nerd alert

Josh and I got a little time away on Saturday evening and we hit up our favorite coffee place and the used bookstore down the block. I seriously love this bookstore. The smell, the stacks of books, the random categories…everything about it is perfect.

We wandered around leisurely since Jasper wasn’t with us. I found a copy of Emily Post’s Etiquette book from 1937. I wanted to rescue it but I already have a copy of that book. That’s the only problem with a used bookstore is that some of the really old beat-up books I just want to save.

I could totally work there. It seems so laid-back and everyone working is so knowledgeable. It’s like I would have to read all day just to do well at my job. I could also pop down the street for the best caramel latte in town. I would probably end up working just to pay for my book addiction. My thought is you can never have too many books. Thankfully the books at this store are cheap and some of the thrill is just wandering around there. I really like that you never know what you’ll find. A bookstore is probably one of my favorite places to go and I don’t care how nerdy that sounds.

We decided to go with an All-in-One computer this time, which means there is no tower just the monitor. The awesome thing about this is that you greatly cut down on the amount of cables and cords. I told Josh since it was already going to be better, I wanted to make it the best. So he attached the power strip to the desk and USB hub to the hutch. It’s ridiculous how happy this makes me. The cable situation under my desk has been bothering me since we moved into this house. Ah, it looks so much better!

Here is a shot of what the desk and cord mess looked like before:

And here is after:

Just wonderful!

I was talking to Ranee the other day about organizing digital pictures. I always give her a hard time when she doesn’t get her images off the memory card right away. I thought maybe I would write about how I organize my photos. Though it’s not a perfect system, I can usually find what I’m looking for. Right now in my Pictures folder I have 109 gigs which boils down to 510 folders and 28,073 files. So that’s a lot…and that doesn’t include any of my client’s pictures.

When I take pictures I have my transfer program automatically delete the images off the card. This way I don’t end up deleting something I haven’t transferred or transfer images multiple times. All images are named by the date they were taken. If I took a picture today it would be name 022311_XX. (This also comes in handy because the printer I use prints the picture name on the back of every picture so I always have the date on the picture.) They are downloaded to a sorting folder that I keep only for pictures that need to be processed or sorted. (Right now in my sorting folder I have a couple pictures of Jasper and Ranee’s daughter’s basketball game.)

Now here’s where things would be slightly different for me. I shoot in a format called RAW. All images I take have to be processed in Photoshop and save to a jpg. If I take twenty pictures of Jasper I open them all in Photoshop and delete any out of focus, duplicates and process the rest. (By process I mean adjust exposure or other really basic editing effects.) If I had shot in regular JPG format I would sort through those twenty pictures in my folder and do the deleting right then. If you use any picture editing software now would be a good time to use it. Adjust colors, exposure, contrast… I really try to keep my post-processing to a minimum. I don’t want to look back at all my pictures in a year and think, “Why did I process all of those pictures that way?”. So I try to make them look the best in a simple, technical way. Usually I’m done there, although now is a great time to do a little black and white changing or other effects. If I change a picture to black and white I ALWAYS save the original.

Now comes the sorting process. For the most part I sort things by subject. I have twenty-eight main folders in my Pictures folder. Jasper, Josh & Kimberly, Nature, Christmas, Our House… I try to keep these folders pretty broad and then sort within. The Jasper folder is sorted by year and in each year folder I have a month folder. I have recently started making additional copies of pictures that belong in different folders. If I take a picture of Josh and Jasper, I try to remember to put a copy in Josh’s folder too. Since all of my pictures are saved by the date I have an easy time locating in specific folders. If the folder is sorted by name or date, my pictures are always in order.

Eventually I would like to have all pictures tagged with useful tags so that I can search for something and get every picture that contains that. Imagine searching for “kitchen” and getting every picture you have with your kitchen in it. Some day…right now that’s a little daunting. Like I said, my system isn’t ideal but it works for me. You really just have to find what works for you and allows you to find your images. And ALWAYS have a backup system in place! (But that’s a whole other post for another day…)

I have been eyeing a charging station like this one for awhile. Instead I thought I would just make my own. I took a file box I got from Ikea and cut a hole in the back.

All of our electronics can sit on top of the closed box and be plugged in. I labeled each of the cords so it would be easy to find the right one.

Nobody has to see the mess of cords now! All I have to do is find a good spot for it.

- When we go into labor, Josh or I will tweet so be sure to keep an eye on our Twitter accounts.
- We bought Lego Batman for the Wii and I can’t believe how fun it is. Josh and I can play as a team which works best for us. When you beat up a bad guy the little Lego pieces fall apart.
- I’m wearing my “We’re Hungry” shirt today. Figured I better wear it while I can!
- Not sure if it’s nesting or just the fact that my house is so dirty, but I would love to be at home cleaning.
- I heard some good news last week and anytime I forget I get really excited again when I remember.
- If we have a little girl, we’re not going to name her Piper. A couple that live a block over named their baby Piper (she was born last month) and I’m hearing a lot of people using that name. We just don’t want to end up with a “trendy” name.
- It’s not even 8am and I would love some ice cream.
- I’m really proud of where Knight Light is this year. No advertising or promoting really… This just might turn into something great!
- I have finally settled on a new cell phone since mine is over two years old. My PDA has been acting flaky for awhile and I know I really need to replace it. I wasn’t sold on the cell phone/PDA combination until I heard about the HTC Touch Pro. I can’t wait until it gets released!
- Two Senior sessions left to process and one wedding album to wrap up. I really want to be done before the weekend.

I’ve been using a PDA for a good four years now. I love it, can’t live without it… I put all of my appointments, birthdays, contacts, everything in there. However, with all of the Knight Light scheduling I’ve been doing it was easier to print out a monthly calendar to see when I was busy. For a month I printed off calendars and then filled in my schedule (also putting it into my PDA).

I was recently at Border’s and looking through their selection of Moleskines. I found a weekly calendar that started in July and went through the end of 2009. After staring at it for 30 minutes Josh convinced me to just go for it.

So now I’m using both my PDA and the planner. I’m not sure that I can wean myself off my PDA although I love the planner. I really like my PDA because that’s where I keep my little budget spreadsheet, contacts are so easy to update, I can check my email… I’m wondering can I make the switch back to paper?

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1823766

When Josh asked for a Nintendo DS for his birthday, I thought it was kind of silly. He already has a Wii, why would he need a DS? And then I played it… This thing is so much fun! The first game he got was New Super Mario Bros which we both have now beat. The graphics are kind of amazing for such a little screen.

I didn’t think I would want to play it as much as I do. Lucky for me, Josh is good at sharing his toys.

Josh recently got Resident Evil for the Wii. That was definitely not my choice. Josh keeps asking me when I’m going to try and shoot some zombies. After the first time watching the game and a zombie attacked the main character with a chainsaw…well, that pretty much did it for me.

The other night I had a dream that Josh and I were locked up in a house to keep the zombies out. No joke. Josh felt pretty bad so he hasn’t played in two days. Hmmm….maybe if I have a nightmare that dirty dishes were attacking me, he’d feel bad and help with those. Ha!

Josh and I often try to incorporate new words or phrases into our everyday conversation. Unfortunately I don’t mean words to increase our intellectual vocabulary. Usually they are just random things we’ve heard in movies or on the Internet. Quality, right?

For example, there was a time where when someone would say something we would respond, “UmmM!” Like you do when you’re in third grade and someone is getting in trouble. Last summer my brother would constantly say “gihad, derka derka” (a reference to the mind-stimulating movie Team America). Unfortunately that one stuck around for quite awhile.

These days we are working in the phrase “would that it were so” just because it’s fun to say. We have added “fugging” to our vocabulary which is slightly rebellious. As in “It’s fugging hot out”. Fug was in the book “An Abundance of Katherines” by John Green which was an excellent read and made us addicted to the word. My other new favorite is “natch”, short for naturally.

Maybe one of these days we’ll actually try to add something that has some mental value. We just have more fun with the goofy things we hear in movies. Natch.