It's All Right 2.0

Just got 2 CD’s of photos from Gina’s extreme tour with Uncle Rick and friends. There’s a bunch of them here. curious; I didn’t see a single picture of Aunt Louise. She must have been the camera jockey.

I just had an ice cold sugar-free Jones Cream Soda with lunch. Its my new favorite diet soda, the cream soda flavor is so overwhelming, you don’t even notice it’s artifically sweetened (splenda). I plan to try more in the Jones diet soda lineup. They are available at Target and Paneras Bread.

We recently purchased our second vehicle from CarMax and I heartily endorse this nationwide dealership. There are 4 big advantages to shopping at CarMax:

1. They keep a large late model low-mileage inventory on their lot (at least here in Orlando), and its organized by vehicle type, so its easy to make hands-on comparisons between auto-makers. You can compare different makes of small SUV’s, or 2 door coupes, or crew cab pickups.
2. Their entire inventory is on line and searchable in great detail, with photographs and pricing. You can search any of their lots, or a wider geographic range. And their online inventory appears to be up to the minute accurate.
3. Their pricing is firm and fair and below bluebook. No bullshit or haggling. I almost got in a fistfight over the hard sell I got at a Nissan dealership when we recently went for a test drive.
4. Vehicles are inspected and guaranteed. I don’t feel the need to get a third party mechancal appraisal before purchasing.

If there is a CarMax dealer near you, give it a try sometime, or just go window shopping and tire kicking on the web.

Reedsoutwest
Originally uploaded by Baritone Bob.

This just in from Uncle Rick. Gina and the gang.

More photos from our weekend in Sebastian, hosted at flickr.com The 9 images there are available in high resolution.

This picture here is castnetting for mullet (bait) in the river right in the backyard of the lodge we stayed at. The Ferndale lodge advertises on their website a 250′ shaded dock on the river with boat slips. However, they are still struggling to rebuild the dock from the hurricanes last year. So I made do and just tied my boat off to a pylon and waded back and forth. I really missed the convenience of a dock, and the opportunity to sit out over the water in the early morning and evenings.

We’re back, Linda’s started her new job, Gina is in Utah with Uncle Rick, and I finished up this short video shot by Linda while we were down in Indian River County over the weekend. It was a pain to complete, because I put so many titles and overlapping sound effects in it, my 4 year old pentium III computer gasped and said “Uncle”. So I had to render it in pieces.

Tech note: the still pictures were imported at 640 pixels, the video was shot at 320 pixels, and the final cut was rendered in Windows Media (WMV) at 640 pixels, and its still a little jumpy. A clean video rendering would be over 100MB, so this is a good compromise. The file download is 15MB. It may take a few minutes.

update: I shared the video with a local fishing discussion board, and they have some nice comments over there.

11/06/2005: The file has been uploaded to google video.

On the way back we stopped over in Athens, GA, home of the University of Georgia, R.E.M., and the B-52′s. Its a nice little cultural oasis, and the motels are cheap and clean. We had some indian food for dinner, and passed by this landmark on the way out of town.

Here’s a couple of snapshots. I only got one good photo of the stage, I took about 10 pictures from my seat, but without flash, the exposure times were too long for the handheld camera and they all had camera shake except this one of the Del McCoury bluegrass band.

Here’s me outside the venue..

and here’s gina checking her instant messages at the restaurant just before showtime.