Vanity, thy name is NWC

The other day at my friend’s house on Johnson creek, I took a lot of pictures.

I used to take rolls of 35mm film, and then spend a lot of time scanning the prints into my computer’s hard drive, but after my further decent into poverty, that became cost-prohibitive, so I put my Nikon point and shoot 35mm camera away.  When, in 2004, I got my last tax refund, about the first thing I bought was this digital camera that I have been shooting these pictures with.  It is a Nikon Coolpix 2200, a 2mg camera, and while it is not as fine a resolution as any of the 35mm cameras I have had, it is cost free to see the pictures taken with it.

I usually shoot in the camera’s PC mode, which makes for 1280×1024 pics.  They do not print out very well, but they download onto your monitor that much faster than the fat data files that it shoots at full resolution.  Since one of the main points of getting this camera was to post web-accessible photos here on OD, (yes, I am fully addicted) it is almost perfect for my uses.

I had dial-up though the phone company for years, and was waiting, more or less patiently, for DSL to come to my area.  I had to get a cellphone for the paper job – mobile communications are necessary sometimes- so the combination of a home phone line, the cost of the dial-up, and the cost of the cell, (also though the local phone company) was too much for my thin wallet to support anymore.  DSL is still not available here, and likely never will be – my building is more than thirty years old and I live on the 8th floor.  That’s a lot of old wiring that will likely never be replaced.

I used to have a bad attitude re: cable internet access, primarily cuz those grapes looked good, but seemed out of my reach.    But when I really looked into it, I found that while it’s pretty expensive, that, all together, it was not too much more than a phoneline and the dial-up access through that, and was light years faster, at 4Mbps, compared to my dial-up’s occaisional 32.2 kbps and it’s much more typical 28.8 kbps.  It’s that old wiring, you see.  It would never be as fast as the modem was capapble of being – 56kbps.

I used the dial-up to find a good deal on Comcast service on the net.  Six months at half price, a free after rebate cable modem, and a fifty dollar gift card from Barnes and Noble, and Self-Installation (which was like, rediculously easy).

The home phone hardly ever rang with a call I wanted to hear anyways, so saying bye bye to that was a simple task.  I have basic cable access, because this building is wired for it already, and through some deal the city housing authority has with Comcast (used to be ATT) we all get free basic cable.  Good reception on the broadcast channels, and several shopping channels, and a couple of Spanish language channels, which my former wife, who is Japanese but who is learning Spanish, was overjoyed to see when she comes to visit.  Not much of real interest to me that I didn’t already have with the antenna,  But, and this is a big but, it knocks ten bucks a month off my cable internet access bill.  It became affordable.

Since I have had the cable access, the download speed has increased from 4mbps to 6, and is now slated to go to 10mbps next month.  The price hasn’t changed – still about $43 a month.  With a bit more money, I could so easily get the Vonage VoiP service and get a home phone again and not impact my ‘net speed at all.

And, photos I’ve taken upload to Photobucket so much faster than they ever did with the dial-up!

Since I had dial-up for years, I try to remember that many of my readers still have it, and post fewer pics than I might, and smaller files than my camera really shoots.

I titled this entry vanity because while I was sitting in my friend’s backyard, I shot some pics of myself to post, and now that you’ve read this far, they have downloaded onto your monitor and are there for you to see.

***

I shot this one in their house, while I had the camera connected to their TV to show off my Gorge sunrise pics:

The camera acts like a web-cam when plugged in this way, so I was looking at the TV screen and shot this pic.

+

+

I went out back and sat in the shade while the ribs cooked on the barbie and shot these:

Sharp eyes may spot the scar on my thoat… I don’t remember this at all, but when they transferred me from OHSU’s trauma center after the car wreck to a care facility to wait for a spot to open for me in Good Sam’s RIO unit, I expressed my unhappiness with the move by ripping out everything stuck into me – lung tubes on my left side, feeding tubes stuck in my abdomen, and the breathing tube stuck in my thoat.

When I had come back to myself, I was offered a "simple" operation to repair the thoat scar, which is quite noticable, especially to young kids who haven’t learned to be polite yet, but by that time, I had had enough of hospitals and of pain in general and said "no way".  Now, of course, I have reason to wish I had gotten that done, but since it bothers me far less than it does anyone else (it moves when I talk), I don’t regret not having it done very much.  It is about the only visible (when dressed) scar you’ll see from my car wreck experience.

(and no, I don’t know if there was a catheter for urine elimination in me, and I don’t know whether, if there was, I ripped that out too.  D

oesn’t look or feel like it, anyway)

That’s A’s dog Izzy’s head on the right, and his dead 65 Chevy pickup truck.

*

*

 I took more of myself because I wanted to show off my hat:

This Panama hat is made not from straw or other conventional fibers, but from hemp, a very strong and durable natural fiber.

Yes, I can say "I went to the coast and got some dope" and be almost honest too.  This is my favorite summer hat.  I like hats and almost always wear one.

Ok, that’s my vanity entry, but there are still pics to post of flowers and of the sunset – more to come.

Stay tuned.

*****