Thursday Recap
Thursday: Woke up at my brother's place in Phoenix, said hi to his long-suffering wife who just got home from a graveyard shift at the pharmacy. Had lunch with him and his work friends: he lives a block away from where he works, and drives to work. At work, Z let me in on a joke: he's been trying to convince his friend Mike that most people "save babies or find dead bodies" quite frequently. That both experiences are common, everyday experiences and anyone (such as Mike) who doesn't have this experience regularly and can't recount a half-dozen times when they've saved babies or found dead bodies must be leading a shallow and boring life. I told Mike how I'd saved a baby from falling off Angels Landing just the previous day and he seemed impressed.
gaping_asshole and I met up at the Phoenix Fry's to replace the camera that fell out of my pocket. I'd narrowed my choices down to two: Panasonic FX30 or Canon SD1000. (Panasonic has a wider-angle lens and image stabilization, Canon has an optical viewfinder.) I posed the question in another online group and the response was almost unanimous: get the Fuji F30 (which I hadn't even considered) for its Super CCD and excellent low noise. Unfortunately Fry's didn't have either one for me to look at so I left empty-handed, and Fuji seems to have released an almost-similar F31 and F40 to make the decision even more difficult. I'm really bad in situations where it seems like there's an optimal choice among many choices. Side note: I'm a little creeped out by the "face detection" that most 2007 cameras seem to be advertising.
We went to the mall to meet up with Paul H, who is the manager of a Waldenbooks. He has changed remarkably little, apart from his divorce from Tina, becoming Bahai and getting freakishly, disturbingly good at Dance Dance Revolution. (I'd post a video but C and I were too agog to remember to record the spectacle.) He was in very good spirits and it was great to see an old friend from high school and college after so long.
By the time we'd eaten lunch it was 4:00 and large scary clouds were coming from the north: possibly the same large scary clouds that caused us to skip the south rim of the grand canyon. I reached usernameguy (sitting in his office with a good net connection) who confirmed that there was bad weather moving into Phoenix and that if we were going to Tucson we should leave *now*. So we did, got stuck in rush hour traffic out of town and got blown around by serious wind but arrived in Tucson otherwise unscathed.
C and I split up again. He went to stay with his family, and Paul and I went to gauntleteer's house. It's a really nice single-story on an acre of something very close to real desert with old original creosote trees and a 4-car garage in the back. I am evious. We had lunch at some brew pub and watched a bunch of ridiculous crap on Youtube until everyone got tired.
gaping_asshole and I met up at the Phoenix Fry's to replace the camera that fell out of my pocket. I'd narrowed my choices down to two: Panasonic FX30 or Canon SD1000. (Panasonic has a wider-angle lens and image stabilization, Canon has an optical viewfinder.) I posed the question in another online group and the response was almost unanimous: get the Fuji F30 (which I hadn't even considered) for its Super CCD and excellent low noise. Unfortunately Fry's didn't have either one for me to look at so I left empty-handed, and Fuji seems to have released an almost-similar F31 and F40 to make the decision even more difficult. I'm really bad in situations where it seems like there's an optimal choice among many choices. Side note: I'm a little creeped out by the "face detection" that most 2007 cameras seem to be advertising.
We went to the mall to meet up with Paul H, who is the manager of a Waldenbooks. He has changed remarkably little, apart from his divorce from Tina, becoming Bahai and getting freakishly, disturbingly good at Dance Dance Revolution. (I'd post a video but C and I were too agog to remember to record the spectacle.) He was in very good spirits and it was great to see an old friend from high school and college after so long.
By the time we'd eaten lunch it was 4:00 and large scary clouds were coming from the north: possibly the same large scary clouds that caused us to skip the south rim of the grand canyon. I reached usernameguy (sitting in his office with a good net connection) who confirmed that there was bad weather moving into Phoenix and that if we were going to Tucson we should leave *now*. So we did, got stuck in rush hour traffic out of town and got blown around by serious wind but arrived in Tucson otherwise unscathed.
C and I split up again. He went to stay with his family, and Paul and I went to gauntleteer's house. It's a really nice single-story on an acre of something very close to real desert with old original creosote trees and a 4-car garage in the back. I am evious. We had lunch at some brew pub and watched a bunch of ridiculous crap on Youtube until everyone got tired.