random chitchat

[bonnie]

for some reason, I'm thinking of one of my first posts on TMC ...

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(this whole discussion is going to look really random when I change my avatar)

 

[NigelM]

Pink Tesla's

No, really: teslas-strange-motorized-pink-bunny-slippers

Tesla Motors -- maker of the Tesla Roadster -- recently demonstrated a strange pair of motorized pink bunny slippers.

 

[brianman]

Major Geeks. Geek 'till it mhz.

MHz

It's not funny as "milli".

 

[NigelM]

Another pink Roadster:

 

[Grendal]

Not sure whether to put this here because of it's entertainment value or energy and environment. Absolutely fabulous stuff from The Daily Show:

An Energy-Independent Future - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - 06/16/10 - Video Clip | Comedy Central

 

[JRod0802]

...there is that new avatar of yours.

We could talk about that, but...

Got an idea for your next avatar:

(might have to crop it though)

 

[bonnie]

awwwwww ....

 

[TEG]

And we know how to keep that car shiny:

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Got an idea for your next avatar...

I'm thinkin' "Albino Turtle"...

 

[NigelM]

I'm thinkin' "Albino Turtle"...

Albino turtles rarely survive very long in the wild; they are much too visible to predators and get eaten at an early age. If they avoid being eaten they'll usually suffer from sunburn until an infection of one sort or another gets them. This is a picture of Edgar, a Loggerhead Turtle who survived almost 19 years in our hospital. She (yes she, there was a mix up when she first arrived at the hospital!) was named after Edgar Winter. Rather than being albino Edgar the Turtle actually suffered from amelanism:

 

[vfx]

The slower white meat

 

[daniel]

I'm back. And I'm sad to be back. This summer's hiking was the best yet. I don't do pictures anymore, but I'm hoping that they'll send me some good pictures they took. Here's me swimming in a freezing cold glacier-fed lake, something I have refused to do until this year, and now that I've done it I'll never do it again!!!

I hiked at Lake Louise, Alberta and at two different wilderness lodges, one in the Rockies near Golden, B.C., and one in the Selkirk mountains near Revelstoke, B.C. The last is my favorite place in the entire world. This was my 7th time there, and this year I spent 3 weeks there, with 3 days off in the middle to rest and do laundry. I reached two summits I'd never been on before, including one that involved a very long ridge scramble that in prior years I was too scared to do, and with a private guide I went exploring in a number of spectacularly cool and beautiful locations that they don't normally take guests to because they're off the beaten path, or are longer hikes than most folks want to do, or too difficult to take groups on, or because they involve hiking down in the morning and up in the afternoon, which is the opposite of what most of their guests want to do.

Now it's ten months before I can go back. :crying:

They do ski touring in winter, but I don't ski and I don't like cold.

I'll post more pictures if they send them to me.

 

[bonnie]

Welcome back, Daniel - looks like a great time!

 

[daniel]

In another thread, Johann Koeber offers an invitation to Nuremburg to the first person to get the correct answer to his riddle concerning an incredibly efficient Roadster trip. I hereby offer an invitation to Spokane to anyone who does not get the correct answer to Johann's riddle. (Including people who do not bother to offer an answer, since if you don't offer an answer, you didn't get the right answer.) Since he does not say whether or not he will pay your way to get there, or your expenses while there, I assume he will not. I also will not pay your way to Spokane or your expenses while here. But I'll give rides in my Roadster and take you out to lunch if you come to Spokane to visit me, providing I am not flooded with requests, which is unlikely since I don't expect anyone to come to Spokane to visit me. I'll also give rides in the Porsche, if I have it and if it's in drivable condition. It's supposed to be done with the latest round of fixes by the 23rd of this month. Who knows?

 

[TEG]

...I hiked at Lake Louise, Alberta...

Since this is Random Chit-Chat.
I once took a trip to Banff and took lots of pictures. One roll of film I sent in for processing (back in the Kodachrome/Ektachrome 35mm days), came back mixed up from the processor. I got a roll of slides of someone's dental surgery (ick!). Someone else, a dentists office I assume, got my roll of lake photos including a bunch of (what I think were probably nice) pictures of chipmunks coming right up to my camera and staring point-blank into the macro lense. I always wonder how well those photos turned out. I had really been looking forward to seeing them. I harbor a conspiracy theory that someone at the processing office liked my slides and swapped them out with some junk slides.
I sent a letter and they said "These situations usually get sorted out... As soon as the other party contacts us, we will arrange to swap them back." Well, apparently the "other party" never came forward with my slides and left me stuck with the tooth/gum surgery pictures... :cursing:

 

[brianman]

Since this is Random Chit-Chat.
I once took a trip to Banff and took lots of pictures. One roll of film I sent in for processing (back in the Kodachrome/Ektachrome 35mm days), came back mixed up from the processor. I got a roll of slides of someone's dental surgery (ick!). Someone else, a dentists office I assume, got my roll of lake photos including a bunch of (what I think were probably nice) pictures of chipmunks coming right up to my camera and staring point-blank into the macro lense. I always wonder how well those photos turned out. I had really been looking forward to seeing them. I harbor a conspiracy theory that someone at the processing office liked my slides and swapped them out with some junk slides.
I sent a letter and they said "These situations usually get sorted out... As soon as the other party contacts us, we will arrange to swap them back." Well, apparently the "other party" never came forward with my slides and left me stuck with the tooth/gum surgery pictures... :cursing:

I'm really curious what the dentists thought of the chipmunks' dental health.

 

[FalconNinetyD]

Reminds me of a story from one of our family vacations as a kid. It was 1977 or so, and we took a cruise to the Caribbean. My dad befriended another passenger, who told him wild stories of being a French spy/inventor. My dad was a little skeptical of the stories, but was entertained nonetheless. The gentleman did not want to have his picture taken, which just made my dad even more determine to snap a shot of him, which he did surreptitiously.

When we returned home, my dad dropped something like 10 rolls of film in the photo developer slot at Fedco. Can you guess which one roll failed to get delivered back to us?

 

[daniel]

Since this is Random Chit-Chat.
I once took a trip to Banff and took lots of pictures. One roll of film I sent in for processing (back in the Kodachrome/Ektachrome 35mm days), came back mixed up from the processor. I got a roll of slides of someone's dental surgery (ick!). Someone else, a dentists office I assume, got my roll of lake photos including a bunch of (what I think were probably nice) pictures of chipmunks coming right up to my camera and staring point-blank into the macro lense. I always wonder how well those photos turned out. I had really been looking forward to seeing them. I harbor a conspiracy theory that someone at the processing office liked my slides and swapped them out with some junk slides.
I sent a letter and they said "These situations usually get sorted out... As soon as the other party contacts us, we will arrange to swap them back." Well, apparently the "other party" never came forward with my slides and left me stuck with the tooth/gum surgery pictures... :cursing:

Just one more reason not to take pictures. :crying:

I actually stopped taking hiking pictures because year after year, they all look about the same. Tiny pocket-sized point-and-shoot.

I went diving one time where my buddy for nearly every dive spent the entire dive with his camera right in front of his face. Afterwards, he shared his pictures with the group. Not a single picture was worth saving. He was a good dive buddy, but a lousy photographer.

One time on an island off Belize, there was a guy in the group about whom a rumor circulated, that if we learned his real name, he'd be somebody extremely well-known. Nobody offered any guesses, though.

 

[vfx]

Another icky.

As a photography student I once got a tour of a photo lab where they high speed processed 10's of thousands of photo prints on paper strip rolls 100's of feet long. This was nightly from the thousands of rolls of film brought into the chain stores. Correspondingly they have thousands of rejects of prints for a myriad of reasons and those paper rolls spaghetti-like filled rows of massive recycling containers the size of a small car.

Here's the icky.

One of the lab employees was very prolific in rummaging through the bins and cutting out blurry, dark, and innocent pictures of women and girls in bras, topless, etc. and saving them for his own...

 

[mt2]

Back in my early 20's I worked at a drug store behind the photo counter. Every day we'd put all the undeveloped film in a light proof bag and some guy would pick them up and take them to the lab while dropping off yesterday's prints. One day while driving to work (on a major road in a large town), I spotted a film bag in the middle of the road. I pulled over, dodged traffic, and grabbed the bag. Back in my car, I read the label. Yikes! It was undeveloped rolls from the store I worked in!

Don't think I ever learned how many people lost priceless photos, but the bag had been run over at least a couple of times. I think of that every time I grab the digital camera nowadays.

 

[TEG]

Random indeed.