Scouting

Posted on by Jordan

This weekend marks both a beginning and an end.

It is the end of the several month long process I have been working on to become an adult leader with the Boy Scouts of America. The process hasn’t been hard, but has required a fair amount of tenacity. I won’t bore you with the entire process, but figuring out who to get in contact with, actually getting into contact with them, filling out the forms properly, and then waiting for the right training opportunities ate up a surprising chunk of time. I am not 100% done with the training, and it appears it may be some time before I actually am, but I figured I was far enough along in the process to warrant a blog post.

A lot of people I have come into contact with in this process ask “So why are you getting involved?” this question generally comes right after they ask how old my boy is.  I hope I haven’t confused anybody with my answer being somewhat different each time. It isn’t that I don’t know it’s just hard to summarize.

For one, my amazing wife was honest enough with me to make it clear that she didn’t want to become a camper, and I would rather camp in a scouting environment than with the guys who consider ‘several cases of beer’ to be essential camping supplies.

Another reason is to just find ways to get involved with the community here. It has been far too easy to just go from home to work and then back again without interacting with anybody. This seems like a great way to learn about the area (I still don’t know where most of the outlying towns are), and meet a broader swath of people.

The final reason is basically that I always figured I would. When you become an Eagle, they remind you that part of your obligation is to give back to scouting. I remember being asked specifically if I were planning to get involved with a troop once I started college. I am sure I said yes, and no doubt meant it, but I just never got around to it. Heather has been a great encouragement in that… I don’t know if I ever would have started this process without her, but I am really proud that I have.

I have actually been mildly involved with the meetings for a month now, and the first camp-out I will go on is mid October.

That reminds me, I should probably make some time to go through my camping gear and see if it is all ready to go… most of it has been packed up for the last ten years 🙂

-Jordan

Des Moines Habitat, Rain

Posted on by Jordan

Saturday, Heather and I had the opportunity to help provide food to the Des Moines Habitat For Humanity build.

They are doing some sort of large scale build, i think 10 houses in 10 days maybe? At any rate, they are building a lot of houses.

We were simply helping prepare and serve lunch to the crews.

Our involvement was due to Heather’s company providing the food for the day’s meal, and then recruiting staff to come help serve it.

Lunch turned out to be about 300 pork-burgers:

What you can’t really see in the picture is the rain. As has been the trend for September, it was cold and rainy all morning. It never turned into a downpour, but standing outside of the shelter wasn’t ideal. I was more than happy to grill, in part due to the fact I hadn’t brought a coat in my rush to leave the house. Standing by the fire was nice and warm, if a little damp.

The other advantage to volunteering to grill is that I have a defined task, and don’t have to keep wondering around looking for something to do or haunting the one person who seems to know whats going on for another task.

Even on that rather large grill, cooking ~300 burgers was surprisingly time consuming.

After cooking and serving lunch, we cleaned up and headed home. I had just enough time to get a hot shower in before the Nebraska game started. ESPN was streaming video of the game, a trend that I hope continues as we haven’t had a TV for over a year now.

Our plan for Sunday involved helping our friends who have been remodeling their house, to do some painting after church. A phone call from family drastically altered that plan, early Sunday morning.

Heather’s Uncle, the same one I briefly mentioned back in April when we saw him run in the special Olympics, was in the hospital. His remaining lifespan was being estimated in hours when we got the call, and found out that the majority of the family was headed to Omaha. I am not sure if I even know what I think about that day, and I am certain that I cannot refine it into something worth putting here. It was a long, cold, sad, rainy day.

Sorry to end on such a down note, but it ends up being an accurate summary of our weekend.

-Jordan

The Cornhuskers Host Idaho State (And I Was There)

Posted on by Jordan

I don’t know how much there is to say about it, other than I wanted to mark the event with a blog post.

Josh contacted me, saying he was going to be in Lincoln, and that he would probably be able to obtain tickets outside of the student section for a reasonable price.

Corey was also able to come, making it a college reunion of sorts.

(I typically don’t post peoples names in blog posts, but considering they were both in the wedding, their names are already thoroughly posted in other areas)

I think having gone to the ISU game really made the atmosphere in Lincoln feel fresh and exciting.

It’s also worth noting that, while I am proud of the (before the 2010 season) 305 game sellout record, being able to just buy tickets to a football game is somewhat novel. I guess you can’t have a tradition bordering on the fanatical, and have tickets available to the casual fan for very long.

That being said, if you have extra tickets the Texas game… 🙂

-Jordan

Camera Hacking

Posted on by Jordan

I feel a little silly calling this hacking.

Somebody did some really amazing work on the tool I used, but lets be honest all I did was copy a file.

This is really just a step in the path to a fancy camera, but after the photography club I remembered an old Lifehacker post about some software that you could run on some Cannon cameras to do some more advanced things.

What kinds of things?

Well for one, club members were extolling the virtues of “shooting in RAW” instead of JPG. The second reason is getting access to an on-screen histogram.

Why would I want these things? Well, honestly I don’t know first hand, but from what I have read, RAW saves a lot of extra data beyond what is visible. This means you can bring out dark or light parts of a picture in photo shop later. Basically it lets your pictures behave more like film in a developing room. The histogram does most of what having a light meeter would do apparently. (The next step is to read a lot more about how to use the tool, now that I know it works)

Some links:

The Lifehacker Post

The CHDK Wiki (probably more helpful)

I started off following the Lifehacker guide, and was having some problems because the buttons they were telling me to push weren’t working. Then I realized that instructions for the exact model of camera I was using were written up in the section for the Cannon SD800. Using those instructions, I was rather quickly able to get my camera setup with this little program.

I should explain the most amazing part, these changes are 100% in software, and only act in volatile memory, meaning I can always stick in a clean memory card, turn the camera on, and have it be just like it was before I started this process. In the mean time, I now have access to about 500 menu options, about four of which I understand right now.

Learning is fun though right? 🙂

-Jordan

Photography

Posted on by Jordan

One of the topics that has continued to come up as Heather and I search for more things we enjoy doing together is photography.

Until now we haven’t really done much with that information, other than say “we should figure out a way to get more into photography together”

As of a few days ago, we are now proud members of the Des Moines Camera Club.

We attended one meeting to try and get a feel for the club, and were really impressed by how friendly the long time members were. To say that they are more knowledgeable than we are about the subject is an understatement, but they were friendly and happy to talk about their hobby.

The speaker at our first meeting was a nature photographer with an incredible portfolio of work. While he could still be considered amateur, many of his pictures have been published in books and magazines.

I was really impressed by his work. Neither Heather nor I are really interested in doing nature photography per say, but it was still really interesting to have someone that good at the craft tell us about some of his work.

On a tangent, it was hard to ignore that the speaker was retired, and therefore had a much more flexible schedule to work with. I guess the lesson to take away from that is he put in a lot of time learning the skills needed to take good pictures over the years, and now that he has the time to really dig in and wait for that perfect shot he can get great pictures!

I think we are going to quickly find that Heather and I have drastically different interests within the broad scope of “photography” but at least it gives us something to talk about 🙂

We have been putting aside a little money each month to eventually buy a nice camera (did someone say Dave Ramsey?).  After one meeting with this club, I am a little concerned about fast you could burn cash with the hobby. Heather seems committed to the idea of not buying until her talents surpass the cameras we have now, but there seems to be a pretty substantial leap from the point-and-shoot models we have and what most people at the club are running. Maybe we can pick up last years model from somebody or something.

Whatever camera we end up using, and whatever topics we end up photographing, hopefully we can post some interesting stuff here over the next year!

-Jordan

Labor Day Weekend

Posted on by Jordan

What are we doing this weekend?

Are we driving half way across the US for a wedding? Are we attending showers or parties? Are we going on a trip somewhere?

NO!!!!

We are staying home! We are not doing anything really, just sitting around the apartment and enjoying spending some time with each other.

That doesn’t make for much of a post though. Luckily we had a busy week, so I will tell you a little about that. 🙂

Thursday night was the Iowa State University football team’s season opener. Heather had a work event including a tailgate and tickets for the game. Ames is only a short drive from Des Moines, so we headed up right after work Thursday night. We got there just in time to eat a quick sandwich and walk into the game.

As with many teams, ISU did not pick a challenging team for their season opener. It made for a game that wasn’t terribly interesting. It all felt kind of odd, I was surrounded by loyal fans, and I don’t feel any real antagonism towards the Cyclones, but I didn’t really feel much emotion about the game ether. In the end (or perhaps at halftime when we left…) I think it was fun, and I am really glad we went.

Heather and I realized it was our first college football game that wasn’t the Huskers or the Mavericks, and that alone made it kind of novel. Parking was a bit of a problem. Most of the campus was under water just a few weeks ago, meaning many of the grass areas people would normally park were too soft to use. Or at least I hope that is the reason parking was so bad, we wound up parking about a mile away on some random side street.

On the way out, we saw an…. enthusiastic and perhaps geeky fan:

I started laughing, and stopped to take a picture.

It is at this point I discovered something somewhat sad about my wife.

…

She had no idea what that guy was dressed up as. I made sounds of outrage and left her guessing for a few minutes, but it became clear she wasn’t going to all of a sudden remember.

At the time of taking the picture, I had been planning on asking Heather if she thought he was in the 501st. I figured I would have to explain that group, but I thought it would be an interesting topic… I mean we had a rather long walk ahead of us.

I love my wife, but it is clear I have not fully converted her to a sci-fi fan yet. On the bride side, she did like Battlestar! 🙂

-Jordan

P.S. I came *this close* to blurring the faces in that picture of us in the ISU stadium, but I thought that might be taking it a little far. All the same I do feel more than a little conflicted living in Iowa this time of year.

Adventureland!

Posted on by Jordan

What did Heather and I do last weekend you ask?

We went to Adventureland!

For those of you who didn’t know, and it’s probably a lot of you, Adventureland is an amusement park in Des Moines.

It isn’t the biggest park I have ever been too, but we had fun.

We probably wouldn’t have gone, but both our companies happened to have chosen the same day for their company outing to Adventureland.

Heather and I both remembered kind of liking roller coasters, but after two different ones, we weren’t sure they were all that much fun. I am going to blame having eaten some rather greasy food and the heat for part of my upset stomach… but the fact remains I kind of felt old.

The newer areas of the park all focus on water rides. Nearly all the slides require a tube to go down. I didn’t take the time to try all of them out, but the ones I did try were really fun!

They also have a feature called “the lazy river.”  Its an interesting idea, they basically recreated what tubing down a nice calm creek would be like… assuming the creek has concrete banks, chlorinated water and is packed full of strangers. I think the hot day probably pushed more people into the water, but the lazy river was way too crowded to be “lazy.”

We forgot to pack a camera, so I will have to put up yet another post without pictures /sigh.

The final verdict is that, with free admission, the park was well worth our afternoon. If we would have been required to pay retail for our tickets… it’s hard to say, maybe if we had paced ourselves better with the roller coasters 🙂

-Jordan