Yep, I get a local Covid report for my area and the U.S. sent to me weekly for rises in daily covid admissions, hospitalized patients, and ICU beds occupied. It's going up everywhere and my area is particularly bad with all those stats rising between 12% and 27% and steadily increasing every week since Thanksgiving.

I'm hoping that it is just caused by holiday travel and not another big spike coming. We'll see in the next month or so. I'm masking when I go indoors in crowded places now even though I've had the latest booster plus the RSV and Flu vaccines. At my age and with asthma my feeling is that "you can't be too careful".

Yeah, it's beautiful. I skied most if not all of the areas in those mountains within a 90 minute drive from Salt Lake City and I liked Alta the best for that and because it was close, less crowded and cheaper than a lot of the others... but that was back in the late '80s and early '90s so those last 2 may have changed now.

Nikon, Sony and Canon fight AI fakes with new camera tech

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Nikon-Sony-and-Canon-fight-AI-fakes-with-new-camera-tech?utm_source=join1440&utm_medium=email&utm_placement=newsletter

Two other things I've noticed on Amazon in the last month. New release movies used to be $19.99 to rent as long as they were in theaters and after that $6.99 or less. Now I see a lot of them that only drop to $9.99 when they become available outside of the theater. I have Paramount+ and Hulu and I have found several recent release movies on those platforms that Amazon is still charging a rental fee for.

This may be the last straw for me. They are very greedy. They keep going up in membership price too. Always been unhappy with their free music service for prime members, then they started moving lots, if not most of their prime TV show content to FreeVee (which they own) so you have to watch commercials and now they are putting commercials in the free stuff they still have on prime! We mostly rent new release movies there and there are other free to use apps that rent the same movies for the same prices on demand with no membership fee like Vudu or Redbox on demand. The only advantage to Prime for me now is the free shipping on orders and photo storage. I have my photos tripple backed up on hard drives so was only using Amazon for cloud storage which I can live without. So since there's a Walmart 5 minutes away maybe I'll just quit Amazon all together, buy the same Chinese made crap at Walmart, stream through Roku with apps I already pay for like Hulu, Paramount+, and Peacock and rent new release movies on demand using Vudu. Screw Amazon!

I like your idea but change the lens to a 12-400mm (24-800 equiv)...

At least porch pirates will have a hard time with that one!

That's the way it almost always is. After something like this happens it comes out that authorities were warned. If you haven't watched it yet I suggest watching a mini-series called "The Looming Tower", a dramatized account of the events leading up to the 9/11. There were many signs and warnings that something like this was going to happen but they were either ignored or not shared between law enforcement agencies due to rivalries, agents who didn't like each other, or desire for receiving all the credit if they did stop something from happening... I watched it on Hulu.

Yes, a lot of so called charities are "for profit" in reality. I discovered this years ago and now only donate to veterans organizations or St Jude.

The advice my doc gave me was that as long as you don't eat or drink anything (Black coffee and water ok) for 12 hours before the test it makes no difference what you eat before that as your body digests and normalizes everything to your usual level in that time. Also, trying to change your diet temporarily to get a different result defeats the purpose of the test so you might as well save some time, money, and aggravation of changing your diet by just not getting it done.

That's why I use podcasts. I have the player set so it stops after one episode which is no more than 45 minutes.

I've had chronic insomnia all my life. Even as a child in grade school I always had trouble falling asleep and since my Dad was a bus driver who got up at 4 in the morning I was made to go to bed and be still and quiet at 8 pm every night except Saturday. I used to lie in bed and listen to my little AM transister radio with the mono ear plug for hours before falling asleep but then I slept through the night.

As I got older, (40s and 50s) I not only still had trouble falling asleep but also trouble staying asleep through the night. At first I was waking once or twice and sometimes had trouble going back to sleep but as I got even older, (60s and 70s) I, like you tend to wake up every couple of hours and nearly always one of those times in the middle of the night I could not go back to sleep.

In the last few years, for the first time in my life, I talked to my doctor about it. First he gave me Trazadone which helped me fall asleep but I was still waking every 2 hours so then he added Ambien with the same result. With those I fell asleep fast but still woke a lot during the night. Then I tried Delta 8 gummies. I eat one of those an hour to an hour and a half before bedtime and I fall asleep in minutes and sleep for half the night before waking. If I have trouble going back to sleep I listen to one episode (45 minutes) of a podcast with small earbuds while still lying in bed and usually never hear the end of the episode because I am asleep. I listen to a lot of pod casts when exercising, cleaning, etc., and I make note of the ones that are a bit boring and monotone to use for sleep. If one is too interesting you will just stay awake to listen to it.

So, my problem is not solved but now I get enough sleep so that I function well all day without being sleepy. I also monitor the quality of my sleep with a Fitbit Charge wearable device and it tells me I get better than the average amount and quality of sleep for a male my age.

My Sony RX10 IV. I also have a Sony A7III full frame but the one I grab most often for the shear versatility and fun of using it is the RX10.

Chuck it all and buy a Sony RX10 IV. It will cover nearly everything on your list in a smaller, lighter package than nearly any body and lens combo listed.

I've had an RX10 IV since they were first offered and have used it in all conditions including falling snow and heavy rain with no extra protection. It is still fine and has no lens or camera damage. It's advertised as sealed against moisture and dust but not waterproof. The only precaution I've taken is that I always try to dry the zoom portion of the lens with a cloth before retracting it.