Surrey: The Future Lives Here...uh...maybe not...

It's really enjoyable living in Surrey with all the things that happen here. We live on 96th Avenue which is a thoroughfare from King George Highway all the way to 120th Street. So hence it's busy as hell.

I was enjoying "Hamburger Hill" (a movie) last night on AMC when I heard sirens and screeching brakes. I peer out and there's three RCMP cruisers and an BC Ambulance Services EMT attending "I don't know what" across the street. As far as I know they were there about two hours. Took the opportunity to snap a pic from the basement window.

Did I mention I enjoy living in Surrey? ~rolling eyes~

We went to Morgan Crossing down in South Surrey/White Rock and stopped in at two places on Friday. Store 83 (London Drugs at Morgan Crossing) and the Wal-Mart Super Centre. Evidently, they have everything at a WalMart Super Centre; even a carwash.



This was my first time being in a WalMart Super Centre and the place was just enormous. You could happily get lost in a SuperCentre and spend the whole day there. Evidently they're also turning the WalMart at Guildford into a SuperCentre as well. But that's going to take a while.



We also had the opportunity to stop by the newest London Drugs store and visit. We saw some of my wife's old work-mates from Store 8 at the newest store. What surprises me though is the close proximity to store 73 that 83 is. It's only 3 blocks away.



In the afternoon, though, I went over to Vancouver and picked up plants from Mom's place. Her move is going slow, as she doesn't want to be out of the other place until December.

Off to School

Have to take the kids into school this morning, as I have had other mornings during the weeks that school has been in session. Well, we've moved from the townhouse to a half-duplex that seems to be a lot more comfy in terms of size. It's nice, it's larger and though we've lost a little in size in terms of bedrooms, it's a lot nicer as the kids have a backyard to play in and our bedroom doesn't have as much wasted space. Our living room seems to be huge.

Well, it is 7:38AM which means I'm going to have to chase the two little squirts around...and I'll have more about where I've been later. Plan on taking some pics on the way to school.

Back from taking the kids to school and my shots on the way in were with a Nikon Coolpix L11 so hence the reason why they're snaps.

On 96th there's an empty lot that has stood empty for several years. Until just this past month, where there's been a flurry of activity on it. It's evidently being turned into one of those new cheap construction but sells for 3/4 million big homes that takes up half the lot and they've cut down every damned tree on the lot. Figures.



I'm not too fond of the street 96th Avenue as it is one of the major east-west thoroughfares. They've made it double-lane and it's busy as hell. I tell my kids to walk well away from the curb. As you can see they listen quite well...yeah...right!



At least 132nd Street is a little quieter.



This is the monster house that I keep seeing as I walk down 132nd Street. This epitomizes everything I hate about monster houses. There's absolutely no taste to this home. It's big, it's friggin' ugly, and it's square...there's a small patch of grass that they try to pass off as landscaping...and otherwise they've cemented over the whole damned lot. In real estate terms I would call it a New Delhi Special as opposed to a Hong Kong Special.



Walking down the street towards my kids' school. I prefer this school due to the fact that the kids enjoy going to school there as opposed to going to the school in their assigned cachement area.



What really annoys me is that most of the traffic do not obey the posted speedlimit and persist in screaming through the school zone at a blistering 50-80 km/hr. And yet it is posted, plain as day, for everyone to see...



I guess the last generation raised a generation of idiots.

FalconRose Photography ~ Dedicated in my Father's Memory

Each day without my father has been a journey in itself. I know that there are many choices to make. I know that my time on this earth is finite and I have to make the most of it. For many years I had no idea of what I wanted to do for the rest of my life and gravitated from job to job finding myself dissatisfied. I took music (in college), real estate (as a career) and accounting (as a potential job). I worked as an office person as well as a security guard and I also worked retail. Now, it seems, I have a concrete plan...a crystal clear goal of building this photography business from the ground up.

My dad wasn't too sure of whether or not I was going to be a success at anything that I attempted. Because for many years, I considered myself nothing else but a failure and you remember the old adage: If you feel that you are a failure and repeat it enough, the fallacy becomes reality. I kept asking myself "Why do you even bother when you haven't been able to be a success at anything in your life before." Before I was much too scared to think that I could be any good at being an entrepreneur. But finding the courage to do what I really want; to step outside my physical comfort zone means finding the peace to accept myself for who I really am.

My father was scared though of the fact that I was taking a step that he never had the courage to take himself; which was become an entrepreneur and try to take a business and make it a solid investment and the sole stable income in the family. Certainly he had done it himself with his gardening business but that was a secondary business to his full-time job as a glass cutter, but that wasn't really what he wanted to do. He wanted to learn to play the cello. But unfortunately during my infancy, he lost his thumb and index finger to the first joint in a glass cutting accident. It took him months and months of rehabilitation.

My father was absolutely estatic when I showed him the results of my photography attempts. He’d known that I had finally found my place. At least he was alive to know that I had finally found my place in this world. That’s all any father wants for their children and that’s all I want for my own children is that they find what they truly want to do with their lives. He knew I wasn’t happy in music, he knew that I wasn’t happy in real estate and he knew that I was absolutely not happy in accounting. But to see his face light up when he saw the results of my photography, that was the best feeling in the world.

My mother has always been sceptical of my photography attempts, but she has slowly come around in the wake of my father's death. And she has made one concession, that she is going to get me the DSLR body that I need to get started in wedding photography as well as the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 telephoto that I need for "staying out of the way" of the wedding party while they are doing what they need to be doing during the ceremony. All of this will run her in the neighbourhood of at least $4000.00 CDN. The rest of the lenses I have to earn myself. Consider me ever grateful to her for doing that for me.

My father's passing in December has lit a fire in my belly with regards to getting something going with this photography and turning it into a business. I know I have several strikes against me. 1) I'm starting a business when I haven't had a business course. I'm navigating uncharted territory. 2) I don't have a line of credit. My credit rating stinks worse than blue cheese. 3) I'm competing with people who have the finances to get a professional grade DSLR body or replace any lens any time that they want. But in my corner are: 1) my grit and determination to succeed 2) the skill and knowledge of being self-taught. 3) and the dedication to build this business in the memory of my father's life...in that he never, ever gave up and likewise in his memory, I will show my own children that their own father NEVER, EVER...GAVE UP!

FalconRose Photography is dedicated to my father's memory; his ever present courage and perseverence in the face of adversity and his belief in the fact that if you believe in your own inner strength, any obstacle can be overcome. This one's for YOU...Dad.

I love you, Dad, and I miss you so much.

Wow, cool clouds...

Saw some very interesting clouds today on the way back from dropping the kids off at school. The clouds had formed themselves into a kind of a shelf. Don't know what kind of atmospheric conditions affect the formation of such clouds in that shape...but here's the pics.







Stretched all the way from I would say Delta all the way across what would have been Port Coquitlam a stretch of at least 15-20 miles across at least that's what it seemed like from my view. But to tell you the truth, it was probably a far lot longer than that as my human perspective isn't conducive to accurate estimation of clouds and their size.

Ah...Spring...

We are finally starting to see signs of spring. Of course the one poor lone daffodil that was growing in the curbside planter got chopped in half. Poor thing. Whoever did that was an unfeeling jerk. So unfortunately I don't have a daffodil picture to show. I kept meaning to get a picture of it, but never got around to it.

Just took a small stroll around my complex's parking lot and saw several spring-related photo opportunities with my L11. That's my little point and shoot camera that I use when I don't feel like lugging the D50 out. At least then I'm able to get f/2.8-5.2 aperture with the camera.

We got little flowers...They're pretty. (I have no clue what these are because I'm not a botanist).



And then I took a picture of the buds on the trees right outside my front door.



From there, I walked over to the green leaves sprouting on this tree.



Then...I saw the blossoms sprouting on this tree. Absolutely gorgeous.



Finally I just had to take a picture of 4 of the 5 heathers that line the curb box of one of the neighbours.



After that, I decided that I would take my D50 out and photograph some of those blossoms on that tree.

Oooh, nice innards of computer...AH-CHOO *sniff* excuse me.

I don't know why, but hayfever has been hammering me for the past week. It's like every ragweed, birch, grass and mugwort pollen particle has been attracted to my sinuses. Been clogged up, and feeling out of sorts for days on end now.

Well, in between fits of sneezing yesterday, I managed, with the help of my cousin in Reno, to open up the Gateway desktop PC and managed to get some sort of preliminary diagnosis.



1) The computer does not have any power to it unless the start button is held down continuously.
2) The hard-drive will not start booting regardless of how long the start-button is held down.
3) When the start button is held down; all the fans: case fan, CPU fan, and the power supply fan all operate. When the start button is released, they all stop.
4) There is a green light on the motherboard that is on when the power button is pressed and held down. When it is released, it turns off. The power supply light is lit when the power cord to the back of the case is plugged in.

And of course, NOW it doesn't do anythng at all when the power button is pushed. Sometimes the power light comes on, sometimes the power light stays off. Anyways, yanked out the power switch, ground and hot wires leading to the LEDs and am going to replace all of them at NCIX at some point next week. Evidently, my wife's work doesn't have replacement wires/switches. If that doesn't work, then there could be a short in the power supply cord. Which pretty much means...replace the whole friggin' power supply.



And then now I've gone "STUPID". I'm now having ideas of building my own PC from the ground up. I want to have it be a Core i7 980X which is reputed to have a hyperthreaded-six-core processing unit. The reason behind this is that I'm looking at hyper-processing (on a usual shoot day, I run in excess of over 600 images or more). I've been also looking at going Photoshop CS4 when I get my computer and CS4 was optimized to run with a quad-core system. The reason I've been thinking about building my own machine is because I can't seem to get the stuff that I want with the boxed-package i7 machines available at the stores. I want to be able to pick my own parts and build my machine from the ground up. That way I get a chance to learn how to replace a SATA hard-drive, add more RAM, etc etc.

The faster I process, the sooner I can get on to my next shoot. I hate macro-processing a batch of 600+ photos and sitting there for an hour and a half while CS sits there and churns on a single processor. I'm not a gamer. I used to game, but no longer and I find that I don't miss the games either. But I find that I can use the speed for video/photo editing and it would be a godsend to have that.

Well, I'm going to look into how to build a PC and if I feel like I can manage it, I'll try. If not, I'll get buy with an expandable box system and throw in some upgrades.