My Last Week at MBI

Well, I’m done with my office job. My computer system is now my own. No PC!!! I’ll be working on my Macintosh! I hate PCs! I love my Mac. 'Nuff said.
It would have been much easier to leave if I had a lousy job filling out TPS reports or some such nonsense, but I’ve spent 12 years being involved with something I enjoy--making books. Yes, there is corporate B.S., but that’s to be found at every company. So I'll miss the buzz of puttiing together a good book, the strategizing over look and feel, but I've done enough of that for one lifetime and I'll be doing my favorite part of that--making the words and the photos--so that I can let go of easily enough. Mostly I'll miss the interaction--the tired old jokes with Dennis and Josh, hearing Darwin rant, Jim's addled babble, and so on. So leaving was not necessarily easy, and it took me a while to (as a friend of mine said) “Go over the wall.”
I had a great last week, being treated to lunches, flying a blimp in the building, saying goodbye to everyone, and drinking beer in the office. As I told the CEO, if the job was all beer drinking and blimp flying, I’d never quit.
Good fun, but now it's time to live my dream of becoming an independent contractor. At the moment, I have two Macs up and running (my desktop and my laptop), Science Friday on MPR on the radio, a warm cup of coffee to drink, some home-baked cookies to snack on, shoots of tractors and garages to schedule, and a proposal to send off. Nothin' wrong with that.

The Naked Scot Rides!

Camera Geek Bidding

My final missing piece of equipment is a higher-resolution digital camera. I’ve been shooting with a 10D for nearly three years now. Tho I initially didn’t like using digital—the saturation of the images wasn’t up to what I was used to from Fuji film—I’ve come to really appreciate the advantages. In fact, I now prefer digital.

For shooting calendars and opening spreads in a larger-format book, the 10D’s 6-megapixel images are not up to the task, plus my 10D is starting to show signs of age (missing autofocus shots, and misfiring when used with my 70-200), so it’s time for an upgrade. I wanted a full-frame camera, so I had the Canon 1DS Mark 1 and the Canon 5D to choose from. I went over the specs at length. The 5D has more options when it comes to color adjustment, can be set to ISO 3200, and has a larger LCD. Plus it uses the same battery as my 10D, which means I would have two chargers and some extra batteries right away. But it doesn’t have the heavy-duty environmental seals of the 1DS. And I simply love the way the Canon D bodies feel in your hand.

So I’m bidding on eBay on bodies. It’s become a bit of an obsession with me. I missed what I thought was a perfect one last night. It was here in the Twin Cities area, in perfect condition, and came with a transferable extended warranty. I bid a bit higher than I thought was necessary, and some guy from Indonesia outbid me!

Ah well, I’ve found another one and used the “Buy It Now" feature. The hunt is fun, but I'm ready to get the equipment here and put it to work!