confusion

Look at my Laser… pew pew!

Post date May 27, 2013

OK, I’m a little late posting this… about 5 months but anyway, I got a Wicked Laser [wickedlasers.com]! From one of my sisters. For my birthday. Look at my laser…

This is my laser. There are many like it, but this one is mine. [wikipedia.org]

At this point it’s important to point out that lasers make everything better [splitreason.com]. Except Alderaan [cad-comic.com].

But then my older sister reminded me that I don’t have a very good history with lasers. AKA: The incident with the state cops.

Back in, like, 1997 I had me a laser pointer. Red, in the style of the day. And lasers are cool and must be pointed at everything. Everything. So one night while driving down the Interstate with M██████…

Aside: I realize there is no way to tell this story without sounding like we were complete and utter idiots. Now that I have that out of my system… Back to our regularly scheduled program.

While I was driving M██████ was pointing the laser at various things we passed, trees, the guard rail, etc. There was no one else around when we started. Then he pointed it at a road sign and the reflection was crazy. Road signs being highly reflective and all. After a few signs we noticed something cool; the laser didn’t reflect off of the green road signs, you could see it but it was just a faint red dot whereas it was more like a small red explosion on the other signs. So as we zoomed down the interstate at, something like, 65 mph M██████ was pointed the laser at road signs and especially the big green ones because as you moved the laser back and forth over the white lettering and green sign it produced a strobe like effect. But after a while it got boring. And that was that.

Till I got home two hours later.

And there was a state cop car in my parents driveway.

Turns out some woman driving in front of us saw the laser reflecting off the road signs and got scared that we had some sort of laser scoped gun sight… and accompanying gun. I can only assume that this woman watched a lot of action movies. So she slowed down and got my license plate number and called the cops. Didn’t take the cops very long to show up at my parents house.

I had to sit in the cop’s car and explain what we had done. Then ride down to M██████’s house with the cop to confirm the story and sit while the cop filled out a report, which we signed and then he lectured us for a while. I won’t even tell how much trouble we were both in with our parents after explaining ourselves to a state cop who had waited at my house for over an hour.

So my older sister is right; I don’t have a good record with lasers. But really? Can you blame me?

Do you like lasers?

Fuck yeah you do. [stackoverflow.com]

ranting

Meetings: none of us are as dumb as all of us

Post date January 30, 2013

photography travel

Prague, Czech Republic, November 2012

Post date January 29, 2013

I went to Prague for work. Just a few days for a conference, but I managed to slip out for an afternoon before the conference started and a morning before I flew off.

Prague is a beautiful city, and luckily the conference was in a hotel just outside the old town, so that even though I didn’t get much time I was able to walk around the most famous sites. It was an easy, 15 minute, walk from the hotel to old town square and the Astronomical Clock [wikipedia.org] — so hard to read, that’s why they had to put ‘normal’ clocks on both sides of it. When I stopped at the clock there were people talking wedding photos, and not just one couple, but several — one in a horse-drawn carriage and one in a fancy car. And then there was these girls sitting outside the old town hall [flickr.com] with their balloons looking sad, or maybe just exhausted.

A bit further from the hotel, down the cobblestone streets I visited Charles Bridge [wikipedia.org], unfortunately it was a hazy week and I was never able to get a good shot of Prague Castle [wikipedia.org] and St. Vitus Cathedral [wikipedia.org] up on the hill overlooking the bridge and river.

On the other side of the bridge I visited the Lennon Wall [wikipedia.org]. A colorful experience. The wall is interesting mostly in that it is an organic thing, not planned by anyone.

Later I made it up the hill to Prague Castle but only had time to see St. Vitus and take a few shots of Prague’s bridges over the Vltava River. The haze however was horrible, so the only shot that was really worth the hike up the hill was the one of St. Vitus, where the haze looks more like morning fog.

That was the extent of my sightseeing. I didn’t have time to really explore the old city’s sights and between jet lag, the conference and normal work I didn’t even get to go to any of the Jazz bars or pubs. The closest I got was a Pilsner with some of my coworkers one night in the hotel bar. Sad really.

You can see the full Prague, Czech Republic, November 2012 photoset on Flickr [flickr.com].