Day: November 27, 2006

After a swim with Vero on Sunday, I jumped into the fire with a project that I had put on hold for quite some time. This project involves tedious, monotonous work which some days is fine, others not so much.

I am scanning my parents old photo albums for archival purposes. I figured with the technology around me, why do my parents get to enjoy all the photos? I borrowed the bulk of their albums last year but then a few months ago Mom wanted them back so I kept a few that I was in the middle of scanning. I suppose my eyes were bigger than my belly taking this project on. I would say an entire photo album can take upmost of 5 hours to properly archive.

I am what is referred to as ‘anal’ when it comes to organization of things I’m passionate about. Music, photographs, etc. Granted, if you saw my bedroom, you would think I’m not passionate about my clothing as they are strewn about!

So with the advances in digital photography, I realized that it’s not just enough to scan the photos and crop them. I wanted to know what date the picture was taken to encode that data into the photo. Then, when I organize all the photos, they are by date, or the closest approximation. I think later on when I get bored, I would like to add text to each photo also so that I don’t lose factual information such as who is in the picture. There are quite a few pictures from the parents stash that I just don’t know who is in the picture, but I should have a record of it. I think I may bring the few albums I have scanned to my Mom and sit down with her and write down who was in the picture, or even the story behind the pictures.

Sure, I am ambitious about this project today, but the sheer size of it dwarfs my ambitions and this is why it’s taken me a year to scan three albums and properly tag them.

The COOL thing about tagging my photos by ‘Date Photo Taken’ is that if I upload them to a photo site…let’s say FLICKR, then I can browse my photos by date taken. It’s interesting to look back in the 80s when I was a kid and pinpoint the actual date where the picture was taken. At least I think it’s cool. Some people are just more interested in the actual pictures, not when they were taken. I wish I was like that!

The other thing I start to wonder about is how do the older folk feel about their pictures going on the Internet. I haven’t heard any complaints from my friends about the pictures I put online…if anything it helps them out as they have a cental repository to access the photos. But what about the older folk out there, or more personal pictures like baby photos and whatnot? That’s where I think a courtesy call to people should be issued to find out if they mind if their photos can be placed on the ‘net. Sure, there’s a way to make them private, but it’s a pain to issue guest passes to check out the flickr site if someone wants to check them out. WAY easier to make them public.

So, as you may all know, I may be responsible for borrowing Rob’s ladder for the better part of a year. Well, he finally came to collect a few weeks ago, but I didn’t have the foresight to put up my Christmas lights beforehand. I use my ladder twice a year – once to put them up, once to take them down. A purchase of a ladder seems useless to me. ACTUALLY, I should have looked into renting one for the day instead of purchasing one.

Anyhow, it was a beautiful, beautiful day on Saturday with the sun shining bright. We haven’t seen too much sun in awhile so Vero and I decided to walk to Canadian Tire to check out the ladders. Once we get there, we find two ladders that I have to choose between.

One, is the household grade – load rate of 200 lbs. $40.
The other, a professional grade is rated for 225 lbs. $70.

Now, here I am thinking I don’t really feel like forking out an extra $30 on a ladder for an extra 25 lbs. Then I start wondering what does ‘load rating’ actually mean? Is it really the maximum they can guarantee safety for and after that, they are not responsible? After debating this point with Vero (as I though the 200 pound one would be fine), she convinced me to get the Professional grade one. I seriously doubt that the ladder would simply crumble under the weight of this 200 lb man along with a bucket of paint, but I figured, why take the risk? So please, someone reassure me that the 200 lb ladder could have definitely supported my weight!

Anyhow, we walked the ladder back home and stumbled into Eric and Annie along with Eric’s parents who were hunting the neighbourhood for us. After chatting, we got home, fixed an eavestrough (well, I hope it’s fixed now…I haven’t tested it yet) and Vero and Caroline put up the Christmas lights. They look supreme. I’m not going to turn them on until December 1st, but I figured why bother waiting until it’s -20 degrees outside to put up lights when I can put them up on a nice warm day? Let’s flashback for a moment last year when I was at Eric’s freezing my hands off putting up HIS lights for him. I don’t know how that happened. Plus, I heard the 2 year-old kid next door banging her little shovel on something and said “Hey Eric, it sounds like she’s hitting your car!” and then he said “Nope, she’s hitting yours!” and then I look back and sure enough, there she is banging her shovel against my car! You can’t get mad at a two-year old so luckily the mom came over and scooped up her kid.

The evening brought us to the main strip to catch the Parade of Lights! We happened upon the sign outside the firehall and thought it would be a great event. I can’t even remember the last time I saw a parade, although I have a vague recollection of a parade in Abitibi Canyon which is strange because I was 3 years old. Perhaps it wasn’t a parade…maybe a carnival of some sorts?

The parade was amazing! We opened up the thermos of hot apple cider and watched the spectacle pass us by. Being a parade of lights, all the floats had a generator hooked up to them and it was a bright sight! I especially like the OC Transpo bus decked out a like a Santa Claus! Hilarious! We were very impressed by the parade as it lasted a whole hour. Good times were had and I think the entire population of Orleans showed up for it. If you have the chance, come out next year!