Mars Ain't The Kind Of Place To Raise A Kid

Well, my attempts to extract that word document from my virtual machine ended with me deleting the entire VM and all associated files.

Whatever. 

On The Windowpane

That funny moment where I wrote a post in an ancient version of MS Word on an an ancient version of Windows (ME) inside a virtual machine that is so old I cannot even connect it to an actual machine to get my post off of there.  I've done something like this in the past, and while great for keeping things private, it's a little weird and tricky for getting it back into the real world.

I guess I'm going to have to figure out how to get my file out of there, and then find an OS that will actually use a USB device or connect to...Anything? 

Who You're Gonna Love By Your Lover

I am surrounded by extremes.

From a political standpoint, at any rate. 

I hate it.

Xenophobic racists on one side, America hating Americans on another.

Me in the middle.

When did this country become a country of extremists for one side or the other? Answer: I really don't think it is. I think we are just seeing online what the content driving algorithms feed us. When I was younger, I felt like most people were l basically, politically anyway, in the middle. I feel like the parties catered to that. Now there are extremists all over social media, algorithms are driving traffic, and a few seconds spent trying to decide what fresh he'll turns into a view. Then a hundred, then a thousand, than a million. Someone sees that and says 4 million views? This is what the people like, so let's shift to the other end of the spectrum.

Blah.

Let's Go Fly A Kite

Today I took a friend up on her previously made suggestion and made a chocoflan.  I had a bundt pan that I borrowed for a different cake, so I figured this was the time to do it.

Hopefully it works out...The flan was leaking out of the blender while I was mixing up the cake.  I guess I'll find out in the morning when I take it out of the pan.

I'm being cautiously optimistic. 

Here I Am, Stuck In The Middle

A few months back I was given a box of random "camera stuff." In that box were a couple of point and shoots and the most random, weird digital camera I think I've ever seen.

As much fun as that weird digital camera is, one of the point and shoots came with a roll of film inside.

Today I took a battery out of my Nikon N70 and stuck it into that camera. It is a Minolta Freedom Zoom 160 Date (a mouthful is what it is). I turned it on, and it went right back off.  After I turned it on again, I saw that the battery was about dead. Which doesn't surprise me. It's been in that N70 for close to a year and a half now.

The other battery from the N70 was strong enough to tell me that 7 exposures had been used on that roll.  It was also strong enough to set the date and let me finish the roll that was in there.  Fortunately it was a roll of 24. If it was 36, I would have probably had problems.

I'm both curious and terrified about what is on the first 7 shots of that roll. I'll be interested to see if the date is printed on the picture or not. If so, I will be learning how long that roll sat in the camera. If the film is any good. 

Crawfish Pie

Went to a local skate park today with the old D40x and a 50mm lens that is apparently of the brand "Underground."  I came across the lens in a rando box last year and started using it with some filters.

 

Decided to throw it on a camera and see what I got.  Weirdly, it wasn't working at first, but after I messed with it a bit, the iris loosened up and it was able to produce some pretty fantastic images:

 

 

Honestly, this lens really nails the color of the sky and really gets the vibes of the Yashica "Red Special" FX-3 pics I took last year at a different park.

But You Can Never Leave

Man, eff the news.

Seriously.

What fresh Hell did we get into here? I have grown to despise social media these days, because it's mostly a never-ending doom scroll supermarket tabloid. It was bad enough with the rando crap on facebook, but now it is full of AI generated crap and so much nonsense it's not even funny.

I'll admit that I'm probably doing it wrong, what with only having one friend anymore, but you know. 

Twenty-Two

Someone I would like to consider a good friend said something to me about a mutual friend not understanding her struggles in life.

It actually hit pretty hard for me. I kind of answered her comment on a very practical level, but it occurred to me shortly after I hit send, that on a more personal level, I didn't really answer part of it.  Admittedly, that is a conversation to be had in person, but in short, it is hard to understand what someone is going through if they don't tell you about it.

This particular friend has told me a little bit of her story that she hasn't shared with this other friend, and it seems there was some contention between the two, and it was pertaining to one not knowing a part of the other person's story.

I had an experience the other day where I commented upon a recipe that was frequently made in my house as a child. Someone asked if my parents were paying for my therapy for preparing that for us to eat, but I couldn't bring myself to be annoyed because she didn't know about the time in my life in which we were so poor it wasn't even a joke. Like so poor that there were times where things like running water weren't a thing. Or the trips to the grocery store where I was handed a calculator and told that $25 was all the money we had for food for four people that week, and to say stop when we got to that number.

Why? Because I've never really shared that part of my life with too many people.  I am, in fact, pretty sure this is the first time I've recounted anything like that here. I suspect that my sister dying is the hardest thing I've written about in this space to date.

That was almost twenty-two years ago. Reading through that hit me really hard today. I'm pretty sure most of my current friends don't even know about that one. 

In The End It's Right

I had plans. I had the vague outline of an post laid out in my head, but I've since forgotten what it was to be about.

Possibly digital fish or a pink unicorn.

Could have been shoes or ships or sealing wax.

Might have been a General.

Or cabbages and kings.

Kings...I think it had something to do with the State of the Union, but i don't remember. Something about wishing someone would admit to breaking it so we can go about fixing it.

But I really cannot remember. 

Break On Through To The Other Side

Several months ago I developed 4 rolls of film and hung them up in the office to dry.

In the intervening time, a great deal of things happened resulting in that room being a dangerous place to walk for several months.  I had some time over the weekend. I did some work in that room and got to the point where I could safely move about in there.  I cleared off the desk and started cutting and scanning film.

These rolls cover 4th of July both 2024 and 2025, my trip to Lake Michigan in 2024, Yellowwood State Forest in 2024 and a bit from 2025 and the Rushville Steam Engine show from 2025.

Here are a few of the scans.  They won't be labeled as to what is what, but I'll fill in the holes once the scanning is done.

 

There are a handful of pictures from at least 6 different days on 4 rolls.