BUDDING PHOTOGRAPHER

Grandson, Theo, was requesting a monopoly game, a game I dislike.  He settled for a “camera assignment.” I asked him to choose from three colors, blue, red and yellow and go outside and take pictures of (he chose red), red items  on his short street.

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He is nine years old and did very well. I always learn something from my Grandson’s. He had read a library book  called Zoom, in which a photo is reversed from close up to far away, showing for example  a roosters comb, then the rooster, then the barn where the rooster lived, people looking in the barn, the magazine the picture of the barn etc. was on, a person reading the magazine, the chair he was sitting in and so on. Hmmm. Intriguing and challenging.

So he took this photo:

which is part of his:

slip on Croc.

Later in the day we visited my sister’s grandson, Jeff and great grandson, CJ.

And, I forgot my camera and had to steal this photo from facebook.

We did manage games after dinner. We settled on  Bananagrams and Quiddler instead, both  fast moving and can reasonably be played by all ages. But, now I know I have to try a “zoom” assignment.

 

HOME IS NEVER HOW YOU LEFT IT.

Amtrak to Sacramento was a breeze. Got to Sacramento Knee and Sports Medicine on March 9th, to have Dr. Wang, a shoulder expert advise me. I was given a cortisone shot without a definite answer yet about surgery. So, its a wait, wait situation, but,  if surgery can be avoided, its worth the wait.

Murphys seemed relatively unchanged. Yet, I knew a heavy snowstorm accosted the area on February 12 while I was gone. The power was out for 72 hours. Fixed as quickly as possible by PG&E. With the live line across my driveway and orchard gone, only the telephone lines were left lying waiting for AT&T. It took them 9 days to restore phone service. That strikes me as a misuse of the word service. They apologized and made promises they didn’t keep. And, from a bill of $84?  My credit amounted to $6 for internet and phone services. Doesn’t compute. Being angry with the phone company is a lost cause. Then, when I attempted to blog yesterday?  It seems my modem was not working. I suspect the loss of service to be part of the problem.

So, even though all the lights light up, it won’t take the signal from AT&T. And, the AT&T repair service did not reset this modem after the lines were down. They want to sell me another modem for $100. One that has horrible reviews by users. I’d be three to five days without service, unless I pay a premium to have it mailed overnight. I drove to Sonora and bought one off the shelf that AT&T told me they would not support or help connect for me.

My Linksys router that allows me wireless reception gave up the ghost around Christmastime. Its only given me about 3 years of service.
So, I bought a replacement for it. Its a nifty device called a Cisco Valet.

At $79, not cheap, but really user friendly.
So, now add the new modem for another $75. Is this a racket? My friend Jerry observes he has his old Royal Typewriter in his garage that still works like a champ and its 60 years old. Does make you wonder.

So, here is the new Zoom X-5 modem. I’m up and on-line. But, it hasn’t figured out how to communicate with the new Cisco Valet, so I’m hard-wired to this modem and must blog from my office. All wireless capability is lost. I’ll leave that for another day and be thankful I can check my mail and see to my blog. Basically, yesterday, besides shopping for a modem and filling my refrigerator,  I killed all the spiders that moved in while I was gone. I don’t spray, but one on one? Wham! They are history.