See the Mouseachu! Oh, and his flunkie. You know, that pinto guy

Note to self: body wants to be a side sleeper all of a sudden. The crackling sound in my breathing is probably not helping. Probably bronchitis from the half-month cold and the sudden temperature changes and the plumber forgetting to turn our heat back on while checking the pipes without telling us.

Fuck me, this means Peloton time might need to be reduced, or omitted. Weights and core to compensate for lack of cardio?

(I need something to burn somehow, I can't abstain food in a house that shops at Costco)

This abruptly prompt post brought to you by my own gripes.

While I'm here though, might as well upload some photos.


( This is pretty much the impression everyone has of winter by now, right? )

EDIT: My throat is starting to feel itchy. SIGH.

Two days straight of 30 minutes on a peloton. Let's see how long I can keep a routine. I've noticed I've gotten paunchier and while I can see definition, I can also see a barrel forming, so I need to do more burn to compensate for more food. It doesn't help that Michelle has not only switched diet meds but also is using Invisaligns which give her a two hour window to eat anything. She's being religious about this because we want to avoid anymore adjustments by the time we get on that eclipse trip. Despite that, she's also obsessed with Costco trends meaning we have like a 24 pack thing of Costco donuts that are good, but I'm powering myself to eat through to prevent waste.

My left thumb feels overextended and I'm debating it's because I play too much mobile game or I slept funny or I used the grippers too much. Maybe all at once. Who knows! Biology is weird.

Work is moving along. I feel pretty good about it in general. I'm progressing so much! My boss has been pretty good about everything I've been doing and my boss's boss has been as well. ISTG having a good job environment feels so goddamn rare and I'm thankful for this job because of it. I hated feeling so invaluable/disposable everywhere else. Even got enough of a bonus to cover the last of the trip expenses! Which is awesome because knowing me I'm also going to probably have to pay more tax returns because I found out the NIH job didn't add any fucking deductions to my last paycheck meaning two months of unpaid taxes to account for. SIGH. Still, this means any gains I made last year in spite of buying expensive ass lenses will likely be retained. I also need to probably pay taxes for my bank interest which is another fun thing to think about since my 401k is probably getting destroyed thanks to *gestures wildly*

The weekends have been a bit less traveling on account of the weather but we did do some traveling. Visited Longwood Gardens during the winter, which I honestly would have liked to see more snow but was too warm to really get there. Then we went to Letchworth Village where it was full of goth teens that were looking for places to smoke or tag and they all thought I was going to narc them, lol. Found a little historic village in Clinton, NJ awhile back and we revisited it and found another Portuguese bakery that was closer to us. Michelle's parents approved of them, so that's another place for us to hit whenever we visit them.

Barely had time to even postprod my photos.

Oh, have been seeing a trickle of photos selling this month, which surprised me as well. Hopefully more to come as well, just need to get my numbers up higher. So far I have around 400, they usually say once you get to 1000 is when the payments get more consistent although I doubt this will lead to anything really lucrative. I am also aware that next month I need to change my settings because I'm getting royalties for my content that is being used to train AI models. No need for that.

Not much more to say, just a lot of work. Back to work!

Heeey it's been a week and I've been busy. I know, surprising right?

Hope everyone enjoyed the VD, be it with someone, yourself, or that cheap, cheap candy.

I say this as someone that spent that day in a pancake house where everything was covered in strawberries or cotton candy: meh. Save your money. Pancakes from there are always good though, just not impressed at paying the extra for a seasonal.

Wow, typing that made me feel like a boomer.

So I will say that outside of work, which has been my one obsession, the trips have been remarkably light. Weather's still been too cold. We did try to visit Sandy Hook and it was nice in that everything was covered in snow and ice and the water was nothing but a blank desert as far as the eye could see, but wildlife was at a low. At least the wind wasn't trying to kill us this time though.

Also visited the Bronx Zoo and some of the animals were more active. The tigers did their thing around all the white snow, while the snow leopards were practically housecats, pacing around the entrance to their shelters that is only opened around closing and making pathetic mewling to go back inside while scratching the door. It was hilarious to imagine a wild beast behaving like anyone's longhair tabby but here we are.

Also writing this post reminded me to start uploading my card and charge a battery which were both neglected.

Dryness is still a constant annoyance. My skin is flaking off all over the place and itches like crazy.

My computer froze while writing this and I'm debating whether it was because of Chrome or some other annoyance. It's been running warmer than usual and given how prices are, I would like to avoid this completely. Fun!

Oh, and I'm sick. Again. A new infection? Maybe covid swiss cheesed my immunity. I shouldn't be too surprised though.

Tomorrow promises to be a lot of snow, so going to see what we can see. Sandy Hook again? Seal time looks promising again. I'll power through the sickness, just going to do it with a mask on.

It's now the third weekend of intense cold. Last weekend we took a trip to NYC and while we didn't see much (it was mostly a gear run since Michelle ordered new boots), we did see where the snow gets stockpiled and melted in the Financial district. Pretty cool stuff ngl.

The cold has been debilitating a lot of our travel options. Honestly, I'd power through but Michelle is more sensitive to it and I think we're both suffering some illnesses as she's right now got painful skin and I'm still dealing with being tired and walking around in my old work boots gave me bruised toenail that looks ready to be cut off if the rest of my big toe didn't look fine (there's no pain unless pressure is applied and it's starting to feel normal again). Not a big deal, I have other boots that have been gathering dust for years.

At home I'm getting some work done; submitted a hundred images to stock and need to word them out but I have so many and keywording is very tedious stuff. I'm also stuck on one day's worth of shots where I still have 2k more shots to process (the seals) and I'd love to clear this but I'd also love to be more active now that my toe is not throbbing.

Still thinking of things to do. It's too windy to be by the shore, I learned my lesson after visiting Staten during that winter storm. Might try to hit the Bronx Zoo today? We'll see. It's bright enough that ambient light indoors should be pretty good. No idea for tomorrow. I will say that we handled the previous week through NYC dressed like we're braving a Vermont winter, but it worked. Subway travel might be the way to get around for Sunday if we decide to hit NYC again (for what I dunno).

It was the nephew's birthday on Thursday and he got a Switch 2 because he has a family that loves to spoil him (guilty). I took some photos and after looking through them yesterday I think the funniest thing is he's going goblin mode throughout the day.


Like imagine seeing someone that looks like this through half your shots

I feel like I'm atrophying. Did some pushups and struggled with 10. I moved the ringfit stuff up to my work room but I apparently have too much work to be distracted by it lol sigh. Going to need to force myself to work on myself more, maybe when we do the evening TV watching.

I found a site that lets me stream the Sister Boniface Mysteries, which I found out is a branch off of another more serious serial drama. I keep thinking this means it's a UK version of Elsbeth, a little more silly though with nun shenanigans.

So yeah, trying out other BBC comedies. Found this one called Dad and it's downright cartoony but I love it for that. Someone said it was canceled for being too similar to 2point4 children, so now I'm trying to find out how to watch that too. I mention this because there's very little to watch these days. I think even if we still had Hulu I'd probably be meh.

If anyone knows anything about Microwave Society that's bad by the way, please let me know because otherwise I am very amused at these three dudes' energy.

Watch on YouTube

Oh, and on the subject of media: happy Iron Lung Day for everyone that wanted the Melania doc to eat shit to celebrate.

Since I'm here, I'll give an update.

...

Yeah, it's nothing too exciting.

Week before has mostly been work. Some travel but not a lot because the weather was crappy then too, potentially even worse lol. Saturday was in fact us visiting a local park and getting some snow and fog shots before calling it and just doing errands.

I'm halfway through a day in Niagara Falls. A day. There's some crazy ice shots and I'm barely breaching into the really cool stuff, mostly focus stack experiments to see if I can sort out a better way to do macro.

I did just find out that Adobe stock will also recompense you by paying for Lightroom if you sell enough, so might branch out into that to pay for Michelle's subscription. But first, work.

We'll try to head back to Sandy Hook for more seal shots. They'll be around until April, but same with bald eagles. We also found out snowy owls are around here. Fucking snowy owls! We'll see how that goes though. I can hand hold the 300-600, but with a teleconverter for long periods of time? In crappy weather? Ehhhhh.

I can at least confirm that ISO 1600 is fairly usable. Thank god. Just did a comparison test between Lightroom Denoise and CaptureOne and I think I'm good with CaptureOne, so I at least know that it's still worth paying for this subscription too.

Okay enough of this, I should clean some sheets.

Teleconverter came in.

Okay, it came in like a week prior, but still. It's in. Reviews have said it's not officially supported for the 3-to-6 (300-600 f/4) so use at risk. I did a test with it at home in manual focus in case of any glass impact and it cleared without a problem. Other photographers said something very similar. Image quality is really solid despite the extra elements. Viltrox has found ways to turn me into more of a fanboy.

Speaking of which, dinged my fucking 35mm during a lens change, I'm so mad at myself for even letting that happen. It was in sand at least so a lot of the impact was reduced but fuck me I am going to bubble wrap my gear if I can't figure out a smarter technique when juggling my gear around.

On Friday, Michelle has been tracking the Sandy Hook Facebook group to better gauge when the seals pop in and determined that the seals do not come in right before low tide but a time before that. She said it was a risk, but if we try to get there two hours prior, we might see a seal.

So here's the catch: low tide is at 5pm and rain was scheduled to come... at 6pm.

So under Michelle's calculations, there is a chance we'd see some seals if we pop in around 3-4, right before sunset.

So, one 30 minute drive later and we were the only ones standing around their favorite spot looking for the seals.

And we saw them! We saw them at 4:45pm, finally making landfall right as it was becoming near-impossible to see them, lol.

I did get to field test the 3-to-6 teleconverter combo at least. It works, though the focus range takes some getting used to, but it's very promising.

But also any images we have of these seals is at unusable ISOs, so not much in the way of our progress lmao

Aside from this,

My head is still in holiday mode, meaning I am having a hard time getting myself back into workaholic mode. I'm not saying this as a way to say "I hate my job" (this is still the best place I've worked at so far), but I am saying I'm annoyed at myself for taking this long to getting myself to wind up. At least I had a meeting with the boss and gave her a laugh when I talked about that Niagara trip.

Yesterday was relentless rain in cold weather which, seen it, done that, so spent it at home and did some chores, worked on a model kit. Not much to write about.

I'm chronologically parsing through photos and made it to Niagara Falls. There's a lot here, obviously, and a fair share of it not that good; mostly tourist shots but snapshot stuff so fairly boring by my standards. There's good stuff in here though, just... ironically not too many in the places where I paid for it lol

I'll set up a photo post before I step out.

I am typing on a train bound for Niagara Falls.

Slowly.

The train is around an hour late, halfway up and fresh out of Albany station

I have had three hours of sleep since staying in a hotel before taking the train, not for discomfort nor noise but because of another train trip that had a three hour delay.

We initially put some thought into this trip to Niagara by thinking ahead a little more. The Maple Leaf starts at 7am so we'd leave a day earlier to get a room somewhere further up that would pick us up at a later time. We would pack for the winter in a way simolar to Montreal but lighter by wearing a lot of our heavier clothes. We would leave the car in a station that was fairly accessible. Etcetera.

So when you play D&D you know what it's like when you roll a nat 1? This trip has started off with a load of them.

Firstly, we managed to time our departure from home right at the peak of the ice storm that was chilling and slipping up the roads. This made a normally safe drive to the station a lot more treacherous.

The train arrived a bit late and we slipped around a bit desperately trying to clamber our way to finding our seats.

Then came the delays. Holy shit.

So we arrived at Moynihan at 8pm for a 8:45 departure. Easy, right? Well how about when the delay gets to 9:10? 9:30? 9:33? 9:50? 10:20? 10:50? 11:40?

So we waited as the delay extended continuously and it kept getting more and more ridiculous. It tookcuntil an hour and a half of delays before an announcer said the problem was getting the train from the railyard. I will also add by the way that we were the only people going this same destination that had delays. Seriously, all other trains going to Albany had come and passed.

At this point, Michelle was looking up options and we found a Metro North line in Grand Central that could get us there, so instead of perform the eternal wait, we rushed through the subway lines and the notoriously maze-like Times Square to finally get to Grand Central and a much more prompt commuter line that was moving at a snail's pace but was moving in general. At close to midnight we were surrounded by MTA guys on their way home and we watched as the Amtrak schedule get longer and longer, finally leaving that damn station at 12:57.

In the end, if we stuck along we would have gotten to Poughkeepsie by 2:48, which with foot high snow banks on the sidewalks, would have meant we could not get our room that we booked to relax more (wegot in the hotel by 2:30 and was told we could not get in after 3am).

So yeah, three hours of sleep. Got some sandwiches and trying to relax while not falling asleep since it would lower my body temperature in this cold train and give me a cold

This train was also delayed btw but like by 40 minutes.

Will post about Christmas next time, maybe while in Canada if I can get over typing with a touchscreen that can't handle my fat fingers.

The lens didn't take too long: little more than a week (during a Thanksgiving week at that) and they returned the lens to me. I checked the form with anticipation as I had spent months--MONTHS--testing this lens to figure out what was wrong with it.

They confirmed that there was something wrong with the lens and had it fixed. I FEEL SO VALIDATED. Michelle felt like it was fine and I wasn't entirely sure so this was something I needed to confirm it.

TBF I don't think what was wrong with it was anything too big: it was very likely an element was out of place and that was screwing with the focus, but I gave it a test at the problem range and it looks so much better now. Thank god. Though to be honest, I was fine if they took a few months for parts, too.

Michelle wanted to celebrate by spending a night in Northern MD and going to the dam where the bald eagles go to give it a proper field test but we're waiting on some gifts for Secret Santa and some of the items just happened to be scheduled to come in on that weekend, so yeah, we canceled it.

By the way, I visited my parents this Thanksgiving and I saw a bald eagle flying around. Holy shit. The Hackey has really cleaned up if we're at this point imo.

Speaking of gifts, the stuff for the nephews mostly came in without a hassle and I have my usual batch of stuff prepped for Michelle. I must have been spending generously because I got my paycheck, prepped to do my usual credit card bills, and watched the entire paycheck go to those bills plus a little bit of the savings. I am a savior of the economy, thank me for my service! Christmas necessities are already taken care of so that's all that matters to me atm.

But yeah, Thanksgiving was fine; I made vegan dishes in case the SIL's GF came around and although she wasn't really around everyone seemed good with the dishes. Whew. Now to figure out what to do with all these cashews and this vegan parm... By the way, the in-laws went crazy with the food.

I'm now playing Battletech again because I missed it but also I want to goof off.

Work is still piling up though so maybe I need to knock it off.

I've got a lot of photos to work through because I've been going to the zoo more training my tracking but also getting Michelle more used to tracking which I think she really should get used to if she wants to take full advantage of that telephoto she has. I think that's the other reason she wants to see the bald eagles and get some practice sorting the process better. To be honest, different types of photography require different types of settings and I think she also understands that as well.

I probably should be using my time working on photos though, My system can't really handle juggling more than one resource-intensive task anyway. I'm probably being slower because my portfolio's been getting bigger these days. It's starting to feel like more of a job and I guess I wanted some time to step away from it, especially as a job where I'm making nothing from it lol

That's all I can really think of for this week, so gonna call it here. Hope everyone's good.

Heeeeeeeey

Weather is finally cooling off, so...

I did more tests with the Sony 400-800 super telephoto in cooler weather at Sandy Hook and my images are still not sharp. I can't chalk this off to heat haze anymore. Am I measurebating? Am I hoping for too much to get sharper telephoto images? Either way, I sent a message to Sony and they're going to take a look at it (with warnings that it may take over a month to fix it). As long as I get it before August I'll be good. They did feel a bit confused since they thought I should send this to the East Coast of Sony, but I was recommended from a third party authorized repair facility and they immediately recognized the facility I checked with (lol).

I can walk around more! Well without looking like as much of a sweaty mess.

Out of curiosity I looked up all my shedding and it reminded me that my scalp has been drier and itchier these days and wouldn't you know: hair thinning and itchy scalps are a correlation. I might need to look into a physician about this. I'm going to do a terrible thing in the meantime and probably rub baby oil on my scalp in the meantime and enjoy greasy hair that I shampoo my hair to stop happening and does any of this make sense anymore I don't know but I'm shedding way too much and I'm not a fan of scratching myself as I sleep so.

I've got a LOT of photos and I finally sorted through Boston. It was a great time, no further notes needed. I want to go back and force my body to suffer for the art, but also I still feel like I'm fairly vigorous from it all.

This weekend might as well have been "people try to bug me as a tourist" day as I swear I kept getting pandhandlers on me which, okay, fair, you want money you gotta ask but also I am one of the worst dressed people on the street so have fun bleeding a stone I guess. Maybe it's the camera or my willingness to talk openly--which doesn't make sense as well because you're also trying to interrupt me--don't expect interrupting people to get them to like you for it!

Anyway, Michelle is asking me to help with her photos too. I'm getting more practice as a result but I don't think she's aware of the process yet. All good, she's learning things in a month things I self-taught myself in more or less a year. The resources are so much better now and it's more favorable to watch now that TV is getting hard to access.

My newest training is learning to see what I can focus stack to get away with. This unfortunately means that my limited SD cards are now becoming more limited which is not helpful. Regardless, if I can find a way to make it work while avoiding too much noise, that would be ideal. More to learn.

There's more stuff going on too but nothing of too much concern.

"But zesty_pinto," you may ask "isn't everything politics?"

Yeah, it is, so I guess this is also me being hypocritical.

So like I said prior, I spent a week in Boston. Island camping! How was it? Glorious. Actually, hot as well but I generally prefer cooler weather so yeah: good for some, not as good for me.

BUT

-Yurts are awesome
-Yurts with power magnify this awesomeness exponentially
-Running toilets and water let you focus more on activities
-I burnt 1k calories a day on top of my normal runtime
-I saw so much beach life
-Astrophotography? I now have a bunch of shots to experiment with once I get to them (details to follow)
-Got a bunch of macro that, with the extension tubes, got me some great shots of the tiny things living in tidal pools
-I got a bunker shot. Got a few of them, low exposure and everything
--At one point while I was prepping a shot, some guy started to approach and I think he was dramatizing it, but he was looking around, pulled out a light from his cellphone and, right as I was moving (just finished the exposure), he immediately bolted away like a cat that saw a cucumber. He said he was okay but I got a good laugh at it. Sorry guy!
-Saw a community of off-gridders that live on the remnants of a Portuguese community that live on the island-turned-park. They are grandfathered to live there, but they are literally THE LAST. The community has been shrinking and I remember there being many more houses here so I think they've been shrinking more and more. I literally was around living monuments that will be gone in the next ten years or so.
-I got to test the 400-800 that I was having quality concerns with and it actually turns out to be much more competent than I expected, I just need to use the proper settings to maximize it.
-Endlessly high humidity means I woke up never feeling dry
-There are some wild apple trees here and I ate a few. Yes they were good.
-Low tide is not only a great time to beachcomb, but there's part of the island that are not accessible because of it, giving even more awesome things to see.
-I only got one mosquito bite
-Didn't even need to take the ferry to go back for supplies, but we could have if we wanted to and that's pretty awesome!

Cons?
-The toilets were a half mile walk
-The shore is mostly stones which means walks along the beach take a lot of effort
-THE SUN GOOD GOD THE RELENTLESS HEAT OF THE SUN
-Burning 1k additional calories a day on top of my normal burn rate meant I was literally calorie counting but for the exact opposite reason I normally do. At one point we made pancakes and I was eating them every few hours to supplement nutrition since the snacks were not enough.
-Dehydration was very common and we did dehydration checks a lot
-Lemon eucalyptus works because it makes your skin disgusting for mosquitoes and it also applies to yourself: beware of finger food
-Birds, not unlike people, can get very antsy when you point a camera at them making it harder to camp a spot to bird watch
-It rained A LOT around the end of our stay which made it difficult to do things (but the night after when we saw lightning in the sky was awesome so a bit of a wash)
-We still were unable to see all of the island despite having 3.5 days (partially because of the rain but also because-)
-We walked so much that our feet were really hurting
-Also my shoes reek now I have bathed them (and the poor The Rat) in Fabreze

So the camping was awesome. And Boston? Still pretty damn cool!

It's such a difference from NYC, in that I feel like NYC is always changing every few years, while in Boston a lot of places we remember have held out pretty well!

We did the Freedom Trail and I finally saw Bunker Hill for the first time. I never mentioned in on LJ, but I had an impossible time finding Bunker Hill back when I lived there so this felt like an achievement for me.

The following day was a trip to the Boston Aquarium which, I'm sorry but I have to say it: it's a superior aquarium to NY Aquarium and Adventure.

"But zesty_pinto," you may say (again) "Adventure Aquarium is one of the biggest on the East Coast while the NY Aquarium has sharks"

To which I say, "eh."

Adventure Aquarium *is* nice, but it's kind of organized like a theme park and that always threw me off. I don't feel like they present what they do there as much for the scientific endeavor and more like you're there to pretend to be a pirate or something.

NY Aquarium is fine, but it feels so small in comparison despite having some really big saltwater tanks. It also always irks me the wrong way that their freshwater tanks are overloaded with beard algae. C'mon guys, you can't get someone in there to scrub the rock? Also, the freshwater tanks are much fewer in comparison and I'm always big on the freshwater aquahobby (this might be why I'm in love with the Bronx Zoo's Jungleworld full of giant couramis and tinfoil barbs).

Boston's architectural design is more my style: I like a main tank that is centered around the area and that you are allowed to see it from any angle. I like that they did a similar design idea with penguins and even though you're smelling fish everywhere you get to see penguins from everywhere. I even got to see them hump. It's awesome.

I also found out the Prudential Center has an observation deck and got some skyline shots, which I did not expect. It ended up leading to me dropping a lens and of course it's one of my favorite lenses but it only physically damaged the filter. I think the lens is still in trouble though because the focus motor is off. SIGH.

Anyway, after that was a trip back. Found some awesome muffins that were just breakfast cupcakes, followed by awesome bagels run by two ladies who are very obvious ex-New Yorkers.

The rest of the week isn't worth talking about unless you want to hear me complain about work lol

I DID HOWEVER GET THE COVID VACCINE BECAUSE NEW JERSEY FUCK YEAH

I also however feel like shit because I got to covid vaccine so yeah fuck

I'm on the better end of it but the weekend plans were mostly reduced as a result, save a trip to the Bronx Zoo which is always a treat.

So yeah, I've got A LOT of photos and ironically, I've got a month of shots I'm processing first.

I'm still halfway through the trip to Ellis Island and I got to tell you the images from it are amazing, some real art piece stuff I was able to get while I was there.


These aren't even my favorite pieces! There's so much good stuff, guys!

I think I am getting close to the end though, and in which case I probably will share some later on because there's definitely a couple that are going to the photo site and then after that is a bunch of stuff I'm less enthused over. Also, been taking advice from other photographers on rules about photography (and what traditional ones I honestly should stop following if I want to identify my own style) and I think that's also influencing my decisions these days so hopefully the images will get better along the way.

That's it from me.


Okay, just one more from Ellis Island. Now I'm done.