I just posted the photos I took from yesterday’s parade. Click here.
All posts by Jim Trottier
Kenosha wind storm 2011
For those not aware of it yet, we had a huge wind storm blow through Kenosha Thursday evening. It did a lot of heavy damage to the area. We have taken some photos, so I create a collection of them on my Flickr page. As for us, I think we fared pretty well compared to the damage many others (including our neighbors) suffered. We lost power at the start of the storm, around 8pm Thursday, but it was back on Friday afternoon. Kevin certainly learned a good lesson about many of the luxuries of having electricity, since he didn’t have any video games or movies (after his iPod battery died), and we had no lights or computers to use.
After all of our home repairs that Jay and I did a couple weeks ago, the porch was spared. The security lights Jay installed for us, however, are now shattered, so I’ll have to replace them, and the brand new door closer I installed on the back door was ripped right off the back screen door. The closer survived intact, but a chunk of the back door was ripped out and still attached to the closer and the wall! That was it though, no other damage to our house, luckily.
This morning Kevin, Socks and I walked down by Eichelman and Wolfenbuttel parks and the new marina and took a few more photos. When we got to the tot park I realized that the new marina slips had shifted way north, and into the duck pond! Most of the boats are still docked in them, so I bet there was quite a mess at first, with overturned and sunken boats during and after the storm.
Today more of the roads are open again and more traffic lights are working, so we’re getting back to normal. I still see a lot of tree services hard at work and We Energies trucks driving around though, so they still have a ways to go.
Awesome article on the Amazon Lady Gaga 99-cent album deal
Here’s an awesome article on the recent Amazon daily deal on Lady Gaga’s new album. It sold for 99 cents as their daily deal, but they had some server issues due to the high demand, so they did it for another day. Amazon paid Lady Gaga her full royalty for each album sale, so they took a hit of over $3,000,000, but that was expected, since they gained a lot of new customers. Read the comments, they’re great!
Jay: Origins
The date that started it all – Jay: Origins. I found this today while throwing out some more of my dad’s old stuff. My mom had cut out and laminated the little tiny newspaper clipping so it would last forever.
Still restoring old posts
Just an FYI – I am still restoring many old posts. I’m up to 2004 now, and this morning I just restored this post from Prairie Family Days 2004, and realized that the entire photo set was missing from my Flickr account! It apparently was lost in the many moves between the various photo services I’ve used in the past. This has happened before, but in this case, once I did locate the missing album I realized it contains many of my favorite memories of 2004, including a few of my favorite photographs! So I’ve restored it completely, and it’s right here.
Southport Park
Kevin, Socks and I walked around Southport Park tonight and I took a few photos. You’ll find those in this set. That set also includes some photos from our recent walk through Petrifying Springs park. I also found some tile art on the side of the water treatment plant tonight that I hadn’t seen before, so I took some photos of those too and added them to my Kenosha Art set. We followed a new path that went behind the treatment plant and into an area of woods along the lake. It was pretty neat. Even ran across what looked like a beaver! It ran away and hid quickly, so we only got a glimpse of it, but it was bigger than Socks! This is my favorite shot from tonight. Love the view.
A few new photos
Sandy took some neat pictures of some geese that stopped traffic on the road recently. There were at least 3 babies and 4 adults walking in a line. Check it out. They’re in this “Misc. photos” set. I also used one of them for my website banner. She also just uploaded some cemetery photos during this weekend’s Memorial Day visit. Those are right here.
The makings of a future ‘geek memoir’, perhaps?
While searching through my oldest documents I recently stumbled upon an old text database containing hundreds of postings from my website. For me, this is exciting. It’s a chunk of my past that I thought was lost forever. Tiny glimpses of day-to-day things, just ramblings mostly, akin to short Facebook or Twitter posts (which weren’t even possible back then). I have been carefully going through them (there are a lot of spam postings in there as well) and grabbing everything significant, and re-posting it on my site here. They start in January, 2001, over 10 years ago! This is when I first put up my website as jimtrottier.com–right near the end of 2000 and into 2001. I’m pretty sure I was still in dialup back then! This was very shortly after BBS’s went away and I was no longer a “sysop” of my own BBS–if anyone out here remembers those days.
There are some elements still missing–including nearly all links & photos, but I’m still adding a lot more over this weekend. All of the photos were in various places on the web back then, and not on Flickr as they are now, so the links are missing, but the references are still there. Some images were actually embedded in the site themselves though, and amazingly, I was able to recover some of those, but others, I’m afraid, may really be gone forever.
If you’re interested in reading these flashbacks, the easiest way to jump back there is to drop down the “Archive” list in the right sidebar on this site, then pick a month and year.
Zombies invade Lincoln Middle School!
Kevin’s really having a good time with his Theater Arts class this year. First he scared the crap out of us when he came out of school with horrible head, arm and hand injuries. This week he came home Undead! I really got a kick out of it. So much so, that we both decided to take it even further and digitally enhance him even more. I used Kai’s Power Tools on his teeth (yikes! Sounds painful!) and google image searched for “scars and cuts” and found some decent skin disorders to copy. Believe me, the ones I actually used were extremely mild compared to the horror that I found in those search results! Take a look at the before and after photos. He took a copy of each photo to school today to show them off. On the back of the BEFORE photo I wrote “Dawn of the Dead”. On the back of the AFTER photo I wrote “28 Days Later”.
Tessa’s 1st Birthday
We went to Tessa’s 1st Birthday Party this afternoon. We took a few photos. Click here to view them.
Miscellaneous Weekend
We finally got a new fire pit after our old one fell apart last year. Dennis had given it to us, and we gave it many good feedings until the fencing around it just crumbled and fell apart. We love to cook hot dogs and marshmallows (burnt & crunchy is best for both) and just sit around the fire and keep warm. It also allows us to quickly get rid of all of our excess cardboard boxes. Kevin and I assembled it this morning and we were very proud to see how he handled the work. He didn’t complain or whine about it, did what he was told to do, and I think he enjoyed the whole experience. I know he especially enjoyed the “breaking in”, when he got to tear up the cardboard box and packing for the fire pit itself, put it inside, and watch it go up in flames.
Kevin’s had more free time to do other things lately, now that the Playstation Network is down and he can’t play with his friends in Little Big Planet. He was pretty disappointed the first week, but now that we’re entering the third week of it, he’s been moving on to other things. So I guess it’s not a completely bad thing, at least for us. I can’t help but think there are millions of other people out there experiencing something similar with PSN down, so I have some concerns that this is going to impact Sony and the PS3 in a huge way moving forward. It was our favorite gaming platform before, but I’m not so sure any more. Kevin’s still playing other games on it now–mostly Portal 2–but we’re just not as into it with such a huge part of it disabled. No updates for anything, no communicating with anyone in any game, 
and the worst part is no video chatting. We especially enjoy the latter when Tyler comes over for a weekend… He has virtual visits with the AZ half of his family every time he comes, and we all enjoy that. I heard yesterday that hackers actually attacked PSN twice in the past two weeks, and they were planning a third attack this weekend, so who knows when it’ll be back up again. Kevin dutifully checks it once or twice a day and keeps me posted.
Kevin also tried on my glasses this morning and had to pose for pictures. Take a look.
Old Photo Album 12 is now up!
I just finished scanning Album 12 from my dad’s old chest. This poor album had nothing at all to identify any of its photos. Luckily, I recognized a lot of its contents, so I added all the details I could. There’s some great photos from one of my mom and dad’s vacations to her father’s place – The Little Buckaroo Ranch in Modesto, CA. I remember them deciding to take Elizabeth on that vacation, but they couldn’t afford to take anyone else with them, so I had to stay home. It was her first time flying, I believe. Other photos include various family members and relatives in Kenosha, and a few more mysteries. Enjoy!
Koscinski Recovery Benefit
Sandy, George, Kevin and I went to the Koscinski Recovery Benefit today at the Moose Lodge. We had some good food & snacks, bid on some raffles, and Sandy and Kevin had their faces painted. Here’s a few photos.
Old Photo Album 11 is up!
I just finished uploading Old Photo Album 11. Wow, what a chore! 315 photos, most of them black & white and very old. See my last posting for more info. Enjoy!
Old Album 11 coming soon
Old Photo Album #11 is coming this weekend. This one has been a real challenge. I have spent almost every free moment I’ve had this week just scanning, cropping, editing and filtering these photographs. This album is (or I should say WAS…read on) filled with mostly black & white, very very old photos, some of which have faded almost completely to white. They kind of turn a ghostly grey shade, with an almost invisible image on the paper. Luckily, applying a few filters pulls much of the photo back, restoring it enough to be recognizable. That is, if you know the people or places in the photo already. And, for many of these, this has been another part of this album’s challenge–trying to identify everyone. You’ll find plenty of photos titled “unknown” in this album. There were so many, in fact, that halfway through scanning the album I decided to go the extra mile on this one and fully disassemble the album to get to the backs of each of the photos, hoping there are written names and details on them identifying everyone. That turned out to be the case in about 1/2 of the photos, so it helped quite a bit, but left me with a ruined album. The originals are mostly destroyed. Peeling them off the sheets ripped many of them apart. I figured this might happen, which is why I made sure I had good scans of every photo before I attempted this.
So, at this point the album is at just over 200 photos in size, with still probably a couple dozen or so that are still “unknown”. Most others had some writing on them, so I added that to the captions, as well as filling in my own details from memory whenever it worked for me. Some of the photos are only about 1/2 the size of wallet-sized, so they can be pretty tiny. I have about 10 more double-sided pages to edit and save, and the amount of photos on a page varies a lot from 2 or 3 bigger photos to 10 or more small ones, so there may be 300+ photos in the album by the time I’m done.
I should be able to complete it this weekend though, and get everything posted. So, as I’ve asked in the past, if you know anyone in them that I haven’t already identified in the titles, please add a comment to the photo.
Old Photo Album #10
I’ve just uploaded another old photo album. This one contains 124 photos, and many of them contain people I don’t recognize. If you can help identify anyone not listed in a caption, please add a comment to the photo or let me know. I’d appreciate it.
Old Photo Album #9
I just uploaded Old Photo Album #9. 84 photos in this set. Includes Harold, Donna, Beth, Penny Clifford, Clayton, Paul, Paula, Karen and one of her exes (Bert) and many others. Also includes a few photos of Rex and Prince, two of the dogs we had.
It’s a little easier for me to scan a whole album now, so you should be seeing many more of these old photos from me real soon. I can insert a flash drive in my MFP and scan whole album pages directly to the flash drive, so I don’t have to leave the scanner for each photo or each page any more. Then I move the flash drive to the PC and process all of the pages at once.
Alienated
We went to see “Paul” this weekend, and as they say, “There’s a app for that!” Kevin “alienated” all four of us just for the occasion. Yes, I’m a bad dad, taking 13-year-olds to see an R-rated movie. We really enjoyed it though. It explained a lot about Area 51 and what’s been going on there, and even revealed how Steve Spielberg got a lot of his ideas for “Close Encounters” and ET! There were so many jokes and references to old movies and history, that I’m not even sure the kids caught or even understood half of them.
The Lost Room
Kevin and I watched an excellent mini-series from Netflix this past week. It’s called “The Lost Room”. It’s on two discs. Here’s the description of it from Wikipedia:
The Lost Room is a science fiction television miniseries that aired on the Sci Fi Channel in the United States. The series revolves around the titular room and some of the everyday items from that room which possess unusual powers. The show’s protagonist, Joe Miller, is searching for these objects to rescue his daughter, Anna, who has disappeared inside the Room. Once a typical room at a 1960s motel along U.S. Route 66, the Lost Room exists outside of normal time and space since 1961, when what is only referred to as “the Event” took place.
It was an excellent movie. It’s one of those movies you want to watch again, and when you do, you put together even more pieces of the puzzle and it makes even more sense, making it just as enjoyable the second time around. I gave it 4 out of 5 stars.
Amazon vs Google – The quest for the MP3 market
Amazon just released “Cloud Drive” and “Cloud Player” for Android. It lets you stream your music from the cloud. 5GB of cloud space is free, and you get upgraded to 20GB if you buy just one MP3 album from them in 2011 (from this date forward). All future purchases of Amazon MP3 music are stored in their cloud space for free, so if this is the only place you get your music, like me, this could be great.
But unfortunately they’re not including everyone’s previous purchases, which is very sad. I have purchased hundreds of albums from them over the past few years, so this would have been awesome, so unfortunately this is a deal breaker for me. I have over 250GB of music, so they’re saying I would need to purchase a t least a block of 200GB of cloud space for $200 per year! Or worse yet, their next plan up, which is 500GB for $500 a year! Yikes! So it looks like I’m sticking to streaming my own music from home for now.
Google, however, is about to release “Google Music”, which promises to offer streaming of your own music from home, as well as from the cloud, and they’ll have their own MP3 store to purchase new music! This sounds pretty promising, and if it works out, I might just have to switch to purchasing my music from Google instead of Amazon in the future! We’ll see.
JimTrottier.com 