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Regional Trip..
May 31, 2007I came in to the office today with all intentions to write a funny, if not entirely random blog.
But instead, I'm heading out into the region with my fave. reporter Lara Richards, which is way more fun than sitting at a desk.
Full report at 10...
Posted by Jason Palmer at 12:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Death of a Grill
May 28, 2007It's official.... My Aussie Bushman Elite II grill is dead.
I thought there were some outside chance of repair...replacing the burner head and the propane hose...a task that would have cost me about $40-50.
I came home from work today fully expecting to be able to make that work. I was going to remove the bad parts and just fix it. That was the plan anyhow...
Sadly, that will not be possible.
The burner is held in place by four rusted on screws...two of which striped out the head with a few attempts at a turn. The rusty burner won't budge.
I got the hose off...no problem. But the burner was too much to bear.
That being said...I can just go to Home Depot and get a new grill for about $85 and be cooking on it tonight. Plus...the new one will be clean, and that's always a good thing too.
Here are the long-awaited pictures of my deceased grill, rather appropriate on Memorial Day I guess.
Brace yourself...you might not like what you see.
Here's the grill...outside my apt...I'll miss you little guy.
This is the broken connection on the propane tank...the black plastic ring shouldn't be hanging off like that.
And now the burner....yikes.
Posted by Jason Palmer at 07:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Duck...
Posted by Jason Palmer at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Lost Season Finale
May 24, 2007Okay...I am completely flabbergasted. There is nobody I know that is a "Lost" fan.
I watched the two-hour season finale of the 3rd season last night...and I had nobody to call and say things like:
"Holy batwings, that was freaking awesome!"
"I can't believe Sawyer did that!"
"They have to bring back Charlie!"
So on and so forth.
Now...make no mistake, "24" is my fave. show on television...but "Lost" is a close second. And I won't even pretend to say that the season finale of "24" can hold a freaking candle to last night's show on ABC.
Pound for pound...."Lost" had a MUUUUUUUUUCH better season than "24" and that's saying a lot.
Now...if you're lost on what I'm even talking about....it'll take too much to catch you up on the entire show. But here's the basic premise:
Plane crashes on Pacific island...48 survivors.
The island was a research station, there are bad guys running all over the place.
There are also monsters on the island....a black smoke cloud thing and polar bears that were part of the research.
The island itself has some mysterious powers, electromagnetic whatnots and health issues (all the women who get pregnant on the island die."
It seems all the people on the island from the plane crash have a purpose for being there and a connection to each other...as in, it wasn't pure chance that they were on the plane and crashed.
This show has more twists and turns than anything on television...even more so than "24". It's kinda hard to follow, which is why there are so many internet resources with pages of theories and information.
So...anywho, the season finale absolutely blew me out of the water. Throughout the history of the show, we've seen flashbacks of things that had happened in the past. And the finale started out with a scene that you automatically ASSUMED was in the past...but I couldn't figure out where in the main character's (Jack) past it was.
Turns out....it was a glimpse into THE FUTURE...the first time that had happened on the show. Now that was a loop that nobody saw coming from everything I've read online.
ABC has extended the run of the show for 3 more seasons until 2010....each season 16 episodes running consecutively from Feb. to the May sweeps.
I can't freaking wait....now, I just have to find somebody to talk about it with me.
Posted by Jason Palmer at 04:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Another view from Windthorst
May 23, 2007So Stacy Horany, one of our reporters, and I went out and about yesterday on assignment to the rolling plains of Windthorst on a story about Art Litteken. He's got an awesome spread just south of town and was kind enough to take us on a tour filled with history and scenery.
This is exactly the type of trip I love to take on assignment, away from the office and in the middle of nothing but quiet wind-swept grass-blowing plains with nothing on the horizon but more land.
This was one of the views from a hilltop on his land.
Posted by Jason Palmer at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Possible Grill Hope
May 21, 2007Okay...so one of my friends on Myspace tells me that it's easy to replace the propane hose and get a new burner for my deceased grill.
That sounds like something the Home Depot or Lowe's would carry...I may have to make an emergency trip there and find out.
Spending a few bucks for new parts sounds a lot better than spending a lot of bucks for a entire new grill....but I'm desperate at this point.
Posted by Jason Palmer at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
I am in mourning....
My grill died.
Note...that doesn't say my girl and a typo....
My bbq propane grill died. It died. It's dead. I am going to have to buy a new grill.
I'll post a few pictures tomorrow of the damage, but trust me..it will no longer function.
Luckily..it was one of those cheap $120 jobs and I've had it for about three years, but it shouldn't have happened this way.
The thick plastic connector screw to the propane tank literally fell apart in my hands today. It won't attach the gas line to the tank. No gas....no grill.
Not that that was the only problem. I noticed today that my burner had a bit of rust on it...no bid deal, a little bit of rust won't hurt a steak will it. That was until I went to touch the burner...and it crumbled in my hands. The burner fell apart.
The burner....collapsed into dust. In my grill.
My reaction: "Uhoh....that's not right."
I just stood there...kinda looking at my grill like a guy looks at his fishing boat sinking in the water.
My reign of being a grillmaster....has come to a brief end. But make no mistake...I will return.
Posted by Jason Palmer at 01:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
False Hope
May 18, 2007So I log into my blog this afternoon....after posting up the sunset photo and sure enough...I've got three new comments.
Yay...people actually read my blog. I love getting comments. I'm averaging about 1 comment for every three blogs I write. That's okay, I don't know if that's really good or really bad.
But comments make me happy....
And sure enough...the three comments in my box today.
Spam.
Spam blog comments. Spam.
To say that I'm frustrated by that is the understatement of the week. I'm hat-throwing pissed off. I hate spam. I especially hate it when there is no reason for it...and it doesn't even make sense.
All of the spam comments have basically said "http://foammatresses.soft"
That doesn't even make sense. Why would that be on my comments on my newspaper blog? Nearly matched by my anger is my absolute confusion.
Posted by Jason Palmer at 05:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Windthorst Sunset
Usually speaking... I don't shoot stuff for fun.
I mean, I have a lot of fun when I work (sometimes), and I shoot a lot of stuff on the side for money, but very rarely do I take pictures of stuff if I don't have to.
When you work 40+ hours a week taking pictures of stuff for a living, you kinda lose the drive to just pick up a camera and go.
That being said...I couldn't resist this shot last night.
As I was leaving the Holliday-Peaster baseball game at the field in Windthorst, the big-ole burning sun was sinking right behind this farm. Now...normally a sunset shot is a wide angle with the clouds and whatnot, but I really liked what I saw.
Shooting with the giant 400mm f2.8 lens (or as I sometimes call it....the beast), there was no worry about getting much more than the sun and the grain silos in the distance.
I didn't get back until too late to get this picture in the newspaper, and I didn't even bother even telling anybody about it.
It was just kinda something for me....
Posted by Jason Palmer at 01:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
From the "If I were boss" Files..
May 17, 2007First order of buisness....
I would dock pay of any employee with an annoying ring tone on their cell phone.
And by annoying...I mean, anything that doesn't sound like a real phone.
From where I sit...there are at least 5-7 cell phones that ring throughout the day. The "songs" they play range from:
The Entertainer (yeah...the Ice Cream Man song)
The Chicken Dance (shoot me in the face)
A choo choo train
"Fergilicious" by Fergie
so forth and so on.
And the problem isn't just that people have these ring tones, but this is a freaking workplace for crying out loud. They'll just up and walk off without their phones and let them annoy everybody around.
I think that if you are in your workplace, you should have a phone ring tone that sounds like a normal desk phone. My ring tone is still loud enough to get my attention, but it sounds like any standard bell-ring desk phone.
It's called "Nostalgia" on my menu.
Better yet...just turn off the ringer and have it on vibrate, if you can't hear your phone rattling across your desk, you should go to Hester's Hearing Aids and get yourself hooked up.
Rant....over.
Posted by Jason Palmer at 03:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Website update???
May 16, 2007Well, after careful consideration and many minutes of searching on the internet...I've decided that it's time to update my personal website.
It's a portfolio website that I built about 2 years ago with my own design and a long distance phone call to my friend Brian Clark (who walked me through the hard part). Now, I don't know much about HTML code or any of that stuff, so I've always been just amazed at how well the whole thing came out.
That being said....it was time consuming to do. And I haven't updated it with any new pictures in way more than a year. I have a good excuse though, a girlfriend for a long period of time doesn't have the patience to sit and watch me fiddle around on the internet.
Well, I've always loved the overall look of my website, but it wasn't what I had in mind in the beginning. Finally, I found a picture gallery script that more matches what I had in my head initially. They are a dime a dozen honestly, but I had to find a match between what my limited talents would comprehend and something that doesn't look like total crap.
I have a ton of new pictures in mind to put up, many of them far better than the ones that are on there currently. Also, since I've started doing wedding stuff, I could add that section as well.
'Course, all of this website talk leads to the inevitable problem of people stealing my images off the internet. Now, I've only known this to happen a few times, and it was people I know or somebody who gave the proper credit that was due so it wasnt' a big deal.
But this stuff happens...a lot.
So, of course, I've been looking to "protect" my images a bit, not that I'm overly conceited about people stealing my stuff, but since it technically belongs to the newspaper, they could get in a lot of trouble.
I'd say that probably 80% of the work on my site is copyrighted to the Times Record News. That means...they'll sue your butt.
'Course, the other option is just put crappy work up so nobody wants to steal it.
Posted by Jason Palmer at 01:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Ten Years...
May 15, 2007Shockingly....my high school 10 year reunion is this weekend.
I haven't decided whether or not I am going.
Ten years ago...I walked across the stage at Wilkerson Grines Arena in Fort Worth in my green gown and gold tassles and was a graduate of Western Hills High School. It was 1997.
Everything since then has seemed a blur. I got to thinking about it this weekend again, it's been more than five years since I have been in Wichita Falls. Five years...and that point was driven home when I was hanging out with some friends from church at home that I remember being freshman in high school...and now they're graduated and married.
It's almost like time has stood still for Jason over the last 5 years and everything I am familiar with back home has gone on without me. I mean, the last five years I have lost my grandmother, graduated college (finally), worked into a full time job doing something I'm really good at, and gone through a bunch of girlfriends, but none of them longer than 8 months and none of them materializing into what they probably could have been.
But none of that seems nearly as significant as the things that have happened to my friends in Fort Worth.
Maybe my sense of self-worth is skewed, I dunno. But it was bothering me today.
I haven't purchased my $60 ticket to my 10-year reunion yet. I don't know what's keeping me from doing it.
Part of the problem is this...I didn't have that many close friends in high school, I had a lot of people that knew me, but I wasn't one of the ultra-popular hot guys or anything like that. And I'm not sure I want to spend an evening eating and drinking with a bunch of people that I didn't really know the first time a decade ago.
A lot has happened to me since high school, how many people really have to hear the entire gory story. Or how many of them really want to hear why I ditched all of my high school friends for the new, cool fraternity guys in college.
The same college guys that played a big part in my greatest downfall of all time.
Honestly, I've give up a lot of things to be back in high school where everything was safe and harmless fun. I've worked really hard over the last 10 years to get back to the same type of guy I was back then.
Careless and carefree. Fun and goofy and not worried about what my future will hold.
I'd like to think that I've made it as close to that guy as I can.....sometimes I feel like I'm right there. Other times, I feel like it's been 10 years since I graduated high school.
Posted by Jason Palmer at 05:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
New/Old Photos
I meant to do this last time I was home....so I didn't forget this time.
I have an entire book of old photos of myself that my mom has saved over the years. School pictures and easter this and that. They're all pretty hilarious if I do say so.
My fave. is the first one. I actually still have that Easter outfit saved in my little scrapbook box that my mom has under the bed (also in the box, school yearbooks, graduation cap, bronzed shoes and whatnot).
Moreover...this proves once and for all that I did in fact used to have long blonde hair. I'm not sure what happened to it. I mean, in a few pictures, it's blonde, then it just changed to the dark brown it is now. I'd give anythign to have that sandy blonde hair again...I'd be the freaking man.
Anywho, I thought it'd be fun to put up a bunch of the old pictures and let everybody see that I did in fact used to be a cute kid. No idea what happened.
Enjoy them...
Posted by Jason Palmer at 02:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
The Rundown...
May 10, 2007So...how many "keepers" did i end up with from Austin?
Well, I shot nearly 650 the entire two days. Now, that's three golf teams on two different courses and two tennis doubles teams (because I can't be in two places at once...or three places).
Now, I know the good folks out in Vernon and Holliday will fire off e-mails and Sound Offs to the sports dept. because they didn't have any pictures in the paper. But neither did most of the tennis teams that were ran out of the first round.
It's a simple question of logistics. The 3A tennis was way out in Lakeway, quite a distance from the more centrally located UT campus in proximity to the golf courses.
Plus, they were pretty much playing at the same time as the Rider teams in the semi-finals and finals. Sadly, the choice to cover the city school was an easy one.
Sorry.
Anywho, 650 dosen't sound like a lot of photos compared to what I shot during the UIL state soccer tournament. And it isn't. But there is a reason.
Golf isn't a constant action sport. It's a pick and choose your spot kinda sport. Plus, trying to scatter-shoot 15 golfers isn't fun or easy. I much prefer the Texas/Oklahoma Junior where I'm basically only responsible for shooting the leaders and can follow them on the course.
Okay...so 650 total shots.
I turned in 39 shots for publication. Those were the best of the keepers and tryign to get at least one of everybody I could.
Now...after going through and editing out the ones that were out of focus, or missed peak action, I'm left with 356 photos.
These are what I would consider the keepers. Not all of them peak action, but all of them good enough to provide a file photo of a particular player for later if need be.
Why save so many you might ask...because you never know what you'll need at some point. Best example lately, Archer City pitcher Andrew Swinhoe who was injured in a car accident a few weeks ago.
I happened to have a good photo from last year, and we ran that in the newspaper to accompany a story about him. Basically, it saves the day to have file art that you can find.
Which brings up the other point...
I am going to put as much of a caption on all 350+ photos as I can, including names and whatnot. We don't have a good archiving system up here at work, which really sucks when you need it.
But I have a good system at home, and can search through my entire database of photos (some 130 gigs of files currently) and pull up any photo with a certain keyword I need.
For example, if I need a shot of the Rider QB...all I have to do is type in "Rider quarterback" into my program and all of the photos on my system matching that in the caption info will come up.
Brilliant...I know. But thats probably how it should be done period.
Posted by Jason Palmer at 01:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
More Duck
This one is pretty funny. People ask me all the time how many pictures I take and how many are keepers. Truth is...I only need a very small percentage of photos to make the paper. I'd rather them be really awesome ones rather than just "keepers."
Posted by Jason Palmer at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Back from Austin
May 09, 2007Well folks...I'm back
Again.
I rolled back into W-Falls about 6 p.m. and promptly passed out on my sofa. I pretty much just woke up 3 hours later.
Worst part...I haven't unpacked my car yet because it is freaking pouring rain outside. At least it was at last check.
So, I've still got that to do. Boo.
The trip was fun for the most part. Working as long and hard as I did....the "fun" is somewhat limited. I probably sweat a gallon of water out..but had plenty of water and gatorade to make up for it.
I'll post some photos of stuff I loved a bit later, I'm still trying to figure out if I'm going to unpack everything tonight...or just go back to the sofa and sleep.
Posted by Jason Palmer at 09:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
To Austin...again!
May 05, 2007Be back in a few days....heading to Austin for UIL State Golf and Tennis on Monday-Wed.
If you're there, drop me a line or come up and say hi. I'll be the guy running around like a chicken with my head cut off.
peeeeeeeeeeace...
Posted by Jason Palmer at 02:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Taking out Trees at Weeks Park
May 04, 2007So I see this story in the paper the other day...and honestly, I don't know if I should be happy or mad.
Judging by my tendancy to find every tree on the course and either be behind them or below them, I'd say just take out all of the trees on the course and lets go with a true links style layout.
You'd be suprised how much fun it is to play a course with huge mounds between the fairway. If you duffers out there haven't ventured towards the metroplex to play at Split Rail Golf Course in Aledo...do yourself a freaking service and get a tee time.
Another great links style course is the Roy Kizer Course in Austin....where the 4A high school state golfers will compete next week. Few trees (if any)....lots of water and you'd better bring your target golf game, because you'll need it.
But this kinda makes me mad.... Weeks Park was able to move many of the small trees on the course, which is fine and dandy...but the bigger, more mature, more impressive trees couldn't be saved and the course is going to lose about 1/3 of the trees on the layout.
What...we couldn't draw a golf hole that included big pretty trees? I have no problem with a big pretty tree in the middle of the fairway. That's called....CHARACTER.
There are plenty of famous golf courses with huge trees right smack dab in the way of stuff. Heck, there are plenty of not so famous courses with trees hugging the fairways.
Any idea how long it's going to take for some of these small trees to grow into a nice big impressive intimidating fairway-guarding obstacle.... it isn't going to be by the time the course re-opens, whenever that is.
Now...I understand that the course lost a lot of trees in 1979 because of the tornado. I'd love to see some photos of the course pre-tornado if anybody has them.
Anyways..here's the story, read what you will.
The Weeks Golf Course renovation project could result in the loss of a third of the trees currently on the course.Weeks Park is undergoing a $3.6 million face-lift that is expected to rearrange six holes where the front nine now stand and add a driving range and short-game practice area. The back nine is also set to see improvements.
The clubhouse, cart barn and maintenance complex will get a $700,000 makeover.
All of it means some trees are going to be lost. Assistant City Manger Matt Benoit, who is in charge of the project for the city, said most of the trees will be saved.
"Everyone would have loved to have seen every tree that was in harm's way get relocated," he said. "We didn't have the time. We didn't have the money."
Already, 700 to 800 trees have been relocated. Once the renovations are complete, those trees should return to the links. The relocation work for trees with stump diameters of 6-8 inches was contracted at a rate of about $160 per tree for the round trip. The city's parks department is handling trees with stump diameters of 1-3 inches. Of the more than 700 trees, 350 are being kept behind the maintenance building of the golf course. The rest have been sent to Hamilton Park.
"We had to pick the trees that, based on our knowledge, had the highest likelihood of surviving the move," Benoit said.
But some larger trees were caught in the middle of a tight situation.
"We couldn't have moved the biggest of the big trees," Benoit said.
Renovation efforts began last year as city officials hoped to make the course more appealing and capable of drumming up enough fee revenue to support itself. Bids for construction were accepted in late December 2006 with a reopening date aimed at October. But the new golf design didn't arrive until the end of January. That put staffers under pressure. The trees were set to bud in the spring and the plants would quickly die once they were uprooted.
"We didn't have months and months to work on this," Benoit said, explaining that pressures included having to move trees in February, the late bidding and moving the plants before the course renovation began.
Preparations - such as identifying trees, finding a place to put them, getting irrigation set up - all took time. Many trees near planned fairways were set to be removed. But every tree still on the course isn't doomed.
"Not every tree left on the course now will be removed," Benoit said.
Medical/military reporter Michael Hines can be reached at (940) 720-3456 or by e-mail at HinesM(at)TimesRecordNews.com
Caption:
A bulldozer operator backs away from a pile of broken sidewalk slabs Wednesday at the Weeks Park Golf Course.
Posted by Jason Palmer at 01:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
