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Daynotes
Journal
Week of 22 December 2008
Latest
Update: Sunday, 28 December 2008 09:02 -0500 |
08:43
-
Costco run and dinner with Paul and Mary yesterday. We gave Mary
a gift we found for her that is multi-dimensionally perfect: Mary is a
chemist and a vegetarian.
We
spent part of the morning and afternoon hanging kitchen cabinet doors.
The old hinges were external on the frame side and the door side. The
new hinges are recessed on the door side. That is, they mount to the
rear of the door rather than the front. One thing I didn't think about
when we bought the hinges is clearance between the rear overhang of the
doors and the cabinet opening. These cabinets were built
in-place, so there's some minor variation from door to door. A typical
opening is 16", with the face of the door about 16.5". But a typical
rear side of a door is maybe 15-5/8", and the hinge itself occupies
about 1/4" on the inside of the door. That leaves me maybe 1/8" (~ 3mm)
of clearance, so I had to fit the hinges very carefully to avoid
binding. We got all of the lower cabinet doors installed. Installing
the pulls and magnetic catches will be a project for another
weekend, as will installing the upper cabinet doors. But we're making
progress.
I didn't manage to get any of the images shot for
chapter 6 (hair and fiber analysis). The text part of that chapter is
complete, and the images will just have to wait. I'll start today on
the rewrite of chapter 7 (glass and plastic analysis). And my lab is
still trashed. I'm in my usual state when a book is starting to come
together in final form. I have so many balls in the air that I'm bound
to drop some of them.
Tuesday, 23 December 2008
07:59
-
I got most of the rewrite on chapter 7 done yesterday. I should
finish it today. At some point, I need to spend a couple of hours
getting my lab cleaned up and then shoot the images for chapters 6 and
7.
We've been experiencing a cold snap the last couple days,
with highs around freezing and overnight lows around 19 °F (-7 °C).
Sunday night, the wind chill got down to 6 °F (-14 °C). The low
temperatures are pretty hard on our older Border Collie, Duncan, who
turns 14 on 1 January. He sleeps on the floor on my side of the bed, on
a long futon with a couple of regular dog beds on top of it. Even so, I
was concerned last night that he'd get chilled, since he's against an
exterior wall. So I covered him with a light throw blanket, which he
didn't seem to mind.
Wednesday, 24 December 2008
08:55
-
I finished the rewrite of chapter 7 (glass and plastic analysis)
yesterday, and got part way through chapter 8 (revealing latent
fingerprints). I'll finish the rewrite on chapter 8 this morning and
get started on chapter 9 (blood detection). If I finish that today,
I'll get started on chapter 10 (impression analysis). For now, I'm just
doing some minor rewrite and inserting image placeholders in the
chapters and building an annotated consolidated image list, from which
I'll actually shoot the images when Barbara's available to help me. I'm
on a roll now, and the book is actually starting to look like a book.
Barbara
took a vacation day today. She's running errands, helping her dad with
some chores, and going for a mammogram this afternoon. She'll be over
at her sister's house all day tomorrow for Christmas. (I'll take care
of the dogs and work most of a normal day and then head over around
dinner time.) She's going to work at least a partial day next Monday,
but plans to take most of that week off, so we'll have plenty of time
to shoot images and get most or all of the remaining work done in the
kitchen.
Thursday, 25 December 2008
11:04
-
Hah! Got him! After years of trying and failing to capture Santa, I
finally started wondering if he was reading my journal and knew my
plans ahead of time. So this year I didn't say a word about what I
planned to do. And my cunning plan worked! Oh, the reindeer and sleigh are
gone, with no sign that they were ever here, but I did get something.
I
used the old flypaper-in-the-chimney trick. This morning,
I looked up the chimney and found it blocked, either by Santa
himself or his bag of loot. It's hard to tell. I shined a flashlight up
the chimney and all I could see was red cloth. Whatever it is isn't
talking, even after I started laying a fire in the fireplace.
Barbara
took off about 9:00 to head over to her sister's house, where they'll
have festivities all day. I'll take care of the dogs today and head
over late this afternoon for dinner. Otherwise, it's a normal workday
for me.
11:15
-
Curses! Foiled Again! I just climbed up on the roof with a long hook to
extract whatever was wedged in the chimney. Turns out it wasn't Santa
or the loot. It was a red sack full of ... coal.
Oh, and I forgot my Note to Burglars:
Yes,
it's true I'll be gone for a couple hours this afternoon, although I'm
not saying exactly when. I'll even tell you that I'm going to crate
both of the dogs. But I'll also warn you that I'm giving George and
Martha free run of the house. George and Martha are diamondback
rattlesnakes, and they both still have their fangs. George is actually
pretty laid-back. He seldom strikes unless someone annoys him. Martha,
on the other hand, has a nasty snakish temper, even for a rattlesnake.
You probably think I'm making this up, but my friends know I'm serious.
Deadly serious.
That's the reason, incidentally, why I have that long hook handy.
10:27
-
Boxing Day, and Barbara and I were just moving boxes around. We're
getting the downstairs guest suite, which we hadn't touched since the
Bilbreys visited over Thanksgiving, straightened out and cleaned up.
Later today, we'll continue work in the kitchen, which is starting to
look like an actual kitchen again. There are still some cabinet doors
to install and some hardware to mount, but that's it other than
installing replacement electric receptacles and some other minor stuff.
And I may get some work in on my lab, which looks like a disaster area.
Over
the weekend, we'll shoot a lot of images for the forensics book,
particularly those that require Barbara's assistance. I'm also going to
re-re-reshoot some images that I've already re-reshot. For example, for
the impression analysis chapter, I took one shot looking down the
barrel of a .44 revolver to show the lands and grooves of the rifling.
I must have shot 50 images to end up with one semi-usable one. I used
the on-camera flash and a slave flash, and I never was completely happy
with the lighting or depth of focus. This time, I'll clamp the pistol,
and use a couple of incandescent lamps, which I can adjust to get the
lighting the way I want it. Shooting aperture priority at f/32 or so
should get me sufficient depth of field to show a fair amount of the
bore in focus.
Saturday, 27 December
2008
08:52
-
Reading the paper this morning, it again struck me that 2009 is likely
to be the last year for many newspapers. Our local paper has already
cut back the Monday and Tuesday editions to two sections, and it can't
be long before they go to a partial-week publishing schedule. Thursday
through Sunday seems to be the most common choice for papers that have
already done so, but Barbara thinks our paper will go with Wednesday
through Sunday to keep the Wednesday supermarket ads. Whichever they
choose, I expect it to happen early in 2009, and it won't surprise me
if the paper ceases publication entirely later in 2009 or in 2010 at
the latest.
Radio gave up any serious local news-gathering
efforts years ago, so that leaves us with only the television stations
as local news sources, and they're not in much better shape than the
newspapers. Local TV stations get most of their revenue from local car
dealers, who won't be spending much on advertising in 2009 and the
coming years, along with local retailers, who will also cut way back on
ad spending. If it hasn't already begun, I expect a race to the bottom
to begin soon, with local TV stations cutting ad rates desperately in
search of additional revenue sources. There are simply too many local
TV stations chasing too few ad dollars.
And that brings up the
second source of revenue for local TV stations, which is the payments
that the networks make to local stations to run their programs. But the
networks are hurting, too, and for the same reasons that the local
stations are hurting. National advertisers are cutting back on ad
spending, and a larger portion of that smaller pie is going to the
Internet every year. Some time soon, possibly in 2009, I expect to see
the first domino fall, with one of the big-four TV networks dropping
all of its local affiliates and going to 100% cable/satellite
distribution. If that happens, the other three will soon follow.
They'll have no alternative. And when that happens, the local TV
affiliates disappear.
And that leaves us with no local news at all. It'll be interesting to see what, if anything, arises from the ashes.
09:02
- Dinner out with friends last night.
We
got quite a few images shot for the forensics book yesterday, and will
probably shoot more today. We may also get a few more kitchen cabinet
doors re-installed. The kitchen is starting to look like a kitchen
again.
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Bruce
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