dear fujifilm,

hi, it’s me, mike. i know that i’ve only recently become a customer of yours with the purchase of the fujifilm finepix f31fd camera. i’m not writing because i’m upset that you just announced an upgrade to this fine camera RIGHT after i bought it. that’s upsetting a little bit, yes, but i’m willing to overlook that.

what i am writing about is your insistence to continue to use your proprietary xD-Picture Card memory. nobody but you and your friend olympus use the format anymore. it’s a dying format! let it die! yes, yes, i know you spent a lot of research dollars into the format and you don’t want to see it go away, but come on! it’s time to accept the fact that SD memory won that memory battle war between you two. suck it up, accept it, and move on. just because you make people call it xD and you have the funky lower-uppercase designation isn’t going to make it any cooler. marketing will only take you so far…

the thing that bothers me most about xD is that it costs more than SD and the cards are limited to 2GB. 2GB?!?! who uses only 2GB of data these days?! heh, ok, it’s a lot of pictures on my camera, but still!

please, please, let the format die. use SD. or better yet, use CF! just please stop using xD. i had to buy an xD=>CF adapter so that i can use my image tank with the memory. i’m going to send you the bill.

your customer (the customer is always right, right?),
mike.

(picture courtesy mchew, thanks mchew!)

we were gathered saturday to witness this union of this man and this woman in matrimony. that’s right, the wedding of greg and cheryl was this weekend. they had a wonderful wedding. i was the officiant for their wedding.

people ask me how it is that i came about becoming the officiant for them. one day greg was talking to someone and he was asked who was going to marry him and cheryl. neither of them are religious and they didn’t want to have a religious ceremony. he said that he hadn’t thought much about it and didn’t know. i had made an offhand comment that i would totally marry them. greg said he’d ask cheryl about it and the next day he IMs me and says, “so…were you serious about marrying us?” and that’s how it all started.

the ceremony itself was great. it fit greg and cheryl quite well, humorous at times, heartfelt at others. the letters to their parents got me teary-eyed. both of them.

i was pretty nervous officiating the wedding. i didn’t want to mess up their wedding, and i was a little unsure about whether or not some of the humorous parts of the ceremony would go over well. but in the end, i think it came out well.

that’s three weddings this year: geoff and pak, paul and leeya, and now greg and cheryl. i think our wedding will be the last of the year.

ok, so you have a small point and shoot camera and you want to add a little more oomph to your flash by getting an external slave flash. you’ve heard of these things called optical slaves and you’re thinking that this might be the right thing for you.

that’s what i thought! and i had heard favorable things about the vivitar df120 (well, A favorable review) and so i eagerly picked one up and it arrived today.

this thing is TINY! like 1 inch by 1.5 inches tiny. i’m not sure if light will even come out of it, but i’ll give it a whirl later today when i get some batteries for it.

i received my replacement outlaw audio receiver and everything works as it should. it seems like i might have just been the one with some bad luck, but everything is working crisply and boomingly well now. i decided to go with a pretty small set up, the smaller definitive technology speakers, the small subwoofer, and with everything wired up, it sounds incredible. i love it.

now, my next big project is building my own old school arcade!

my surround speaker mounts have arrived! it looks like it is going to be a pretty simple install, though where i am going to be installing them appears to be sub-optimal. oh well. this should be the last phase of my home theatre set up. finally! it’ll be done. i think that i will celebrate by watching my all time favorite movie ever — Bring It On!

hmmm…maybe i should watch something with more action. stunts, thrills, and spills! maybe i’ll watch my all time favorite action movie ever — Bring It On!

hmmm…maybe i should watch something with good dialogue. perhaps my favorite romantic comedy — Bring It On!

err.

uhhh.

ahem.

i went to john’s place for burgers and dole whip last night and what i saw at his place surprised me. driving his home theatre was an outlaw audio receiver!

“hey!” i exclaimed. “you have an outlaw!”

so someone i know HAS heard of this brand before! it turns out that most of john’s friends use outlaw products and have been using them for quite some time. i found that to be quite cool.

not that i think it is really possible, but i was forced to ask myself the question, “too much pizza?” the other day when i walked into the local pizza joint and they recognized me and knew my order before i got to the cash register.

have i been eating too much pizza?

my netflix queue is starting to get a little thin and i am in need of some good movies to watch. summertime tv is slow and mostly sucks so i have very little to watch at night. if anyone has any suggestions for some good movies, i would love to add them to my list.

i generally tend to like good action movies and romantic comedies. nothing too cheesy or over the top with the romantic comedies. if it’s dark humor, i generally tend to like it more.

i had been a little lazy and nervous about mounting the LCD in the office, but finally got around to doing it last night. the first time i drilled into the wall into a stud found by the edge to edge stud finder that i borrowed from paul i drilled through the wall, but instead of drilling through the stud, i hit nothing!

i looked again and realized that i think the stud finder actually probably found the cable tv wires instead of a stud. so i looked again for more studs and finally was able to mount the LCD to the wall. i used my power drill/screwdriver to pre-drill some starter holes and then to screw in the base plate. what i really needed was a socket wrench, but i didn’t have one handy, so i used the power screwdriver until it couldn’t drive the screw in anymore (stupid 12V power drill, should have gotten the 16V!) and then painfully hand tightened it the rest of the way.

but it’s all mounted. i just need to set up the sound system and then we’ll be in business!

this weekend was also the annual queens tournament. traditionally, there are many, many more men who show up than women, so to even out the numbers, guys have the option to wear bikini tops and play as a woman. i have played as a woman for the last two years and was ready to finally play as a man.

initially diana and i were paired up, but there was a twist in the partners this year. this year, girls had the option to steal someone else’s partner away, similar to that of a white elephant gift exchange. there actually weren’t that many trades that happened, but i was involved in one of them. so diana didn’t end up trading me (much to my surprise) but instead someone else stole me away from diana. my partner for the day has played with me once before and wanted to play with me because i was someone she knew.

we played the day out and went 6-2, the last two games i think we were just too drained to play well and ended up losing. we made it to playoffs and ended up taking second place for the day. all in all a good day and fun. i didn’t get too sunburned, just a little pink, so that’s good too.

the only tradition that i wished would not continue was diana blocking me at the net. not only did she block me, but everyone on our court gasped and cheered for her interrupting play on the other two courts who looked over to see what the commotion was all about. i had to yell at the other courts to mind their own business and keep playing, but it didn’t seem to stop the many, many people who came up to me afterwards to ask me how i was doing because they had heard that i got stuffed by diana.

sheesh!