I am taking a break from painting. So when I went to sleep last night at like 5am (so really this morning) it wasn’t snowing. I was in fact a nice mostly clear night. I wake up this morning at 8:30 (thanks Darwin) and there is like 3 inches of snow out there. wtf I vow to spend every night this week at Keegans, I got so much stuff done last night not to mention the epic novel that was my last post. (sorry roo I know that you have works to do but I know that you would rather be reading all about me =) It is good times I think I am gong to go for a walk and escape the paint fumes.

My Cat
So my day was started as it is everyday. By my cat and his incisive need to do happy paws on my face, chest, neck, etc… It is 8 O’clock and for him it is up time. I do nothing because he is doing happy paws because he loves me and to discourage would be to deny his love, and no one wants to be deny love, especially the love of something so cute. So I lay and ignore the pain that often comes with this, when I haven’t bounced out of bed and ran to the food dish to divvy him his daily rations, he begins to chew on my hair. Being that there is little in the world that has such an annoying sound and even less that happens inches from my ear, I am awake. I have been watching as of late to see if this all happens at the same time every morning, or if it follows a more seasonal pattern with the coming of the sun or something and after much study and deliberation I feel that I can conclusively say that it is in fact at 8 O’clock sharp this interaction begins regardless of what time it was that I went to sleep or how long I have been sleeping. Ah to have everything as cut and dry as the life of a cat. We call them stupid animals but yet we are all striving for the same thing. Contentment. I am reminded of a story that I once heard and being as I can not remember all the details I will tell it as I remember (so quite possibly incorrect) A west coast native man lived on an island and was he was happy and alive. The sea provided him with all the food he would need and the forest provided him with the materials to build his home. He would fish when he was hungry and sleep when he was tired but basically he was at ease. The White man can and cut down all the trees, bought all the land and on it put a fish cannery where the west coast native man is now gainfully employed. He spends his 8 hours a day working so he can one day pay off that two acres of untouched coastal rainforest, that he gets to enjoy now on weekends.

Infrared
So after waking and eating and all these things that go on in the morning, I decided that a walk down to the Legislature was in order to try out the Hoya Infrared filter that is on loan to me from Jamie. I have read that the Canon 10D is capable of seeing all the wavelengths of the visual spectrum and not unlike the eye of most electronic devices it is also able to see things in the infrared area of the spectrum, but as to how well this is possible with my camera I have read completely differing opinions. So it is just one of those things that is best left to the experimentation. I have actually come across an interesting dichotomy in the availability of opinions when it comes to photography vs. independent film. In the independent film world every one is standing on the heads of the other to have there feeble and untimely dry and deprecating opinion known. (an opinion that almost always curses big bad ol Hollywood) where as photography, which incorporates so much of the same visual ideas and pulls on the same thoughts and feeling that are felt when composing a shot, has very little opinion slinging. I mean you can find a great deal said about equipment and the different facets of this film over that film, digital vs. silver halide prints so on and so forth But when it actually comes to the opinions of work on the grand scheme of things it is some times like pulling teeth to get thoughts that are not pulled out of the technical realm. I find that critiques are often checked at the technical aspects of the composition, little statements made about the detail contained with in shadows, and other such technical aspects of the photograph. I am taken back to Art history 102 where we would drone on and on about a silk screen that Warhol did. We would spend hours poking and proding at Worhal and his work of Marlin Monroe, or Smithson and his Spiral Jetty of rocks and sand that were in a Utah lake. But when it came to the first photographs, we discussed more the technical aspects of how the photo was made as apposed to the visual construction. We didn’t get in to the details of how Warhol actually did the silk screening, or how it was that Smithson brought these truck loads of dirt and gravel onto the banks of some forgotten lake in Utah. Nope the how was replaced with the why, where as with photography, the why was left to these single line statements and vauge jawings of things like “repetitious shapes of cement pillars”, when discussing Margaret Bourke-White’s Fort Peck Dam, taken in the mid thirties. Or with Weston’s pepper, “The textures and the shape of this pepper are slightly reminiscent of later female artistic nudes” and that was that. (pulled from my Art History notes) I was aware of Ansel Adam’s Zone theory, the idea of shooting film for the paper (a long story with in its self and being that is am like 6 to 8 hundred words of topic already I will refrain from its telling) long before I was heavily involved in photography. As is all to often true with most of my journal entrees there is little point to be made from all this. It is simply just my thoughts on some things. So anyway back to the IR filter… There was little online to be said about how well it worked so I was going to wait till I had a lot of extra money lying around (so never) and simply buy one to try it out. But Jamie had one and he was willing to lend it to me to try. So this morning after the cat was fed and the telephone answered (superpages telling me that my ad will in fact be white and they are simply cheap on the paper.) I decided to take a tripod out and try it. Now shooting infrared is something that is best done in the summer but and experiment is still viable out of season. I have been infatuated with infrared since I got turned on to film way back in February but have thus failed to try it, so I am slightly unsure of what can be artistically achieved out of this but I am totally ready to try anything once. What I discovered surprised me even though it really shouldn’t have because technically it is rather obvious but as I have said before I am very good at missing the obvious. So the Hoya R72 filter removes all light from the visual spectrum only allowing light of higher wavelengths in? Correct. So I slap on the filter turn on my camera and look though the view finder and what do I see? Nothing! Umm… I make sure that the camera is one and that there is nothing blocking the path, and I see? Nothing. I think about for a moment and I it came to me as these things often do. Oh ya, removes visible light :) So I am like ok I will fire off a shot.
And I did what I saw in the view finder was a shock, I could see the dark, dark, sky and the white clouds in a stark contrast to the dark surrounding area. I was like, ‘shit shit who the fuck is shooting at us’ (inside joke) and I spent most of the morning experimenting. Now one of the draw backs of this is the need for very long shutters and a tripod, which of course isn’t true with film (but I am not shooting film now am I.) so with these technical issues aside there is an entirely new world to be experimented with here. Some of the shots from this morning.


Camera: Canon EOS Canon 10D
ISO: 100
Shutter: 15 sec
Aperture: f 5.6
Lens: 28-80mm @80mm
Date Taken: Nov 18 2003



Camera: Canon EOS Canon 10D
ISO: 100
Shutter: 6 sec
Aperture: f 3.5
Lens: 28-80mm @28mm
Date Taken: Nov 18 2003

Again I think that IR shooting is something that is best done when there is a lot of alive things about to reflect the Infrared spectrum But it is a test.

Night Photography
So last night I was working away when a get an MSN from Jamie asking if I wanted to go out and shoot some stuff, and being one that will never turn down an opportunity to shoot things I heartily agreed. We went about the provincial museum area and near Jasper Avenue to catch some long exposures of traffic and the like. Here are some of the results.


Camera: Canon EOS Canon 10D
ISO: 400
Shutter: 15 sec
Aperture: f 27
Lens: 28-80mm @50mm
Date Taken: Nov 17 2003



Camera: Canon EOS Canon 10D
ISO: 100
Shutter: 4 sec
Aperture: f 4
Lens: 28-80mm @28mm
Date Taken: Nov 17 2003

Random Today
I was out and about till about 11ish and I am sitting at home after when there is a knock on the door, it wasn’t just a knock it was instead the musical knockity knock knock (pause) knock knock. Well you know what in mean. So I answer the door and standing there is one of our neighbors that I only see on occasion and only as of late. (I actually thought he was a worker as apposed to an owner, but I am sure that many think the same about me) This guy reminds me distinctly of this guy from Westlock Troy Billado (most of you have no idea who that but for those that do he was at first almost exactly like him) I was actually wondering if Troy was in Edmonton and had looked me up. However, Troy it was not, it was instead the neighbor from upstairs. He was in need of 40 dollars or so all so he could tow his car from some parking lot where it had died or so he said. Now I have never actually met this guy, I have seen him about like twice, and he thought that I was going to pull out my wallet and hand him 40 bucks. Not that I actually have 40 dollars in my wallet nor could I afford to hand that imaginary 40 buck over if I did. But I have no idea who this guy was. Alas I did genuinely feel bad that I couldn’t help him but he did set off huge alarm bells when he came to my door.

Street Photography
So I think that the style of photography that I like best is street photography. The type of photography that keeps me amazed and fascinated is the genuine and authentic style that shows us life as it is and is somewhat ironically the most technically void of the lot. I recall reading an article about a guy and the course that he took with street photographer Garry Winogrand. I recall reading this article in a technical mindset but I recall the non-technical things most vividly I remember that he used a manual meterless camera and set the aperture and shutter based on one of three different settings that he would choose based on the weather, sunny, cloudy, & very overcast/evening. This is often not the approach that you hear photographers taking, very often (I am as guilty as the rest) there is an extremely long and technically complicated commentary that accompanies a lot of work. I think that this has a lot to do with photographers asserting that this is a skill not a talent. That of I confuse you with a complex and in-depth explanation of this shot you will be more amazed at my talent and appreciate the photo more. Which is not to say that this idea is based in fiction but there is in fact a great deal of truth in the above statement. I think this is why street photography is often not included. It seems to me that it is the 1990’s “alternative rock” of photography. But, before this turns into a lengthy essay about the artistic position of street photography in the world of art and photography (all subjects that I am far from an expert on) lets get back to the article. Winogrand would take this manual camera set the appropriate aperture and shutter depending on the conditions, load up a roll of 400 speed Black & White and go out into the street and shoot. Winogrand would be quick, decisive, and invisible. Just a guy totally separated from those around him that were going about their daily business, but was taking there picture. He would take these 10 or so rolls and label them with a prewritten notes on the weather, and stash them away. He would stash these undeveloped rolls of film away for at least a year, if not longer. The idea is that he wanted to remove any memory of the day when he looked at the negatives as to not taint his perceptions of a good picture with his memory of the day. He didn’t want to choose a picture simply because it was taken on a day that he felt in a particularly good mood, or in the opposite not choose a shot to work with because he was in a bad mood. Such a drastic separation from the technical world of today, where you are told to develop your film as soon as possible and that it will be no good if you don’t etc… He would process the film in huge batches and print every single negative on a full 8X10 (No contact sheets for this cat) He would spend hours exposing the paper and then develop them in bulk. Then out of these stacks of 8X10s he would choose which shots where worthy of further exploration. When he died there was over 300,000 exposures that he hadn’t even seen. The point of this story? I am scared shitless to try street photography. It may be that I am far too Canadian or a wimp, but the idea of wondering around and blatantly taking photographs of unsuspecting strangers is quite frightening to me. I mean what if they saw me, what if they get angry, what if they feel violated by my deliberate disregard for their personal space? BUT this afternoon the desire to shoot overcame the fear if only for a second and I went out and tried my hand at street photography. I walked out and down jasper to city hall and back home taking photos as I went I tried to not think about the photograph I just took it. I often look at an something and think about how I will approach the photo, I look at the different aspects of the item and then experiment at taking the photo. This is so far separated from street photography that it isn’t even funny. If you see something you need to shoot it NOW!!! That should be the mantra that I recite as I go out and about. But, I do think I tasted what it is that keeps a person doing this sort of thing. I haven’t the foggiest idea how to describe the feeling; it was almost… it was almost like I was a machine making split second decisions as to what to take and how to take it. It was as though the camera was an extension of my sight and the shutter was simply a blink of an eye. The camera would come to my eye, focus, choose the composition, click the shutter and be back at my chest in what seamed like a heart beat. I felt like I was invisible. No one looked at me nor noticed my quiet intrusion; however as is true with all photography one may take a hundred pictures and come up with a single gem so these are the best of my day if only to illustrate what I am rambling on about.


Camera: Canon EOS Canon 10D
ISO: 200
Shutter: 1/90 sec
Aperture: f 4
Lens: 75-300mm @95mm
Date Taken: Nov 18 2003



Camera: Canon EOS Canon 10D
ISO: 200
Shutter: 1/30 sec
Aperture: f 4
Lens: 75-300mm @75mm
Date Taken: Nov 18 2003

But I realize that I have been yakking for like 3 hours and I am working on the sixth page in word so I will save some of my thoughts and leave it at that.

Weston “the camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.”

So in an effort to start posting more often and less of the weekly epic long novels here is my daily post. Today was busy, quite busy, after a morning of running around downtown I was able to come home for lunch :) which was really leftover supper from the night before. But the good news of today was all the cool stuff that came in. I got my first 13 prints back for the Home builder and they look fantastic :) I got all set up in Carousel Photo’s pro client database or what have you and I am now getting the professional pricing on all my prints. (This saves me a lot of money)

I also got my stamp today :) So now I feel like a real business because I have a company stamp.

See stamp isn’t it exciting :) but I need to have a shower and do some other stuff so I will leave it at that.

So I am now at coffee. Yay. I started the evening at coffee sorting the 10 trillion things in my email inbox. For those not in the know of me and my manic email habits, I am manic about my email. I have almost every email that was sent to me over the past 4 or so years with the exception of junk email. I have this wondrous snippet into the life of The Jerk all organized into a number of folders in my outlook. It is really everything that I have received and it is all of about 400 mgs of compressed data. I would hate to think about what it would be if it wasn’t compressed. What is crazy about it is not that I keep them all No I have been a digital packrat since I had my first Cd burner years and years ago. (I have all my data backed up, sorted, and cataloged since 98 into hundreds of cd’s But that is an entirely other story) What is manic about it is I can’t stand to see things unread, and Un sorted after It has been read. I have been so busy and haven’t spent enough time at Keegans I guess, because I had email in my Inbox that was sent to me before the party at my house in September or when ever it was. I had to sort it out into the appropriate folders and sections, which took a long time all in all. At it is crazy because I can’t delete anything if I know the person who sent it. Even if it a one word reply to another email I have it in the archives. For example I have in the Outlook -> Personal Archive -> friends -> Scotty Jackson Folder an email from Scotty that is

SUBJECT: BoooYa
BODY: BoooYa

That’s it, that’s all. And it is from Feb 2000, Crazy I tell you. I guess that when I am 100 my kids can look though this craziness and have a good reason to call me their fucked up father. I do it with other things as well for example if you have ever chatted with me on MSN or ICQ. Chances are great that I have a log of that conversation somewhere in the archives of the institute. :)
Anyway I am blithering on again about how crazy I am. I suppose it is better to be a digital packrat then a real one. One if the draw backs of this email system is that while its organization is great I absolutely have to deal with the email before it can get filed. SO if you emailed me asking a question I have to email back before it can get filed other wise you won’t get a reply. So I have spent most of my time writing emails this evening.
I Ate some Lemon Pie MMmmmmm…. Lemon Pie. It is really just Lemon Marainge (sp?) pie but Donna calls it Lemon pie cause I always have it.
I also realized that for a guy that raves about how much time he spends at Keegans I sure haven’t been as of late. I sort of have been a bit of a hermit not really leaving my house much. But somehow I still claim to be a Keegans resident. Tisk tisk very sad indeed. I actually can say that since I quit smoking a year and a bit ago I haven’t been spending a lot of time here as compared to my smoking days. I guess coffee just isn’t the same with out cigarettes. Also noticed that this is directly in proportion with my rate of creative productivity, Oh well I digress.
I have Come to the realization that the only thing worse then the Grey cup Fans is the Grey cup game its self, and the only thing worse then the grey cup game is the Grey Cup announcers that I unfortunately can hear now even with my headphone as loud as they go.
The Funniest shit ever is to be found with in this video. Mike sent this video to me so I can laugh about the things that are so silly about a Mac. Please see My October 1, 2003 post for more thoughts on this.
I have almost finished the rphoto website as far as layout and what have you is concerned So now I just need to fill it up with content. Content is my arch nemesis when it comes to web pages. I hate typing out all this cheesy stuff to fill up a website with something other then a snappy design. I will be leaning heavily on Miranda for this part I am sure :) (wink wink) It is funny I just had to explain to the waitress at Keegans why it was exactly that I was holding my laptop up really high in the air. (better wifi signal) It will always be funny to me the crazy looks that I get when I do this. But ya I think that I may walk home soon just cause I am sorta tired of sitting here.

So I have officially sold my first print that wasn’t to a family member or a friend (Not to say that your print isn’t special Asylus) Yes you heard me correctly, one of my prints is going to be hanging in a bank (Not sure what bank but I for see getting arrested in trying to find out! Good times.) Man I feel a little fuzzy from it. I mean someone likes my shit enough to pay money for it.

wow

Well I am going to head out to the lovely but very greesy Keegans this evening and spend some more quality time with my laptop. My laptop and I have been spending a lot of time together while Miranda is in Montreal, but I mean what can you do :) I better go early though cause the corner has been quite busy as of late.

http://www.geocities.com/DustinLuvsJesus/

Well I have just gotten back from a delightful evening at Keegans that consisted of: coffee, Adam, Mike, discussion of Kant, different techniques that actors can derive motivation, the philosophy’s of art, the problem with films, what is funny, what is the quintessential definition of Human, psychopathic tendency’s, Dr. Robert D. Hare, & Androids and their dreams of electric sheep. It’s is nice to have a car again even if I need to let it run where ever I go Where would I be with out my precious Golf Bumper stickers and all :) and its so ubar fun to watch people poke at the lack of rear window. I really need to fix that :) Any who, it is sleep time for I have a photo job in the morning and a job interview in the afternoon, all of which i plan to elaborate on later tommorow night… I hope… Well we will see. :)

Well now I know that it has been like ten days since I have posted but I have been ubar busy. I decided to not go to Montreal because it is quite expensive and while I am sure that the money could be found from somewhere it will surely serve us better elsewhere. I have instead been painting our house, catching up on some photos, working on websites, and writing all sorts of documentation for rphoto. I apologize to all my loyal readers (if I have any) but this is the time of year where it is hard to find the time in a day to post all the time. I am sitting at Keegans right now writing a few words before I walk home to sleep. Tomorrow I should actually have a few spare moments which I will use to post some photos of the past while. But I have been up since 8 and it is 3 and I am sleepy so I will leave it at this.

So it has been an interesting week and I have blogged none of it. Partly due to my own laziness but mostly due to a perilous router firmware upgrade that has kinda fucked my computer world all over. But the last post was about the shoot with Justyne and the fun that I had with that, well it was very fun and I got some great stuff from this shoot.

I hope work with her some more in coming weeks for she was a blast to work with.
On Thursday I had a shoot with Adam. He wanted some new head shots and wondered if I could do them for him and me being me I said Of course I would love to. So he came to the studio and we did a huge variety of stuff, including more stairwell and hallway stuff. He was a blast to work with, in fact I think that I like working with actors more then some models. Actors take instruction way better and are more aware of there outward appearance in a pose. This may come from all the time that I have spent working with Actors on films and such I don’t know, but actors understand motivation and are less apt to end up with a goofy grin on there face when I say smile. But I digress. Adam was a lot of fun to shoot with and I think that we actually spent more time talking then shooting but It looks like I got some awesome stuff here. I hope that there is a lot here that you can use for headshots Adam. :) I also have to say thanks for the movie invite guys. I am really kinda sorry that I made other plans :( Perhaps another time we can see something and it would be good times.
So on Thursday after the shoot with Adam I was to have a shoot with Erin (another model from OMP) but she had to reschedule which because I am unemployed and haven’t anything else to do was not a problem in the least (Hehe) So I went though the photos from Justyne shoot for a few hours and basically got them wrapped up, and felt that it was definitely coffee time. I MSN’d mike and away we went. After gallons and gallons of coffee I go home and I am cruising the I-net looking at different photographers websites, hanging out reading Indecline.net etc… But as of late every time I am surfing around using Wi-Fi at random times the router will disco me from the wireless and I have to log in to the router and reboot it. It is a pain in the ass!! So I am like well I wonder what D-link has to say about such an issue so of to d-links site I go to find that the firmware on the router is like three versions behind. So I say well why not upgrade the firmware of the router and maybe that will fix my problems. So I being me back up the settings of the router to a file on the desktop using the feature that is within the software. and make sure that everything is cool if the router dies in the upgrade keep the cat off the keyboard and stuff of the like because a problem during a firmware upgrade is a sure fire way to fuck something up for good. So I run the first upgrade and check it out and it lost all the settings to the router including all the virtual server pass trugh info for the server an everything. So I am like hey no problem I will just restore the settings using the backup point that I have made. So after about 20 min of looking for the means to do so I came to the conclusion that while one can back up my router one can not restore the settings. The option doesn’t exist. Cant be done. MM…. Ok…. So I am fill in a few of the settings just to make sure that it is working ok. Mmmm should I run the next upgrade… MMmmm Ok I mean I might as well. So I run the next upgrade and while this time it didn’t lose all the settings it did remove my access to my websites. So I am like fuck shit fire the missiles (inside joke) and I am fighting trying to get to my websites and only after much fucking around was I able to determine that the websites were accessible just not to me. (Thanks Roy for being awake and online at 4 in the morn) so I am like well I am really tired and the sites are up I will just go to sleep and figure it out in the morning. I wake up about 9ish and stumble over to my computer to see a plethora of ICQ’s and MSN’s to tell me that my websites are down. ARRRG. So Friday was spent almost in its entirety fucking with router and servers and OCA (Fuck I hated That place where I work and their slow OCA page that day) and well I still have no access to the server from inside the router and I am mostly convinced that the router is fucking up all the dataflow in and out of the router. For example a website wont load. I get a cant find the DNS error and I refresh and bang the whole shit is there. I go to another and the pages comes halfway and then bang!! zero data flow. Arg fuck it is still whooped and not working properly. And serving is the same way. I sent Miranda a couple of links via icq today and they didn’t work and then with out changing anything they decided that they would work.. SO Well for all those reading this please fire me an email if this site is being wonky for you. info@jerkwithacamera.com so after entire day of this I was ready to get totally shit faced slobbering drunk, or go out and KILL people . Just as I was eyeing up the liquor cabinet (JK) mike phones and says that Michelle is going to go to a Halloween party and he is alone at home, he wanted to know if I wanted to come over and play 1942 (a shoot em up video game) I said I get to kill? He said yes. I said “really?” and he said “ya.” So I put the lid back on the bottle of Tequila, closed the liquor cabinet, and packed up my computer and with in 20 min I was set up and ready to KILL KILL KILL.
But before we could get into the killing and death and mayhem that was to ensure when one gives me a digital weapon we had to take Jared and Jetta trick or treating. So get this How much more Canadian can you get. I mean we do spend more then half our year in winter and we have the world’s largest mall I am sure for that reason alone but apparently we have a new take on Halloween. So I remember that Halloween was this huge ordeal where you spent the better part of the afternoon dressing your children up in crazy costumes and applying makeup and all that jazz and then sticking those wonderful costumes under snow suits and toques to go out in the freezing weather to trick or treat. But apparently we now can go to mall to trick or treat. (This could be the way that it has always been but this was simply the first that I have heard of it) great idea for the kids I suppose but for those that know me you would laugh. Here is a mall that is filled to the brim with crazy sugar crazed children in masks and other such shit running around and yelling and screaming and generally being kids. (kids are fine I am just a old grumpy ogre) and then there is me, in the middle of this craziness going with Mike and Michelle from store to store to get candy. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been I mean I could have been On fire or prairie dogging (another inside joke) So after words the kids went and trick or treated on their street near their house and we went to the basement for a evening of virtual slaughter. It is healthy to once in a while to go and slaughter people that you have never met. I guess t neat thing about online games is you are in a crazy way interacting with other people, it just a different medium. Because as you have the sights of your sniper rifle lined up on another players head you think this is going to directly effect the guy in the other end of this. It is a real person at the other end of your keyboard, not some computer Bot that is working within a certain set of parameters to mimic a human but a real person. Its kinda fucked up I guess. This killing mayhem ensued for a few hours and I dove home about 3ish
Today I had my rescheduled photo shoot with Erin who emailed me from OMP. She was quite fun to work with although I think that she was a little nervous because she was kinda stiff and such. I only did a short one with her because she was allergic to cats and although she was fine the time she was there I didn’t want to push the limits. Darwin was such a goof as well he spent the first 20 min trying to sit on her lap and the rest of the time trying to sit in her clothes and drink her water. Crazy cat. I should have photos from the shoot soon.
Montreal.

It would seem that Miranda has found a “Spare” four hundred dollars to bring me out to Montreal. Really? I think the plan is that I am going to go out this coming Tuesday or Wednesday after the meeting with the builder on Monday. I am excited and I am worried all at the same time. I mean I am thinking of the bills that could be paid with 400 bux or worse the equipment that could be had, or the job that I could have instead of being there and the money from that. Not to mention that I am sort of getting in to the swing of things here when it comes to models, websites, and other such stuff. But is Montreal with paid accommodations while I am there. That is something that is never going to happen again in my life, ever! So I will be on a plane (first time ever) sometime next week. Interesting.

I am at Keegan’s right now writing this because I need to use the Free wireless that can be found here sometimes to post to my website. (see router issues above) I had coffee with Mike but he is gone home to sleep now and Here I am sitting in the corner as per usual drinking copious amounts of coffee and typing what appears to be a novel. Again Adam & Roo thanks for the invite I am sorry that I had to decline. But I may go home play (fuck) with the router and see what I can do about fixing it & such. To get out of here before the bar rush and what have you. With that I sign off.