News: May 2001

PBS re-ran last year's Frontline special on the life and times of Kip Kinkle, the 15-year old Thurston High School shooter who also greased his parents for good measure before going on his rampage. There may have been some sentiment by family friends that the Kinkle parents were loving and concerned about Kip, but this video should have been subtitled "How Not To Raise a Child."

It was in many ways a chilling look at a terribly dysfunctional family. The parents were wrapped up in the careers and had very little time or interest in what was best for Kip. It was clear from the home videos played during the show that Kip was an unwanted son who was constantly compared to an overachieving older sister. Kip's father was at best emotionally withdrawn, at worst a jerk of a guy. Case in point: He was happy to send Kip to counseling but refused to go himself. Ultimately, you see a sad little boy obsessed with the worst that today's culture has to offer, which is to say guns, violence, and death.

The video was somewhat overproduced and the narrator had an annoying vocal tone, but enough source material was used that they couldn't help but present a chilling picture of a child turned into a killer. Indeed, my only major qualm—and by this I mean I was furious—with this work is that, like much of the media, a lot of made of how "normal" this family was, the implication being that if it can happen to these "normal" folks, it can happen to anyone.

Well, that's just a load of junk, and don't let the fear-mongering media convince you otherwise. This was not a normal family, and Kip Kinkle wasn't an unstoppable freak of genetics. He was the product of an environment that served to do nothing but frustrate him at every turn. If either of these parents could've coupled an ounce of compassion with half a clue they could've prevented this tragedy.

May 28, 2001
Returned to Portland this morning to pick up Dave at the airport. We stopped by CompUSA and Fry's Electronics, but no joy on low-priced Mac software, so we'd didn't end up buying anything. They didn't even have the pro stereo headphones I wanted. (What good is an electronics superstore if they don't have what you want?)

We got back in Salem just in time to meet Dave's brother Kevin at their parents' place and to help him unload all his stuff. That accomplished in short order, Dave and I return home to play with various consumer electronics and get Spook, his G3, updated to 9.1. Success on all accounts.

May 27, 2001
Up early to drive Dave to Portland so he could fly down to San Francisco, help his brother Kevin pack everything, go to sleep, and fly back tomorrow. Me? I was the willing taxi driver, made especially willing by the opportunity to drive Dave's 1998 Honda Odyssey.

Overall, this is an excellent minivan and very likely what Erin and I will end up with in a few years. That said, there were some "issues." First and foremost, the cab-forward design means the driver sits well back of the front of the car, making it impossible to see or judge the edges of the vehicle. This is less than good news for parking. Secondary and more minor issues would include the ability of adults to get into the third row of seats. It's okay for kids, but big people will have to really squish their way in (this may have changed substantially in the 1999 and later model year). Other than that, I didn't have any problems.

And there was a lot to like: Plenty of engine power, excellent cruise control, moon roof, stereo tape/CD, easy to use controls, ABS, good gas mileage of the size (we averaged over 25 m.p.g.) and so on. When Erin and I buy in a couple of years, I'm pretty sure that the minivans we'll look at will be the 1998 Honda Odyssey, the 1999 Honda Odyssey, and the Toyota Sienna. I'm betting any of them will be more than adequate.

After dropping Dave off, I spent the day at Garr's (over 12 hours!) trying to get his G4's hard drive back in action. By the end of it all, we had everything working and had updated the system to 9.1.

May 26, 2001
Erin and I carpooled with Matt and Ginger up to see Joe and Carol in Battleground. I passed around the S300 camera just so everybody could get a feel for it and shoot whatever shots they wanted. I've always hated it when somebody has a neat new toy, and I don't get a chance to play with it. So I wanted everyone who was interested to mess around with digital camera technology (which they may not have done before).

Well, that, plus I figured we'd get much more interesting shots than if I just waltzed around clicking at things. I figured right, and I'll try to post a few more images to the Gallery within the next few days.

May 25, 2001
Met Dennis for lunch downtown in the midst of a busy day of SiteRev.com work in Portland. Dennis was showing off a nice tan from the previous weekend's Reach the Beach bike ride which he described as an excellent time. If the stars will align properly, perhaps one of these years I'll be able to make that ride myself.

Anyway, we ate at an interestingly authentic Chinese place for lunch with Mike—an associate from my client's office and a friend of Dennis'. Thankfully, Mike did a lot of the ordering, or I'm sure I would've ended up with various unpalatable foods. In other words, the goose intestines didn't sound very yummy.

May 23, 2001
Hung out with Garr for much of today and tried like heck to fix his G4 tower machine which exhibited some of the worst hard drive corruption I've ever seen. By the end of the day, we'd run Tech Tool Pro, Norton Utilities, and Disk Warrior without any success. Finally, we decided to back up everything on the hard drive (18.2 GB) to CD-R dics (lots of them), and reformat the drive. Either this fixes it, or it's time to get a new hard drive.

Garr was still backing up at 9 PM when I had to leave, so we'll see how the whole reformatting thing goes in a few days.

While I was there, Garr played some cuts from the new loligo album, and let me tell you, it's gonna be a great one. Once we get close to release, I'll have news of it here and on loligomusic.com.

Good news! Erin's been offered a full-time contract for next year. So we've been debating the relative merits of a return to a full workload for her. As I've noted several times, this has been one of her best years teaching (if not the best outright), and it's been far and away the least stressful. More money is nice, but who cares if you can't enjoy it?

The contract, at this point, calls for three preps which would mean more students but no additional classes for which to make lesson plans. Erin believes she can do this three prep six class job without all that much additional time expenditure, so the early thought is for her to return to full-time for next year.

Still, we're also exploring what options are available as far as dropping a class in the years to come. For example, motherhood will probably exact a high price time-wise, and if she wants or needs to drop down to a part-time arrangement we want to make sure that's a doable proposition.

To a degree, it'll be a bit of an experiment if Erin goes full-time next year. Certainly she's much more experienced and savvy than she was, but how much of that accounts for her low-stress year and how much is just having fewer kids? If she's full-time next year, we'll see, and if it's the latter, expect a retreat to the latter for following years. You can't put a price on sanity!

May 22, 2001
Thank God for air conditioning. Ninety-five degrees in Portland today, and it would've been a lousy deal indeed to have had to program Perl or drive I-5 without A/C. As was, it was a little toasty, but today's unseasonably warm, record-setting high temperature proved survivable. Glad the forecast calls for lower temps for the remainder of the week, though.

May 20, 2001
Clouds of smoke in the house can only mean one of two things: Either I'm trying to cook again or there's a serious problem. Unfortunately, tonight we had the latter as our clothes dryer went belly-up with a fantastic billowing of smoke. At first I thought maybe it was a lint build up problem, but I checked the machine interior and the vent line, and nope, I'm pretty sure that the motor is toast.

This was a machine we got free from our friends Mike and Joy, and we remain deeply appreciative. The dryer has provided us with 18 months of much-needed service. It's an older machine—I'd guess 15+ years—so I'm confident we're past its expected life span. Heck, all things must pass, and I'm thrilled we got what we did out of it. When we received it we were in a lousy financial position to buy a washer or dryer (having just purchased the house). At this point, it's a bummer, but we're financially stable enough that we can afford a replacement.

In the meantime, I'll be researching dryers (early favorites are Maytag and Kenmore, but I'm open to suggestion), and we're working to mitigate the smoke smell we've got downstairs now. I'm sure we won't be getting anything this week: I'm in Portland Tuesday through Friday.

May 19, 2001
As one of the advisors, Erin's had her hands full leading up to the Senior Prom put on by the Junior class. And it's not like this evening's event came off without a hitch. It's more accurate to say that it came off despite numerous hitches: fences falling over, lights breaking, various plans changing in the last minutes, and so on. Nonetheless, the approximately 250 couples who attended seemed to have a fine time.

There was a need for chaperones, so obviously I was volunteered. I fixed lights, mingled with other chaperones, and took tickets. Not terribly exciting but hardly a rotten time either. Best news might have been that we didn't have to help with clean-up since Erin paid her dues in set-up. Works for me.

I've heard relatively little Gershwin, which is to say none to my knowledge, but I've recently been listening to "Rhapsody in Blue" (perhaps best known nowadays because United Airlines uses little segments of it for their theme song). Simply put, this song is an amazing achievement. It might clock in at over 16 minutes in length, but man, oh, man what a song.

May 17, 2001
I traveled up to Portland at the behest of the Red Cross who've declared a red alert for Type O Negative blood. Today's donation was pheresis, which meant lots of TLC for me, including getting to watch The Saint starring Val Kilmer on my own private VCR. Pretty cushy setup for donors nowadays.

In truth, though, this was one of the rougher donations I've had. I may advertise myself as God's gift to the world of blood donation, but my left arm has built up a considerable amount of scar tissue from past donations, and it's getting increasingly difficult to get the needle placed correctly. They had to adjust things quite a bit, which would've been uncomfortable if I'd not opted for a local anesthetic. As was, I didn't feel a thing. But from here on out whole blood donations come from the right arm.

After the donation, I wandered over to the Oregon Convention Center where the National Genealogical Society was holding their annual national conference. It's a shame I don't really have the time or money right now to participate in some of the seminars, but the expo was a good experience in and of itself, and I ended up buying a couple of books and making a few contacts with local professional genealogists. I need to think about it a little more, but I'm tempted to join NGS.

May 16, 2001
Tune-up time for Six, our '86 Mazda 626. New muffler, new wiring, oil change, change of filters, etc., etc. $475 when the day was done, which is relatively high for a tune-up, but the car had not had one in a long-time, and the wiring bit required a lot of labor. No car troubles in awhile—this tune-up was scheduled, not an emergency—and Six now purrs like a happy kitten. So I think it's money well spent.

Money that I would've like to have spent? $1200 for electrical work on the house. Instead, after weeks of delays, the electrician called today, apologized for everything, and said he had a major job at an apartment complex and that if I'm looking to have the work done any time soon, I should probably get somebody else.

Erin wasn't all that happy at this news since the guy's strung us along a bit, but I'm more philosophical. I don't think the guy was trying to hose us. He's just really busy, and he needs to go where he'll get the most cash. An apartment complex could keep him hopping for weeks. Yeah, he could've handled things a little better, but I'm not all that put out. I figure if nothing else, I've got a baseline bid for the work that needs to be done, and I can compare other electricians' bids against it. So it's not a complete loss even if it's gonna take us a little while longer to get the stuff done.

The big news of the day, though, was that I met with a remodeling company representative to begin dealing with the walkway overhang problem that Mark discovered last November. (Namely, the fact that of the three posts we have supporting the front walkway overhang, none of them actually touch the ground.) This meeting followed a similar one I had with the company last week—and today's turned into one of the more enlighting and shocking I've had in some time.

Apparently—and big points to Erin's mom Liz for her continual mention of this—we have a major water issue out front. The remodeling guy, Ed, termed it responsible for all the driveway and walkway concrete cracking and said that it really needed to be fixed by digging a trench along the front, putting in a PVC pipe with holes in the top (so that water drains into it), and sending the water away from the front of the house. Ed thinks the water in the strata of the earth is just coming down the hill and whacking our house anytime it rains moderately or heavily and that this represents a major issue over time. He also suggested that we pipe off the water from the down spouts (something we were planning on anyway).

So the water damage prevention effort and the post fix-it were the two issues we were dealing with. The post fix-it plan Ed described was more detailed than I would have expected or liked, but at least some of it had the ring of sense even if neither Erin nor I are particularly enamored of the walkway. I mean, we're hoping to push the kitchen and dining room into it in a few years when we do a big remodel, all of which I told them last week. Nonetheless, I got the sense during the presentation that Ed's plan called for fixing the water thing and building the Mother of All Walkways, which wasn't exactly what I'd signed up for, but, hey, estimates are free. And that's a good thing, right?

Well, sort of. Because let me tell you, seeing the estimated price for the trench-based water fix-it PVC pipe thing and the Taj Mah Hall of walkways absolutely stunned me. I mean, think about it: It's a trench with some pipe, a new sidewalk to the front door, and three posts cemented into the ground. What should that cost? I was thinking maybe in the $2,000 to $3,000 range. Tops.

Well, I'm excited to be the one to tell you that $3,000 wasn't one-tenth of the estimated price. That's right. Ed handed me a estimated price of $38,000 to $44,000. What do I look like, a lottery winner?

I was civil at the time, but in hindsight I feel insulted more than anything else. Clearly, they paid little attention to the job I described to them and instead presented the job that would make them the most money.

Looks like we'll be doing some of this work ourselves this summer, or acting as our own General Contractor. And if you thought $38k-$44k was scary, wait until I try to make sense of a major fix-it project like this. You don't know terror until you see me attempt home improvement.

May 15, 2001
I've been doing a little online genealogy work in my spare time over the last few days, and I hope to have a substantive update to the Genealogy section within the next couple of weeks. (I made a minor update a day or two ago.) An ever-increasing amount of information with genealogical ramifications is coming online (and I don't mean here), and I'm especially pleased to have met several distant cousins via email in recent days.

I'm still trying to put together Dr. Asa Lee Davison and his Descendants, my long-awaited (by me anyway) family history starting with my great grandfather. As I say, with luck I'll have bits of it online soon.

The biggest benefit of genealogy, to my mind, has to do with a particular phenomenon known as "pedigree collapse." The way it works is this: If any one of us were to trace back our lineage 30 generations, and if we were to compile that list of ancestors, what we'd find is that the number of people we're talking about is in the billions (2³⁰, to be exact). Now given that 30 generations ago the world only held about 400 million people, we're confronted with an interesting truth. No, not aliens from outer space.

It's that we all marry our cousins. Or perhaps a better mind-blower: Your mom and dad are cousins, too. I don't mean to imply that they pulled a Jerry Lee Lewis, but ultimately, yeah, they're kissing cousins. Because we all are.

That's right. If you trace any two people's genealogy back far enough, you'll find that we're all related one way or another. We're 9th cousins twice removed and eleventh cousins once removed and we've got half aunts and uncles and everything. This is called pedigree collapse because the lines of the family tree "collapse" into one another. It's a fascinating quirk of statistics with broader implications.

I use pedigree collapse (and genealogy in general) as a reminder that when we take this historical perspective on human existence, we see that there is more that unites us than divides us. Some day perhaps that notion will lead us to stop building our various multicultural enclaves, and instead of focusing on the diversity and differences between people, we'll have tee-shirts and bumper stickers which read "Celebrate Commonality."

To my mind, it makes a lot more sense. Highlighting differences spark ideas of otherness, separateness, and inequality. Conversely, nobody goes to war because they have too much in common with the other fellow. Genealogy probably won't lead us to world peace, but it's a start.

May 12, 2001
The Davison clan assembled this afternoon to celebrate Mother's Day a day early. Since Bret was running a little late, Mom and I messed around with the S300 digital camera. She had the opportunity to shoot several shots including a series of Dad, none of which, I'm happy to inform her, will ever be posted to the Internet by me.

After Bret arrived we headed out for pizza at Pietro's (Mom's choice) then returned here for a few bocci ball games in the park. The uneven terrain made consistently good play next to impossible, but we all managed to get off several decent shots during the course of the afternoon and it pretty well evened out in the end. The weather was beautiful, and most importantly, I think Mom had a good day.

May 10, 2001
A quick shout-out to my homeys using the Amazon.com links in the For Sale section of this site to buy stuff. In particular, many thanks to whomever it was that picked up a couple Associated Press Stylebooks. It's not gobs of money headed my way, but I appreciate every bit.

We've got a weird scenario going on relating to the house refinance. When we bought the place 18 months or so ago, we prepaid the property mortgage insurance (PMI) by plopping down around $1300 at closing. This enabled us not to have to pay PMI on a monthly basis, and since we were prepaying on the mortgage, we'd get some portion of the money back eventually.

When we refinanced last month, the ratios shifted in our favor so that PMI is no longer necessary. I called our lender about getting our PMI money refunded. They gave me the number of the insurance company. The insurance company said that the a PMI certificate was taken out a couple days before we closed the deal back in October 1999, but no money was ever paid, so the certificate expired. Surprisingly, we've been going this whole time without PMI (at least from this insurance company—theoretically the lender could have lined up a different insurer and gotten lax with the paperwork).

Now not having PMI is no big deal from our perspective. If we had gone under financially, the ones hurt by lack of insurance would be our lender, not us. But the question that's being asked right now and the thing that has everybody puzzled is: Where in the world is our money?

The lender is researching and should have an answer in 6 to 9 business days. Keep ya posted.

May 9, 2001
I was elected to the Neighborhood Association Executive Board this evening, and already my head is beginning to swell with power. I have voting rights on any issue that comes before the Board and since we have a budget of approximately—and this is give or take a buck or two—zero dollars, it should be apparent that my level of political influence has grown by leaps and bounds. I now expect people to genuflect in my presence.

All that joshing aside, my goal here is to be active in the community without getting too active if you will. I have no political aspirations at this time—other than maybe fighting for one or two ballot measures—and don't intend on having any until I'm in my 40s (if then). It's not that I have better things to do with my time (though maybe I do, who knows?), it's that the hours are long and the pay stinks. Hehe. Or is that too much candor for a politician to have?

We started tonight's meeting with a talk by the mayor followed by short speeches from the president of the City Council and one of the Council members from our area. Good folks, and I like very much that they're open to suggestion (and I don't mean hypnotic suggestion, though maybe I'll try that next time I see one of them). True or not, I at least get the feeling that I can send ideas their direction and they'll be heard. I'm hoping I can generate the same feeling about me amongst my neighbors.

The 128 MB Compact Flash memory for the S300 camera arrived today, and I've been busy shooting everything I can find. At highest quality, I can get just over 200 shots in the camera. Frankly, I'm never gonna shoot that many at once unless I'm on a vacation or away from Trinity or something.

However, that much memory also gives me about 3 and a half minutes of 20 fps movie time, and I'm now thinking it might be fun to shoot a movie using this little thing, just to see what can be achieved. I'm not sure what the movie would be exactly—I can only shoot about 200 seconds of footage before I have to download to computer—but I should be able to take the clips and edit them in iMovie, Premiere, or Final Cut Pro. Sounds like a fun adventure to me.

(Anybody out there saying to themselves, "And this is why he doesn't want to commit too much time to politic endeavors?" To know me is to love me. Hehe.)

May 8, 2001
Up in Portland again yesterday for client work. Exhausting drive but fun job. I'll be going up again Thursday and maybe Friday, but in the meantime, I've had the chance to order upgrades for the PowerShot camera.

First and foremost, I've got a Compact Flash memory card with 128 MB on the way. That'll hold 128 of the best quality images at any one time, which should be more than enough considering I don't think I've ever shot more than 36 on a roll before. I've also ordered a CF to PCMIA Type II adapter so I can take the memory card out of the camera, put it in the adapter, and slide it into Trinity. I don't know that it will prove any more convenient than the USB cable, but it should be a little faster downloading images to the computer. The adapter was only $7, so I figured I'd give it a try. Finally, I order a second lithium-ion battery with the idea that this little gadget sucks energy like the California power grid with all of the state's air conditioners turned on. I'm also on the look out for a carry case and an AC adapter, but both items are apparently not available from Canon yet. All the additional widgets will up the final price of everything to just under $800, which is a little high, but given the capacities (and the fact that I'll never again pay film processing fees), I think it's justified.

I've posted a QuickTime VR file of our front yard in the Gallery. Be forewarned that it's 1.7 MB. It's neat and all, but if you're on dial-up you'll be waiting awhile. There's also a regular QuickTime movie and a couple of images. Check them out if you're so inclined.

At long last, I'm happy to introduce to you the beginning of what I'm sure will be a most fantastical web site. Yes, VanDriesche.com is now up and waiting for people like to you to pay a visit. Dave was kind enough to say some rather flattering things about yours truly, which is as compelling a reason as I can think of for me to send web surfers to a place on the Internet. So shoo! Go visit, and send him an email congratulating him on sending his ideas out into the electronic ether.

May 5, 2001
I finally had the chance to start futzing with my new Canon digital camera, and I'm ready to pronounce it a winner. (Like I'm gonna spend over $500 and pronounce the item a loser.) It syncs perfectly through USB with Trinity and the quality of the shots is excellent, at least for on-screen display. (I've not printed anything yet.) The camera is small enough to pretty much take anywhere, and once I get a bigger memory card for it (the 8 MB card it shipped with being insufficient in my opinion), I should be ready to go.

Right now, I'm really enjoying the integration of the Canon software into the MacOS. As soon as I attach the camera with the USB cable and turn it on, the software automatically launches and displays all the shots from the camera's memory. I can then download these to the computer, email shots, send them to Photoshop or Premiere for editing or whatever else I feel like. It's very easy, quick, and convenient.

The various shooting modes of the camera and how they integrate with the Canon software (and by extension the Mac) have me very excited. I went out into our front yard, put the camera in "stitch assist" mode and started shooting a panorama. After you shoot shot 1, the camera displays a portion of it on the built-in LCD so that you can line up the next shot and overlap the images. Doing this one shot after another, I got about 270 degrees around from where I started before the camera ran out of memory. (I did mention that the 8 MB card it comes with is insufficient and that I'm getting a 128 MB card, right?) After that I went to Trinity, hooked everything up, the software automatically launched, I downloaded the images off the camera and sent them into a Canon application called PhotoStitch. PhotoStitch took the images and automatically stitched them together to form a panoramic shot. The only work left for me to do was to save the image (which I did as a QuickTime VR). Impressive.

The movie mode has been a little bit trickier for me to figure out, bearing in mind that I've yet to read the directions. I've shot a couple of small movies, the results of which have been fair. As I've said before, this is clearly no movie camera. You're limited to 20 fps which is acceptable, but the audio, frankly, is terrible. Still, I consider this whole "movie mode" to be usable in a pinch, and that being the case, you've got the smallest video camera around in the PowerShot S300.

I've not done much shooting at night yet, so I don't know about the quality of the flash. Given the size of the camera I'd suspect it's not too great, but I'll reserve judgment. As far as I can tell the red eye reduction light seems to work, though the subject needs to be looking at it for it to make a difference. (One can always Photoshop red eye results anyway if necessary.)

In summary, I'm prepared after about a day of use to declare the Canon PowerShot S300 Digital Elph a winner. It takes good images, has a raft of options and features, and integrates nicely into the Mac. Yes, it needs more memory than the paltry 8 MB its ships with (so plan on spending at least another $50-$100), but it succeeds nicely as a "take anywhere" point-and-shoot.

Indeed, I'm not even sure that I've completely grasped the paradigm shift I'm facing here as digital images and Photoshop converge. Anyone or anything is now a potential piece of a digital puzzle, ready to be shot with the S300, downloaded into the Mac, and composited into a new image in Photoshop. Steve Jobs was right: The Mac is the hub of the emerging digital lifestyle.

Mom mentioned a really useful web site the other day called Epinions.com. I won't make you suffer through details you could just as easily read there, but the gist of it is that people from around the world rate and review different products in an online sort of Consumer Reports written by the masses. If you're contemplating a purchase, it's worth checking out.

May 4, 2001
Many thanks to Bret for letting me stay over at his place in Portland. I'd been working on a catalog for a client and yesterday was the "big push" which resulted in a 12+ hour day. I am very thankful that I didn't have to drive back to Salem after that. It also gave Mom and Dad a chance to drive up to Portland this morning and meet Bret and me for breakfast. (It was the fun goofy affair which those family get-togethers usually are.)

I ended up working another full day today both tweaking and error correcting the catalog and doing some Perl programming for an online auction I'm setting up. I am more than ready for the weekend.

Erin returned from her education conference in Forest Grove, which sounded like it was a worthwhile experience. Now that she's back, well, wouldn't you know it, it's the end of the grading period so we'll be busy all weekend doing that. My role is confined to data entry of the grades, which will be a welcome change from the lengthy and draining (albeit lucrative) work of the week.

May 2, 2001
Dave and I drove up to Portland for the Macintosh Business Expo where we listened to various presentations, checked out the new iBook, and tried to stay out of trouble. The presentations were decidedly hit-or-miss, with the jam-packed Apple keynote being pretty worthwhile, an Adobe web design talk being rather boring, and an Apple QuickTime presentation being next to worthless (which is a real shame because last time the QuickTime seminar was the best thing going).

We both had a chance to look at the new iBook Apple introduced yesterday, and our conclusions were pretty much identical. We liked the look (sort of a mini-Titanium PowerBook style) and the portability but worry that the 12.1" screen size is insufficient for the resolution. Actually, I think it will work out just fine for students, but older folks or anyone with vision problems would be well-advised to look elsewhere. (That's not to say that the 12.1" screen isn't excellent—it is—just that it's too small for many people.

Finally, I ended up buying the Canon PowerShot S300 Digital Elph, a dinky (3.7" x 2.5" x 1.2" and 8.5 oz.) little digital still camera for $549. (Full retail is $699, though it's widely available at $599.) The camera, which I've only just begun to explore hands-on, has a 3x optical zoom plus a 7.5x digital zoom, a 2.1 megapixel CCD, and a bunch of shooting modes including manual, auto, panoramic, black-and-white, and slow-sync (for nighttime). It's also got a 20 fps movie mode with audio, though let's not kid ourselves and say it's a movie camera too.

It came with an 8 MB Compact Flash card; I'll be buying a 128 MB card tomorrow. That'll give the camera the ability to hold 200 images at the high quality and at a 1600 x 1200 size. Lower the image quality or the size and it can hold even more. There's an adapter for the Compact Flash card which lets it slide in Trinity's PCMIA slot so that I can pop the memory card out of the camera and in the PowerBook in under 10 seconds. From there it's just a matter of selecting pictures.

Hopefully this means a lot more images on web site soon.

May 1, 2001
It's been a couple of days up and back to Portland for client work with a couple more to go later this week. Erin's off at an education conference in Forest Grove, so I'm bachin' it for a day or two, which is to say that tonight's dinner was pizza. Dave and I will be heading to the Mac Business Expo in Portland tomorrow to see what's happening. I hope to get firsthand information on the Canon S300, a digital camera I've got my eye on as well check out other various technologies. Maybe it's just a good excuse to hang with Dave and play with high tech toys. Not that we've ever needed an excuse in the past, you understand.

Latest update on May 29, 2001
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