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Kauai has good coffee

4/21/2008 / Matt

Finally! A business trip that went somewhere a bit exotic. I had an opportunity pop up out of the blue to make a two-week jaunt to Kauai. My old boss needed some help with an Information Assurance tasking out at the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF) and he asked me if I could break away and lend a hand. It turned out that the timing was good as we were in a slight lull time waiting for a new series of testing to begin so I was able to clear it with my current boss. The only thing that would put this over the top is finagling a way to get Rhonda out there with me.

I’ve been hoarding a bunch of “travel reward” points for a number of years now waiting for an opportunity like this to come along. Rhonda kept wanting to use them up with some mundane flight to Topeka, KS or what not and I kept refusing. I was finally vindicated! Continue reading

Photography Update – 2008

3/26/2008 / Matt

It has been a year now since I made the switch from film to digital photography. Overall, I would have to say that it has been a very positive change. There have been many favorable elements and to be honest, I can’t think of one thing about film that I miss. The one downside to the digital world is the additional effort required to process your images before you print them. But, on the other hand that is where the flexibility lies too. You can fix things that did not quite work out. Adjusting the exposure after the fact, or the white balance, tweaking the color saturation a bit to make it look like it did in real life.

The end result is a lot better picture. Looks like it did when you were standing there taking the shot. I have found that some caution is necessary though because it is easy to push the color saturation a bit too much. Doing that can make for a striking photo but there tends to be a shade of unreality to it when you do that. The tools for manipulating the image are simply mind-boggling. The industry standard is Adobe’s Photoshop. I put off buying it for a very long time. Not only is it expensive but it’s so powerful and has so many features that the learning curve is quite high. I decided to go ahead and make the plunge last December while I still had my academic credentials which allowed me to buy the package at a deep discount. As I expected it is a challenging package to learn. In fact, I think it will be a life-long process.

One of the neatest features I’ve found so far is the ability to select a certain portion of the photo and lighten or darken just that section. That feature alone has allowed me to save a number of photos. One of the other big reasons for using Photoshop is simply because all the articles/tutorials/how-to’s for digital photography are inevitably written for Photoshop. So, I have started inching my way up the learning curve. Someday I’ll probably be an expert. Continue reading

Snow Fun

2/28/2008 / Matt

We have finally gotten some nice weather around here. The early part of winter has been pretty cold and blah but for several weekends in a row it has been nice enough to get out and enjoy some fun in the snow. We have stayed pretty close to home, just driving up to some of the higher elevations on Pikes Peak and tromping off through the snow. The snow ranges from deep powder to fairly compacted (by the wind) drifts that you can walk right over the top of.

Abby loves to accompany us and she really gets a workout! When it gets powdery she ends up going snow swimming.

Coming Out Of Our Cave…

1/20/2008 / RHonda

Happy New Year to you all! May this find you walking in the rich blessing of goals already met, dreams dreamed and are in the process of being implemented. I write this morning to say that we still love you and that we are moving towards not being so reclusive. I have been noticeably absent from our website for some time. I apologize. Matt has done a good job keeping you up on most of the family current events. We have been immersed in moving, going back to school, sending Kristina off to CA, my early December trip to Iowa, and the holiday preparations. All of those activities culminated on Christmas Day which I spent in bed. Not because I was sick but because I was just plain exhausted. I had been going, going since early summer with no real breathing room. Matt and I both became cave dwellers! With no family in town for the holidays, Matt and I decided to decline offers of fellowship and spend our first Christmas Day alone in 31 years. We did spend Christmas Eve with Josh and Selenda as I wrote about in December’s post and had two nice times with our neighbor, Donna Renea over the holiday week. Her laughter is contagious and was excellent medicine for our healing souls. It felt odd not to be in the middle of a lively celebration but it was good in a whole different way. Neither of us had the soul energy to be ‘good company’ to anyone. Continue reading

December Memories

12/31/2007 / RHonda

We keep ‘family history’ here on the website so I want to record my mad dash to IA. I finished finals on the first Thursday of December and headed off to Iowa feeling like Santa with my trunk and back seat full of presents. It was a lovely, snowy Colorado picture perfect morning as I began to head east. Little did I know that I would drive the entire 750 miles to the Farm in unlovely snow, ice, freezing fog, and almost every other form of precipitation imaginable. The entire trip the temperature was a constant 19 – 21 degrees. No greater variance – it was the craziest thing! As the day waned, I stopped often to scrape off the headlights and windshield. The miles north of Kansas City were the longest, most dangerous, and arduous. By the time, I arrived in Iowa, I had been driving for over 12 hours and on the road for 14. One and a half inches of ice covered the front of the Caddy! This was BEFORE the ice storm! Continue reading

Significant Moments

11/26/2007 / Matt

This has been a month of significant moments. I turned 50 the other day…years that is…or, 618 full moons, five decades, or one half a century depending on what perspective you want to use for the moment. One of the earliest memories I have is when JFK was assassinated in Dallas. It was the day before my 6th birthday. Now AARP is sending me offers in the mail.

I finished my Masters degree. My final report is delivered and the oral presentation went well, the comprehensive final is over and now the only thing left is waiting for the diploma to show up in the mail. I will now have more of that elusive “free time” which has been significantly lacking for the past four years and I am endeavoring to decide just what to do with it. Aside from catching up on a lengthy to-do list I may look at resurrecting some old dreams. Continue reading

Job Change at ITT

11/8/2007 / Matt

I am working a new program these days. The program I was assigned to has finished up. It happened a little earlier than we expected but it is good to finally have it finished. The company has been real good about finding positions for everyone. Most of the people joined an expanding program over at one of our other buildings where they are getting ready to work on modernizing some of our ballistic missile early warning systems. Most of those systems were built back in the 70’s and are in serious need of updating. I was looking at joining them but was offered a position with the RAIDRS program in the same building I am currently working in. Continue reading

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