Silence of the Mind

On a lark last week while waiting for the weather to clear, I was looking up towns I'd lived in on Google Maps and seeing what had changed. That lead me into looking at the schools I'd been to and what was going on with them. I was rather surprised to learn that of the 7 schools I attended, 4 of them have been closed now.

I had known that the Jr HS I went to in Wheatland was shut down, it was built in 1927 and was getting to be in sad shape even when I was there 25+ years ago. But I was surprised to see that the other Jr HS I went to had also been shut down as well, and according to Map View been torn completely down, though streetview dates to 2007 and still shows the building complete with lines of buses and students heading in for the day. I admit to being a bit amused by the difference a few years made in mapping. I had to do some digging on the school district there to see where they'd moved that Jr HS to...only to learn that they hadn't. The school district is now composed of a bunch of K-4 schools, a pair of 5-6 schools, one 7-8 Jr HS , and one 9-12 HS. I discussed this with Mom(the one with an Ed degree) because it seemed like there was almost too much segregation of grades and ages, and she agreed with me.

Likewise I wasn't that surprised that Reliance Elementary had been shut down, it was also rather old, and I sort of recall hearing something about them busing kids into Rock Springs for school quite awhile ago(Its only a 4 mile drive to the school they moved them to). But I was rather surprised that Glenrock had closed its original elementary and moved all students to the new one they'd built way out by the HS. They'd needed and built a second gradeschool there, but then the population dropped and they didn't need it and were going to mothball the new one...and apparently the pop dropped again so they could fit all the gradeschoolers into the one new school.

I was mildly amused that of the schools that closed, it was both Second Grades and both Jr Highs.

For those that would like to see them, my 2013 3 Barons RenFaire are now up at http://www.davebrownphotos.com/RenFaire2013

And Renfaire 2012 is posted.

http://www.davebrownphotos.com/RenFaire2012

It kinda makes me feel like an idiot when I spend 2 hours hunting down a problem in a webapp upgrade only to discover it was due to the difference in how windows and linux handle slashs.

Windows demands c:\webapp\install, linux like all unixlike OS's wants /usr/webapp/install, so when the app wants c:/webapp/install and I don't know this it causes...issues. Atleast now I have stage 1 of the upgrade done, now on to stage 2.

So 2010 was quite a year for me, and had a ton of stuff happen. angie_di were still living together, and planning a wedding. I'd originally wanted to wait till she turned 25, but we talked about it at length and realized it wasn't going to make any difference, and she really liked the idea of getting married in 2010. In February I had a couple "straw that broke the camels back" events happen that lead me to start very actively hunting for work...which proved fortuitous in that a former coworkers boss was changing jobs and they needed an IS administrator to replace him. I applied, and ended up being offered the position. It wasn't quite what I'd expected, they'd reworked it from a management to a technical position, with the superintendent handling the management. That lasted about a week :-) and i took over most all aspects of the job.

All that happened in Feb to April, and as a condition of hire I told them I needed the RenFaire weekends off, as well as the time to get married off. One of the managers interviewing me laughed when I told him that I needed time off to get married, and said it wouldn't be a problem, they'd just class it as bereavement leave. I chuckled at it, but knew angie_di would be atleast a touch miffed by it all.

Renfaire was good, though exhausting. I was flying home Thursday's night, and racing for the airport Sunday night to fly back to work, so I didn't get to see Strike or any of that. Since I was landing in Fairbanks at midnight, and my bus was at 5am, I was just napping in the airport, so I wasn't getting much rest. Made for a long LONG Monday there. While this was all going on we were finishing up the last of the coordination for getting everyone to Reno for our wedding. angie_di's best friend C was her maid of Honor and bulldog_ak was my Best (wo)Man and we made sure they were there.

I flew home on Monday June 28th and we headed for Reno the next evening. To make this trip even more interesting and nerve wracking, I had dropped my phone causing it to really REALLY want to self discharge in about 30 minutes, and her phone stopped working because her mom found an iPhone 4 and bought it for her, so her old phone quit working as soon as they activated the new one. Made coordinating with people when we landed fun. We did manage to find everyone and start getting things setup. She'd decided that she wanted her father to perform the ceremony, and in Nevada thats not a simple thing to setup like it is in AK. She did get it done though.

The next day I went to the Apple Store to see if my phone was fixable, and ended up with a new phone. Sadly not an iPhone 4, but they warranty replaced the 3GS. Can't complain there really. We went shopping around town, and generally just killed time. The next day we collected the rest of the wedding party from the airport, and then went shopping again, and got a marriage license(simultaneously nerve wracking and calming) while checking out the location...which was weird because I'd never seen any photos of Reno but the Riverwalk was exactly what I'd pictured it to be. My parents arrived that evening and we all went out to dinner together so everyone could meet and greet and get to know each other.

Since our wedding would be a 1234am, we spent the 2nd racing around getting ready. I hunted up things to decorate the room with and her favorite wine while she was getting her hair done, and then we went to In&Out to get dinner for everyone before the ceremony. After dinner they headed to her parents room at the hotel downtown(not were we were staying) and got ready while I got ready at our hotel.

Everyone met up at the hotel downtown, and I told everyone that She wanted to be married at 1234am but since timing that to happen would be near impossible, not to look at watches or cellphones or anything..we'd just declare whenever we finished as 1234am. They all came down, and sent most of the wedding party on to the site on the riverwalk ahead of them so I wouldn't see her till she got there. Got down there and I was standing looking at a little water fountain taking a moment to collect myself...I was seriously nervous about it. Later she confided in me that standing above us seeing me there and not over at the site, she was worried I was about to change my mind. I wasn't, but I needed that moment to myself.

We went though with the ceremony, with me flubbing a line(which she'll never let me forget :-) but otherwise getting though it all. We were pronounced, kissed, and stepped back...only to hear her brother the wiseass say "I know we're not supposed to look at the time, but did you realize its 1234am?" I pulled out my phone and amazingly...it was 1234. We'd gotten it down to the minute perfectly...come to find out later, she'd wanted us to START at 1234, but hey, it worked out well and we had a good omen to start off married life. We both raced to update our facebook status after that :-)

The wedding was some wonderful amazing chaos, followed by the reception 3 weeks later which was practically rained out. I'm SO glad she talked me into buying the big tents we got. Honeymoon-wise we did what we're calling a pseudo-moon and took one of my RnR weeks and flew to Sitka and wandered around so she could show me all her favorite spots and I should show her all my favorite spots. It was a nice relaxing time.

That pretty much is what has been consuming my life, a new job I love, and a wife I love more than I can begin to express.

I suffered a catastrophic containment failure on the dashboard donuts in my truck today on the goat trail that thinks it's a road to Petersville. The donuts are still ok though, its just the containment.

And I'm betting less than a dozen people will actually know what this means. The end of an era comment is because the containment system in question has been in place since May of 2003, and finally came apart today.

I've now been married 2 days, 2 hours and 8 minutes.

I spent today swimming with my wife, her best friend and maid of honor, and my best man bulldog_ak, then went to In & Out Burger for dinner and drove to Nevada beach on Lake Tahoe to watch the South Lake Tahoe Fireworks with my parents. We had a blast...on the half mile walk from the beach back to the cars, we were trying to reconnect our 2 groups and bulldog_ak called out "Marco!" and probably 15 people within an 1/8th mile section of walkway called out "Polo". It was hilarious

...I'm married. Holy crap...

8300 photos culled out to 2180 marginally postable images. I've never been as disappointed with my work as I am with this years Ren Faire photos. I'm so exhausted its not funny.

But, here you go!

2010 3 Barons Ren Faire!

I got up to a msg that my ICQ number was in use on another computer this morning, and when I tried to log in it said my password was incorrect. I'll bet anything if I try to communicate with whoever took it they'll answer in cyrillic. I've seen several friends accounts get usurped by russian speakers...apparently ICQ is the hot IM client over there, and theres alot of status to low UIN numbers. And with an account number of 288798 it doesn't get alot lower.

Ah well...the last person that IM'd me there was Earl, and before that it had been atleast a year since anyone contacted me there. Still, it was my first IM client.

Urgh...

Over the years I've changed and updated my organization structure for photos a few times. The biggest event I shoot each year is the 3 Barons Ren Faire, and the internal org structure for those has also evolved. Over the past couple weeks I've been going back into those old photos and updating the org structure to match the current structure I'm using. Tonight I finally finished getting the 2002-2007 photos updated. Whew!

I was debating doing a complete import of my entire photo library into Lightroom(I've never imported my back catalog in, just what I've shot since I started using it) and then exporting to Smugmug, but I'd have to go though and rate and keyword everything, and I'm thinking thats too big a project to tackle for something that a few dozen people might look at for nostalgia. So I'm just taking the resized for webposting directories and updating them(will be much faster to port across than it was to setup everything I've just done) to current standards and then posting those. That gets the web resolution photos up for people to look at and I won't go insane doing the work. I'll still do the bulk import of all the full res photos, but I can take my time rating them based on what I've posted.

I feel somewhat accomplished now.