Hey all! Warning BIG post to follow...
Ok, so I have been pretty quiet of late (not that any of you probably noticed! lol)... And here is why... Firstly, my email packed it in and stopped delivering messages to my Inbox. So I went to my webmail thinking that there may have been a really big email or a virus etc blocking it, as I hadn't received any email for an entire day! I found 1542 messages, dating back to 16 January!!! Extremely weird as most of them HAD already been delivered to my Inbox. I deleted them all but not before my server had been rejecting my emails due to the mailbox being too full, so I have had heaps of clients ringing me saying "what's wrong with your email" etc AND PDML unsubscribed me too! So, all seems to be working ok now, lets hope it stays that way. Also, I was in Brisbane for Sunday/Monday/Tuesday doing my "arab" guy's wedding! Then we got home at 1am Wednesday morning and I had to get my 5yo off to his first day of Grade 1 yesterday! My 4yo starts preschool tomorrow, so I am sure you all now "get" what I've been up to! lol... I have been taking almost a booking per day for weddings and as of this moment, February, April, August and September are completely booked out, as is April 2005!! Phew, there just aren't enough weekends in a year! I need a "doppleganger"! lol... On the technology front, my laptop is zipping along at a merry 'ole pace, and was fantastic for the "arab" wedding. (BTW, these people were so NON middle-eastern!! lol, I'll post some pics soon. But lets just say, they were as pommie as they come, complete with beetroot red, sunburnt faces and shoulders (as those silly Pommie bastards just don't REALISE what real sun is like until they come here!), blonde hair and blue eyes, and a THICK Yorkshire accent!. I was laughing myself silly at one point as I was shooting them, and the groom starts yelling to his bride "omg, don't move there is a giant BOOG in your veil!!", it took be a few minutes to realise that he was referring to a BUG!! lol. Anyways, they were a great couple, lots of fun, and I honestly don't know why I was stressing so much about it all. (oh, just realised that I didn't post about my nerves - I was actually vomiting the morning of the wedding due to my nerves and had to put on a relaxation cd and do a meditation to calm myself down! Even after this, I was still shaking as I applied her makeup!)... Can't remember if I ever posted the specs, but I ended up with a Compaq Armada E500 - 600mhz cpu, 256mb RAM, 18 gb HDD, cd/DVD rom, infrared, win 2000. I then added a 52x32x52 external cd burner, a 4xUSB 2.0 PCMCIA hub, a PCMCIA cf card adapter (thanks to Christian for the suggestion!), a Targus laptop backpack, a Compaq vehicle/plane power adapter, and a few other bits and pieces. Must say it is rather heavy though, but at least it does the job for now, and I will probably upgrade it in another month or two... Tomorrow, I will take delivery of my new PC - it is a AMD Athlon XP 2600+ cpu (anyone know anything about these chips?!?), 100gb HDD, 512mb RAM, 19" flat screen monitor, 64mb CDRW/DVD (52x52x24), Win XP, Digital Stereo sound with 2 speakers and a subwoofer (don't know why I'd ever need this, but it sounds good! lol), 10/100 Auto-Switch Lan, Cordless optical mouse/keyboard, onsite warranty (which cannot be underestimated for someone like me who lives in the middle of nowhere!), 64mb Graphics S.M.A., internal modem, and a heap of software that I'd never use! Also comes with a Lexmark x1150 "All-in-one Print Center" which claims to have photo printing up to 4800x1200dpi, flatbed scanner, colour copying etc. The printer will go into my boys' bedroom with the PC that I am currently using for them to "play" with. And as I now have a "big boy" who is in Grade One, he suddenly thinks that he "needs" a computer in case he gets "homework"! lol. All this and he can barely write his own name! At least it will keep them off my work computer though. They were in here playing games the other day whilst I was in Brisbane and turned off the Adobe Gamma (as their games looked too "dark" apparently), so I come home, spend two hours working on images from the wedding only to discover by some chance that I wasn't working in a colour space! So I turned it on and omg, all of my work was completely destroyed, I had to start from scratch. I could have strangled them! Ok, so guess what, I am going to get to meet Bob (Rapp)! Yaaaay, my first PDML "meetup"! He will be here next week some time as he passes through due to work. Then I am hoping to catch up with Ryan and John on my next Brisbane trip which is the weekend of the 28th Feb. Question to *istD owners - does it have automatic rotation of images when you are shooting them in a portrait hold? I am finding this very time consuming and tiresome, having to manually rotate all of my images with the Oly... Ok, now just before I disappear to pick up my son from school - I am really in a quandary now, with the release of these new bodies from Nikon and Canon. In another week, I will have enough money to buy the *istD, so please, someone, convince me that I won't be making a big mistake if I do! Any advice here is most appreciated... Alrighty, going back under my rock now and into fairygirl oblivion... tan.x.
