Mail today
The mail just got here, and check out what came:
There you have it…proof that I have an honest-to-god liberal arts BA. Wouldn’t want people to think I was exaggerating.
Trip to Saugatuck
Erin had the day off yesterday, and I got my errands done early, so we decided to go for a drive. We ended up in Saugatuck, where we climbed the majestic Mount Baldhead and ate lunch.
Mt. Baldhead was actually a set of stairs up a dune, with a trail that led to the beach. It was pretty cool. There weren’t many people around, and even though it was windy, it was really warm. It feels pretty nice to hike in January without a jacket.
I brought my new digital camera, and have reconfigured my blog to use wordpress and NextGEN Gallery (a topic for another day). Here are the results. (warning: the full size images are huge)
Edit — I’ve re-sized the images. They’re not nearly as big.
At this point, these images have been compressed a bit by me, and by the gallery plugin. There is a lot of noise that isn’t in the originals. I’m really impressed by the pictures that this camera takes.
Textbooks for sale
Erin and I have been accumulating textbooks for a few semesters now. I’ve been meaning to sell them on Amazon, but hadn’t gotten around to it (until today). I posted 42 books; the face value I set was more than 800 dollars. We’ll get maybe 75-80% of that, after Amazon’s cut and shipping, but it’s beats the bookstore prices by a lot.
I’m not terribly attached to my textbooks. Between libraries, online journals, and digital books, actual books are just another way of storing the information — and a pretty inconvenient one at that. I’m happy to get as much money out of them as possible. By purchasing used books online, and selling them back online, you can really keep costs down. I was saving a couple hundred bucks each semester compared to bookstore prices.
Anyways, it makes checking my email fun, because each new message is money in my account.
– Edit –
So far customers have paid a total of $263.67 (including the shipping fee). After Amazon’s charges, I’ve banked $210.18. Not too shabby.
New Digital Camera
So I received some money from relatives for graduation, and figured it was time for a digital camera. I bought a 35mm SLR a few years back; in retrospect it was a mistake. It’s a blast to use, and takes great pictures, but film just doesn’t make sense anymore. Mostly when I take pictures I want to use them on the computer, and film costs a fortune to shoot. For decent processing, I bet it averages $5-10 per roll, and I don’t shoot fancy film.
I decided on a Sony Cybershot DSC-H3. I also considered the Panasonic Lumix TZ3 and the Canon Powershot SX100-IS. My price cap was $250, and I was looking for something fairly small, with a decent optical zoom, image stabilization, and some manual control options. There were a few other models that were larger, and a few that had some nice features (I really like the Olympus weatherproof models), but these three interested me the most.
I’m glad I tried them before buying, because it was an easy choice with the cameras in hand. The Canon had more manual control, and nice controls/interface, but was too slow. Autofocus took too long, and the shutter lag on unfocused shots was terrible. The Panasonic would be my second choice. It was small and sleek, performance was very snappy, and the controls were comfortable. I decided against it because it lacked any manual control options, and because of the impressive performance of the Sony.
It’s fast… The camera powers on and is ready in a couple seconds — fast enough to just grab the camera and shoot. Autofocus was noticeably faster than the other models, and shutter lag is negligible.
I don’t feel like writing a crazy-detailed review; there are plenty of them online already. So far I like it a lot. It seems to take nice sharp pictures, and I love how fast it is. It’s nice to have so much zoom available in such a small camera, and the stabilization helps a lot at slow shutter speeds.
It does have a couple drawbacks. I’d like a wider angle lens; I think it’s a 38mm-380mm equivalent. The 28mm lens on the Panasonic was nice. I also wish it had a standard USB cord. The cord has a proprietary plug and contains both the USB and audio/video connections. I’m sure it would cost an arm and a leg to replace.
But other than these, it’s great. I’m looking forward to figuring it out.
Update
So it’s pretty clear that I didn’t keep up this blog very well, I’ve been wrapping up the last semester in my undergrad. Last Saturday I had my graduation ceremony, and I’ll be finished with my finals on Thursday. I’ll be the proud recipient of a BA in international relations from James Madison College at MSU.
As a result of graduating, I’m getting kicked out of my student apartment, and losing my student job. I hear that you’re supposed to get a job after college, so I’ve lined something up (I hope).
Currently, the bulk of my non-studying time is being spent cleaning and packing up our old apartment. The new place is a lot nicer, I’ll get some pictures up ASAP.
Movies in class
Can’t stand watching movies in class. I end up writing blog entries to stay awake.
Kennan was smart
I read the following quote in some of my IR reading: “There is more respect to be won in the opinion of this world by a resolute and courageous liquidation of unsound positions than by the most stubborn pursuit of extravagant and unpromising objectives.”
George Kennan said this to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1966, in regards to US policy in Vietnam. They could stand to hear it again.
What a crappy student I am
I’m writing this from the MSU library, and I’m pondering what a crap-tastic student I really am. In order to get any work done at all, I have to put myself in a truly hellish situation (the basement of the library, next to a sniffly kid), and force myself to stay until my work is done.
If I’m comfortable at all, I get distracted. They say that when you’re a student, school is your job. Maybe so, but I’ve never gotten the kind of job satisfaction out of school that I’ve gotten out of any of my crummy student jobs.
7.25 per hour inspires a better work ethic in me then earning a college degree.
That being said, I did just draft out an excellent reading memo for tomorrow, and ideas for my research proposal are bouncing around in my head. I suppose I can deal with sniffly kid for a couple more hours.
Seriously though, the bathroom (and the tissues contained within) are 10 feet away, but he just keeps sniffling. He must have about a gallon of snot wiped down his arm at this point.
Marquette is beautiful
So I’m spending the weekend in Marquette. What a beautiful place. My friend Ann and I did some hiking today, and you really don’t have to go far to see some amazing places. I find it so refreshing; East Lansing really falls short for me in that respect. There’s not much (clean) water around, which is a big change from Manistee. Rose Lake (PDF warning) is nice, and not far at all, but there’s something special about the Great Lakes.
Anyways, I didn’t even bring a camera, because I didn’t want to be bothered with taking pictures. (So you’ll just have to imagine it)
Amelia the Millenia is ill, but it’s nothing serious.
My car, a ‘96 Mazda Millenia (christened Amelia, by my sister) is temporarily out of commission. After a short drive last night, I noticed steam belching out from under the hood in a bad way. It was entirely out of antifreeze, and I figured it would be a bad water pump, or worse, a head gasket. Hell, even most of the hoses would be a serious pain in the ass to change. Mazda built a nice car, but they sure as hell didn’t make it easy to work on.
Turns out it was a hole in the one radiator hose that’s actually easy to replace. Gotta love it when you luck out.
My Twitter- hunter186: So far, twitter has proved useless and annoying. I'm going dark.
- hunter186: Hell yeah! observing a demo class today! no morning classes.
- hunter186: No teaching today! Hooray for standardized tests! (when I don't have to take them)
- hunter186: The Wire is f-ing sweet. Hooray for our Korean fiber-to-the-door internet!
