Greg

Photos from Vancouver

A very small sample of the photos I took in Vancouver are making their way online here.  I'm trying to be a bit better about choosing good ones and also doing a bit of post-processing on them to clean them up before posting or printing...

A couple of them have (or had) really good potential, but I think I just got the focus a little bit off.  Or the camera got the focus a little bit off - I'm still largely running under auto-focus while I adjust some of the other settings to get a feel for things.  The more I think about it, it might make sense to reverse that and start by mastering (or at least just getting better at) manually focusing the camera/lens, and then move on to playing with ISO, shutter speed, etc.  The majority of the pictures I took I was in 'aperature priority  mode' - trying to play with and learn how changing the aperature changed the picture...

How do you know if something really is a good deal?

Just got back to Seattle from a few days in Vancouver.  Clodagh had to get her visa stamped, so I took a couple days off of work and went up too.  Canada always seems a bit strange because things are so similar and then are little difference will come along and suprise you.  It's mainly small stuff like having to look at the tiny km/h numbers on my speedometer to see how fast I'm going vs. the speed limit.

One of the nice parts of going up to Vancouver is getting to see live hockey.  I'm not the most die-hard NHL fan in the world but I do think it's a really enjoyable game.  A couple years ago we were up in February and bought tickets on the street and really got ripped off.  This time, I think we actually got an OK deal.  Since I hadn't been to a game in a really long time, and probably wouldn't be back to one for a really long time, I decided to splurge and go for 100-level seats.  The negotiation for the seats went like this:

Him: "Hey, you looking for club level seats?" 
Us: "Sure, how much?"
Him: "Face is 140, how about 150?"
Us: "Hmmm.  How about 90?"
Him: "OK, 140."
Us: "90"
Him: "OK - 120."
Us: "no, I don't really want to go that high."
Him: "OK, OK - 100.  I'm taking a loss."
Us: "How about 90?"
Him: "OK."

The whole thing kinda left us wondering if we just got a good deal or how much he was still making on them that we coulda bargained him down more.

Folks - it's just traffic

Very strange experience while getting ready for work this morning.  Out of no-where we hear this insane yelling, almost like a fight is going on.  It was a bit unusual because we generally don't hear street noise in the part of the house that I was in at the time.  And because while Eastlake is busy heading into the city at 8am, it's not usually road-rage busy.

I don't know if there was an actual fight though - we looked out of our windows and couldn't see anyone.  I assume whoever it was yelling had gotten out of their car because it was LOUD, and the car would have muffled it even with windows open...