Oh I wish I may...

I'm curious; If you were to get three wishes what would you wish for? I don't want to hear about I want world peace or I would end world hunger, blah blah blah. We all know these "PC" answers that every beauty pageant queen would give. I want to know what you'd really ask for. And I don't care if it's even a little bit skeevy like I would wish to be invisible so that I could sneak into the women's showers at the gym. I know there are people out there like that so let's hear it. I know what I would wish for so give me your best list.
There are a lot of things that I would wish for given the chance. I would love to be rich, smart, not so much famous but popular among my group of friends. I never liked the idea of being famous. I would much rather be rich and have no one know who I am. You get to enjoy your money more that way. Smart because I would want to be able to just have fun with my life. I don't want to have to go to school anymore unless it was to share my knowledge. I think it would be fun to teach a highly specialized class on a subject that I felt passionate and knew a lot about. It could be interesting. I could generate genuine conversation, something I try to do with my blog.

So if I wish to be rich and I wish to be smart what else in the world is there that I wouldn't be able to attain? Love? Got it. Family? Got it. Friends? Got it. The ability to perform true magic as seen in Harry Potter? Don't got it. That would be my third wish. It always bugs me that when someone is given the chance to have three wishes they never wish to become magic themselves so that they could just conjure anything they want whenever they want. I could fly, become invisible, be super strong, leap tall buildings in a single bound, etc. What more would there be really?
Another cool thought would to wish that your favorite TV show or movie was real and that you could live in that universe. Yea, I'm going to get a little geeky now. What if you could fly around space on the Enterprise or train to become a Jedi but for realsees? How cool would that be? And it doesn't even have to be sci-fi.
Whatever you want could just be. Live out your wildest fantasies, your dreams, your greatest desires. Everyone has three wishes they would love to have granted. Sit and think about it for about 5 seconds and I'm sure you will come up with a whole lot more than 3. Have fun and remember, I want to hear about your wishes so post replies.

Thanks for reading.

History and Bikes

So how's this for a post: I haven't found any pictures or come up with a title for this one yet. I thought I would just write and when I'm done I'll pull the meaning out and fill the rest with pictures and a title that fit. Haven't done it that way before.

So here I am sitting at work loading images into Photoshop so that I can edit them. Sounds fun, huh? Well to some I know it does sound fun because they took photo classes and know what they're doing. To others it may sound tedious and boring. To me, well...it's both and here's why: while I do enjoy working on photoshop with pictures that I've taken it can get tedious when everything you do is mapped to a hotkey. All I have to do is press one button and all the functions are done. I just have to save it and move on to the next image. And the images I'm working with are just typed pages. Nothing interesting in the slightest. My employees however get to work with some really cool old negatives. They are working on a collection of nitrate film that has started to degrade so we have to scan them and get them all digitized so that we can preserve the history of what's on those negatives. Those pictures are really cool to look at. Here's an example of what we are doing with them:

These pictures were damaged to a point that you wouldn't be able to see what was on the negative because the emulsion is so damaged. We scan them and then we have to play with settings and techniques in Photoshop until we come to an image that we can see. We literally pull the image out of the muck and this is what we end up with. Pretty cool I think. It amazes me how much can be pulled out of some of these. You look at them and think no way is there an image in that mess but once you scan it and see it, it's very cool. And the pictures themselves are pretty cool too. I love history, I always have. I have favorite time periods that I would love to visit just to see what it would be like. A lot of them have to do with war so I wouldn't want to stay long but still I would love to see things take place. I would love to see a Roman army form ranks and attack an unorganized horde of barbarians. I would love to see and hear the battles of the civil war where passion was king. Where it was brother vs. brother and family vs. family. I can't even imagine what that would have been like. And it all hinged on where you were from. You fought for what you believed, right or wrong. Some of those wounds still haven't been healed. I love the 1920's with all the flash and flair and pomp and circumstance that went on then. The parties, the extravagance, the overindulgence that comes from a great economy. Then of course you have the crash in december 1929. I wouldn't mind seeing that. I've thought about doing a photography project where I take pictures to look like they were from that time period. touch them up and tear them down in Photoshop to make them look desperate, desolate, disconsulate. I would love to do that. Recently I took some modern photos of a temple in Cambodia and used Photoshop to make them look like they were taken back in the early 20th century by explorers. I love it because they look like something out of Indiana Jones now. So that's something.

The weather has now turned warm. To all of you who have been whining about how cold it was and that it was snowing in May, Bite me! I miss the cool weather. I love waking up to 50-60 degree mornings and having the temperature not go above 75. Now it's going to get too hot and it will be uncomfortable. That just sucks. I can't wait for fall. Yes, already. I don't like hot weather. I like warm weather but not hot weather. It makes me feel sick to be in the heat for too long. I know, I'm weird. But one good thing comes from summer weather:

getting my butt off the couch and in the mountains to ride my bike, my baby. I have missed you. And, thanks to Chauntay, I have a biking buddy. She loves it about as much as I do. I've found some new trails to ride that I'm really excited to try out. Some new early season rides that are out on the mountain face where the snow will melt quickly. Can't wait to take Chaunie out and have some fun. Planning on Friday. Hopefully my knee feels better by then. Really wish I knew what happened there because I don't feel old enough to have bad knees like that. See ya in the mounatins.

Thanks for reading.