Mascot, originally uploaded by Jennifer J.

Did the Title catch your attention?

I really don't know what I am going to write about, I just feel like I should write about something since it's been awhile since my last post.

I think right now, I am wishing that I some wonderful insight to life that I can bestow onto my readers. But alas, it is not so. Therefore, this here ends this blog entry. Hopefully, someday soon I will be able to push through this writers block.

The quality of the video pretty much sucks. In particular, I am working with a piece of video that was shot completely in HD and the sequence in Final Cut was credited using HD. I have tried almost everything to get the video to look good. I have used Compressor to convert it to SD, used the Quick Time conversion in Final Cut, and used DVD Studio Pro to compress the video, and they all pretty much suck.

When I take on an issue at work, I understand the underlying causes and the technical aspects of the issue. With Final Cut and DVD Studio Pro, I really don't understand the concepts of compression. I have spent all day on this issue and I don't want to spend another day on it. Help.

Now when I started reading it, I did't know what it was about. I picked it up because it was onsale at Borders and it looked good.

The book is about a shepard boy who deciedes to follow his Personal Legend. A Personal Legend is basically the path that you are made to follow, discovering what you were made to do.

The book is actaully a really quick read and motivated my to find the path of my Personal Legend.

In my last post, I talked about what I made to do; be a software engineer. So now that I figured that out, what's the next step? Well, I think it's determining whether or not I am currently following my Personal Legend. From the surface, it looks like I am on the right path as I my offical title is IT Application Engineer. In reality, I am not really doing any Engineering. I spend a lot of time analyizing issues and then passing the fix off to someone else. I really want to do is analysis the issue and fix the issue. It's really annoying to pass off an issue to someone else and know that I can do the work much better.

So where does that leave me? Well, if according to the book The Alchemist, I need to follow my Personal Legend, then I need to figure out how to get a job that allows me to program and not just be a paper pusher.

Then in 8th grade, I took my first formal computer class. Now, it was not anything too exciting. The class was a computer literacy class and was taught on Apple 2e's. The class mostly consisted of writing Logo programs that created pretty designs. Toward the end of the class, we did try to write some BASIC programs and again, I was the only one in the class that "got it."

When it came time to go to college, I spent the first 2 years at a community college, which just felt like an extension of High School. I went into college as a Computer Science Engineer major. I took calculus, it was OK; chemistry, I had some issues but got through it; statistics, not bad; and physics, it killed me. I loved my one computer programming class, FORTRAN, and thought I found my nich. Unfortantlly, the physics class did me in. There were several reasons for down fall, one of them being that it started at 8:00 AM. Anyone who knows me can tell you that I am NOT a morning person. By the time I left the community college, I was a dance major and decided to attend Mills College.

By the time I got to Mills, I had all of my General Education classes completed, so that left me with time to spend in other classes besides dance. I decided to try another computer class. This time it was Pascal that I learned and I fell in love all over again. So in between Dance classes, I took computer classes and had a blast. I didn't have to work in the computer classes, it just came easy and I loved hanging out in the computer lab working on my assignments. I think my favorite classes were Programming Languages and Assembly Langauge. By the time I had graduated from Mills, I was no longer a Dance Major but had a degree in Computer Science.

So, now I have my Computer Science degree from a Liberal Arts College, finding a programming job shouldn't be that hard, right? I am smart, I work hard, and I love programming. Boy, was I wrong. I did have a hard time finding a job. I had several interviews where the managers loved me wile the employees didn't think I had the right skills for the job. I finally found a job at HP were they were willing to take a chance on me and let me program. The job involved making enhancements to SAP. Now, I had no idea what SAP was but I did know that I would be able to program and that's all I cared about.

So what is it that you think you were made for? Look back at your life, your childhood, high school, college, and professional career, what clues are there that point to what you are meant to do with your life? Are you doing it?

Butterfly on flower, originally uploaded by Jennifer J.

Yesterday, I had a lot of fun taking pictures of the Butterflies at the Oregon Zoo. The macro lens came in very handy and I got some good shots. Although, there was a professional photographer there who took a couple of shots with my camera and his are way better than mine. I guess that is why I still have day job.

After looking through my pictures again, I think I got better as the day went on. I don't have all the photos up as I took over 200 and need time to weed out the really bad ones.

For the two people who actually read my blog, do you look at my photos on Flick? Do you want to see all the photos, excluding the really bad ones, or would you rather I put like my 10 best on-line? I tend to put everything on line, but worry that people get bored and don't look at everything. When is it appropriate to put all the pictures online vs. only the top ten? Thoughts anyone?

Bamboo Plant, originally uploaded by Jennifer J.

I am going to take pictures tomorrow of the Butterflies at the Oregon Zoo as part of a Zoo Educational Program. On the literature for the outing, it was suggested to bring a macro lens. I don't own a Macro Lens although I have been wanting one. So I went to Pro Photo Supply today to check out lens. They didn't have any to buy, but I was able to rent one.

This picture was taken with a Canon 100mm/2.8f Macro Lens. It's a lot of fun to play and have lots of potential.

Tomorrow should be a lot of fun. I will be in the exhibit for two hours before the zoo opens. There will be people there from Pro Photo Supply, plus the Zoo's Professional photographer is going to be there to give some helpful hints and tricks of the trade. I just hope I am not beyond my element as the class is for advance photographers. We will see.

Check back tomorrow for pictures and an update.

View of Podium with Carleton Sign, originally uploaded by Jennifer J.

are now up on Flickr. Check them out. In order to see most of them, you have to have a Flickr account and be reconginzed as my "Friend" or "Family".

These are only the pictures from the Graduation Ceremony. I will be continuing to upload more photos from the weekend over the next couple of days.

Podium, originally uploaded by Jennifer J.

I spent the weekend of June 10th in Northfield, Minnesota to watch my cousin graduate from Carleton College. I was asked to be the offical photographer for her family which was a little scary because that meant a lot of pressure on me. I am not used to being the only one taking pictures. Thank God a lot of my family was also taking pictures.

I am working on getting the pictures that I took up onto Flickr. I had titles and cute descriptions all written up yesterday and during the upload the program that I was using crashed. It could be because I was tryiing to load over 150 pictures. Anyway, I lost my work and now I am starting from scratch. I am using a different program to prevent the issue from happening again. Unfortunately, I am not as motivated today to write cute descriptions. So I am uploading pictures as I finish them. It will be a couple of days before all the pictures are up on flickr.

The weekend with my family was a lot of fun. I love hanging out with my extended family, aunts, uncles, and such. We always have a good time together. Like most family get togethers, we spent a lot of time playing games. This time around we played several rounds of "Settlers of Catan". My aunt Carol created/bought a really nice travel case for the game that keeps all the pieces in a contained plastic container.

So, I would like to thank my family for making Rachel's graduation weekend a lot of fun and I am looking forward to the next family event.

I am printed a soft bound book, it's a little flimsy and a probably won't survive major use. I am going to print a Hard Back version tonight.

Overall, I am really enjoying Aperture. I have created some web pages and I created a photo book. I will be ordering the book in a couple of days, I will do a review of the quality once I get it. I have heard the Vendor that produces the book for Aperture is different from the Vendor that does it for iPhoto. The quality from Aperture should be higher.

Right now, I am enjoying Aperture so much, I wish I didn't have to work so I can play with Aperture and get all my photos organized and published on the web.

With playing with Go-Live and Aperture, I wish I could sit at my computer all day. Chores are not getting done this week at my house. ;-)

I have published pictures from the first night in Kauai. In the next couple of days, I may be moving the pictures to a different site. I just don't have the brain power right now to figure out how to publish the pictures on my own site.

For now, I hope you enjoy the pictures.