I STOLE AN ELEVATOR

It was at a swank hotel in Portofino, Italy. I was about 13 years old. I don't remember the name of the place, but it's in all the pictures as it looks down on the harbor. Back then this hotel had an elevator operator. A UNIFORMED elevator operator. At the bottom floor, I caught him chatting up a woman - he had left his post in the elevator and was just around the corner. I snuck inside, closed the door, and took it to the roof, where I left it on manual control. I then ran back down the stairs to the ground floor and kept pushing the button, as if I knew nothing. The operator came around the corner only to find his elevator was missing!

It was a wonderful moment.

I also stole one on a ship, but I don't remember much about that one.

It only works when there's an operator. Sadly, opportunities are very rare these days.

OMG! BLACKBERRY!

I didn't mean to get MYSELF a new phone, but for work, Terri needed to upgrade to a Blackberry so off to Verizon we went. There, on the wall, was a sign that said "Buy any phone get another one free" and somehow this related to the Blackberries. However, the clerk said no, we didn't qualify since we weren't at the end of our 2 year service agreement, and that buying the Blackberry would cost $430. We insisted that the sign was misleading, agreed that we might have to buy one outright since our term hadn't expired, but that should be a two-fer. He said no.

And so it went, back and forth.

The resolution: $250 total for two Blackberries, offset by two hundred dollar rebates.

You might think we WON big - and we did do considerably better than the way it looked initially, but they still will make about $840/yr in increased services to these two units so they can get email.

So I find myself in the new techworld - again.

Other than for voicework, where my agent must be able to reach me asap, I don't live a life where that immediate connection via email is crucial. Phone calls, yes; voicemail, yes. Texting or emails, I can wait until I am home at this keyboard. Or I could.

My hope is the thing has a better camera and better video than the last phone - that's where I am coming from. Too bad we don't have cows - I think this phone will do milking.

Yeah, those iPhones are way cool, but for $25, I'll use this thing. (Note: listen! You can hear the corporate laughter!)

To think that my father used to work for the telephone company, got free telephone service, but was always worried about abusing the system when we placed our annual Christmas call to the west coast relatives... the times, they sure have changed.

ARMADILLO MADNESS

Another 'dillo trapped!

That's now 1 raccoon, 1 cat, 3 armadillos!

There must be some armadillo graffiti at the armadillo bar - "For a Good Time, dine at Wood's! Dine under the shrubs!" It's a %$#@ PARADE of 'dillos, it seems.

Another ride up Highway 71 with a stinker in the trap in the trunk - about 10 miles... and release. This one was slow to escape the cage and immediately went under the car and a tire. HEY!

I am NOT going to accept suicide after schlepping this varmint this far.

And so, I edged away, and the beast was seen waddling away up a hill.

ACTUALLY BUYING THE CAR

It was a sunny, hot, expensive day. We drove up to the local Audi dealership, asked for directions to the sales manager who printed a form. I circled two items on the form. We wrote a deposit check. That's it. Now wait.

I suppose it will feel good when I see the car - it's somewhere - or not - either built and on a slow boat from Germany, or not yet. Meanwhile, no owner's pride or buyer's remorse.

I am happy to get that behind me. I can say it wasn't a pleasant experience, what with misinformation coming from several different places. Recession or not, Audi isn't pricing their cars as cheap. Hopefully the value will linger for years, if not as a Blue Book Price, then as an enjoyable and dependable ride.

This car will be much more nimble than my present one which could be a boat anchor with a little hammering. But that's for the dealership to decide when they take the trade-in.

TRYING TO BUY A CAR

I contacted 6 dealerships by email. I heard back from only 3 of them. Conflicting info was passed to me as to whether or not the car I want actually exists, or will have to be built. The only significance of this is the timeline.

Price was too close to call, but local trade-in tipped the scale. Well, that, and convenience.

Saturday we will double check with our local dealer that what I have in writing is true, and will leave a deposit.

I am AMAZED that 3 Audi dealerships didn't respond.

TRYING TO BUY

Two Audi dealers - each contacted by internet - each telling me different stories about wheels. I believe they are both using factory supplied information. Who's right? How can I tell?

Today I expanded my search. I have low expectations.

Called the GM at the local dealership - got voicemail - he hasn't returned my call.

However this turns out, it's not a pleasant experience.

VERY DIFFICULT TO BUY A CAR!

I am stunned. I know the exact car I want, have had conversations by phone or email with various dealers, requesting info as soon as the 2010s are known (availability info, dates, pricing, etc.) They all failed this. Every one.

I finally did enough detective work to find out the cars are arriving at the port of Houston. Now, the one dealership that seems to have information (after I 'reminded' them about my pending sale) tells me the very car I want will not be available anywhere in the midwest (served by the port of Houston.) I want a silver one with grey interior. Nope. They'll build one for me.

So I sit with amazement on my face. This is the sort of salespersonship you get above $50k, apparently:

After shaking this dealership-cage with a WHY HAVEN'T I HEARD FROM YOU when I know the cars are coming? Here's what I got:

"I have never received any information about you until 5 minutes before I contacted you. I just received the prices from Audi today, so here are the prices.
For a 2010, Prestige 3.0T quattro, with 19"wheels. The MSRP is $57.525. If you would like to give me an offer on this car I would be glad to present to my manager.
Also as I mention, I also have a 2009 Audi A6 3.0T quattro, prestige,side assist, Adventure Blue Pearl ( which is kind a dark gray), with light gray interior, it was lightly hail damage but fully repaired and demo from the owner with about 6000 miles. (MSRP $56.525) Would you be interested on this 2009 or only 2010?
Please let me know."

I just don't get it. Ready to go many miles out of my way to award the biz to a good dealer with a good sales ethic (you're laughing - I can HEAR you!) I cannot find one.

NEW WEBSITE

Speeding Hippie attempts to drive through the Early70s barrier.
I've opened a new website as a pathway to more opportunity locally. Why not take a hobby and turn it into a service? Thus: www.PhotographerBobWood.com

At most I would hope to serve as a local freelancer here in the Austin area. No weddings - not that large a scale... but for real estate pictures, family events, etc., I am there.

There are some good pictures on the site and I hope you enjoy them! Contact info is also there. Have a look.

BER-MU-DA

We spent a few Bermudays on the beach, in the sun, floating in the water, snorkeling, marvelling about how the weak economy doesn't seem to have reached that isle. Let me put it this way - where we stayed (Elbow Beach Resort,) the prices were HIGH.

But the weather was cooler than Austin's record breaking summer by about 20 degrees. It was much more humid, of course, as Austin is in mid-exceptional-drought while Bermuda sits on the Atlantic.

Some notes in no order:

--- Tourists from wherever still smoke more than we have seen/smelled in our lives for many many years.

--- Elbow Beach sand was wonderful. (I collect sand from beaches on which I've stood. I have about 70 samples.) I'd put this right into the top few!

--- The world population is headed to obesity, as measured by our snapshot on the beach and in airports.

--- Flying in coach still sucks. I cannot get comfortable.

--- Atlanta airport is HUGE and amazing and well run.

--- Bermuda's airport also beats all of the Caribbean ones we've seen in organization, cleanliness. Of course it isn't IN the Caribbean, either.

--- We saw very few seagulls. No dolphins. Lots of seaweed. LARGE parrot fish.

--- Despite a couple thousand college-era miles on my Vespa, I'd have died on a scooter in Bermuda as I would have immediately turned right into oncoming traffic. No question!

--- I saw several schools of very small jellyfish. I didn't know they could do that schooling thing. Each was maybe the size of a 50 cent piece.

--- Terri and I debated about a couple - he, what appeared to me to be a 60ish retired CEO; she, a thin 20ish long legged colt (high heels to the beach,) Me: model; Terri: white trash. We gave up on "niece" after watching him caress her thigh. She swam a great distance and I didn't think strippers did that. The debate was fun.

--- The people in the room next door to ours played the oddest music, sometimes accompanied by singing... as late as 2AM or beyond. We finally thought to complain to the front desk and that stopped the nighttime warble.

--- Bermuda is clean and beautiful. It is celebrating its 400th birthday next week.
Their last hurricane was in 2003. Water was 84 degrees. Daytime air was 87 degrees. We had fun.

--- I took several hundred pictures and will probably post some on my new site www.photographerbobwood.com , which remains a work in progress.

'DILLO NUMBER DEUX

The other night while taking the dog out for her before-bedtime necessaries, I spotted another armadillo browsing our shrubbery beds. I noted another large hole dug around our gas pipe feed, just like there was when the LAST armadillo was trapped. Though we had filled it in, these guys are super diggers, and the hole had reappeared.

I take Jessie out with a flashlight, always on the lookout for snakes, said to be especially restless during this heat. So I shine it around and that's when I saw the beast.

I set the trap and today Terri greeted me (she walks Jessie in the early morning) with a "You're going for a ride today!" We caught the bugger and I am charged with driving it away, hopefully far enough that it would not come back. (My limit is 10 miles.)

After the photo shoot, we headed to a side road off Rt 71 (busy highway) to just outside a new development deeper into the Hill Country called Bee Creek. I released on the rocky, undeveloped side of the road but the 'Dillo took off at a run across the road and into the lush greenery of the new tract. I thought I could see a smile.


TRAPPED


NO-NECK MEET LONGNECK!


THE GETAWAY

MORE COMPUTER TEETH GRINDING (w updates)

The tech was here Friday. he sent me out for a new sound card which I bought Saturday. That's when I discovered the overnight backup of C drive didn't take place. I also found that the D rive wouldn't work at all. I put another in and IT wouldn't work either. The D drive is the CD player/burner.

I called and called through the weekend and yesterday. Today is Tuesday and curiously only after voicemailing a threat to dispute the Visa charge, did I get a return call.

Someone is supposed to be back today - but will have to charge me for the issue of the D drive. I have tried to load the driver to the D drive again but it fails.

LATER THAT SAME DAY.

I managed to fix my D drive. Don't ask what I did - it was try this try that until it worked. We are down to ONE issue - the backups... and the service call should be free. Says me.

I feel exhausted.

LATER THE NEXT DAY

I never did get the tech out here, but did spend a while on the phone with his supervisor who got into my computer by remote control and declared that my backup F drive was faulty, though probably the drive itself was ok but the electronics in the box with it were suspect. At his direction I removed the drive from the box and it was pretty darn hot; worrying me - he thought I could install it into the computer itself and let it dangle. Or get another enclosure (with perhaps working circuitry). I opted for a new outboard hard drive, and will try the backup overnight. This should conclude quite a saga. If not, my teeth will be stumps.

COMPUTER MESS

I am sitting in the middle of a mess... discs, sound card, sound card software, scribbled notes, vacuum cleaner, my computer peripherals scattered about with thumb drives, instructions, and a computer that only partly works.

The issues began when the very confusing website template* I bought for a new website, photographerbobwood.com (not up yet), suggested that I needed Netscape. I didn't want it, but dutifully downloaded it - along with all sorts of other junk I ALSO didn't want that apparently travels with it. I decided I didn't like or really need it, and deleted all those files using "remove files" and then searching for and deleting others with the same name. And then running registry mechanic. Lots of rebooting too, along the merry chase.

*their support people have been giving me some help, but also WRONG information, it turns out.

I also found my windows updater wanted to add some or change some files which I agreed to, those being security updates and - what the hell - IE8, supposed to be much better and safer than IE7. I quickly grew to hate IE8, and tried to load it from a thumbdrive the Best Buy GEEK SQUAD loaded for me with IE7, (that didn't work), then roll the computer back to a previous setpoint "when everything worked." It didn't. On any point I tried... 3 or 4 times.

I had lost all Internet browser ability.

I couldn't go online for help, I couldn't reload explorer. I was and am very frustrated, over my head!

I hired a company to send a tech. He was here Friday afternoon for two and a half hours, got me IE7 back - a huge victory - and also attended to removing some programs I could never completely remove. He installed an outboard drive I bought for my photos, and simplified the non-working backup scheme I had for my C drive. He reinstalled Skype and declared my sound card broken. I subsequently went out and bought a new simple card and put it into the computer. But when I went to load the drivers, found that somehow I had lost the D drive entirely.

I had a spare, installed IT but still, no D drive. Which means the sound card issue (and Skype) remain unresolved.

The C drive backup onto the F drive failed completely. Twice.

Backup of my 9000 photos onto my new E drive was incorrect and will have to be undone and redone.

Calls and emails to the tech service remain unanswered - I guess they don't work weekends. I expect a comp. return and more attention.

I've come to realize how very addicted I am to a fully functioning computer.

This story leaves out a lot of futzing - it all blurs now in or under a cloud of frustration. I thought I had gone the full route to getting all in order.

This story is for you, when you are also having the nightmare, so you know you are not alone.

FIREWORKS

Last night we were invited to a home with a really good view of the Lakeway fireworks. Lakeway is a suburb just up the road. Although we can see several to a dozen commercial displays from our home, none are really close. This was close.

The red white and blue lights we first saw were in my rear view mirror from the motorcycle police that pulled me over for making a wrong turn - I missed a road, and, since, nobody was on that road, went down the one-way (wrong-way split just until I could switch over to the correct side.)

The police were busy and polite and since I was the same, knew I was wrong, hadn't been drinking, wasn't argumentative, I was let off with a verbal warning. Nice.

The home had a deck from which I tried my first really serious fireworks photography. I used a 5 second shutter speed. The camera was on a tripod and I set all the settings to manual, then discovered a hidden control that won't allow a really bad picture. Since the lighting was zero to bright, it decided that when I pushed the release, it shouldn't accept my command.

I did find the DammmitDoWhatITellYou control and then it worked, Too bad more of life isn't that way.

It was a great show with many quality aerial bombs. Clearly the state of that art has moved forward since I was a kid.

Here are what I got... I am pleased with my efforts. Happy Belated Fourth of July!

KQV

It seems Roadrunner is down again. Can't be sure. Nothing is coming up as I write this offline. I must be an addict. I get way too bothered by outages.

Today I was contacted by a guy who I've known forever who is writing a book about the Golden Age of Pittsburgh Radio - he asked if I had any pictures (I do.) This then triggered a batch of exchanges and memories. It was a special time in what was then, I believe, the tenth largest market in the USA - after only two years of seasoning I had cracked the big time (albeit overnights, but still...)

The station was owned by ABC Radio, when they had two of the largest Top 40 stations in the country (WABC, NYC; WLS, Chicago) and it wasn't uncommon for good old KQV to serve as a farm team.

I just missed working with Rush Limbaugh, then a disc jockey. Missed by a year or two. He came after I left for a wrong choice in Phoenix. Ah, hindsight.

KQV was larger than life. The HiJinx were all larger than life. The personalities full of personality.

I was offered a chance to be program director of their FM, which was just switching from an automated to live format - this was back when FM was just catching on (1972.) I refused. Three times. MY BIG MISTAKE. The station is still number 1 today (not that I would have known what to do.)

9000+ PICTURES

Yup - on my hard drive. Of course I can't throw any out. Actually, I am slowly working through them, tossing some duplicates, but this must be a packrat disorder.

The solution may be to get another outboard drive and move it all there... where it can be joined by many many more since memory is so cheap!

In the attic we have a LARGE box of picture prints (remember those?) which we never look at - and I have videos over 20 years old I have shot and never watched.

It must be something about wanting to preserve life's moments.

COONAN O'BRIEN

After our varmint saga some posts below, resulting in a quick ride down the highway for Mister Dillo, there was a brief lull where our grass'n'weeds grew normally. Then more digging appeared, like tiny toy archaeologists were looking for artifacts. I reset the trap. First some bait was eaten but whatever ate it got away with Salmon breath. However, this AM brought another trapped digger. Even while in the cage it managed to ruin the grass under it.


Now I know many will see this and go "ooooh, how cute..." but you'd be wrong! This snarling, wretched, spiteful, straight-razor toting beast was quite intent on breaking through the slammer to slash and chew on my white ass.

My research said that you'd have to drive it at least 20 miles away because they can come back and will certainly find your house and seek revenge. (Okay I made up the revenge part, but they can really wreck a house when inside it, and they apparently will try to get inside - a neighbor trapped 2 DOZEN in Florida as they infested his home!)

And they can be rabid.

So, drastic measure time.



I can assure you the circle of life is an unbroken one. Read into this what you will.

"...AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE"

I am mid-worst-cold I can remember. I was taking ZiCam. Which, it was just announced, can permanently disable your sense of smell. They are pulling it off the market. I don't trust easily, and especially mistrust the 'experts.' This is another reason why. I will stop and try to get my $11 back just because I am pissy about this.

TRUST NO ONE. Period. This stinks and I CAN smell the stink.

PRESCRIPTION DRUGS' SIDE EFFECTS

My helpful Walgrens prints out a long list of cautions and medicinal 'oh by the ways' which include a long list of possible side effects of whatever I've been prescribed. Frankly (okay, "Bobly") I never read the things until lately. You know - the doc says take this, I trust him or her, I take it.

What I want to know is this: WHY AREN'T THERE ANY GOOD SIDE EFFECTS? I got weakness, anxiety, confusion on one, and that's just the first LINE. I stopped reading that one. Was confused. Thought I had already read it. Then dropped the bottle. Searched the floor for any pills that might have rolled out - wouldn't want the dog to eat one. See what I mean?

Others list stuff I don't even want to consider: explosive colon disorder, barking wildly, hair on elbows, etc.

So it occurs to me (between anxieties from the damn prescription I still take) I've never seen or even heard of a GOOD side effect. Why aren't there good ones? "May cause you to laugh more." "May make you a more pleasant person." "Could help you see through clothes (oh, sorry.)" You get the idea.

I think Big Pharma is missing the boat. Put some great side effects in, and you cure arthritis or whatever PLUS you are a happy camper. THAT would be one popular health care plan. Congress could get behind that.

ZEN BLOGGING

I realize I haven't blogged on this blog for a while. I have several others and I'd like to keep them all juggled, but since I have a nagging feeling that only a very exclusive (read: small) audience checks this out, I don't feel a ton of enthusiasm to write more often. Also, FACEBOOK in many cases seems like ego-static, so I guess that makes a blog an ego-thunderstorm. LOOKITME! LOOKITME!

I miss having that great ego extension of a radio station which I would program. Even though you aren't as necessary as you think you are, it feels like you are, and this emanation is controlled by you. An aside: I once argued with a troublesome talent who claimed I was a control freak. 20 years later I can admit he was correct in that regard. I wanted the station to be perfect. Later I realized that it CAN'T BE PERFECT, that people are who they are and the best you can hope for is THEIR best, and to, well, lighten up.

I think I take things too seriously. I also think I swing to nonsensically. This throws most people. Polar opposites? With icecap melting?

Enough introspection!

It seems the Armadillo I trapped, drove away and released, is back, or his relative is. I have reset the trap and THIS ONE, if I catch it, will get the free ride after I mark its shell with magic marker. If it comes back down the road, makes it back those 7 miles... I might have to use Fedex or Remmington/Winchester to dispatch it upon the third visit.

We have been visited by deer lately - they're always around but two Bambis and Mom have been on our property several times. And Rabbits Galore!

CONAN RULES

I like David Letterman, haven't been a fan of Jay Leno, but don't regularly watch either --- once in a long while to catch an interview maybe. I used to watch more Letterman when it was edgier. Can't stand Paul the too obvious Laughing Stooge. I rather like Craig Ferguson, but just haven't been inspired to record him either. Fallon, not.

I was interested enough to TiVo (mainstream alert - using a noun as a verb!) the first Conan O'Brien show as he took over the Tonight Show.

It was hilarious! WAY WAY better than either Leno or Letterman. I laughed OUT LOUD many times. Many! And so did Terri! That's a miracle. So much so, the Catholic Church wants to take up a collection. Check it out!