A little too much hype?

This is going to sound a little odd, but as Obama prepares to be sworn in as president some eight hours from now, I worry that the country is making too big a deal out of the inauguration. While the event is certainly historic and exciting, the media frenzy and commercialization surrounding the event seems a bit much.

When I attended Clinton's 2nd inauguration, it was a big deal in my life. That entire trip to DC/New York/Philadelphia as a 5th grader is still very fresh in my memory. The inauguration, however, is not one of the most memorable moments. Granted, 5th graders aren't usually terribly excited by speeches and can think of things more fun to do than standing around for hours in cold weather - but I'm glad I was there and would certainly appreciate it more were it today.

This time around, everyone seems to feel the needs to get in on the day. Every major TV station is not only covering the event live, but most have hours and hours of "pregame" where they'll undoubtedly repeat the same thing over ten times trying to fill airtime. It's a little early in the morning to be playing drinking games, but I'm sure you'd be well on your way if you simply drank every time you heard the word "historic" uttered. Yes this event will be historic. I hope Obama gives a moving speach tomorrow that will be remembered among the great presidential speeches. The problem is that history usually runs its own course on its own time, and in this case everyone is forcing this to be a part of history. It's still what it's always been - a swearing in, some formalities, and a parade, followed by DC letting its hair down for a night of partying. Don't spoil the moment by making too big a deal of it.

I'm extremely happy for the countless African Americans who have waited for this day their entire lives. I'm happy for every Obama supporter who finally gets to see an extremely long election process come to fruition. I'm happy for our new president. I could do without 14,000 hours of TV coverage for an hour long event. I laugh at the 2800 different Obama t-shirts and 288 bottles of Obama wine (even though it's from Oregon). I shake my head in disbelief at the Obamarella and Obama bedside lights.

Who knows, maybe the massive amount of money being spent in relation to the inauguration will accidently give the economy the kick in the pants it desperately needs.

As for me, I'll be wearing my Obama underwear and "Yes we can" slippers first thing tomorrow morning while I eat my Obama-shaped pancakes watching picture-in-picture-in-picture MSNBC/CNN/ABC coverage on all new inauguration news that has broken in the last 6 hours prior to the event. Then I might actually go back to being sane while I watch the actual event.

Shooz

Likely the last free pair of Crocs I'll ever receive:

A photo walk

I think the photos I took on a walk today are some of the best I've ever taken. I spent much of my time focused on macro photography, with some other odds and ends thrown in.








And Some HDR:

Key Words

In the last month, here are the top keywords (ordered high to low by number of hits, ranging from 18 to 1) that have landed people on this blog from Google:

"adjectives starting with m"
"adjectives beginning with m"
(Apparently I'm not the only one that can't think of very many)
"vibrating belt and Dallas"
(Uh...)
"interesting adjectives"
"migratory marketer"
(Ok, I'll give them that one)
"rick davis, portland, or"
(Undoubtedly a combination of several different posts having absolutely nothing to do with one another)
"rock racing"
(I may have mentioned them once, which apparently is enough)
"Vibrating Belt"
(Really? This was a couple months ago. And they're a joke!)
"Adam Edgerton blog"
(Hurray! Even if it is only one hit!)
"adjective running child"
(Once again, a mashing up of several different posts)
"Merry Marketer"
(At least this person spent a whole four minutes on the site rather than immediately bouncing)
"Portland Oregon Sneakerhead"
(Seems fairly apt)
"Road trips from Phoenix to Flagstaff"
(I wouldn't call myself an expert, but it is a trip I've taken)
"food movie"
(Well, I do like food. And movies, for that matter)

It would appear that my random post subjects that fail to fall under any one theme have unsurprisingly made it really difficult for Google to catalog my blog. Using the tags section on each post for locations also probably doesn't help. Nor does my blog's current state of name-in-flux syndrome. Not that I'm really that concerned with drawing in people who are actually looking for my blog. It's linked from every major online social network I'm connected to. Plus I kind of like drawing in people who are searching for something completely menial that my blog has nothing to do with.

Routine

After a week in Portland I'm starting to feel settled into a bit of a routine, for better or worse. A typical day begins around 8:00-8:30 with a run. Then I'll get back, eat Cheerios, and begin searching the dozen or so job sites I'm frequenting for new postings. After doing this combined with some research and brainstorming about companies to apply to directly, It's about lunchtime. I'll have a bit to eat and get back to job hunting, usually focusing on writing cover letters and submitting actual applications in the afternoon. Around the time my aunt and uncle get home, I finish up for the day and socialize a bit. Dinner is next, followed by anything from a movie to watching a bit of TV to reading a book to messing around with my camera. Late evening I'll watch some TV in the basement while stretching and doing some weights/balance ball exercises. Bed usually around 1AM. Rinse and repeat.

There are a few exceptions, including last night when I went over to a different aunt and uncle's house for dinner followed by American Idol. And Friday nights have been designated as the night I cook dinner with my aunt. We're experimenting with various Thai and Asian dishes.

Still, I need to get outside a bit more, see some friends in the area, and explore Portland. I'm also in the process of planning a long weekend trip to Eugene and Corvallis, probably to occur the weekend following this one.

I've got enough applications out now that I'm waiting patiently for an interview call. I've gotten a couple no answers already, including what I thought my best shot might be at the company I was recently working for.

I need to get one of my bikes.

Going RAW

So I finally added RAW as a file format my camera saves with. I'm not sure why it took so long, other than I had to get around to installing software to make full use of the format's potential. For those who don't know RAW, it's a format that saves all the details of the photo as captured by the camera's sensor before any additional settings (such as white balance or noise reduction) are applied. This allows you to go back later and make any changes to the image that you would otherwise not be able to if you set those extra settings prior to taking the shot and only saved as a jpeg.

This means that this otherwise badly underexposed shot...



can be mostly salvaged without having to resort to contrast and brightness manipulation.



Oh, and I also decided to create my first HDR image. It's really a shame that I picked such a boring subject, but at least I don't feel bad for spending very little time adjusting it to make it look good. Look at the top of the window. Yikes.

Just a big kid

I spent much of yesterday playing with my cousin's son whose grandmother (the aunt I'm staying with) regularly babysits him. Legos were the name of the game, and I fulfilled building requests for a Star Wars-like spaceship, R2D2, and C3P0. Eventually the spaceship gave way to a larger space ship that was nearly 2 feet long.



R2 was an especially big hit. There was a bit of a tantrum when R2 had to stay when it was time to go. Not to worry though, R2 is currently sitting on the fireplace mantle waiting for his return.

My personal project of the day started out with a wheeled-vehicle of some sort. I wasn't sure where I was going with the idea, until I decided it had better be a jet-driven car. I added a couple jets. I quickly got completely carried away and decided that this needed to be the most overpowered jet car ever, so I crammed as many jets onto it as possible. I only stopped when I ran out of jet-like pieces to use.



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