Though I've had the camera in my hands off and on over the last couple of months, I haven't had much opportunity to really put it through the paces a VJ student normally would. So today was the first time I'd done any real shooting with the camera. This probably should have been more nerve racking than it was; the first day out with an untested camera that has a reputation (from others, not me) of being finicky and troublesome should not be the first day of shooting on a crucial project. True to the laws of nature, today was the first time I had major issues with the camera.

Another 5 miles into the log books. This was a good run for me because I was feeling pretty tired after that 9-miler two days ago. None the less I knew that this 5 miles would be the make or break 5 miles for getting to 32 miles total by Saturday. So, I popped some Sport Legs, donned some cool weather running clothes (it's down to 45º at night) and got my sore butt out on the road. It actually worked out well because I needed to mail a couple packages before I left, and wouldn't you know it but the post office is about 2.5 miles away! So, stretching is done, I've downed my Muscle Milk shakes - which are actually tasty and really seem to help me feel less crappy after excersizing - and now I'm off to pack for my weekend. Early morning tomorrow, but it'll all be worth it come Saturday!

Watch out 1/2 marathon, I'm comin' for ya! Oh, and sorry Post, looks like you don't get to slug me come Saturday. I'm well on my way to the 32 miles I promised I'd run by then. This last week was kind of a bummer for running: cold and incredibly wet weather is not my idea of running weather in any way, shape or form! Despite being a little behind in my schedule I none the less added another 9 miles tonight. I was shooting for just 8 but my route estimation was a little bit off. Oh well. I think 9 miles is actually the longest I've ever run; including in the military, in college and afterwards. And I celebrated my personal best with a well deserved chocolate milk shake. Okay, so it was a chocolate milk shake flavored Muscle Milk, but it was a tasty and satisfying reward none the less.

I was reminded again why it is I love to run long distances (if you can call 5-10 miles long): I have found few other times when I "get in the zone." I was around 5 miles tonight when I found I'd been drifting off into thoughts of projects I wanted to work on and people I wanted to talk to. Not in any cluttered-mind sort of way, but in a totally at ease kind of way. I wasn't slacking on my running either. In fact I realized I was breathing very easily, but running at a very steady, brisk pace. I was so at ease running - my body just doing what it knew I wanted it to do - that I could let my mind wander to other things, things I enjoy thinking about, creative things that didn't require my body. So, in that time my mind was doing one thing and my body was doing another. I love being in that place!

We watched a video in marketing class today that, despite being roughly as old as I am, made me think. The video itself was mostly ridiculous 80's pop culture cut together in an editing style and scripted in a way that made me think back to Reading Rainbow! But there was one speaker on the tape that really hit home with me. This business instructor and book author was talking about commitment. He talked about how, as business people and managers, they're taught to keep all options open. That limiting yourself in business is a bad thing. This struck a nerve because I've found that I do this same thing. I don't like being locked into one thing unless I'm absolutely positive it's the very best thing to do at that moment; so I keep my options open and don't fully commit until I absolutely have to. Even then I'm still keeping my eyes open for something else in case it comes along. Very rarely have I found myself 100% engulfed and dedicated to some pursuit. This has troubled me lately, especially as I look to graduating and leaping full time into the business of visual journalism. More and more I feel like I need to find something I can commit unabashedly to.

And that's what this guy on the video tape was saying. That contrary to common business sense, committing whole-heartedly to a decision and putting everything you have into making that work is often the best course of action; that sometimes it isn't the fact that you made the right decision that determines success, just that you made a decision. I don't know what my decision for the future will be yet, but I do know that when the time comes I'll be ready to put my all into the one I make.

"Rule #1: Use your best judgment.

"Rule #2: See Rule 1.

"That's it. That is the one hard and fast rule. Unless a serious mistake was made when you were hired, you have pretty good judgment."

In an attempt to get motivated to keep working at my desk, doing school work and other projects, I decided to take a break and go for another run. I have to log 32 miles before February 2nd thanks to a bet I made will long time friend come triathlete, Aaron Post. He, I and some other friends are meeting that weekend in Tahoe, California, for a little snowboarding. It's a good beginning goal and so far has succeeded in getting me off my butt and on my feet. And if I don't make it he gets to punch me. That's not really much motivation 'cause he's a bit of a girly man, but it's fun getting his hopes up.

My next goal after that is a bit larger: a half marathon. For the year my two main goals are running a half marathon and running a full marathon. I don't have a specific event in mind yet for either one but I know there's a half marathon in Santa Cruz in April, and the Chicago marathon is generally in early October, which gives me plenty of time to get ready. According to one training schedule I can start at the end of May and be ready in 18 weeks. Seems reasonable. I'm very motivated to follow through on my goals, not just because I'd like to actually keep a New Year's resolution, but also because I've felt painfully out of shape lately. Enough said about that. Besides, I like running.

Well, run number 2 happened tonight. After 4 days of realizing I over did it a little with intervals my first time out I decided to keep a nice even pace for 3 miles this time around. I'm adding a body weight workout to my routine as well as a little bicycling. That should keep things interesting for at least the next 8 weeks!

As some may recognize, I've joined the Nike+ website to help motivate me on LeAnne's and my goal to run a half marathon in April, or a full marathon by June. I've run sporadically in the past, especially back in 2000 after getting back from basic training. Lately I've felt like I've let myself go, what with school, bouncing around from place to place and not having anyone to consistently be active with. I've decided that a new year is a good time to turn things around, so I'm doing what I can to get back to the body I had coming out of basic training: not ripped, but healthy and trim. So, here it is, my first 4.2 miles towards that goal.

As a side note, this run was done with one of Nike+/iTunes' workout tracks. For $12.99 I picked up this interval run which included 13 individual tracks as well as 1 40 minute track that combined the 13 tracks back to back with runner Kara Goucher's voice coaching me through the 4 lung, lug and heart busting intervals. I really enjoyed it, though I can see I'll be buying at least a few more to keep the variety going. I would get REALLY bored if I had to do intervals to the same 13 songs over and over again. But for $12 it's really a pretty cheap alternative to a personal trainer! Here's the iTunes store URL for the interval workout I used: Kara Goucher's Endurance Boost

To all my dear friends who sent me their best today - Joe you old fart, John, LeAnne :*, Erin, and everyone else. Thank you so much. I feel so incredibly fortunate to have such a wonderful and caring group of friends and extended friends.

I often hear, "Oh, Christmas Eve huh? You must really hate getting jipped out of presents huh," when strangers find out that my birthday is the day before such a momentous and lucrative holiday. My typical response is pretty contrary though. Usually I say something like, "actually, I usually get DOUBLED-UP presents!" Which was true in the past, not so much anymore, but neither here nor there in the big picture. In reality I LOVE having my birthday preceding such a stupendous occasion. First of all no one ever forgets my birthday. You'd have to be pretty oblivious to forget another event right before the biggest shopping holiday of the year. Second, and more importantly having my birthday on Christmas Eve means that ALL my friends are generally back in town for break from whatever schooling they're up to, or, more frequently the case now, they have a couple days off work to come visit the family.

You see, I'm VERY close with a good number of high school friends. And we've all been fortunate that no one's family has really moved away from the area in the year following high school. Thus, our nice, tight-knit group of incredibly caring people are all in town for my birthday. We usually get together for a dinner or at least drinks on Christmas Eve or slightly before. I'm wished the best by everyone else and we all get to see everyone else's smiling, happy face another year as they grow into the amazing people we all knew we would be.

So again, to everyone here and elsewhere, "Thank you!" You are all very special to me in your own, unique way. Now, when is your birthday again...? ;)

This is a good news / bad news item for myself, though I hope it's good news for everyone else. I just today downloaded Google's new Google Updater software for my Blackberry Pearl. I've been using the Gmail and Google Maps mobile software for some time and have absolutely loved them. With the new Updater software I found that not only were there terrific new updates for these two programs but a slew of other new programs are now available. The best of these new offering, IMHO, is Google Sync.

For a few months now I've been using a combination solution to get my Google Calendar schedule to sync with my Blackberry's calendar software. Two things, service at Goosync.com - which I believe will now be rendered completely useless - and a little piece of client software called SyncJe, were handling the syncing of my main calendar, while other calendars (birthdays, holidays, etc) were being ignored due to the crippled service Goosync.com provided for free. I had to pay $30 for the SyncJe client so I certainly wasn't going to pay a ludicrously large monthly free to Goosync.com just to sync a few more calendars.

I have to say that I've been happy enough with the service of this combination. However, when offered something better for free, I'm not one to pass it up.

So in comes Google with - finally - their own direct sync client that, gasp, syncs as many of your calendars to your phone as you like! There have been reported bugs, though the only one I've personally experienced has to do with recurring events in GCal showing up as single events in my Blackberry. But that's a minor nuisance I'm hopeful Google will correct. The other down side for many is that the service is only compatible with Blackberry devices, so sorry all you Palm, and mobile phone users.

So, for those of you with Blackberry devices and Google Calendars I highly suggest you check out Google Sync to get yourself synced up! Oh, and the bad news, in case you missed it, is that I just a couple months ago PAID for a service I could have waited for to get free. Oh well.

The Motion Tips & Tricks session I did this morning was not entirely worthless; I learned where I could get a good DVD tutorial to watch and learn. Besides that I picked up a few little things, but I certainly don't feel like I could get a project started from scratch and come out with anything that looks good. I did get $20 off the DVD tutorial because, surprise, it's done by the same guy who did the workshop. The lesson here is that these 2-3 hour sessions are basically just shock and awe with little actual learning going on. I did take 2 pages of notes, but they're just notes, not anything really solid to work with. With this expo running $200 I guess you get what you pay for (Apple training sessions lasting 2-3 days run about $1K-2K) it's just a disappointment to go in expecting something worthwhile then feeling let down because you're barely any further along than when you started.

I'm hopeful the Digital Documentary Workshop will be more productive... will report back afterwards.

This morning I went to Ivy Lawn Memorial Park cemetery for the Veteran's Day ceremony there. I decided that it might also be a good opportunity to grab a few portraits of some vets. The ceremony was lightly attended, but I managed to grab a few vets from the First United States Volunteers color guard who were milling about before the ceremony. They were joined by a couple of kids from Young Marines and Navy JROTC. The former seaman at right is my favorite portrait of the few I took. Click on the image to see the other portrait I liked enough to post.

For both portraits I used a fairly simple setup of a single flash with a shoot-through umbrella mounted on a light stand just above head-height. Fortunately the skys were a bit overcast or I'd have been pretty severely blowing out the backgrounds. I was trying to mimic to some extent the style of a photographer named Platon, who's work you can see here: http://www.platonphoto.com/index.html

I just thought I'd share this photo of my new girlfriend and I at her friend's wedding last weekend with all 5 of my loyal readers. Leanne has been a good friend for at least 6 months. We spent the Nature Photography class in June/July camping and photographing a number of beautiful places together; all the while each of us were just a little too shy and too hesitant to screw up a great friendship by going out on a limb and saying something to take the relationship further.

Well, I finally missed her so much towards the end of my internship that I just had to say something when I got home. It took an all-night hang out session to finally get it out of me, but now it's out and I couldn't be happier. I think she's happy about it too. But you'll have to ask her. Here's her blog: http://bokyatbrooks.livejournal.com/

I was given the chance to photograph at Arco Arena for my first ever basketball shooting gig. Well, not so much gig as tagging along with Carl Costas, another Bee photog who was shooting for daily. Carl is an awesome guy, and would be fantastic to tag along with more often. Sadly I'm not here for photography, and I'm outta here in two days. So there goes that idea.. oh well, maybe some other day.