Monday, August 25, 2008

Another Visit

Heidi came to visit for the weekend again. I had such a good time with her. She is so nice, I'm very lucky to have met her.

We went to see, "The Rocker" and it was a very fun movie. We both laughed the entire time. After that we went and sat in the shade in a park. We chatted, gossiped and otherwise got to know each other a little better. I barbecued for her yesterday and today after church I made spaghetti.

She made the cupcake mix that I had bought for my birthday back in May. The cupcakes turned out very well.

She's only been gone for a couple of hours and I already miss her. It makes me want to move to Lethbridge. I just love my job so much and I don't know what I would do for work there. Convincing her to move here is an option, but she loves her job so much too. I guess I should be working on my stock photos harder than ever.

Right now I am saving my istock money to buy a video camera to shoot stock videos with. The site experiences a summer slowdown, but it seems to be ending. As it picks up again, the istock money will be a big help. It would be nice to be making enough money from istock so that even if it wasn't a full time gig, that it would let me take more time off in the summer when we aren't as busy in the studio.

-Gary

Thursday, August 21, 2008

I Went to The Lake

Heidi's parents have a cabin on the shore of a lake in Montana and they were kind enough to invite me to come down for a few days with Heidi. I had an incredible time. It was a nice chance to relax before the school photo season starts again. I also really enjoyed getting to know her parents and littlest brother better.
We did a little boating, jet skiing, swimming and canoing. It was a really fun long weekend for the two of us. Heidi was excited to give me a taste of what is was like to grow up in her family.
I got a text message from Tracie yesterday, because today would have been our wedding anniversary. I called her and we had a little chat.
This whole thing is getting better bit by bit all the time. It was a kind of difficult talking to her, but I am feeling significantly improved because of it, so I'm glad I called.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Fixing Electronics

Does being able to fix a broken LCD screen on your camera's flash make you more Manly or more Nerdy. For my money it makes you more manly.

A month or two ago I was doing some photos of my parents using my SB-800 speedlights off camera on stands with umbrella diffusers. A small breeze tipped one of the flashes over and cracked the LCD screen. I figured that it would be pretty easy to replace myself, so I looked it up on the internet.

Here is a link to the instructions (or possibly destructions) How to fix a Nikon SB-800 Flash. It is pretty straight forward and pretty easy if you are careful. I recommend being very gentle, if you feel you need to add much force at all as you are doing this project, there is probably a wire caught somewhere so that should be a signal to examine things more closely.

Important info:

Nikon Parts phone number: (310) 414-8107. This number is in California. They won't ship to Canada.
The Canadian Number is (905) 625-9910.

Apparently in the USA it costs $37.50 + shipping (about $10)
It cost me $57.45 in Canadian Funds + $5 for shipping

part description: SB-800 LCD (The parts people can figure out the part number pretty easily)

the part # is : SS523-55

I admit I risked wasting a $65, on this little repair job, but it would have cost at least double that to have it fixed, not to mention what the shipping would have cost. The replacement cost would have been around $350 so I figure it was a risk worth taking.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

-Gary