The Mid-State Amateur Radio Club is offering a 1 day class on Saturday, February 11th, 2012 from 8a.m. to 4p.m. Testing will begin at 4pm. The class is free with lunch provided. Students are recommended to pre-purchase the ARRL Ham Radio License Manual and pre-register. This will be a condensed class and we recommend students study the material before the class. Books are available for purchase for $29.95 at www.arrl.org, testing is $15.00.

Location: Johnson County Emergency Management Agency
1000 Hospital Road, Franklin, IN
Basement conference room.

For more information Email secretary@midstatehams.org

Because it is a point and shoot, I didn’t have near the control I am used to. This led to some interesting effects, or as I call them, happy accidents. Such as this shot which sort of looks like a galaxy. I was shooting handheld which caused squiggles and the glowing white orb bottom right is a street light. When you get to the party late you get stuck with an obstructed view.

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Yet another one resembling a galaxy, the squiggles are more pronounced in this one.

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This one just looked cool!

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Last but not least the colors in this one were nice.

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I would have loved to show you a shot of the finale but it was several bursts ran together so the photo is just a burnt out mess.

See ya later!

I have a wedding to shoot this Saturday, for family so it’s not a paid event. Too bad, I love making money!

I would love to sit here and yap all night but Good Eats is one and I love that show. See ya tomorrow!

Thankfully, I was at my computer around the time he started his attack. I was able to head it off before it got too far. I did lose a few things, but nothing I can’t get back.

I am still out there taking pictures. This week is busy. I have scheduled a few portrait sessions plus the worldwide photowalk is this Saturday. Things should slow down a bit here after July. Next week is fair week and I always have to make a few appearances there and take photos too.

See you all soon!
God bless

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My church is having Kidz Kamp this week. It is going to consume my evenings since I am the photo guy. My family is taking part in a community yard sale Saturday, that is eating up my mornings trying to get stuff together.

Is summer over yet?

Really, that good?

Huh, mine wasn’t so hot, as you can tell by the title of the post.

Want to know what happened that made my holiday weekend suck? Too bad, I’m telling you anyway.

It started out normal enough, the neighborhood pool was opening that Saturday so the girls and Becky decided to go enjoy that for a few hours. To make it even more amusing, they decided to drag me along, I don’t swim so all I do is sit in the shade and sulk while they swim.

When that bit of joy was over we decided to hit up the little carnival/fish fry that a local church was having. I asked if we could please stop somewhere and get me a Mountain Dew, gotta have it! Becky needed gas anyway so we went to one of the local inconvenience marts and tried to get this accomplished. I stayed outside and worked on gassing the car while Becky went in and got sodas. This is where things really started to go wrong!

I usually pay by card at the pump. I slid my card through and after a few seconds it says “invalid card”, what, what the heck does that mean? I try again and still get nothing. I walk into the store where Becky is getting ready to checkout, I inform her of the problem so she goes and tries it with her card while I try and pay for the sodas. No luck, my card won’t work inside either. We leave the building with no sodas and one not so happy daddy. Becky tells me her card won’t work either!

Our bank is just next door so we decide to take a quick drive to their ATM and see what is going on. Well, unfortunately their ATM was out of service, big surprise there. We drive to the next bank over and try to get a withdrawal there only to be informed that we have insufficient funds! What, I made sure the deposit was there Friday, I payed a few bills, but nothing that would drain the bank account.

At this point, I am furious. I tell Becky we should go ahead and go to the carnival/fish fry and try to enjoy it, we can go home and see what happened later. We get to the carnival and it is HOT, boiling hot and they are holding it on their blacktop driveway. I do not enjoy myself, mostly because it is so hot but partly due to the fact that I am fuming over the bank problem. We leave after an hour, since we don’t have money we aren’t getting any fish!

When we get home I head straight for the computer. I go to our bank site and look up our account, what I found darn near made me cry! See one of the bills I paid was to my ex-employer for my COBRA payment. I gave them a check for$185. When I checked my account it showed that the check had been cleared not just once but twice. Once for $185 and once for $10,124.86! Well, my account did not have that much in it, not even close, my fury turned to rage!

I called my ex-employers home number and informed them of what had happened. It appears that when the check was ran it went through alright but the next check they ran went under my account instead of the correct one. Alright, it’s 2:00pm on a Saturday, there’s no one at the bank. As a matter of fact, it’s a holiday weekend, there won’t be anyone there till Tuesday AND I AM BROKE!

So I spent most of my weekend sitting around and fuming over this whole mess. I started in with the phone calls early today and as of this writing everything seems to be back in order, except that my entire weekend was shot!

All photos can be clicked to enlarge!

Suffer the King

Yes I broke the cardinal rule of concert shooting and used a flash. I couldn’t help it though as I don’t have any fast lenses yet. The best I have is still 3.5 wide open, I really need a 1.8 at least, but 1.4 preferably. Anyway, this next shot is of the singer, who has the coolest name in the band IMHO.

Jeff

Did I mention that I shot most of the show in RAW mode, which made it even more of a challenge for me since I had to figure out what all the different sliders in the conversion program do! Next up is my buddy Quentin, he’s a really good guy, which makes me wonder why he puts up with me? Quentin has some mad bass skills and is showing them off here, granted you can’t tell since this is a still photo, but you can pretend or go to their mySpace page that I linked earlier.

Quentin

Next up we have the guitar wizard himself Dan, who by the way is hilarious. He reminds me of myself when I get going, only he is actually funny!

Dan

Last but not least we have the drummer, whom I could not for the life of me get a good shot of because every time he looked up someone got in front of me.

Derek

I hope I got everyones names right, I had to write them down from memory and as you all know, my memory is pretty poor! Suffer the King rocked the show Saturday night and I can’t wait to see them again!

Since I am miserable at the moment I am going to cut this short!

Tired

Originally uploaded by Jeff A

If you want to see the shots the rest of the group took then go HERE

Anyway this is Anna’s room, now pink and purple with pink and purple polka dots!

First up, the bed. Sorry about the blown out highlights on the window, I was too lazy to retake it.

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Next up, how about those closet doors nestled in that purple wall!

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And finally, a few of the polka dots. She wanted us to do more but we told her less is more, besides, they were a pain in the tush.

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I hope you enjoyed this tour through my little princesses castle.