed under: House, Site News on October 11th, 2009 | No Comments »

For the last 4 years or so, just after we moved to Virginia, we got Vonage as our home phone. We replaced the Verizon line once we got reliable high speed Internet at the house.

However, over the last month or so, we’ve been unable to see our caller ID due to the “check phone line” being displayed on our handsets. This is very annoying. I mean: how can we avoid talking to you if we don’t know it’s you that’s calling? Seriously!

When we originally got Vonage, I got two phone lines and that mean two adapters. Now, you can do two lines through one adapter, but for some reason, they had me buy two adapters. I found out I really didn’t need that second phone line for fax, that I could just use the number they gave me at work, so I cancelled the second line. Still had the box though.

Since the “check phone line” is annoying and the phone wouldn’t even tell us when we had voicemail, I thought I’d see if the old Motorola box was bad. I put the rarely used Linksys box on the network, did a “move line” from the Vonage web page to the new (old) Linksys box, and Voila! Phones are now working as desired.

Motorola box is now on its way to a landfill.

Filed under: Life News on September 20th, 2009 | No Comments »

Now that we’ve shredded most of the documents [after having to wait for the shredder to cool down between bouts] we’ve been working on streamlining our bookcases. I’ve been looking at the Kindle and will now likely buy one. That decision made, I’ve started to clean off my shelves of books that, if I read again, it will be digitally. Some I will not read again, but to know that they are available on the Kindle is enough for me to get rid of them.

Some I will keep never to sell, of course, but that is not what this post is about.

I have a couple of crates of books sitting beside me now: books to sell or otherwise get rid of. I am going to try Craigslist now.

Craigslist has become our friend lately. We’ve sold lots of stuff, including Laura’s old behemoth of a computer desk. That will definitely clear up some space in our basement for a photography studio.

And now, I’m off to type up some Craigslist posts.

Filed under: House, Life News on September 13th, 2009 | 1 Comment »

We’ve decided to clean up our basement. Well, it’s not really a basement since it’s not really underground, but it’s the ground floor room. We’re getting this cleaned to accomplish several things. First, we have all this stuff that we’ve carried with us since before we were married and much of it, we haven’t used. So: Freecycle and Craig’s List are getting them. We’ve given away and sold a couple of trunk loads so far. Second, we need a more organized place to work on our computers. Third, we also need some space to set up our studio lights.

In cleaning out things we’ve been carrying around way too long, we’ve emptied some files out of our filing cabinet. Most need to be shredded. Here’s a picture of the pile:

Ant that’s after we’d been shredding a while. We started shredding but had to stop. Our shredded is not capable of high volumes of paper. It told us to stop:

I guess we have to give it a rest now.

Filed under: Life News on August 29th, 2009 | No Comments »

I have a spreadsheet I keep on my laptop with which I keep track of my billable hours for work. The company has a tool, but I like to keep an independent check on it with my own records. Just in case, right? I click on the desktop shortcut I have setup for it and to my chagrin, it says “file not found”. This is not good. I search my laptop and sure enough, it’s gone.

All is not lost, however, since I have Windows Live Sync keeping copies of all my data from the laptop to a share on my server. Of course, the program works flawlessly by replicating the deletion and thereby removing the server copy of my file.

Not to worry, I think. I know that not too long ago, I set up Shadow Copies on the server, which keeps snapshots of changed files. The only problem with this is that it only goes back as far as when I turned it on, which was 2 weeks ago – AFTER the file in question had already been deleted.

My last hope: my online backup system – Elephant Drive. This, like Mozy and other online backup services, has a desktop client [or in my case a server client] that runs and copies files and changes up to the Internet for backup. This is exactly what happened shortly after July 2nd, which was the last time I changed this file.

A simple browse and right-click later, I was saving the file back into its old place on my laptop.

I like Elephant Drive for the main reason that all the other services wanted to charge me MUCH more money just to be able to install their client software on Windows Server. If I have a server, I must therefore be a business and be made of money or something. This is not the case – I’m just a geek with a server or 7 at home and want to keep all of my data and files in one place. So, for $4.95 per month, they let me run it.

It’s now proven its worth. While that particular file might not be worth the $35 I’ve spent so far, the experience I’ve just had certainly gives me a degree of comfort that my files are safe.

My recommendation to you is this: find a backup solution that works for you, but be sure to include automated off-site [or Internet] backup as part of it.

Filed under: Life News, Technology on August 27th, 2009 | No Comments »

After about 5 days without email, I was finally able to restore our email service – and even get us upgraded to Exchange Server 2010 Release Candidate. All it took was a complete destruction of the old Exchange environment (twice) and rebuilding from scratch. Good thing I was able to take a backup of the mailboxes!

So, if I hadn’t replied to you for a while, now you know why.

Filed under: Technology on August 25th, 2009 | No Comments »

So, in the process of upgrading my email server to Exchange 2010 Release Candidate, the power went out [it was out for a whole day] and now it’s VERY messed up. I’m trying to restore services, but we cannot send or receive any new emails right now…

So, I’m not deliberately ignoring you. This time.

Filed under: Site News, Technology on August 21st, 2009 | No Comments »