and again

How do I keep forgetting to update this?  Huh? HUH?

I even REMINDED myself to write something here yesterday - and immediately forgot to do so.  See, I had to go into the office last night for a number of trivialities - a truly bogus conference call to go over various types of alarms and how to respond to them (uh...we've been doing this for the better part of a year, folks.  We know what to do), mapping the layout of the call center workstations (why this had to be done last night - or any night, for that matter - is beyond me), and four separate systems updates with which I had nothing to do.  So my plan was to sit at my desk and type an entry...and I completely forgot the plan.  I ended up asking a bunch of questions that everyone knew the answers to on the alarms call, had a great time turning workstations on, writing down their host names in my little notebook, and putting together a pretty decent floor plan in an excel spreadsheet.  I even tried to pay attention for about 5 minutes during the first systems call; but, as I usually do when I'm on a call that doesn't involve me, I lost interest and eventually just left at around midnight.

YesterDAY at work wasn't much more exciting than last night was.  I finally got my laptop reimaged yesterday afternoon and spent much of the day reinstalling programs on it - many of them not approved by the corporate software Nazis (things like Office 2013, Visual Studio 2012, and various other apps that I use on a daily basis).

Today was more of the same.  Installed a few more programs that I need, helped a technician who was having problems during an install at a customer's house, helped the IT guy (who's job I want) set up some command center workstations, paid some bills, wrote some code, drank some coffee, and left.

Then the fun began - or at least a little fun began.  Today was bonus day - that glorious one day a year when we get our obscenely-large bonus check.  Traditionally, I take the opportunity to pay off a credit card or a car - or make some other large and relatively responsiblee payment; and I also buy myself a toy that I otherwise wouldn't.  Past toys have included a new refrigerator, a camera upgrade, a nice lens - one year I put a down payment on new windows; but this year I'm still waffling on whether or not I'm going to get a new car, so I didn't really want to spend a great deal on my toy.  True, I've had my eye on the Canon D1x since I rented it several times last season - and I had indeed considered making it the 2013 bonus toy - but after much thought, I decided that I'll just rent it a few more times this year rather than dropping $3000 on it.  I'd dearly love to have one of the things at my beck and call, but I'd also dearly love to be debt free and/or behind the wheel of a Subaru Outback (maybe I'll talk about my car research in tomorrow's post); so in the end I went with a much cheaper toy, but one that has also been catching my eye for the last couple of years: a GoPro sports camera.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that there is absolutely no way to consider this purchase to be anything other than a big boy's toy.  It is highly unlikely that I'm going to be shooting any footage for National Geographic, Alpine Ski commercials, or the Survivorman television series - although the little camera that I got for myself is indeed capable of doing any of those things (as you'll see if you go to the link I provided).  No, this is strictly for the type of filming that I've wanted to do for years, but the hardware to do it was always ridiculously expensive and/or crappy.  The GoPro Hero3 that I bought shoots high-definition video (or 12MP stills); is waterproof, shockproof, crushproof, and coldproof; weighs in at about 2 ounces; and can be mounted on virtually anything - a bicycle, a shoe, my wrist, chest or head, a car, a roller blade....or a tripod.  My camping buddy Brett and I have been experimenting with hiking videos since about 2000, and I now have the camera that will let me do some of those sequences that we've never been able to do.

First up, however, I'm going to see if I can do a time-lapse film of the trip from Atlanta to Chicago.  It'll be a fun way for me to get used to the camera, and I do love time-lapse stuff.

So roll your eyes all you want to.  It's my toy.

TWD