I go to Costco every Friday to shop for groceries, and on occasion over-the-counter medications.

Today, while I was wheeling through the store with my push cart (which I need to help me walk before my knee operation in about three weeks), I happened to pass this sale flyer for an ounce of gold. Real 24kt gold. That sure is expensive, except when I googled for the price of one ounce of pure gold I discovered it is currently selling for @2,330/ounce (rounded). I guess that extra $40 is for the special stamping and whatnot that also comes with that one ounce gold bar.

Needless to say I can’t afford such an item, and if I did, I don’t think I’d buy mine from a Costco. The sales tax alone for just one bar is more than what I paid for my groceries today.

I knew “my” Costco attracted a well-heeled clientele, but I didn’t realize they were this well-heeled. Me, I’m just one of the many hoi polloi.

Links

Convert Gold Ounces to US Dollars — https://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?Amount=1&From=XAU&To=USD

On Tuesday my wife and I traveled on Brightline round trip from Orlando to Miami and back again, all in one day. We traveled down to Miami for her to see a medical specialist at the University of Miami.

We were up by 5am Tuesday morning. I took care of feeding our six cats and two dogs, and we were out the door by 5:30am. We dropped the garage door opener off by the house/animal sitter on the way out of our neighborhood. We arrived at the new Brightline Orlando Station by 6am. We parked right out front of the station, then walked up to the departure area. Getting to the waiting area for the train was totally uneventful. There was none of the airline security theater to deal with. We boarded around 6:35 AM. We were out of the station by 6:50 AM, just like the ticket said.

The trip was uneventful, no interruptions, and we arrived on time. We managed to get to the University of Miami south lobby entrance. Once in we had enough time to eat lunch in the UM cafeteria. When then walked on up to the doctor’s waiting room, and well, waited until my wife’s appointment.

Unfortunately the trip to see this “specialist” was a complete waste of time. The “specialist” wanted to disagree with my wife’s preliminary diagnosis even though three primary doctors here in Orlando (a cardiologist, gastroenterologist, and immunologist) all saying, after eliminating all other causes, that my wife was certain to have this condition, but they wanted a specialist to examine the evidence and my wife. Unfortunately the “specialist” at UM did nothing except inpugn that my wife was doctor shopping. My wife came out angry but unshaken in her doctors up here, and more determined than ever to get to the bottom of what has stricken her, at times violently, since her early teen years. When she informed her Orlando doctors the results, one of them said “enough was enough” and it was time to check in with Mayo up in New York state.

The Brightline trip was twenty minutes late because some idiot driving a car decided they would try to outrun a train at a crossing on the tracks shared with other trains, and so paid the price of stupidity. The other train (not Brightline) was held and the tracks closed as a consequence, until FHP cleaned up the mess. No word on the fate of the automobile driver. We didn’t arrive back in Orlando until almost 9 PM.

The Brightline trains are new and comfortable, far better than riding on Amtrak here in Florida. The seating was comfortable, and the cars we rode on were clean and bright. The stations are all brand new and have the same look as an airport. The Orlando Brightline station is, in fact, immediately south of Orlando International Airport (see the map above). The one-way price right now is $50, but I managed to get a coupon in the mail that trimmed off $10, so my round trip cost was $80. You can bring luguage just like an airline, but since ours was just a day-trip, I brought everything I needed in my backpack, while my wife had a small half-size wheeled carryon. One amenity we both appreciated were all the easily accessible AC plugins at every seat. This allowed us to keep our devices fully charged. Decent WiFi is also available in each care, which I used to conduct a bit of work. Because it was a very long day I mostly rested both ways.

If I have to travel around the southern half of Florida I will either drive or take Brightline. I hate to fly and will avoid it whenever possible. There is no airline I want to fly on, and certainly no Boeing aircraft I’m willing to set foot on today. Brightline is excellent, but even if Brightline wasn’t, I’d still ride Brightline rather than fly.

There are already consequences showing up from this huge rise in global temperature anomalies. For one example, the crazy bad weather over Orlando this evening as you can see in the screen capture at the start.

And then this weather warning from Orange County:

Severe Thunderstorm WarningBeginning: 2024-01-09T22:21:00Ending: 2024-01-09T23:00:00New AlertTHE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN MELBOURNE HAS ISSUED A* SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING FOR...SEMINOLE COUNTY IN EAST CENTRAL FLORIDA...CENTRAL LAKE COUNTY IN EAST CENTRAL FLORIDA...ORANGE COUNTY IN EAST CENTRAL FLORIDA...VOLUSIA COUNTY IN EAST CENTRAL FLORIDA...NORTHWESTERN OSCEOLA COUNTY IN EAST CENTRAL FLORIDA...* UNTIL 600 PM EST.* AT 521 PM EST, SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS WERE LOCATED ALONG A LINEEXTENDING FROM NEAR PIERSON TO ZELLWOOD TO 12 MILES WEST OF FOURCORNERS, MOVING NORTHEAST AT 70 MPH.HAZARD...60 MPH WIND GUSTS.SOURCE...RADAR INDICATED.IMPACT...EXPECT DAMAGE TO ROOFS, SIDING, AND TREES.* LOCATIONS IMPACTED INCLUDE...ORLANDO, DELTONA, DAYTONA BEACH, KISSIMMEE, AND PORT ORANGE.PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...REMAIN ALERT FOR A POSSIBLE TORNADO! TORNADOES CAN DEVELOP QUICKLYFROM SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS. IF YOU SPOT A TORNADO GO AT ONCE TO ASMALL CENTRAL ROOM IN A STURDY STRUCTURE.FOR YOUR PROTECTION MOVE TO AN INTERIOR ROOM ON THE LOWEST FLOOR OF ABUILDING.A TORNADO WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 900 PM EST FOR EAST CENTRALFLORIDA

All this on 9 January. I’ve lived here since 1984, and I’ve never seen or experienced anything like this, until today. This is now the new normal, and it’s not good at all.

Links

First results are in: 2023 temperatures were stunningly warm — https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/01/first-results-are-in-2023-temperatures-were-stunningly-warm/

Live in a neighborhood long enough and you’ll see trends that come and go. A trend I always hate to see is the cutting down of trees around the neighborhood. I have no idea what triggers this trend, except when I start getting junk mail in my mailbox or business cards stuck in the front door of my house advertising tree services, which is nothing more than an excuse to convince the homeowner they have a diseased tree that needs to come down pronto.

I’ve seen four trees come down in as many months, and all of them on the route I take with my two dogs when we go out on our daily walks. This is the forth one I captured this morning.

My wife and I caught a tree service busily cutting it down yesterday when I was driving back from my wife’s doctor’s appointment. It always saddens me to see this happening because of how dire global warming has become; all these trees provided shade, and where they’ve all be cut down is now an open to the sun area. The rest of the streets we walk down have dappled shade because of the trees by the streets, but the holes where these trees have come down will allow the micro climates where they used to stand grow even hotter in the summers to come. This past summer was hot enough. I can only imagine what the future summers will be like, especially without the shade provided by mature oak trees.

We voted all Blue. For the Florida supreme court justices, we voted to have them all replaced. That was because they backed up the gross gerrymandering of the voting districts. Finally, we voted ‘Yes’ for rent control. We’ve been hit with paper junk mail from the “Realtors Issues Mobilization Committee” to vote ‘No’ with all sorts of dire and scary consequuences if we vote ‘Yes’. We’ve already seen what happens when rents go so high that people are driven out into the street to live homeless. Increasing rent pressures are everywhere, not just here in Orlando but all over the state, and other locations we know about.

The first few days of turnout has already broken records here in Orange and pretty much across Florida. Now we just have to wait and see how this all shakes out.

I had to travel across Orlando today on personal business. On the way back heading West on the 408 the Orlando Police blocked the two right lanes of traffic right before the interchange with I-4. I don’t know why, except the truck all the way in the back is a two truck for other big trucks. As I finally passed by it looked to be a stalled garbage truck off to the side. Why two lanes of traffic needed to be closed off is one of those mysteries of living in Orlando.

Photo was taken with my G9 and M.Zuiko 1.8/75. I trimmed it to 16:9 and straightened it so the vertical lines are properly vertical. It’s tough to drive and photograph at the same time, but the back screen helps. This is why I like to carry a camera with me; you never know what you’ll come across.

I bring this up because there is supposed to be another march today starting at Lake Eola. I did not go down today. My reasons for not participating are varied, the biggest being what good will it do? It did no good the year it happened; here we are four years later, and you want to march again? Such is the definition of insanity. Marches don’t do shit unless they’re kept up year after year. We need to do more; we need to be consistent. In case you want to see what I saw back in 2018, here are a few of the photos from that day.

And we had our few counter-protesters, the assholes who were there to “protect” the Second Amendment and their precious right to bear arms. Of course, they came with their shitty “come and take my gun” from me attitude instead of trying to actually reason and convince people their view towards the right to bear arms was correct. Their behavior that day was the perfect argument why people like that should never be allowed to own guns.

It’s a good four years later. A lot more guns have been sold in those four years. Many of the gun owners are ever more radicalized.

It means something when you consider a night out at a local Chuy’s Tex-Mex restaurant as the equivalent of going to see “Hamilton” back in the day. I got so tired of getting ready to fix another meal at home that I was almost ready to break training and eat at a McDonald’s. Instead I went out to our local Chuy’s where my wife had her Mexi-Cobb salad with shrimp and I had four fairly massive shrimp tacos. And lots of chips with queso and creamy jalapeño. Lots and lots of chips. My wife cleaned out her bowl and I cleaned off my plate, which included refried beans and Mexican rice. Like I said, we were all into a night out at the local Chuy’s. I wouldn’t recommend a two-year-long pandemic to build anticipation for such a thing, mind you. But it just so happened that way, so here we are…

Photo was taken at near-floor level with my iPhone 11 and post processed in Snapseed while waiting for our order to arrive. I don’t remember where I’ve seen the look of the photo before, but I have, from a long time ago, back when I was in art school in Atlanta. Let’s not dwell on the passage of time…

Working all the time now with key line on my ancient Olympus E-M5. The camera and pancake zoom are a compact and innocuous combination. I’m beginning to think of “constructing” a comic-book style panel with various scenes organized with conversation balloons. Maybe converting some of the images to black-and-white. I’ve come to hate the hyper-realism of digital photography. This goes in the other direction, full stop.

All taken at Lake Eola, downtown Orlando. The day was overcast, so I decided to use the flat light with the key line filter to see what it all would look like. I did some cropping, but nothing else in post.

Biden has promised to “toss eligibility lists” in order to get everyone vaccinated by May 1st. Tonight as I was out getting a few things at a local Publix, I saw this for the first time. I know it was new as of today because I’d been in there earlier to pick up a few necessary housecleaning items, as well as a bit of lunch for my wife and I. Tonight was to pick up coffee filters I’d forgotten earlier in the day.

I think this is great. I had to get told by Orange County in an email, and my wife and I had to go through the process of registering via a county-run website, then go over to the Orange County Convention center for our two Moderna shots, one 6 January, and the second 9 February. That helped open up my wife getting her back surgery the end of February, so I can’t complain about how we got ours. But right now, if we all want to put this pandemic behind us, then we need to get all those vaccine doses out to everyone as quickly as possible. I think Publix is stepping in to help with that.

All three taken with the E-M1.2 and 40-150mm PRO combination.

I don’t normally do selfies, but this one was important enough. My wife and I drove down to the Orange County Convention Center on International Drive to receive our first Moderna vaccinations. It was an in-car affair, where we drove a carefully cordoned path past various checkpoints, where we were checked and questioned and then finally directed to a spot inside one of the car garages where we both received our shots. It was highly professional, absolutely fast and totally painless. I took a quick selfie right before the person who gave me my shot injected me. No pain, no muss, no fuss. We left and then sat in an outdoor parking lot for 15 minutes to make sure we weren’t going to have a reaction, and then we drove home.

So far I’ve had a short spell of soreness, followed by a bit of itching. Right now as I write this I don’t feel a thing. Neither does my wife.

Our second shot is scheduled for 6 February.

I wish a lot more of this was going out to people, a lot faster.

In the mean time we will continue to stay masked and exercise proper social distancing, as well as staying away from crowded areas and only going out when it’s absolutely necessary. Although we’re no where out of the woods yet, I feel a solid sense of progress since this pandemic started. My wife and I have been following this since late December 2019 when the very first reports started to surface from Wuhan, China.

Dorian, or should I say its rain bands, have arrived over Orlando. These rain bands along with tropical force winds will continue until mid-morning tomorrow as Dorian slowly crawls up Florida’s Atlantic coast. According to forecasters Dorian will be picking up speed as it moves further north and east. This is due in part to another low pressure ridge moving east off of the Great Lakes. The screen capture is from the iOS version of Dark Skys.

Dark Skys is a hit-or-miss kind of forecast app. If I have it focused on a city, such as Orlando, it’s fairly accurate. If I allow it to use my address, half the time it has the wrong address, and more times than I care for it misses a forecast entirely. More than once it’s been raining outside and Dark Skys shows nothing. Thus accuracy for me increases with a well-known landmark.

And now for a little change away from cats. This small sequence was taken on a 20 minute stroll down a section of International Drive Orlando next to ICON Orlando. I’m using the Olympus E-M5 and M.Zuiko 45mm/1.8 prime.

ICON Orlando used to be called Coca Cola Eye of Orlando for some number of years, and then when it first opened it was just Eye of Orlando. Just to show how long it’s been since I’ve been around there to notice the name change, the name change took place around May of last year. And no, in all the time it’s been there, I’ve never ridden it once.

The signage is interesting; the upper small sign wants to call it ICON Orlando 360, while the lower larger sign is missing the 360 portion.

I used the E-M5 with the 45mm again wide open at f/1.8. I was located right across the street at the start of a crosswalk. The foreground signs are nicely separated, while the background with the ferris wheel (the aforementioned ICON) is nicely out of focus; enough not to compete with the foreground but enough suggested detail to be recognizable and to give context.

From another position just south of the sign, I recomposed and took a photo of the ICON wheel. I have a morbid fascination with this structure because of my engineering schooling. As an engineering freshman I had a course one quarter in statics and dynamics. This is the kind of structure a sadistic TA would have given us as a lab problem to analyze.

For this exposure I closed the 45mm’s aperture down to f/4 and dialed the camera’s exposure compensation up two stops. The sky was overcast with light clouds and wanted to overwhelm the E-M5’s exposure, throwing everything on the wheel into deep shadow, so the added +2EV lifted the detail. I post processed the RAW in Nik’s Silver Express 2 to bring out some of the cloud bank detail as well as emphasize the details of the wheel itself.

As I was walking around I-Drive I came across this gentleman taking a small break on his pedicab. He appeared to be between fares, checking his smartphone. Once again I shot this with the 45mm lens wide open. The foreground is nicely in focus with good foreground/background separation. My only complaint is the composition; the out-of-focus couple in back of the man’s shoulder to the right is a distraction as is the other pedestrian on the other shoulder. I’d have had a cleaner background if I’d been paying better attention. Without those elements in back this would have been a nicer photo. Regardless, it shows the ability of the 45mm to do a really nice job.

There’s a Shake Shack in front of the ICON on I-Drive, and it provided another opportunity to play with selective focus. In this example I opened out the tilting rear view screen, dropped the camera to waste level, and then looked back up to create this composition of the top edge of the wheel over the building. At f/1.8 I was able to get sharp focus on the signage while the ICON was again nicely out of focus; just enough to give visual context without causing too much clutter.

Finally this road side double sign provided an opportunity to play with plains of focus using the 45mm at f/1.8. The signs themselves, being flat, are nicely focused, but everything else is out of focus with just enough context to know it’s in front of the Shake Shack. Besides, I had to wonder if taxi passengers were allowed to pull up for curb side pickup.

I’ve been using Olympus digital cameras since 2006 when I purchased the Olympus E-300 two lens kit form Newegg. It had the Kodak four thirds sensor at 8MP. At first I was frustrated with its output until I spent the time learning how the system worked together, and then I was fine. So far, after 12 years, I’m still an Olympus camera user, along with several Panasonic bodies and lenses. The micro four thirds system is superb.

The following were all taken with the Panasonic Lumix G9 and the Olympus 12-100mm PRO zoom. Post processing was in Lightroom 6 and Nik Software’s Silver Efex Pro 2. I’m pleased with the fact that my copy of Lightroom can process G9 raw files.

Everything was post processed using Olympus RAW in Lightroom 6. I resisted the urge to post process even further in some of my Lightroom plugins, such as the old Nik Collection’s Color Efex Pro 4. I’m trying for subtlety of tones and colors, not the “technicolor puke” also known as HDR. Believe it or not, that’s the way the bougainvillea in the first two photos actually looks.

I have a lot more flowers beginning to bloom, thanks to global warming. Today’s temperature was 81F, and it will be in the low eighties all next week. Not bad for January in central Florida.

This last Saturday, 24 March, we all Marched Four Our Lives. The march in Orlando had at least 25,000 participants. The marchers met for a rally at Lake Eola Park, then marched down East Central Blvd to Orange Avenue, then south to the Dr. Phillips Art Center where they rallied a second time. Judy and I went to participate. We parked next to the Art Center where I left Judy in her chair, then I walked up to Lake Eola where I listened a bit to the rally, took some photos, then walked back to wait for the march. These first photos are from that march down Orange Avenue right at the Art Center.

Orlando Police were out in a big way. Mostly riding bikes, making sure that nothing happened to anyone and that the assemblies and march were peaceful. And they were. I know of no incidents the entire time I was there, and I haven’t read of any since then. The police were pretty cool the whole time. I’m reminded of the Occupy Orlando march; a lot of participants, a lot of energy in the crowd, and a lot of Orlando Police keeping everything calm and cool.

And, of course, we had our “counter protesters.” The alt-right assholes were out exercising their First Amendment rights, but they were pathetically few. I think this was the largest group of them (maybe a half-dozen) I saw the entire time I was there. They were flanked on both sides by Orlando Police, along with quite a few more outside of the photo frame.

And the marchers came, and they kept on coming. There were a lot of energized folks at the rally and who marched to the Art Center.

Once the march leaders got to the Seneff Arts Plaza they stopped and congregated around, chanting while the marchers built up around them. It was a pretty impressive, peaceful, and positive political action, and all due to high schoolers. Who would have thought it would take a teenager to get an old man like me politically fired up again?

Make no mistake: enough is enough. One of the casualties of this will be our very own Marco Rubio, or “Little Marco” as The Donald liked to insult him as. He’s on the record as opposing what the kids and their supporters stand for, so he has to be replaced. He will not politically survive his next senate race in 2020. I will personally help see to that.

I have a lot more photos from Saturday, and a lot more to think about before posting anything. I’m still processing so much.

Because my wife felt the need to be the rally so strongly, I walked back to where we were parked (behind the Orange County Building, two blocks south) and rolled her up to a quiet spot on Lake Eola near enough to hear the speeches. I then walked back towards the band shell and just started to document the many signs and the people holding them. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves. All this was taken with the Olympus E-M10 and the M.Zuiko 14-150mm II.

Lake Eola, 21 January. The protest against the 45th president of the United State, Donald Trump. For Orlando it wasn’t a march so much as a gathering at the band shell. I got there first to reconnoiter and check out the situation. My wife was with me, but before I let her get near the place I wanted to see if it would be a risk for her or not. She’s going in for surgery next Wednesday, and the last thing I wanted was for anything to happen that might keep her from her that important appointment. As it turned out the place was energetic but very calm and polite. Following are three wide panoramas to give you some idea of the crowds. All taken with the iPhone 7 Plus (everything here is taken with the iPhone).