Fun with drywall.....yeah...uhuh...

So, we are going to install some in-wall speakers in the coming weeks, but unfortunately, it looks like the easiest way to get into the wall is to actually drill down into the basement, rather than up from the basement, which means cutting some holes in the drywall to get the drill in there, then patching those because the holes for the speakers themselves will be WAY too high to drill down into the basement.  It is going to be SOO much fun.

Copilot is a wonderful thing

Fog Creek Copilot is a wonderful piece of software.  I am remotely connected to my mom's PC doing trouble shooting without having to set up port forwarding on routers, or VNC, or remote desktop or ANYTHING.  And the best part is, it is free on weekends.  Oh, and it works on Windows or Mac.  Kudos Fog Creek....kudos:
http://www.copilot.com/

Missing the truck

Let's try this again.  I had already written this post once through Picasa, but blogger gave me an error and deleted the post entirely.  FUN!

So, as the title says, I miss my old Frontier.  It was a truck big enough to haul things to the dump, pick up things at home depot, and transport my old big-screen TV THREE times (Best Buy->Elkridge, Elkridge->Millersville, Millersville->House of co-worker that bought it).  It didn't take up too much space in parking lots, and got decent fuel mileage for a V6 pickup truck.  I had a lot of good times in that truck, including when Chrissy & I drove cross country in it back in '02.  This picture is the perfect one to show of the truck too.  I did more modifications to it later in it's life (TJM Bull Bar on the front), but eventually traded it in when I bought the Jetta before the PCS to Germany.  It just didn't make sense to take a pickup truck with over 100K miles on it to Germany.  I wish I could pick up a used one (preferably with the same rough specs as my old one) but it just isn't in the financial cards at this time.  So, instead, I will just post up a pick of the old one in all its muddy glory.

CDANS(?) - Once again open for business

It has been several years since I did paid web development work.  Well, I am back in the mix.  Granted, it wasn't much, but it might line up future work, and I actually had fun doing it (when was the last time I actually had fun doing work?  a LONG time ago).

Now I have to decide if I actually want to stand up a business website again.  CrutchfieldDesign.com lapsed a LONG time ago (and was grabbed by some company in Japan...?), but I still have cdans.com locked up until 2014.  The problem with cdans, it was "Crutchfield Development and Network Services" and I plan on sticking to the development side of things.  Maybe I can think of a different meaning for cdans. I will have to get legitimate hosting for a business domain though (unlike my current half blogger/half server in the basement with dyndns setup).  I guess I can leave it as CDANS because the network services would include configuring hosting, etc...  Will have to ponder that.

Of course, I also will need to figure out how I want to market myself and what kind of projects I want to take on (assuming I can find projects to work on).  SO....I guess what I am saying is, if you need help with a website...let me know! 

Picture of the week

Well, this one is pretty darn obvious. Yes, that is the REAL Eiffel Tower, not some imitation. I was toying around with the black and white setting on the camera and liked the perspective of this shot. I haven't taken many B&W photos, but this is by far, my favorite. Hence, why it is the photo of the week.

Photo of the Week

This panoramic was taken at one of the U Turns on Stelvio Pass.  Despite the roads narrow appearance and blind corners, it is two-way traffic all the way up the side of the mountain.  It actually made for some harrowing situations especially when we were also passing bikers (the pedal kind, not the motorcycle kind).  This is the road that Top Gear (the REAL one from Britain) hailed as the greatest driving road in the world.  It was also featured in an issue of Motortrend (which lead to us finding it in the first place).  It was a blast driving up and down the mountain with the convertible top down.  Maybe someday we will get back there.

Shot of the week, Lake Geneva

I hope to actually make this a regular segment.  I will go through and pull up a photo from my collection (usually historical, but sometimes it might be from that week) and talk about where it was, and share any other interesting tidbits about that particular shot.


This photo is an HDR image I created while we were staying at the Hilton in Evian-les-Baines, France (one of several times we stayed there).  This was probably our favorite view from any hotel we stayed in.  Looking out over Lake Geneva, with the Swiss Alps in the background, and the French Alps were directly behind the hotel.  By taking this photo at three different exposure levels and combining them into a single HDR image, you can see the detail in the clouds, but still have clear definition of the leaves on the trees in the foreground.  Very little of the sky is at maximum saturation, yet the rest of the image is bright enough to see magnificent detail.  I know this is a place we will both want to return to if we make it back overseas.  Evian is a very quiet location, but the drive to Geneva is reasonable for a day trip (we stayed here for the Geneva Auto Show) and it was close enough to Germany for a weekend jaunt if we hit the road early enough on Friday.