My wives (one in fact and one a very good friend) brought home this little fella and gave him to me for my birthday. They figured it was the perfect gift for a Hedgehogger. They were right!

From reading the various replies it is clear I've missed some fun. Thanks for the reminder and the ideas!

Got a call this morning from a very fast talking individual whose first language was clearly not English telling me that he was from the "Windows Company" and they had detected serious errors and problems with my computer. I asked him what kind and he was very concerned because they were registration errors, unconnected files and the like. But not to worry because they the "Windows Company" felt an obligation to fix them for me at no cost. I asked him what the MAC address of the computer was that was sending out all of these alarming errors and he told me that they couldn't tell just yet as they were receiving them over the internet!

Told him he and his company were in violation of the Indiana do-not-call list but he assured me that it was all right because:

1. He was in the Virgin Islands, not India and
2. He was calling using the "internet protocall" (can you spell SKYPE?).

Told him not interested. He started into another high speed spiel but I referred him to my dial tone.

Clearly this call was designed to scare the heck out of a person and rush them into an unwise decision. The clowns just keep coming

Meant to include that the neighborhood association was the leader in getting rid of this place. They kept close tabs on it and aided law enforcement and the legislative effort.

It was the first time anyone had seen a medical facility that had to have an armed guard with a watch dog patrol their parking lot. Funny part of that was eventhough the dog. He made a lot of noise and, as he was a german shepard, looked pretty intimidating. One day he got loose and ran over to a couple of the neighborhood watchers with his ball so they could throw it for him and scratch his ears. The guard wasn't real happy lol.

Times are a changin' because of all the abuse in the pain med world. We just had a situation where a "pill mill" moved into our neighborhood. They could not dispense drugs but did hand out prescriptons. The clinic had been run out of Kentucky because they tightned up their laws. This clinic was owned by a nurse practioner rather than a doctor. He hired a doctor to do the actual prescribing. To visit this clinic cost $350 CASH and no insurance was accepted. Most of their patients were from out of the area -- some as far as New Jersey and Florida. We noticed an immediate increase in crime -- particularily theft and break-ins. As word got out no reputable pharmacy would accept the doctors scripts. Most people went back to Kentucky to a pharmacy that the clinic owner just happened to have a partial ownership of.

The way we were able to finally get rid of this outfit was the Indiana licensing board suspended the doctors license for handing out 8000 scripts mostly for oxycodone in 6 months. That abrogated the zoning restrictions and the clinic was forced to close. Our state senator has introduced a bill to tighten up our requirements for clinic ownership and operation.

That kind of scandal is another reason the FDA is cracking down on all pain management operations. The good get punished for the sins of the bad.

We were at the Fish House in Fort Myers Beach a couple of years back and watched an Ibis steal some boiled shrimp off of a plate held by a server. He was passing out several dishes and didn't watch how close he got to the rail the Ibis was standing on. The server of course had to take the plate back to the kitchen. The Ibis didn't understand why -- the shrimp tasted perfectly good.

It's gonna be a UHH party down there in February! We will be in Ft Myers Beach in Feb looking to try out out our new Sigma 150-500 that Santa put under the tree. We'll hit Ding Darling for certain but have never explored the Naples area -- looking forward to doing it this year.

Great pictures!

For anyone interested in PaintShop Pro X5 Corel has a limited time offer. PaintShop Pro X5 is $29.99 and PSP X5 Ultimate is $39.99.
The difference is the Ultimate package includes NIK Color Efex Pro 3.0 and Allusions. Not a bad deal for the extra $10.

It can be ordered from http://corel.com or by phone at 1-877-582-6735

The fact it is the only bridge to connect two states is very interesting. Here in Jeffersonville, IN we are refurbishing the "Big 4 Railroad Bridge" to be a foot bridge. It will connect Jeffersonville with Louisville, KY. So I guess it will become the second footbridge to connect two states.

Thanks

I have DPP but use it very little. My post processor of choice is Corel PaintShop Pro X4. However, when I did poke at DPP I was working with jpegs. And I don't know of anything that would prevent you from using another program first. The workflow would be do what you would do, save the result as a jpeg or tiff file and then re-open it with DPP. It does seem that DPP is limited to Canon RAW, jpeg, and tiff file types.

Good luck with DPP. Look forward to seeing some examples of your work with it.

Lily Marlene -- not to sure about the train vs limo thing but there's no question she has to be about the sweetest little gal in the world.

This is not your monitor going bad nor is it my camera lol. This river barge was launched earlier this month at JeffBoat in Jeffersonville, IN (across the river from Louisville). This link is the article in the local paper surrounding the launch. It explains that part of the revenue from this barge will be donated for breast cancer research.

http://newsandtribune.com/business/x474411519/Jeffboat-launches-pink-barge-WITH-VIDEO

Typical barge is 195 feet long and 35 feet wide. It will draw 9 feet fully loaded with 1500 tons of dry material such as sand, grain, or coal.

These were taken with a Canon XTi with a 55-250 IS zoom.

That this one will help in the fight against breast cancer is pretty cool.



Noticed today that it was no longer moored where these were taken so you may see it on the Ohio or Mississippi rivers one of these days.

From Indiana -- river is about 1 mile wide at this point


Yup -- it's pink!

Just saw today that Topaz is getting ready to release a "star effect" plugin. They are going to have a couple of webinars on it -- check the Topaz Facebook page or website. They didn't give any pricing information.

I'm with you. It looks as if the baby got tired of being in the bear. Time to get out into the world. :mrgreen:

Great set of pictures!

Really like the picture of the lighthouse. Thinking of your desire to make it look spooky stired my creative juices. This is a combination of Topaz Adjust 5 to get the moody and dark picture. The lightning was added with Corel's KPT plugin Lightning. Then used Topaz ReMask to cut out a profile of the lighthouse so that most of the lightning appears behind the building. Most but not all heh heh (sinister laugh).