I’ve recently discovered the falafal. I don’t mean that I “discovered” the falafal but it is new to my menu. After eating one at Casablanca in the 5th Street Public Market (Eugene, Oregon) I had to question what took me so long to discover this incredible food. I mean I had heard of a falafal before but always thought of it as some strange food that would probably taste horrible and never really knew “what” it was. If you don’t know what a falafal is (don’t worry, I didn’t either) it is a fried ball (or patty) of spiced chickpeas (garbonzo) and/or fava beans. Since discovering Casablanca I have tried falafal at a few other places around town as well as up in Portland and I have to say that the falafal that Casablanca serves up are the best I’ve had. My favorite dish at Casablanca is the Falafal Sandwich which is a pita lined with hummus, layered with lettuce, tahini sauce, falafal, cucumber yogurt and a jalapeno relish. Good Lord it is good! I’ve also had the salad with tahini lemon dressing which makes a great combo with the falafal sandwich. Casablanca also makes a tasty drink called Majik which is a refreshing blend of Mediterranean juices (rose water, pomegranate juice). On a 90 degree summer day you can’t find a drink more refreshing than this. But don’t take my word for it. Head on down and try it for yourself. Say hi to Todd and the guys while you are there.
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Took the camera out to experiment shooting fireworks. I’ve never shot fireworks before so I was curious how it would all turn out. Below are a few of the better shots. I used a 5D Mark II on a tripod with remote cable release. I shot these at ISO 100, bulb mode, manual focus, f/16. When I heard the canon go off I would activate the shutter, wait until I saw a good burst of firework and then close the shutter. It took a bit of practice to get the timing down just right. Leave the shutter open too long and you end up with too much streaking and not enough definition, close the shutter too soon and you don’t get the full explosion. The tripod and cable release are a must for these kinds of shots. If you have any questions I would be happy to answer them. Thanks for looking.
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Went to the Tigard Festival of Balloons yesterday. Tigard is about a 2 hour drive from us so in order to get there for the early morning (5:45) launch we had to hit the road no later than 4AM. Having gone to bed late the night before it was quite a chore but we did it and arrived just in time to see the first balloon lift off. There were plenty more balloons laid out on the tarmac with their baskets on their sides. The crew would first roll out the balloon on teh ground and then attach the basket. Then a powerful fan would blow air into the balloon to start inflating it. As more air was pushed into the balloon it would slowly and magically rise into the air and the basket would be pulled to an upright position. This got everyone excited, especially photographers who crowded around the balloon snapping photos like paparazzi. Next the fuel and burner system was checked and a test flame sent up into the balloon. As the air was heated you could see the basket start to pull up from the ground. After a few comments (and probably prayers) the pilot motioned that he was ready for lift-off and everyone stepped back a bit. The pilot then shot a stream of fire that seemed to go halfway up into the balloon. It only took a couple of jets on the throttle to get lift-off. It was just an amazing and peaceful sight to see all these balloons gently soaring into the sky one after another. What a cool experience it would be to go up in a hot air balloon, soaring quietly over the country-side at the mercy of the wind, looking down like a stranger on a foreign land. I overheard one pilot talking about having to adjust altitude to catch different streams of wind in order to change direction of the balloon. What a great analogy of our own lives. We have ups and downs and we seem to labor and stress over the downs. But sometimes you have to go down in order to catch that next stream of wind and change your direction.
Without a doubt America has some of the best health care in the world. But at what price? I’m writing this piece because I am upset at the extraordinary and outrageous increases that the medical insurance companies feel they can impose on subscribers. My experience is with a company called Regence BlueCross BlueShield, or as I now refer to them, Regeance BlueCross BlueSteal. I’ll begin with a chronology of rate increases over the 3 years I have subscribed with them for an individual family plan. In 2007 my plan cost $415 per month. In July of that year it jumped $64 to $479 per month. In July of 2008 it jumped $124 to $603 per month. In July of this year it will jump $119 to $722 per month. So over the course of 3 years our monthly premiums have jumped $307 per month. Now we have a fairly low deductible on this plan with $500 per member or $1500 per family per year but we still pay $30 co-pays when we see the doctor and must pay for any lab tests out of our deductible before the plan pays 70%. So this year calculating $722 per month for the premium and add in say 2 doctors visits per family member (2X$30X4=$240) we end up paying about $8904 per year just for medical insurance. This doesn’t include what we would need to pay if any lab tests needed to be done. No wonder more than 40 million Americansare without health insurance. Who can afford to pay such outrageous rates, especially in the middle of a nationwide recession? And even people who can somehow come up with the money to pay these premiums end up then not being able to afford to go to the doctor, or delay going to the doctor because they know it will cost them another $30 to do so. How much less expensive would health care be if we changed our perspective from one of treating and curing diseases to preventing them in the first place? Where is the preventative care in this country? It seems instead we are more interested in manufacturing the latest diet fad pill, or a new 10 hour erection pill. How did we reach this point where corporate greed outweighs an individuals health? Health care should not be treated as a privilege reserved only for the wealthy. It should be the right of every citizen to afford and receive the health care they need. So what are the answers? Where do we go from here? It will never be an easy answer or solution as long as government and big business stand in the way. The corporate powers of the insurance industry own the politicians, who by the way, have free unlimited health care plans. Maybe if the politicians had to purchase the same plans the rest of us did we would finally see some reasonable options being put together. Personally I think that it will be a long time coming before we see a national single payer health care system in this country as is seen in the majority of the developed nations in the world. I say this primarily because of the stranglehold that the health insurance industry has on Congress. Until Congress can disconnect themselves from the dollars that industry lobbiests line their pockets with we will never see a system that is fair to everyone. But a lot also has to do with the complacency of the American people. Where is the outrage over this injustice? Where is the outrage over any injustice? Have we all just become mindless boob-tube watchers fascinated only with what our favorite celebrity is wearing today, or who the next American idol is going to be? Let’s break these chains that bind us and get involved. If this were France we’d be in the streets throwing molotov cocktails. Health care is not a luxury item. It is a right. Promises of health care reform mean nothing without action.
Took a trip out to see Sweet Creek Falls on this Memorial Day. I really would have liked to have gotten out there earlier in the day when the light was not so harsh but we got a late start and as I expected it was difficult to get a good exposure. Here are a few I took that turned out ok. We hiked from the Homestead trailhead up to the head of the falls. Round trip it was about 2.2 miles. The trail is very well maintained and follows along the creek passing by lots of smaller punch-bowl type falls and shaded by large big-leaf maple trees. At one point you walk on elevated platforms that are bolted into the side of the cliff. The kids really loved that part. The falls itself was really beautiful plunging into a deep wide bowl. There is an other spur trail that goes up to an overlook at the top of the falls. I really want to go back either early in the morning or late in the evening to catch the better light and photograph these falls. Lots of opportunities there. Until then you will have to endure these mediocre photos. They look the same but they are slightly different. I’m interested to know which one you prefer.
Today was another nice day with lots of sunshine and warm temperatures. The perfect day to get the garden in. Our garden has in the past been a hit and miss proposition. For example, last year we planted some nice green peppers which we had started indoors but the day after we got them in the ground something ate all of them. We tried watermelon and again something bore a hole in each one and ate the insides out leaving nothing but a hollow shell. Our corn ended up with some kind of fungus and we got maybe 2-3 good ears. We did have good success with cucumbers, spinach and lettuce though. So this year we decided to plant a few different things and see what happens. The lineup is tomatoes (including grape tomatoes, heirloom and yellow cherry tomatoes), cucumbers (banking on last years success), lettuce (romaine as well as leaf), spinach and a newcomer this year…eggplant. It’s all in the ground so now comes the WWW… Waiting…Weeding…Watering. I’ll post some pictures when I get the chance.
Took my boys fishing today. We came home with 8 rainbow trout. Here is a picture of the catch.
Just picked up the BlackX SATA HDD eSATA & USB docking station made by Thermaltake (P/N:ST0005U). I needed something to backup my photos and videos and wasn’t too happy about all the external drive bays I had piling up around me. I was afraid one day they would all collapse and crush me under their weight. The hard drive dock allows you to take SATA drives up to 1TB and simply swap them in and out. No more need for external drive bays. This baby supports all 2.5″ and 3.5″ SATA HDD’s, connects via USB 2.0 (up to 480Mbps) or eSATA I/II (up to 3Gbps), is both Windows (even Vista) and Mac OS compatible and is so simple to use.
I set mine up using the eSATA connection using the external eSATA blade that came with my motherboard. For this you basically install the blade in an emty slot in your case, connect a SATA cable from it to your motherboard as well as a power connector and you are good to go. A cable then runs from the blade up to your dock. There is also an AC power plug that you need to plug in as well.
The dock itself feels pretty solid. I was worried that it would be light and that the hard drive would tend to want to fall over or be unstable. But the base is solid with decent weight to it and I don’t see how it would tip over without getting hit pretty hard. There are small rubber feet on the base that keep it from sliding around as well. On the top is the slot to insert the hard drive, the drive ejection button and a circular light that is blue when on and transitions to red when accessing the drive. At the back of the dock is where the eSata and USB cables connect as well as the power button.
Installing the hard drive is fairly easy. I am using Windows XP so these instructions are for Windows but this dock is also compatible with Mac OS although you will need to use a version post 9.2 since earlier versions do not support partition creation for external hard drives. First insert the hard drive into the drive slot of the dock. I use Western Digital WD10EADS 1.0TB SATA drives with 32MB cache. I’ve been pretty happy with them so far. After inseting the hard drive power on the dock. The OS will recognize the new hardware and install the drivers automatically. If it doesn’t recognize the dock you might try going into device manager and initiating a manual “scan for for hardware changes”. Next you will need to initialize the new disk. Right click on “My Computer” and choose “Manage”. Under Storage > Disk Management right click on the new disk and choose initialize. It may also automatically come up with a wizard for installing the drive as it did in my case. After the drive is initialized right click on the new drive in Disk Management and choose “New Partition”. Follow the wizard for creating a new partition and format the drive with NTFS (or FAT32). That’s all there is to it. Your drive should now be available to start storing all those photos and videos.
Now there are a few things that I have noticed that have given me a few problems. The first is when using the dock with more than one drive. I’ve noticed that when I pop one drive out and insert another that Windows won’t always recognize the drive. It doesn’t just pop up in Windows Explorer as one would hope and expect. I’ve had to force it’s detection by going into Computer Management, right click on Disk Management and choose “Rescan Disks” in order for it to show up. It’s a few extra steps that shouldn’t be needed and I’m not sure whether this is a dock issue or a Windows issue.
The dock was about $40 and the WD drives were $89 each. Pretty cheap way to have 2TB of storage. I recommend it despite some lingering issues with drives not showing up after power up.
Went to the Woodburn Tulip festival this weekend. The tulips were in full bloom with lots of reds and yellows and purples mixed together. Just an incredible sight. The festival goes until May 3rd this year: Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm. Here are a few shots taken from my trip there. More photos can be found on my Flickr site.
It’s been a long time without posts on this site. Work and life in general have kept me pretty busy. But Spring is here and it’s time to get out and start shooting the flowers. Here is one I took recently of a Magnolia tree.
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