The Holy Grail of Hockey I'm going to go see Lord Stanley's Cup today as it comes into town on tour. Coooool. Get my pic taken with the cup and oh yes - I will touch it. (Players won't touch it until they win it; it's a thing, but I, being both female and not a hockey player will never win it. Therefore, I have no qualms about touching it!) You need to know how important the Cup is. First off, it's 111 years old. Second, it's the hardest to win trophy of any professional sport. You have to place in the top eight of your half of the country, then you have to win the first round best of seven, the second round best of seven, the finals round best of seven - and that's BEFORE you have to win best of seven for the Cup itself. It takes a grueling 16 wins - after playing a season of 82 games - before you can lift the Cup. Third, it's the Holy Grail of Hockey. Every player lives and breathes the desire to see their name on the Cup just once in their career.
So, that's my evening plans. Go see the Cup. Go touch the Cup. Go oogle and take pics of me and the Cup. It'll be awesome.
Finally.... I can actually see my domain again. Here's the deal - moderately short version. My domain expired may 1st. Didn't know because didn't get a notice. May 1st, 2nd and 3rd, I could still see my site just fine. On May 3rd someone else reported that they were getting redirected to an expired page. I quickly renewed but then I could no longer see my site. May 4th still couldn't see it. Emailed my registrant (because my files were still on the host and I could log into my host just fine) and they said it was a dns propigation issue. The domain was pointing towards the expired page, then when I renewed it, back to my webhost. In the midst of all of that, it was simply not there for many people - myself included. Tonight, I am finally able to resolve my domain again. Several people have IM'd me or posted for me to let me know they can see it again too.
So....the long and short of it is that as soon as everyone's isp catches up from the two changes, everything will be settled. It had nothing to do with my host, just my registrant. So if you wondered where the hell I went or why, that's the story. And, knowing from experience how slow my isp is with updating it's dns info, I have to imagine that almost everyone should be able to see me again. Let me know when you can if you haven't already just so I can be sure the problem is fully solved.
I'm still looking for any comments, suggestions and input on digital camera choices (see post below) so if you've got thoughts on that too, I'd love to hear it. So, hi everyone and welcome back. :)
Still can't see my own site with my domain name (so I'm cheating and using my server name to access it). *sighs* Damned RR is SO SLOW with their DNS propigations. Bah.
Anyway, that's not the point of this entry. I'm looking at dig cams. PCWorld ranks the Canon PowerShot A70 and the Olympus C-4000 Zoom as their top two (of a top ten) camera under $500. So I'm reading reviews and both seem to have a lot of positive things about them. The Canon is 3.2 megapixel and the Olympus is 4. But the Canon is smaller whereas the Olympus is bulkier. The Canon is only running about $225ish at the moment and the Olympus about $300ish but.....it's hard to find. No one seems to have it much anymore. I'm not sure if it's just been discontinued or what, but despite good ratings, it's not in stock. (Found one for $259 here though I don't know the company.) I like that both of these have a lot of manual control to them - something I'm woefully lacking on my current one. I also like the Nikon's - like the Coolpix 3100 (3.2 megapixel) and the 4300 (4 megapixel), but they both have issues. Reportedly hard to use manual settings and some awkward menus scare me away. I adore the Canon PowerShot S400 Digital Elph because it's just so damned small and cute, BUT...it lacks ANY manual settings and has shitty battery life. I want something with good control, great focus (including macro settings so I can actually take a damned photo of my jewelry!), good battery life and has short delay between clicking and the photo actually being taken.
So far, from what I read the Canon and the Olympus have more of what I want. But I'm not feeling 100% yet. I've never shopped for a dig cam before - the one I have now was a gift from an online friend and while it's gotten me by, I really need something newer and more attuned to what I need it to be. Of course, what I'd love is a digital SLR, but...I'm looking to stay under $400 for this thing which certainly isn't possible yet for an SLR. I just really love photography and I don't want my camera to hinder me; something I deal with too much with my current one. It'd be great if I didn't care so much about exactly what I wanted a shot to be or if it would ever for any reason focus without the flash (it won't, the pics are ALWAYS motion blurred). It's a great want a quick shot camera, but I've just out-grown it. I want something new and better.
So.....I'm researching cameras. And I'm overwhelmed! *chuckles* Oh well, I just want to make the right choice, so it's worth reading all the reviews and the specs and the ratings.
edit sheesh! I just read that the Nikon Coolpix 3700 is pretty good and it's supposed to be around $400, but I found it for $299 but then there's a $100 Nikon rebate making it $199 after the rebate! Damn!.
Seems everyone but me knew that my domain registration expired on May 1st. I never heard from the registrant that it was up. So, I'm going about my business as normal - still seeing my site and everything - when I get a comment from someone on a LJ DisneyWorld community I belong to that my domain was expired. He was getting a redirect page. I wasn't but I logged into my registrant account and sure enough, it was up on the 1st. Luckily, they have a buffer period where you can renew it without other people stealing it from you, so I was able to do so yesterday. Problem is that now I can't load my site and I don't know if anyone else can or not either. Some images are still loading from it (on places like my forum or on px, etc.) but it's timing out when I try to connect to it. I never saw the expired message, it just suddenly vanished for me. Someone else today reported that it was gone and they were worried, so now I'm in a limbo somewhere between having renewed it and it actually showing up. I've never let something expire like that before so this is new territory for me. Talk about panicked when I thought I might have lost it! I love my domain and I don't want it going anywhere.
Now it's just a matter of whether or not this will work and when people (including me) can start seeing it again. *sighs* If this type of thing ever happens again in the future though (where my domain goes down for whatever reason), you can always reach me at http://rhea.dr2.net/~giveneye because that's where my files live on my webhost. So long as my webhost is up, that will work. And this is not a webhost failure, it's mine and my registrants for the short lapse in registration.
Anyway, I'm going to try to post this though it probably won't work. When and if it does and you read it, that's where I've been and where I'll be until things settle back down.
Surprise in my mailbox! Oh how lovely! I went to check the mail and there was a package for me in the office. Turns out it was an amazon.com box. Inside was the cool The Artist's Way book. A birthday gift from Lorena! How sweet! Thank you! I can't wait to dive into it and (hopefully!) spark some creative juices. I'm so excited. Getting something off my wishlist like that! weeeeeeeeee!
In case you ever really wanted to know, today I put together a site map of GivenEyesToSee.com. Mainly because I've got so many different directories and sub-directories that at this point, it's hard for ME to find everything and ensure I've linked it properly let alone anyone else. No frills, but eh, it's functional. Might find something you didn't know you were missing! ;)
I've also added a new forum to the site; a message board. Just for people to blather if they want. It's brand new so there's nothing there yet, but feel free to come by and tell me what you think and suggest what you'd like to see.
Tribute and Photographic Timeline 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - some history, photos and the progress of what's happened at and to this Walt Disney World attraction. It has a pic from 1984, photos from a few weeks ago of the lagoon, and the ones I took Saturday of them draining the lake. There's also some further links for continued reading and information on the ride.
It felt important to chronical the changes and preserve some small piece of Disney history. I've never been in a position where I was there to actually watch the end of something - having always before come back years later and things were simply gone or changed - so, since I am now, I'm capturing it for everyone else.
A little heavy on the loading, I wanted to ensure that all the photos were presented together on the same page so that you could easily compare the old and the new. Anyone who likes Disney, the old 20k ride, or just is interested in a bit of Disney history, should take a look. I think it's pretty neat to see it over the years.
We decided to go out to Disney yesterday to do something fun together after my Love being stuck up at the company's client conference all week and me being sick. Turns out there was a horrible accident of some sort on the interstate so about 10 miles from our exit we came to a grinding halt. The a/c doesn't work in the car and it was swelteringly humid. We proceeded to crawl forward for the next hour about three miles. We got off at another exit out of sheer desperation and asked about any other routes. Got directions, headed out, made a left when we should have made a right. Had to turn around and head all the way back. Turns out, we were like a half-mile away from the exit had we just turned right. D'oh. By the time we get there, it's after 3pm. And apparently, it's fucking Grad Nite so MK closed at 7pm. And they herded us out (no milling around, shopping, etc. OUT. NOW.) Well, we think, fuck it, we didn't have time to do anything, we'll just get a room and stay over and have time Sunday to run around. Take a ferry over to the Wilderness Lodge (our fav) and proceed to spend another 45 minutes on the phone trying to make a reservation because you can't get the discounted FL Resident/passholder rates directly at the counter only to find out there isn't anything that's not like $300. (as if) So, now it's like 8:40pm, MGM's closed, Epcot's closing in 20 minutes so not only can we not get a room, we can't eve get over there for a little bit to finish off the night. Fuck. Well, we start to head on home and it starts POURING. The lightning was horribly close and quite worrisome. The drive home was dark, hard to see and a mess of raining, nighttime under-construction roadway.
Needless to say, it just wasn't a fun day. *sighs*
it's a small world is closing for renovations and won't be open again until spring 2005. I wanted to get some shots of the interior and queue area because it's being totally changed but because we ran out of time, I wasn't able to. Dammit. And the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Lagoon which, though the ride closed many years ago, still was a nice bit of lake, has been boarded up and they're draining it. I'm working on putting together some photos of it's history since I found a picture taken back in 1984 (when it was open), then I took some pics just for the heck of it two weeks ago of the lake (thank goodness I did!) and then I scaled over the wall to take some of the draining. It's a little mini-history of the ride yesterday. So it should be interesting to see the on-going history of the ride.
Well, I'm going to finish up that, but blah. What a bummy weekend it's been.
