It’s (extremely close to) official! Meg scheduled an emergency appointment at the Augusta Health Care for Women today because she had been feeling some discomfort for a while, and they went ahead and performed an ultrasound to make sure everything was OK. As it turns out, everything is fine, and we have the first picture of our 8-week old baby:
Sorry for the recent absence of activity, I’ve had my hands full with testing various gallery software packages for the site. I think I’ve settled on the best choice, but it’s still in a “testing” phase, so I won’t have it linked from here for a while. I had made a concerted effort to get some of the galleries online, especially since I took a ton of pictures at Saurin and Michael’s wedding with the new digital camera 
, and I promised to have them up by the end of the week. I will be adding some filler posts that I had been working on, as soon as I fulfill my painting obligation to my lovely wife. 
I had no idea that when I set out to implement a photo gallery on this site, that it was going to be one heck of an endeavor. Not even just with the implementation and adding all of the pictures, but with the decision of which gallery I was going to use! I had posted previously about some of the galleries I was toying with, and the end result was that I wasn’t happen with any of them. So I continued my search, hoping that I would stumble upon a relatively unknown and magical site that would have just the solution I was looking for. Lo and behold, that’s pretty much what happened.
» Here’s an interesting article with tips on how to properly capture pictures of fireworks when using a digital camera. The article gives some great tips and detailed explanations of photography terms and concepts. Comments Off (711)
One of our neighbors on the cul-de-sac that Meg and I live on in our subdivision has made it a habit of having a fireworks show each year, located in his backyard. His house is in a great spot, on the very end of the cul-de-sac, with the back facing a cow pasture. Therefore, he has plenty of open space to have his show, without the risk of damaging a neighboring house. Over the past couple of years that we’ve resided in this area, another gentleman from the neighborhood has partnered up with our neighbor to increase the stockpile of fireworks set off on July 4th. The two of them will make a trip down to South Carolina at some point in the year, to buy as much as they want (or can) of the “good” (illegal) fireworks. Even better is the fact that other individuals in our subdivision also hold their own fireworks show, so we can usually look in several different directions and see a decent show.
Meg and I attended the wedding celebration of our friends Saurin and Michael today. They had a beautiful service held outside at the Westfields Marriott in Chantilly, VA. Following the ceremony, there was a cocktail hour in the lounge, and then an American-ized (so that us mere mortals could handle it ) Indian cuisine dinner in one of the great ballrooms. A lot of our JMU friends were in attendance, which made for one heck of a time. Meg and I had a blast catching up with our friends that we don’t get to see as much as we would like, and dancing the night away. Later in the reception, some of the guys (including me) decided to see if we could get into the honeymoon suite to have a little fun with the lovely newlyweds. Thanks to an extremely helpful security guard, we were able to. There were quite a few pranks put into place (probably too much, looking back on it now and sober) but it was all in good fun, and I hope Saurin and Michael weren’t too upset with our tomfoolery and shenanigans.
A choice has been made. After weeks of scrutinizing over the various ultra-compact digital camera sites, reviews, opinions, and comparisons, my wife and I decided to purchase the Canon PowerShot SD400 Digital Elph camera. In the end, it simply came down to size and price. The whole point of us searching for an ultra-compact, was so that we would end up with a camera then can fit anywhere, inconspicuously and comfortably, and take great pictures. All of the cameras we were reviewing had at least a few reviewers that claimed the picture quality was excellent, so that criteria didn’t really help us narrow the field. We decided to visit the local electronics stores so that we could get our hands on as many of the cameras as possible. It’s very important for me to be able to handle and look at an item that I’m debating purchasing, especially when I’m expecting to pay a fair some of money for it. I think being able to see and hold the SD400 versus some of the other cameras was the clincher. We were both very impressed with how small the camera was, yet how durable it felt. Of course, we weren’t thrilled with the plastic doors that cover the battery/memory card slots and the input/output ports, but that was mentioned in many of the reviews.
