When I went outside to check the game traffic, I saw a gorgeous sliver of moon against the sunset.

Michigan State 34 Michigan 17

This is turning out to be a very good football day.

Radio is playing post-game interview, announcer asked about penalties, to which Coach Stewart replied, ‘For as long as I am coach, I will never, I will NEVER allow my boys to play dirty football.’

Thank you Coach Stewart.

These crows were huge, but crafty enough to stay just far enough away from me.

Kit is not pleased that temperatures are dropping. Her coat is fine and thin, so she cuddles up to any heat source she can find.

Sunday morning Michael & I woke up at 5:00 AM to drive to the Pittsburgh airport to fly to Orlando for his conference. 5:15 we got in the car and discovered that the noise that had awakened me at 1:30 AM was a rock breaking our windshield.

Unsurprisingly, it is really difficult to find someone at 5:30 AM on a Sunday morning to drive you to an airport more than an hour away, especially when everyone who you might call at 5:30 AM is out of town. We started to drive to Pittsburgh, but as soon as we were on the interstate realized it was a terrible idea, and so regrouped at the truck stop at Mount Morris.

I’d like to take a moment here to say that USAA may be the best insurance company in the entire world. Sitting in a truck stop I called the insurance company, and was able to arrange everything to get the windshield taken care of. The only thing I had to do on my own was arrange to get the car back to Morgantown after the windshield was fixed. One phone call, 30 minutes, and everything was taken care of. You can’t imagine what a relief that is–or perhaps you can.

Luckily, the airline has a policy that as long as you arrive within 2 hours of your flight, they’ll rebook you on a new flight, so we did in fact make it to Orlando–finding a ride was actually the most difficult part of the morning.

Even better, the rest of the trip was entirely uneventful. Michael’s conference was (of course) in an insanely expensive hotel, and (of course) there was absolutely nothing within walking distance, so I had no choice but to eat at the hotel restaurants. Although expensive, the food was very good, and I got away with only eating a late breakfast and an early dinner. I also did a lot of walking along the lakes–they had a very nice footpath. Though in retrospect, I’m thinking perhaps I should have stuck to sneakers instead of wearing sandals. (Yes, I did see the aftermath of this–rumor is he or his wife was there for the conference Michael was attending, but there were several conferences going on. Don’t know anything for certain.)

I took my camera and took pictures, but am having issues with the exposure on my PowerShot–or I’ve just been spoiled by my Rebel–so it seems like the better pictures were actually taken with my cell phone, which is just….wrong.

I was fascinated by the boccee court, but couldn’t really find a good way to photograph it.
(more…)

This picture is from my last walk this morning.

On of the things I particularly like about going to Michael’s conferences is I generally do a lot of walking. I have no specific plans, so I can spend a great deal of time wandering around.

Resetting the camera settings on my PowerShot seems to have fixed the exposure issues I was having. This picture, however, was taken at night with my phone camera. I didn’t feel like carrying my camera for my evening walk, which is why I found so many interesting things to photograph I suppose.

I just reset my small camera, because I hate the way every picture I’ve taken with it has turned out. Everything is just a hair overexposed, and I’m hoping it’s just a setting that got screwed up.

Pretty, but I wish I could get rid of it.

I realized yesterday why I really dislike working on Macs so much–because I find the interface chaotic and annoying.

That’s a screen capture of a small portion of what I was working with: Endnote for Word 2008. There are toolbars and windows and boxes lying over and under each other, and getting in the way of what I want to do.

And note you can’t see the menu–it’s on the top of the screen, no matter where the program window is, so if I have multiple programs open (like I did yesterday with EndNote and Word) I’ve got to move my attention from one part of the window to another, while hoping that whatever toolbars I need are not hidden behind something else.

It’s chaotic and I find it maddening. I don’t want my commands scattered all over the screen, I want them in one place, where I can quickly and easily find them (For what it’s worth, I can’t stand working in Photoshop for the same reason.) I don’t want part of my program hiding under other parts of the program. I want to select the program or window and have everything right there, neat and organized. I don’t want to have to hunt down my toolbars from wherever the hell I drug them to last time I used the program, when they were completely in the way.

And don’t even get me started on the fact that by default there is no right click on a Mac. First you scatter my commands to the four winds and then you won’t let me right click to access the commands that way?

How on earth can someone function in this environment without spending half their time looking for whatever it is they want?