Collecting

It is apparently in my nature to collect things. I have a tendency to see something neat, realize it has a companion...and then seek to "complete the set". I have a LOT of little collections that I've started over the years. Comic books, 1:18 die cast cars, action figures, Star Wars toys...etc etc. One of the oldest collections I started didn't actually start as a collection. Growing up, as did many in my generation, I read the "Hardy Boys" series. Now, as a collector by nature...I don't throw things out. That said...this is the view directly to my right as I type this:

Yes, fast approaching 40 and I still have my Hardy Boys collection. And yes, that is a little stuffed Mystery Machine.

Why bring this up? Well...during a recent trip to Half Price Books I happened to spot the familiar blue spine of one of these books on a shelf. A few days later I was up in our guestroom/library/"book storage room" and was reminded of this little find by the site of my collection. Being the completionist that I am I had no choice but to whip on my iPhone and create a note with the books that I do NOT have so that I can compare the list the next time I am in Half Price.

That was a month or so ago. I've made it a habit to stop into various Half Price locations when I am in the area and have found a few. My goal is to complete the "original 58". As of today I'm missing 14.

Eventually I'm hoping one (or both) of my nephews, or should I be so blessed a son will share my interest and I can let them enjoy a childhood classic. If not...at least I'll have a set! :-)

Why "St James"?

So it's been awhile since I put anything here. That's generally how it runs on these things isn't it? Spurt of activity....then nothing. Repeat. Heh. Thought I'd just go basic this time.

One of the more common questions I get is why I use "SeanStJames" online. Nothing mystical about it..."St James" is literally my last name....translated into English that is.

During a recent job hunt I opted to go for a more "normal" sounding email address. None of my existing "handles" really comes off as "mature" and I figured if I wanted responses to a resume I should go with something plain.

Unfortunately every variation of "Sean" I tried was taken....and my last name is the capital city of a country so every variation I came up with was also registered. Then I turned to Google, which led me to the Wikipedia entry for Santiago. If you scroll down past the list of cities you eventually find the entry for James, son of Zebedee, A.K.A. "St James". I read a bit, followed some of the links (particularly entertaining to me was the "Order of Santiago") I got an interesting history of the origin of my family name.

Anyhow, that's all there really is to it. :-) Any bets as to how long it takes me to put another entry up?

Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock

I've mentioned my appreciation for the CBS comedy The Big Bang Theory in the past. Today while shopping for a birthday present for someone I ran into something that has me back here spreading the word so the show stays around. :-)

During an episode of the show Sheldon shares that anecdotal evidence suggests that in a game of rock paper scissors players familiar with each other will tie 75 to 80 percent of the time due to the limited number of outcomes. The result? Better to see it yourself:


I am seeing more and more people throw the "Spock" sign out now and I'm loving it. ANYHOW, what brings this up today is I am shopping for a present for my brother-in-law and that led tme to Think Geek. Like many web sites they list some of their warez on the front page to highlight them. Well, what do I see today? A Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock T-Shirt! After I stopped laughing I read the description and learned that this was NOT a game invented for the show but rather the work of Sam Kass. Credit where credit is due.....GENIUS Mr. Kass!

Anyhow, watch the show. It's hilarious. :-)

Posers

This is just a mini-"rant". I've run into posers all my life...but with my recent entry into the role of "photography hobbyist" it's sort of amplified my view.

If you don't know what I mean by a poser (sometimes spelled "poseur") it's someone acting out a role they have not fully learned. Like the kid who slaps a coffee-can exhaust, a "chip" and some stickers on his Civic and proclaims himself the street race king. Or your pool playing friend that went out and bought a $500 McDermott cue and can't bank a shot to save their life (ok, there might be a little of me in that last one).

So anyhow like I said...I recently started toying with photography. Got my first dSLR and signed up for an entry photography class at the local community college. I got lots of warnings about how this gets to be an EXPENSIVE hobby but I didn't dive in like some of my classmates. Bought the starter rig with one lens and am learning.

So I'm in Las Vegas last week. I've had my camera about 6 months now and will be the first to tell you I'm still learning. I don't share most of my shots 'cause I think they suck. :-)

First poser experience: While Connie and my parents did a little shopping in the Beatles shop at the Mirage I took some pics of the really cool (in my opinion) entry hall way. It's a lit floor with mirrored ceiling....here's a photo of it:

Anyhow, I'm taking turns snapping photos with another fellow who I note is using a VERY nice Canon L lens (I'm not that good at spotting the specifics, but it was one of the big white ones you see at sporting events....they are all over $1000). I caught him muttering something about the stupid camera and I asked what was wrong. At this point I'm close enough to notice the camera is the new Canon 5D Mark II (MSRP $2699) He says "stupid camera is a lemon", everything is blue and red". I say "it's the lighting...adjust your white balance." He says "I shouldn't have to do that with as much as this cost!". So he spent probably $4000 when a $99 point-and-shoot is what he needs.

Later in the week we journeyed up the Eiffel Tower replica. During the ride up the elevator we ALL got to watch this couple pull their cameraS out of their bag and prep. Nice Lowepro bag chock full of lenses and associated gear. We get to the top and I start snapping away. Eventually we end up next to each other shooting the Bellagio fountain show. I hear the following exchange:
"My shots aren't turning out"
"Mine either. I'm switching it to the automatic mode"
(now his flash starts going off with every shot)
"Now it's just focusing on the cage in front of us!"
"Try changing lenses, maybe we need a special one"

I know better to get involved. Besides, I'm too busy screwing up the ISO and shutter settings of my OWN shots. But they sure LOOKED like they knew what they were doing on the ride up. I can't imagine what they spent on that bag full of goodies....not knowing what any of it did. I did get a couple of shots to turn out though:

Last one. We end the week with a (rainy) visit to Sigfried & Roy's Secret Garden. I'm having a hellish time coping with the motion of the animals, the lack of lighting and the rain. Lots of blurry and too-dark photos result. But while shooting the leopard enclosure I got to overhear a classic argument. There was this couple there. When I arrived the husband was holding the umbrella over the wife while she shot. The conversation I heard went something like this:

"He keeps moving!"
"Try slowing the shutter thing"
"What?"
"Here, let me" (they switch, he fiddles with the camera)
"Wow, I think I turned it the wrong way, he's MORE blurry now" (more fiddling)
"Let me try again, your pictures stink....I want to shoot"

At this point I opted to move over the the tiger lair...but my lip was bleeding from biting so hard.

Anyhow, the point of my little rant? You can't just guy equipment and have it work. Just like you should learn to drive before buying a Porsche....you really should understand what some of the settings on a camera do before buying the top end model.

I'm done. For now. :-)

A Vehicular History of Sean

So recently I got sucked into the whole Facebook thing. I've found a TON of old friends dating back to elementary school. We've been posting old pictures and sharing old laughs. While going through old photos to find and scan I kept seeing photos of cars and bikes and getting equally fond memories of times in cars. So I thought I'd take a walk back through a Vehicular History of Sean.

My 1987 Dodge Colt. This was the first car that was "mine". That is, I was the primary driver. The deal was I whatever I saved Dad would match and so I worked at Valleyfair for two summers and shoveled snow in the winter. I have a lot of GREAT memories from this car as I had her during high school. We went to college together but alas we had to be separated my 3rd year for financial reasons. In order to keep me mobile Dad tracked down a car a friend had for sale for $100....the 2nd car in our voyage:

My 1979 Toyota Celica. Note that this is NOT a photo of my actual car. Sadly I had possession of her for less than 72 hours. Ya see the previous owner did not share that the temperature gauge wasn't working (amongst other things) so during my drive back to school she overheated and cracked the block. She was in tremendous shape for a $100 car...but alas it was not to be. After some time bumming rides, using the bus and riding my skateboard to work I saved enough to make my first solo car purchase:

Again, not my actual car but a photo of the same color and model. A 1989 Pontiac LeMans. My first 5 speeed. This car was a great little ride. This is the car I owned when I met my wife. This is the car I was in when an illegal immigrant in a minivan failed to stop for a red light and slammed into the sedan behind us thereby throwing me into the car in front of me. Yes, they were going fast enough to affect THREE cars in front of them. Thus my hatred of minivans. I drove her damaged for awhile after that (I was in college, who can afford repairs?) and then Connie made the fateful decision to help me buy another car. That's right, against her parents advice she lent her boyfriend money. But that's a story for another day. :-) The end result was this:

My 1991 Dodge Spirit. This was a sweet car. She had high milage so sh was affordable. This was the ES model with the Mitsubish sourced V6. She got up and moved. And pulled! I managed to slap a trailer hitch on her and load her down with everything I owned in the world when I followed my heart (and fiancee) to the Dallas area in 1994. This is the last car I owned before I got married. Speaking of which, this is the point where Connie and I's lives intersected "vehicularly" so next in line is Connie's first ever new car!

So you're fresh out of college and you move from the midwest to Dallas...what do you buy? A Jeep of course! This was an utterly awesome purchase. We loved it. Except one minor detail. Ya see, "fresh out of college" = "not quite rolling in the dough" yet. So we cut a few corners. Being from the midwest we had never really experienced Dallas in summer....so when we realized if we bought a Wrangler WITHOUT air conditioning we could save a lot of money we did it. A word of advice....if ever presented with that choice DO NOT DO IT! It's gets FREAKING HOT in Dallas in the summer, you need A/C! So the Wranger and the Spirit were the stable when we took our vows. About a year later, I really don't remember why....we decided to buy another new car.

Enter my first ever new car....a 1995 Mitsubish Eclipse. Tons of fun. She was more on the "looks fast" than "is fast" end of things though. And she had mechanical issues though. But we'll get to that in a second. At this point Connie is tired of driving around without A/C. We've both got stable employment so it's time to trade the Jeep in.

Enter our Honda Accord. We went a little nutty with the accessories catalog. Every option was there from leather to the "gold kit" (which, 10 years later.....not so much). What can I say? It was an Accord....very reliable.

Now, a quick back step....my Colt was a Dodge that had a Mitsubishi motor it her. Ran like a champ and I beat the crap out of that car. My Spirit was a Dodge that had a Mitsubish motor in her. Again, 100k+ miles of smooth riding with no problems. Jump back to the Eclipse...I figure I'll buy a Mitsubishi and get the whole package! WRONG! Bought the base RS model (hey, first new car....) and got the, you guessed it, Dodge motor. Now...given that hindsight is 20/20 and all the press is now about how the domestic automakers have "closed the gap" on quality....you can guess where the quality level on this car was ~14 years ago. Right, in the crapper. Timing was great though. You see, men in this great country are burdoned with being "percieved" as a greater risk behind the wheel until the age of 25. So it costs a boatload to get insurance for an under-25 male. At this point I had entered my career at Nortel and started the "rise" of the dot-com bubble....so one month after I turned 25 I bought this:

My baby. a 1994 Toyota Supra TT (twin turbo). 320 horsepower. It took me 6 days to get a ticket....and it was a doozy. I love this car...and to this day it is the one that I most regret letting go. I ended up making some "special" modifications to her and she got up and MOVED. Now we had a taste of this mythical "Toyota quality" we kept hearing about. The car was solid no matter what I did to it. So when the lease on the Accord came up we natually thought about Toyota for Connie. Sort of.

Sorry, that's the best shot I could find...but that's Connie's ES300. A '98 model if I remember right. This was actually a problem. You see, the interior controls between Lexus and Toyota are VERY similar. Steering wheels are the same configuration, the cars FELT very similar. So every now and then I would take a corner VERY hot in the Lexus much to Connie's chagrin. But a VERY nice car.

Now, while I owned the Supra I discovered the thrill of open air driving. The natural progression to this? Remove the top....and the doors.....and two wheels.

That's right, I bought a motorcycle. Specifically a Honda Shadow 1100. Rode a lot with some folks from work and cruised all over town. It was interesting to get two cars and a cruiser into a two car garage but we made do. (have I mentioned I have the most understanding wife on the planet?) Geez, we're about to 99 at this point I think. The Supra is just menacing...always willing to zip to the limit and as such I managed to get the attention of a State Tropper and he is NOT pleased. I decide I had better slow down a little before I end up in jail (2/3 of my tickets involved triple digit speeds....heh) so I have a lapse in judgement and trade the Supra in. But what to get?

Enter Wrangler #2...this time a 2000 model. And with A/C. :-) I went all out and added chrome everywhere. This was actually a very nice ride. Now I was just getting chased off of all the construction sites I could find to mud in. Alas after awhile I kept feeling the twitch to go fast. And then fate stepped in. We went to Minnesota for my high school reunion. During the trip we visited our friends the Clarks. A mutual friend came over on his Honda VFR. (what is generically referred to as a "crotch rocket") For some unknown reason...he let me take it for a ride. Shorts, sandles, no helmet around the lakes in Minnesota. APPARENTLY there was a visible grin on my face when I got back 'cause I remember Connie saying "oh shit". So I got home and started shopping. The Shadow went away in favor of....

I give you the 2000 Suzuki GSX-R750. At the time this was the newest version of the bike and she was eating up 1000cc bikes on the track. I had a TON of fun with this bike. Rode all over Texas. Put her on a trailer and drove places to ride twisty roads. Tried the whole wheelie thing and didn't really like it....and yes, got pulled over a lot. BUT...only one ticket! Apparently when you stop and pull off a helmet and they see you aren't some 20 year old the police are more forgiving. Though I am guessing it's mostly 'cause I actually stopped. This bike is faster than the the police helicopters ya know.

At this point I've made a new friend. This guy has a "hobby" of ordering cars when they are announced and getting on the waiting list. Then he"flips" them after driving for a little and takes a profit. He apparently owned the first BMW M5 in the area for 4 hours. But as it pertains to me....he had a car he wanted to unload and I made the mistake of looking at it in person.

Yes, that is a Ferrari 360 Modena. No, it was never mine. I just had so use that photo. My car is in the foreground, a 2000 CLK55 AMG. Better shot here:

Now THIS was a great car. All the performance of the Supra (without turbo lag!) AND the "grown up" image to go with it. The police never looked twice at me. On the flip side, she was finicky. In the 4 years I had her she had some major systems replaced and was hauled in to the dealer on a flat bed on more than one occasion. But more on that later. There are a couple of motorcycles to sneak in at this point.

Left to right, Honda CBR1000, Aprilia RS50 & Kawasaki EX250. The CBR started off being stored for a friend. In the end I bought it after riding it so much (to keep the battery charged man) that it made sense to own (and insure) it. After awhile I realized owning two bikes made little sense so I traded it on the RS50 to teach Connie to ride. Who knew that the little race replica had such a high seat? So we sold that and bought the 250. That's Connie on it (the only pic I could find of the bike). Sadly cycling wasn't for her and we sold it as well. So back to four wheels with:

up until this point we technically had three cars. With the purchase of the CLK the Wrangler just sort of sat. At the end of her lease Connie wanted an SUV. The Lexus options were ugly so we traded the Wrangler in on Cherokee. At this point it was DaimlerChrysler so we were a Daimler family! Having typed all this out I realize now what my family was teasing me about. Dang we went through cars! BUT...this was the dot-com era. I was sustaining the economy darn it! :-)

So up until this point we'd been pretty good at "taking turns" getting a new car. Well, not so much anymore. While the CLK was acting up a little I loved it. I was with a new employer that had this "X Plan" pricing on Fords. So off to the Lincoln dealer to bring home this:

Ok, not THAT one. We liked the thing so much I never took a photo of it. Heh. I found this photo online. For whatever reason we thought we needed a big hauler with 3 rows of seating. For the two of us. I dunno. It was a nice truck....but as it aged it just started to fall apart. Screws would work loose, rattles developed...it was a truck but it was sold as a "luxury vehicle" so we didn't expect that. Anyhow, it was a lease so we had to ride it out. In the mean time my CLK was in the shop again. And 3 weeks from the expiration of it's warrenty. This time it was the fuel system....and they had basically replaced all of it. Including the fuel tank. I traded it in while it was on the lift. Believe it or not, on another Mercedes:

As much trouble as the CLK gave me I loved it. I *DID* test drive every other car on the planet before I made this purchase. Well, just about. Connie insists I did. I spent entire days doing from dealer to dealer and driving cars. Sometimes driving one car to another dealership to compare side-by-side. Sales people don't like that. Especially when they are on the test drive with you. BUT...I'm a little OCD and I wanted to be sure. So I bought me a 2005 C55 AMG. And ~4 years later I am still happy. I love this car. She's almost paid off and I'm going to keep her. Sadly that isn't quite it yet. The Lincoln finally got to term and Connie went on a test drive rampage of her own. Though a little more subdued than mine. :-) In the end she went back to Lexus:

The RX had just been bumped to the 3.5 litre 6 and we were impressed with it's creature comforts. That, and we loved the ES we had. So are we at and end? Not exactly. Somewhere along the line between the CLK and the RX350 I had a Yamaha FJR1300 in the garage...but right now I've reached the point where being hunched over on the gixxer is a bit much. So I sold her and bought this:

She's a Triumph Speed Triple. She's classified as a "standard", commonly referred to as a "naked bike" but known as a street fighter. Quick and well mannered....and upright for us "getting older" folks that don't like to hunch over as much when riding. So that's where we stand through today. What is that....15 cars and 7 bikes (6 pictured...heh) in a 20 year period between two people. Shortest we owned anything was a year (the 2nd Wrangler) the longest has been 6 years (the GSX-R). And I think I've managed to break my record for post length. Just rambling on. Thanks for reading honey, I know you're probaly the only one that does......:-)

Lovesacs, recycling and you

Everyone is familiar with the plastic bags that grocery stores use these days. You either throw them away (boooo) or jam them into a corner somewhere to "save" for later. We did the latter. The pantry under our stairs isn't where our nephew sleeps but rather where we stored a couple of plastic bags full of plastic bags. Today I got got a creative impulse and thought I would share. First, I went in and found our bags of bags.

Doesn't look like much does it? Well, apparently over time I've taken to squishing them bags down into each other. When I emptied the bags to get a pile of individuals I ended up with this

First thing, yes...we shop at Target a lot. My wife is a pharmacist for them. The discounts you can get as an employee rock. :-) Anyhow, the crazy idea? Have you heard of a LoveSac? It's essentially a big bean bag. I have one of the little ottoman ones in my office that used be where I rest my feet until my dog "adopted" it as her bed. Since we've established I'm a pack rat (duh, see that pile of bags up there?!?) I have the original cover that the LovSac shipped with. SO...take cover and jam it full of plastic sacks and what do you get?

A little "bean bag" that is just about the right size for a dog. And a little squishier than the actual LoveSac. Not to mention quite a bit lighter. But would she like it? Well, I finished a couple of hours ago and she's still asleep on it. Looks like I get my foot rest back!

And as a last parting commentary...those plastic bags are bad. Consider picking up some of the reusable bags stores offer. They fold up nice and can live in the car for whenever you need them. And it's fun to bring a Target bag into Central Market or Tom Thumb to pick up stuff occasionally. :-)

What the heck?

So living in Texas has it's perks. One of my personal favorites is the ability to call my parents in Minnesota during the months of January and February while out on the patio wearing shorts. Generally I am sitting here:

That was essentially the view YESTERDAY. I went out at halftime of the Vikings game wearing shorts to let the dog take a quick walk around the yard. Well TODAY I am greeted by this:

As one in the military might say: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!? 24 hours from shorts to icicles.

*sigh* When I first got here someone told me "If you don't like the weather in Texas just hang around a few minutes". Apparently they spoke the truth. Hopefully this means I can ride my motorcycle to work in the morning.....