Plane of NonConformity

Normally every couple months I'll spend an hour or two clearing off all the extra items that have accumulated on my desk, pieces of junk mail, the bills,  candy wrappers, etc.  I got around to that last night along with putting my newly acquired scanner back in it's box to clear up two square feet of desk space it was occupying.  I not satisfied with the results.  It's still too disorganized.

I've got three computers and an Xbox 360 that I want hooked up into a single keyboard, mouse and monitor.  Then there is a firewall in a fourth computer that doesn't need a keyboard, mouse or monitor.   Then all the networking gear; a wireless router/switch, Ethernet switch, cable modem.   I have about 40 pieces of equipment around my desk, including wall warts, not counting cables.   It's currently a mess of unintelligible cables.  

I've always been able to keep a tidy desk at work.  Probably because there are people looking at my desk at work.  That and they only let me have two computer at work and only one monitor.  One thing I like about the desk I have at work is that it is a corner L shaped desk.   I've got my main computer in the corner and one side is my hardware workbench and the other can be used for working with papers or my laptop.

I've been looking for a good L shaped desk to replace the straight desk I have at home but most of them have attached hutches and shelf's that would get in my way.  The ones I like are too expensive or too big to fit into the space I have.  It looks like I'm stuck with the one I've got for the time being.

So now it's on to some tough decisions.  I need to cut back on the gizmo's on my desk and create a space that can be reconfigured quickly for the devices I don't use often.  I can move all my photography items off and just plug them in when I need them.  I don't need my computer speakers anymore since my wife requires my to use headphones.  My old Xbox can be moved to the TV room since I don't use it at all anymore.  That also removed the need for the audio mixer I have since I was just using it as an amp for the XBox's sound and without the XBox I'm down to four Ethernet devices so I can get rid of the extra switch( I think), or I just always use wireless for the laptop and reduce the ports I need that way.

If the weather is still crappy and my wife doesn't have other plans, it's time to rip apart my desk and put it back together again. 

This is a photograph of the lobby of Ryan Hall on the University of North Dakota campus, where I worked when I was going to school. 

Another picture taken during my time as a refuge from the flood of 1997.   I like how the grass is just starting to turn green as everything else looks dead.

Another one from my slide photography class that fits into the category of WTF.   I think this was a tree trunk someone was in the middle of removing. 

I'm one week out from posting a photograph a day.  The past couple weeks have been filled with digging though boxes in the attic, cleaning negatives, scanning and attempting to remember when I took these pictures.   Most of them I'll only be able to narrow down to a season and a year, like spring 1996 for all my slides that I toke in college.  Others I have a petty good idea that they are Dec 25, but I don't know the year. 

One thing I've learned is that I need to go buy some good film.   I've shot three rolls of film and developed two of them.  This is film that's been sitting in my camera bag for a couple years.   Something is wrong with it.   I've still got 5 or 6 rolls left to use up but I'm not sure I want to wait until they are gone before shooting a roll with some brand new high quality 35mm film.   Also I need to check the battery in my camera light meter, it's only a couple bucks to replace and it will give me piece of mind that the metering is correct (since it seems that everything I've done lately is underexposed)

I've been looking at digital SLR cameras on the Internet toying with the idea of picking one up.   Pentax does have a few DSLR camera, but I'm just not as impressed with them as I am with the Cannons.  I would like to get a nice I just can't justify the price.  I just purchased a nice 7 mega-pixel point and shoot camera for my wife and with Christmas coming in a few months I'll just have to save, wait and hint. 

One thing that has vastly improved in this experiment is my scanning abilities.  At first I though it was nothing more then putting the print or negative on the scanner and pushing a button.  Now I've learned the hard way about keeping your scanner and scannie clean and how to correct all the underexposed negatives.  

Next updating my blog software with a custom theme and finding a better format for my posts. 

The basement of my parents house flooding in the spring of 1997.  After we pumped the water out this is what we found in the bathroom.   My father, thinking that the sewer would back up, disconnected the toilet and plugged the drain,  no the toilet didn't float into the tube.   That was some of the nastiest water I've ever seen.