My Connection to the Internet is Miserably Slow

I suspected as much and over the course of several months, this is playing out to be so.

Currently I have DSL with ATT.

Actually I started out with SBC global who was bought over by ATT.

I wouldn’t say I’m cynical by nature but I do feel big businesses like the phone company and cable companies and especially the cellphone providers are always out to squeeze something out of your wallet when you’re not paying attention. Read the rest of this entry »

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Saturday morning I packed up the family, made them accompany me to Old Town Temecula for this Street Painting Festival.

This was the 9th year for this festival.

A short portion of the asphalt of Fifth Street became the giant canvas where about 60 artists labored under the Sun.

Temperatures were in the low 90s by the time we got there.

The artists arrived at 8 am.

Most didn’t plan to finish the same day. Read the rest of this entry »

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Summer in the Phun household means one other thing.  Yours truly has to watch himself.

I’m no longer Master of my domain.

Well, not exactly.  Beside my bandwidth for the internet, I have to share everything.

My wife and my kids are home. Whoop-Tee-Doo!

The “General” is home all the time. Since I’m just a Major and outranked, my mantra is “Right away Sweetie.”

She makes the general decisions and I make the major ones.

Good thing she doesn’t read this blog.

All kidding aside, is there such a thing as too much quality time?

Gabriel tries to position the cats for her sister. Julie waits patiently for the “talent CT” to finish grooming.

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Yesterday evening I found these flowers which always capture my attention at this time of the year. I had a feeling I would be by the park, so I grabbed my camera. Canon 40D 17-35mm ISO 100 1/15 sec @ f22

I always feel my post is incomplete if I can’t include a picture even if it’s unrelated. I must be insecure about my writing. I’m including a vertical as well. Let me know which you like better.

While I was “napping” my guestbook which is so yesterday was spammed big time.

There’s so much that my only recourse is to remove it entirely.

Spam is a problem for anyone who has a website where you allow some sort of interaction between your visitors and you.

When I implemented the guestbook, I didn’t give it enough thought.
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Summer in the Phun household means I don’t have my WiFi network to myself.

There must be some truism to this condition: as big a house you think you have when you first move in, you will eventually fill all the rooms and your stuff will overflow and fill even your garage.

In this situation, my DSL bandwidth of 6MBs which is more than adequate is appearing anemic.

I could switch to FiOS or Fiber Optic service and pay through the nose.

I made the mistake of mentioning the 16MBs service of FiOs.

My son immediately jumped in suggesting that would take care of the bandwidth problem.

It doesn’t help that I’m on my MacBook Pro and so are the other 2 Wiis! Why 2 Wiis? My son has 3 friends over to play their video games.

Apparently the boys don’t want a split screen to play their Mario Superkart game. So one of his buddies brought over his own game console.

Good thing I’m not trying to watch any online video right now. It’ll bring the entire (local area network) LAN to a crawl.

Wait till my wife gets online with my G4 powerbook and tries to surf the net. Someone’s going home!

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This was a first for me, teaching 11 young photographers between ages 9 and 14.

We used:
• 4 Dell laptops (2 photographers to a laptop )
• Various digital cameras. Mostly point and shoot. Too many models to name
• Adobe’s Photoshop Elements 7. Currently Costco has a coupon for $30 off, so you’ll be paying $50.

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