Where is my left foot?

Friday, and Tuesday, and now today, and perhaps tomorrow have me at an “ad agency” in Miami Beach, doing geriatric fitness calendars for a large insurance company. The money is not good, and the office is awful, although the people in the office are fine. The circumstances on Friday (my “desk” is a piece of stackable shelving, my chair was a piece of hard plastic on wheels) led me to say I would not be back, but a replacement chair and the lure of $$$ has brought me back. Yesterday at lunch in front of the Starbucks on Lincoln Road, I had a chat with a pilot for SwissAir. That was nice.

Thanks to SP for this one.

I recently had done some test images for a new client, a stock photographer in L.A. I went to the trouble of setting up an FTP account for him to send and receive images form me, and I did a bit of work on six images he sent. After a few days not hearing from him I called and asked what was up. He said his editor had been out of town but that she would take a look at them. When she did, he called and said that she “says the color is a little off…but she can’t tell exactly how. Oh, and there was a color profile that was supposed to have been embedded in there that I forgot to tell you about, and you should have used Adobe RGB for your conversions. Also, they’ve suggested I start using a shop in India they’ve found that will do the work for $5 an image.”

I had considered this person a friend, up until this point. The money he had offered for me to do the work here was a low figure (this was my first little shock), but I was willing to try it and see if I could make it work. After the decision to go with India, our relationship (on my end) changed in a way which makes it difficult to go back. Something was revealed about the person’s character which I had managed to overlook.

This lead to a discussion with my wife about why I attract characters that sooner or later end up taking advantage of me. It has happened three times in the last year.

Friday morning I have accepted a temp job at a publisher on South Beach. The money is abysmal, but there is the abyss of bad pay, and there is the abyss of no money. The graphics market in South Florida has collapsed. I would guess that it will follow suit elsewhere, but because of the real estate doldrums here, it has happened more quickly and with greater intensity. I have confirmed this with others, it’s not just me.

A family drama is under way involving my mother’s side. Money and power are being wielded by one that has it, but has no use for it. When it (love) has always been made about money and power, why are people surprised when they are treated in a fitting manner? My conversations with one family member today were excruciating, but I managed to disguise my pain, I think, with the help of body awareness / self remembering. Naked greed, ancient grudges, and pure paranoia were the hallmarks of the chat. If a proposed sale goes through, we will manage to keep our house. If it does not (and there is little to believe that greed, paranoia, and blood lust will allow it), we will be up Shit Creek. Currently, we are standing at the edge of Shit Creek, savoring the smell.

Color corrected and enhanced from original .vob files, right off the camera

Zoomed on the object by hand, ~3500 frames

Red channel only, contrast enhanced

Green channel only, contrast enhanced:

Blue channel only, contrast enhanced:

Attorneys for Vice President Cheney and top White House officials say leak of Valerie Plame’s name was part of “policy dispute”

U.S. District Judge John D. Bates asked: “So you’re arguing there is nothing - absolutely nothing - these officials could have said to reporters that would have been beyond the scope of their employment,” whether the statements were true or false?

“That’s true, Your Honor. Mr. Wilson was criticizing government policy,” said Jeffrey S. Bucholtz, deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil division. “These officials were responding to that criticism.”

l-r: Uncle John (Brown), Adele, Susan, Henry, Mom, Granny Brown, Cousin Greg (Brown), Barry

Here I remind myself of my grandfather, J.L. Brown

Yesterday, moving a plant — a Moringa drouhardii from Madagascar — from my yard to friend Peter G’s yard:

Fires in the western part of the state have rendered us smoky for days, and days, and days:

Not all is bleak, however:

Friend Peter is in town plant hunting.

Excellent UFO Footage

I spotted this on YouTube, and it had only been posted seven hours before I came upon it. I contacted the poster and asked if he had the original footage, and could I have a go at enhancing it. Over a couple of days I ran Photoshop actions on the 5,000+ individual frames, and settled on one set as the best. I have no idea what “it” is. It looks “natural” to me, as in not aliens spying on us, but who knows? However, it does have an odd habit of disappearing an reappearing in an unusual way. The original poster seems a good guy, and had removed the audio from the YouTube footage because you can hear his parents arguing (in Spanish) in the background.

A 1/5 speed version is here. (A much larger download, for some reason.)

Susan has told me I said it was Henry’s fifth birthday. Nah. He’s seven:

Last night from my office window:

Lightning Strikes