The driving range at Cam Springs is good, no drivers allowed though. (Ya, right!)

This is the golf cart that will hall my fat ass around for the day.

First hole of many in which I will bogey, double-bogey, and just snowman.

“It’s every player’s responsibility… Repair ball marks; Replace or fill divots; Rake bunkers”

I figured that I should get a semi-artistic picture, but took this one anyway.

Nice wide open gairway for which I will likely lose a ball or two.

Of course there’s racists and their signs.

This is one of the unexpected lakes that would give us a malaria bath.

I didn’t have the heart (or aim) to hit the landscapers on the golf course. Thanks for keeping the green so green folks.

Erik is getting serious about sizing up the hole.. at least that’s what he told me he was doing when I joked about him having to poop.

This is one of many putts that would be attempted and accomplished during the day.

“CAUTION: STEEP GRADE” oh ya, and be careful of dangerous snakes. Though I would rather run over a snake going as fast as possible.

I would eventually give 2 or 3 balls away to the bushes on the right side.

Erik had some serious club head speed going, allowing him to outdrive me without contest.

It looks like he knows what he’s doing. Really good that I wasn’t too close so that people wouldn’t compare us and laugh at me.

It’s sort of hard to see in a compressed image size, but the golf ball was just hit and looks to be about shoulder height in this picture with Erik.

I think that this is an excuse Erik uses to just sit and relax.

Amazingly tall mountains all around in the back of Cam Springs. It’s actually a great course.

Sometimes I felt like I was in some Rambo movie while going from hole-to-hole.

Lt Dan always got these funny feelings, he often shouted “GET DOWN! SHUT UP!” So I did.

Erik started getting nervous that someone was going to steal his golf clubs.

I’m not sure if there was a reason Erik kept yelling “DIE! DIE! DIE!” and trying to shoot, I just nodded my head and hoped he didn’t kill me.

I didn’t want to swim in malaria lake after I noticed the leeches were afraid of the water.

I was trying to copy my teacher, so when he hit into the sandtrap I followed.

Sometimes we would hit from between the blue rocks, sometimes all the rocks would get together and hang out.

The seventh hole was 535 yards, which was pretty awesome. Most holes on courses don’t afford golfers the opportunity to take a couple full swings with low clubs.

With the fair way this open it’s great to take a little harder swing, even if it doesn’t drive as straight.

“YOU THE GOLFER ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE CAUSED BY ERRANT GOLF BALLS”

Another nice action shot with the golf ball going to fast for my little Canon SD550 to get a clear shot. It looks like the golf ball was elongated in this shot.

There were a couple good opportunities for chipping the ball.

Umm.. I can explain. I didn’t see the tree there when I swung.

Seriously, getting two golf balls in this tree is a talent.

This is where the term “birdie” comes from in golf.

The scenery was nice, even when it was the freeway in the background.

Another true drive.

Cart 64 warning “KEEP ENTIRE BODY INSIDE CAR”.

If you can’t get a birdie, get a goose…

..or get a rabbit.

Lake Eat-My-Golf-Balls.. it was quite lovely.

Nothing like a 60+ foot putt to make you realize it’s not Golf ‘n Stuff here.

Despite numberous attempts, Erik was unable to hit the people in the golf cart ahead of us.

We started out with a quick show and tell, which is something that people never grow out of, no matter how old they manage to get. When people aren’t in school anymore, it usually means that most show and tell is with more extensive or expensive items, and usually they are less generally enjoyed and more appreciated by a select group. Like when I show and tell about a new set of bump keys, it’s not something that most girls would care about.

After show and tell ended, we made our way out to a restaurant known as The Cheesecake Factory. Since I’m trying to lose weight (I’m now at… well, I’ll tell you that another time) I ordered a

It’s really a good salad, and though it’s not the best dietary option, it’s better than the excellent cheeseburgers that they sell. I don’t mean better in taste, just in health.

Along with the salad I had one quarter of a club sandwich, with lightly toasted bread. I didn’t ask for the bread to be lightly toasted, but was very glad that it was. Overall, the lunch and company for lunch was grade A.

After the food was taken away it was time for some fun, which for me is balancing a salt shaker on it’s ridge. I was told that this was a bar trick, but I started doing this when I was 18… about 4-5 years before I ever went into a bar.

Because there was too much light left in the day, we headed out shopping. I have never previously been inside a Bristol Farms market, but I found some things worth taking pictures of and something worth shopping there for too. I don’t know how the pricing compares to my favority market, Albertson’s, but I think it’s much more expensive. I know the cheesecake is more expensive than I have ever seen before.

Now the reason that I will visit is because the best selection of beer that I have ever seen in a grocery store looked me straight in the face and challenged me to think of something that they didn’t have already chilled and ready to drink.

Though it was still hot outside, we had one last stop to make, this one at Gelson’s grocery store, which I would never shop in on a regular basis because the pricing is intense. I had to get credit approval just to walk in the store! I was looking for Krusteaz frozen French toast, which they didn’t have. I’ve run out of places to find Krusteaz French toast now. Before you tell me that you’ve seen it, make sure that you aren’t going to tease me with hope. I don’t want the French toast sticks and don’t want the cinammon flavored either, just plain, frozen, French toast from Krusteaz. No luck? I didn’t think so.. oh well, thanks for trying.

My car in the garage.

Pretty sure if the only two places listed are in the spot, they could do away with an arrow and just have a comma separating the locations.

Nice neon sign for the casino hospital.

Shouldn’t this sign be in Spanish first and English secondly?

Plug your laptop into the red outlet, it’s backed up by power generators.

What a wonderful compliment of gadgets and medical stuff, along with a digital clock for accurately calling the time of death.

Another angle of the room. Look, clothes on the wall.. looks like I don’t have to streak anymore!

It’s The Law or.. Es La Ley

I think this says something about having to pay unless you don’t want to or can prove that ESL is your way of life.

Check out the monitor. I’ve watched those for so long that I just pretend it’s a TV show (and it’s better than some shows on these days).

Nice lines in the ground. Sort of like what siblings would do when drawing lines to separate their shared bedroom.

Accucare Sphygmomanometer. Umm.. I’m not sure what that word means, but this one is broken.

Having tape on the ceiling to keep the A/C from giving the flu-ridden worse times is a great idea, almost like not putting an A/C vent over a bed in the hospital.

This is a hospital. That’s a vent in the hospital for the HVAC. I think someone doesn’t do a good job cleaning.

“Canon analyze ECG” message means that the monitoring equipment just isn’t trying hard enough.

There’s a cute nurse at the hospital. She has a great sense of humor, likes jokes about thermometers and where to stick them, and has the most incredible big brown eyes of any nurse, ever.

“Some ECG alrms off”. Just some of the alrms alarms were off, the other ones were working excellently.

27 minutes later, same alarms warning.

Guess this was just taken so you could see the reflection of my camera in the monitor.

I’m not even too sure what I was hoping to accomplish with this site.. maybe I should think about that more.

Well, here are the pictures I mentioned I’d show.

This is from a wall that is against a liquor store, next to a medical clinic

Alright now, this isn’t that extraordinary, it’s just a Chevron.  But it’s in a semi-rundown town where most people aren’t rolling around in higher end vehicles.  So I found it sort of out of place, with the electronic sign with pricing.

Here was a nice piece of architecture I found crossing over a bridge which is over a really disgusting washway.

A computer error message I received while checking into a co-worker’s computer problems.

Construction work sometimes seems more interesting than it should.

When you commute as much as I do, there are some times you just feel alone.

Driving home at night the light and dark just seem amazing.

During the morning commute the skyline looks incredible at times.

Interesting signs at gas stations, including those with dates going back to the 90’s.

Skittles are the computer geek’s candy of choice.

Picture of a U.S. quarter taken with my Canon Digital EOS XTi camera.

Finally, a few pictures taken of the side of the road near work.

There have been some pretty good advertising ideas I’ve had the pleasure of seeing (including a banner over 20 stories tall for the Transformers movie).  Seeing this ad just made me wonder why they would use this graphic, would put it on a bus, and put it on a bus that primarily is driven within low income, primarily Hispanic, neighborhood.

Since I took the picture to share, it’s available in four ways. 

First, the ad without the bus:

Next, the ad on the side of the bus, but zoomed in:

Now the full picture I took, in a lower resolution mode and resized:

Now if you want to have the full image, as taken and downloaded from my Canon SD550 camera, click here.

It wasn’t an email letting me know she had been there.  It wasn’t from an IM, it was from a very pleasant set of post-it notes which she had written on and left on my desk.

This was by far the best message I had received all week.  Maybe even all month.

Next time you are at someone’s office and they are not there, leave a friendly message that you had been there, not a voice mail or IM or email, something truly special and unique.

This was a series of 4 post-it notes, which was just a small fraction of what I had placed on her wall at one time when I came into work on a weekend, and had lots of spare time while an email server was doing a database rebuild (check the last picture):

Each post-it note was unique with a different smiley face:

Here’s a picture from the post-it wall I had made. It was like wallpaper, only this post-it note prank took me hours:

The restaurant is clean and as always, really in good shape.  I didn’t take any pics of the place, but I should have.  Next time I’ll take pictures of the inside of the place.

Since the amount is pretty fair for the Baja burrito, the only extra for me is the enchilada style (which Baja’s receipt shows as “Enchilado”):

Something interesting tonight was the broken water faucet.  Though I don’t get drinks at Baja Fresh when I’m taking food home, sometimes I’ll get a cup for water.  I didn’t choose to get water this time, but did make mention that their water dispenser was perpetually on:

Baja use to have the nicest, thick white napkins.  I actually had a co-worker that would stop by Baja Fresh once a week just to steal their napkins.  He was Chinese and his mother (also Chinese) seemed to really have an obsession with their napkins.  Things have changed though, as the environment changes so does Baja Fresh.  No more nice fluffy white napkins, now it’s recycle time:
 

I chose to get the steak Baja burrito, and because I like the extra cheese, I ordered it enchilada style.  If you haven’t tried it, you really should.  The extra cheese and whatever-sauce is good and makes for a good meal that just requires a fork and knife:

Of course, I ate the whole thing and felt too full to move around, thankfully I had some Diet 7-up next to me so I didn’t need to get up and actually move around too much.  This helped me to be lazy and just sit and digest food.

I wonder if its true that the body digests food better while sitting up than it does laying down.

For family and friends, I’ll start posting up pictures more often on my kid’s site.  To the rest of you visitors, I’ll be doing a better job soon and hope that you find this site useful and informative, as well as worthy of being shared among your friends.

Here’s my car in a photo spread that I took a while ago.  The pictures are available in their original version, just comment or email and I’ll make them available to you. 

All pictures were taken with my Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi.  I set the camera to auto but didn’t like the results, so I changed to manual settings and decided to not go nuts and take RAW images, but did leave the JPEG to max quality.

I went to the site and looked through the 6 traditional letters (shown below).  I didn’t choose one of the Christian letters because I wanted something less serious, something my kid could understand and read without anyone’s help.  Being 6 years old means that reading something on your own is more special than having someone read it to you.

First the order form.  Quick and easy.  After entering my name and address, I started making my choices.

I checked out the letters. They were short and easy reads. I could have just stopped at the first letter but decided to read them all.

Next was checking out time, but I got interested in the “good list” certificate, so I got that too.

The total seemed reasonable at this point, so I figured it was time to click the button and buy.

Order complete. Nice. Time for me to start counting the days down until my kid gets the letter from Santa Claus.

And a thank you to you too Santa!

Link: Santa letter

Nothing is more adorable than a young kid’s belief in things pure and fun.  That’s why Santa Claus and Christmas is so popular.

The reasons Christmas is popular in the United States are:

• retail stores make cubic tons of money;
• families have an excuse to get together;
• people can be generous in giving gifts;
• people will be receiving presents for just knowing someone;
• adults can relive being children by continuing the story and beliefs;
• parents can participate in the children’s fantasies of Rudolph and Santa and Elves.

Sure, there are more reasons.  But this is a start.

As for this Christmas, I have already gone over budget and have only bought for a few people.  This year I bought for myself too (Lego time!).  Last year I bought myself the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi.  For this year I was going to buy myself a higher end camera but instead settled on buying myself a lot of Lego train items (beware, Lego is suppose to be doing away with the 9 volt Lego trains).

Alright, I’ll share my Lego shopping list with you as long as you do me a favor.  This is going to be one of those favors that actually should make you feel really good about yourself.  You need to order a Santa letter.  The process is easy and quick and you will be making some child (or children) very happy.  This is sort of like my random restaurant thing, only I will feel much better about the Santa letter surprise.

Click on the Santa picture on the right and than follow through and send a letter to some kid that you know.  Your own kid.  A niece.  Nephew.  Neighbor.  Some kid or adult even.  This is a chance to send something unique that will continue the beliefs and happiness of the season.

If you are anti-Christmas, I do apologize that I don’t have any recommended anti-Santa letter to send, but you could still send a Santa letter and just think to yourself that Santa is just Satan spelled with a typo.

OK, now for my Lego shopping trip.  Wait, you clicked and ordered the Santa letter, right?  Well, do that first.  Please.  This is not a totally selfless act on my part, I’m not pretending that it is.  Everyone is trying to earn money, and well, though I won’t be writing the letters you will be helping me pay for my Lego trains.  In exchange, I will post pictures of my Legos.

Alright, Lego shopping madness.  Click the image for a full size screen shot of my placed order.