I live in a small city just south of Houston, Friendswood. We got 51 inches of rain over the 5 days which flooded over 1/3 of the homes in our city. The water was within a foot of entering my home. We live near the convergence of three creeks, each of which was way-way out of its banks. The weather forecasts prior to the arrival of the storm was 15 to 25 inches of rain; some isolated areas may get as much as 35 inches and possibly 40 inches. Nobody was predicting anything close to 51 inches over the entire Houston-Galveston metro area. The creek closest to us, Clear Creek, crested at 24.03 feet; the highest prior to this was 18.8 feet and that was during a major hurricane in 1989. So, we have been through several hurricanes and tropical storms since I first moved here in 1967, but nothing close to the amount of rain we saw this time. The annual average rainfall in Houston is approximately 52 inches, so we got a year's total over a 5 day period.

I was a young engineer working at NASA in Houston (Manned Spacecraft Center then) in 1969; I know that the Apollo missions were real. I was at the Vertical Assembly Building during the launch of Apollo 11 and still vividly remember the sound and sight of that launch! There were many in those days who did not believe that we landed on the moon -- it isn't just a present day phenomenon.

My wife and I leave June 5 for 10 days in St. Petersburg. We will be staying with a former foreign exchange student we hosted in 1995 and her family. She at one time was a tour guide in St. Petersburg, so we will have that advantage. I am really looking forward to some great photography while there, so I really enjoyed reading the inputs from prior visitors. I have a Canon 5D Mk III; plan to take my 16 - 35 F2.8 and 24 - 70 F2.8 for sure.

A couple years ago I photographed two red-breasted hawks that frequent our neighborhood going at it on the cross member of a electric pole near my back yard. I heard them squawking, so I grabbed my camera and tripod and was photographing the female who had landed on the pole when suddenly the male flew in behind her and proceeded to "have his way" with her. With me clicking away during the event. I have called it my hawk porn shots.

I know it may be just a matter of semantics to most, but when people refer to their GPS providing them guidance, they are really referring to the particular unit (Garmin 650 for instance) that is providing them the directions. GPS is simply a set of satellites that are providing position and time information to those units -- totally passive system so the satellites have no idea where you want to go or where you are. I am somewhat sensitive to this because as a young engineer, I worked for a few years at the Naval Research Laboratory for the father of GPS (Roger Easton). We were in the development phase of the system at that time, but the basic design of the modern GPS is just as we planned it at that time -- with the exception of the military vs. civilian sidebands. Initially the military systems received much more accurate information from the satellites than civilian units; now the satellites send exactly the same information to both. It is the algorithm in the GPS unit itself that determines the ultimate accuracy of the information provided to the user.

There is no news on TV or in the newspaper anymore; only editorials and happenings filtered such that they tell the story the station / network wants to convey. I have been interviewed twice for news events. Both times the story as presented on TV was totally mis-represented -- to the point where I would say the newscaster lied. Never trust an interview you see on TV unless both the interviewer and interviewee are in the scene; otherwise they "cut and paste" questions and answers such that the story is what they want told. I can speak from experience on that.

I seriously doubt Rush Limbaugh authored this. The numbers are obviously incorrect; especially the pension information. And they DO pay into social security and receive SS benefits when they reach retirement age.
I like the comment that 90% give the other 10% a bad name! Probably more like 98% give the other 2% a bad name, however.

I seriously doubt Rush Limbaugh authored this. The numbers are obviously incorrect; especially the pension information. And they DO pay into social security and receive SS benefits when they reach retirement age.
I like the comment that 90% give the other 10% a bad name! Probably more like 98% give the other 2% a bad name, however.

While on Lynda dot com, did you do a search on Wacom? I did, and 4 courses showed up, including one titled Wacom Essential Training.

And a few weeks ago it was at one of our military academies that several black women students did something to demonstrate their support for the black lives matter movement. Shame they don't think the lives of other races also matter.

I agree that the Laura Shoe DVDs are the best out there. I subscribe to KelbyOne, and Lynda.com, and have also watched videos from Phil Steele, Matt Kloskowski, and Julianne Kost. While most of these are good to very good, I would rate Laura Shoe's as excellent.

I actually have an annual subscription, so it works out to a less than $30 a month, but yes, I think it is worth it. BUT (big but) I use it for other training also. The site has training for many facets of business, computer operating systems, computer programs (i.e. Microsoft office, etc.), hardware (camera evals; iPhone classes, etc.), so you might find some of these of interest also. If you are only going to use it for Photoshop training, there are cheaper options out there, including lots of free stuff on the Adobe site. Some of the Adobe training is only available on Lynda.com, however. KelbyOne is one option that is cheaper than Lynda; they focus on photography including Lightroom and Photoshop.

When my wife and I go to see a musical performance at the downtown theater, I refer to intermission as half time. Always good for a dirty look from my wife.

The Canon 1DS Mark ii is a very old camera (approx 2005). If you are speaking of the newest Canon, it is the 1DX Mark II. It has two memory card slots, one for a CFast 2.0 card and the other for a CF card.

What is the advantage over CFast 2.0 cards? CFast cards can read 525 MB/s and write 445 MB/s. Cameras have to "catch up" to the memory cards' capabilities; only the new top end professional grade cameras can write at anywhere near those speeds.