Took a bunch of pics on the way home, to get used to playing with the pencam again.

Check em’ out

My Aiptek mini pencam went neglected for a while, the joys of home ownership reduced not only my free time but also my ability to find the camera. It has recently been located, but I found that alkaline batteries that I left inside had begun to cause corrosion on the contacts. I brushed some of it away at the bottom, but when I put batteries in, I found that it wasn’t working. I feared the worst, and ignored it for a couple of days. But it occured to me that I never tended to the corrosion that was up on the spring contacts at the top of the battery bay. I googled a bit and found that you can use a baking soda paste to clean it away chemically. However, I didn’t bother with that, I just got a screwdriver and flaked a bunch of it off of the spring, and behold, the camera lives again.

Now the only thing I need to do, is install some kind of recessed switch to actually physically break the contact of the battery, as it just sits there and drains the battery even when it is “off.” Right now a piece of post-it serves that purpose for me.

But this should provide for some nice 1.3 MP shots at the bike race. I am even considering looking to see if I can get a hold of the pocket cam x to play with and take some 2.1 MP shots, and see if the flash actually makes it useful indoors. However I haven’t found any reviews or example pics from that, which makes me skeptical. Also I’d like to find a refurb or something so I don’t have to pay a full $100.

The Manayunk Drinking competition is coming up fast. June 6th is the Wachovia USPRO Championship. And since it is likely that this year may be the last where my brother has a house along the route he has stepped up admirably. To go along with the standard fare of 2 kegs of beer, and various dead animals, there is the centerpiece dead animal, a 40 lb. roast pig. They will be getting this from <a href=”"http://www.cannulismeats.com/”>Cannuli’s Meats in South Philly that specializes in the preparation of these delicacies for similair unholy celebrations. The drinking starts at 6:30 AM, and the definition of “Bike Race Drunk” becomes evident by about noon. There are also rumors that some kind of athletic competition will be ongoing, but I am skeptical.

You can read my review of the debauchery from 2003. There are also some crappy pictures. I am hoping to repair my Aiptek pen cam in time to get some better pictures this year. And I am also hoping to hang in without getting totally wrecked, but only time will tell.

My Brother, Tom, graduated from LaSalle University yesterday with a BA in English, Maxima Cum Laude (which means a 3.9 or better GPA). I also witnessed him receive a fistful of honors in the past couple of weeks, including the top student in the English department, where the Professor bestowing the honor indicated that they had run out of awards to give to him.

As a further testament to his ability he has been accepted into and will be attending The Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. For those who don’t know, being accepted to this program is a very high honor. Evidenced by their selection policy summed up on the workshop’s history page:

Though we agree in part with the popular insistence that writing cannot be taught, we exist and proceed on the assumption that talent can be developed, and we see our possibilities and limitations as a school in that light. If one can “learn” to play the violin or to paint, one can “learn” to write, though no processes of externally induced training can ensure that one will do it well. Accordingly, the fact that the Workshop can claim as alumni nationally and internationally prominent poets, novelists, and short story writers is, we believe, more the result of what they brought here than of what they gained from us. We continue to look for the most promising talent in the country, in our conviction that writing cannot be taught but that writers can be encouraged.

So Congratulations and Good Luck, Tom.

When I get a chance I will put some of Tom’s more recent writing samples up here.

When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion.

Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865), (attributed)

Easily accomplished consistent reading of the Quotes of theDay is just one of the many reasons I enjoy using Bloglines

By the way is this similar to how G.W. Bush decided to take our country to war? I am of course referring to the President reportedly quoted as saying: God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam …. Source: here.