Archive for ◊ March, 2008 ◊
Now that I’m at home with the cats, I am happy to report that I was able to download the photos off the card using my card reader here… I took over 500 pictures on Monday alone! A few before I crash and burn:
So close, but yet so far…
Am sitting in Detroit Airport with about an hour and a half to go before my flight to Toronto. When I arrived at the gate, they were boarding an earlier flight to Toronto and I made an attempt to get on it. I didn’t think it could be done since the person before me looked like she was trying to do the same thing but was turned away and I thought I heard the gatekeeper say the flight was full. When I told her I didn’t have any checked baggage she asked me if I would pay the $25 change fee, but before I could say anything she looked at the screen and said she couldn’t do it, anyway, since I just missed the 30-minute gate deadline for check-in (which is what she’d have to do to get me a seat). What a letdown! She had me at “Do you have any checked baggage?” — I thought I could get home at a decent hour!
If I’d checked the board more closely I would’ve noticed the earlier flight, but the real culprit was my preoccupation with taking photos of the AirTrain that runs through the Detroit Airport:
The AirTrain is pretty quick, but it doesn’t run as often as I thought it would, considering it only goes in two directions (one train on each track). There are a total of three stations and they’re also rather far apart, so you end up spending most of the time on the people-mover, anyhow, backtracking or walking past the station.
I took photos with the Pentax K100D, but I didn’t bring my card reader or a USB cable so all I’ve got are the cameraphone pics. I have no idea exactly how many photos I took on this trip, but it’s got to be somewhere in the 500+ range, I think. At least, if I can get them all.
Taken with my crappy cameraphone. (I obviously didn’t get the phone for the camera feature.)
Sitting in San Francisco Airport and hoping I can get the photos off my corrupted SD card tomorrow!
For those with the password, my (rather brutal) itinerary today is posted in the “Where” section at the menu bar. I went to bed after 2am and woke up at *oof* 5am, so I’ll be a little out of it today. But I did online check-in last night and nabbed the last window seats to see if I can get some good window seat photos, at least. I have not one but TWO connections and four airports today.
(I dropped my US-roaming phone several days ago and the keypad is on the FRITZ so I’m not using it right now, only my regular Toronto mobile phone.)
pretty windy for a little sparrow
I jinxed myself this afternoon.*
Today was my biggest photography day yet — we shot all day, in Marin County and around the Marin Headlands with some fantastic photos from the points facing the bridge, ending with sunset shots from Treasure Island. Then I made the mistake of saying to Kevin about how terrible it would be if the flash card got corrupted, how sorry I feel for people who have had that happen to them.
Then I got home and tried to download the nearly full card first, the one I shot with all day long in the Pentax K100D. The card reader blinked a couple of times, and then nothing. NOTHING. I tried another card, and the reader worked just fine. Kevin tried to download off the card onto his computer. NOTHING. We tried to repair the drive on the Mac. FAILED.
Now, I’ve heard of this happening before, and there’s usually a happy (albeit sometimes costly) ending by taking the card to a data retrieval service. I’m going to be optimistic that I’ll be able to get the pictures off the card, which is the first thing I’m going to do after I get home, inject Beano, and have a good night’s sleep.
It wouldn’t be the end of the world if the pictures were irretrievable. I shoot with David’s Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ1 as well, but its specialty is 12x zoom and it has virtually no manual functions. I did get some decent photos with it today, but no wide angle shots of the Golden Gate Bridge, just long-range ones.
downtown San Francisco as seen through the Golden Gate Bridge cables
Oh well, we had a fabulous day in gorgeous weather, anyway, and if my photos don’t make it off the card, I will point you to Kevin’s!
* I’m not actually superstitious.
Unsurprisingly, today was officially Recovery Sunday. Kevin, because he did imbibe in a rather spectacular fashion at the Flickr party, and me because I went to bed at 6:30 in the morning. And I emailed Noelani (after she commented here and reminded me that they’re nearby!) to say we’d meet for lunch, but didn’t set any sort of alarm. Thankfully I woke up just before Noelani called to ask where we’d meet, and I practically leapt out of bed to see what time it was. We arranged to meet at a Japanese restaurant, and Kevin and I got cleaned up and headed out into the bright sunshine for the pleasant drive to… Pleasanton.
It’s 5:30 in the morning Pacific Time, and I’m the only one in the house who hasn’t gone to bed, including the cats.
It was a day of photography on Saturday, that’s for sure. Kevin and I hit Treasure Island for photo ops before heading over the bridge to San Francisco for the afternoon and evening, to attend the Flickr Turns 4 Party at 111 Minna Gallery. We arrived early, which was a good idea since more than 500 people RSVP’ed on Upcoming.org and the venue maxes out at 500.
I was looking at the other Flickr Turns 4 party photos in Flickr and came across Barack Obama’s Flickr profile because he’s a contact of someone who attended the party. I also see that he one of his representatives attended Scranton’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade! Wacky! David was a big fan of Barack Obama, he would’ve gotten a kick out of this, and the fact that Obama’s gone this far in the presidential race.
For the Pennsylvanians who read this site, here’s Obama’s PA photo collection.
One of the things I wanted to do while visiting the Bay Area is to check out the USS Hornet, a decommissioned aircraft carrier that now serves as a museum and cuts an imposing figure in the waters east of San Francisco.
USS Hornet’s official website
Kevin’s photoset of the USS Hornet on Flickr
U.S. Navy - A Brief History of Aircraft Carriers - USS Hornet (CV12)
USS Hornet on Wikipedia
a comprehensive site by Dwayne Miles
I’d never been on a carrier before, and this one has a long history of action in the Pacific Theatre. It’s also apparently haunted, with a reported 200 sightings recorded over a five year period, as mentioned by RoadsideAmerica.com citing a Wall Street Journal story.
I took a *pun alert* boatload of pictures that I haven’t uploaded yet, but here are three for now. You can see the weather changed quickly a few times over the course of the afternoon.
As seen while running an errand in Oakland today.
Just a few pics for now. I took David’s camera with the big zoom (420mm) out to Ballena Bay yesterday:
San Mateo Bridge in the background.
USS Hornet A US Navy reserve vessel (I think it’s the Chesapeake Bay, but I’m not sure), with San Francisco in the background.
More photos to come…
images & text © 2008 All Rights Reserved by Gail Edwin-Fielding.
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