Dark Lady Kimberly went on the attack in the early hours of the morning today. Halloween was near enough to raise the dead, so she cast a resurrection spell on her long-deceased Rumanian grandmother (shown here) and asked if she could take some time from her busy schedule to do a little haunting. Being so recently resurrected, her grandmother admitted she nothing much else going on, so she agreed. She located the Nanookian miniaturized submarine fleet in record time, and appeared in each and every periscope.

The sub crews were so terrorized that they scuttled their entire fleet and rowed to shore in teeny tiny life rafts (I'd have shown them, too, but before I could get a shot, in a final act of irony, Ministry of Mayhem seagull lookalikes milling about at the shoreline and previously programmed as feeder drones mistook the teeny tiny rafts for shrimp and ate them).

The Martian sent a note of thanks to Dark Lady Kimberly, and so as not to appear overly cheap, he paid for a wreath to be laid at her grandmother's grave.

Another happy ending for all. Except possibly the miniaturized Nanookian submarine crews now stuck inside the feeder drones. But not to worry, the Martian has directed Ministy engineers to work on getting them out. After lunch.

Happy Halloween!

When they were first introduced, I avoided self-service cash checkouts because I thought they were taking jobs from people. I know someone who works in retail, and these DIY stations are not putting people out of work. In his store, it's not unusual for half a dozen people to just not show up for work. Maybe they will call and say they're coming in, but generally, they just don't show up. One day last week, there was only one person available to work a register. Without the DIY stations, they would have had a major problem. The store is paying a decent salary, well above the minimum. People don't show up, or they take extended breaks and lunches. This behavior covers all age ranges, from young to old. I can't understand it. I was in a supermarket last week, and only one register was open. A manager said that five people had called in "sick."

When I was in high school, I worked in a supermarket, and people showed up on time and did their work. We could count on each other to keep things flowing smoothly. So, don't turn your nose up at these self-service checkouts. They exist for your convenience.

Working out my travel plans for 2018

I have been in many places, but I've never been in Kahoots. Apparently, you can't go alone. You have to be in Kahoots with someone.

I've also never been in Cognito. I hear no one recognizes you there.

I have, however, been in Sane. They don't have an airport; you have to be driven there. I have made several trips there, thanks to my children, friends, family and work.

I would like to go to Conclusions, but you have to jump, and I'm not too much on physical activity anymore.

I have also been in Doubt. That is a sad place to go, and I try not to visit there too often. I've been in Flexible, but only when it was very important to stand firm.

Sometimes I'm in Capable, and I go there more often as I'm getting older.
One of my favorite places to be is in Suspense! It really gets the adrenaline flowing and pumps up the old heart! At my age I need all the stimuli I can get!

I may have been in Continent, but I don't remember what country I was in. It's an age thing. They tell me it is very wet and damp there.

The sun goes down on another summer season at the island home of the Ministry of Mayhem, somewhere here in Maine. The days are growing shorter, the nights growing colder. Soon no one but the hardiest of lobstermen will be out on that water. Except, of course, the heroic feline sailors of the mighty Ministry Fleet, ready at a moment's notice to sail into harm's way.

Okay, maybe two moments, as being quite truthful, they're really not too happy about going out in freezing weather, and sometimes it takes a little push to get them going.

Color Cast

Over some time now, I have been noticing in my processing and other's photos posted here that color cast is an issue. Sure, we set our camera's White Balance to what some believe to be the correct setting. But, that only takes care of something called White Balance, supposedly. What I have noticed is that the scene itself lends a cast to the image depending on the predominant color of the scene we are photographing. In an open area, the blue of the sky may be prominent. In a forest setting, a green cast can be seen. In desert scenes a beige cast is present.

It would seem that this cast affects the vibrant colors we had hoped to capture. It tends to reduce contrast and obscure subtle color variations and details in a photograph. Fixing that issue results in a truer to life image with all of the vivid colors we had intended to capture. So, how do we determine if a photograph is biased toward one color or another? It's pretty simple.

Open a photograph, I use PS so the instructions are for that program. Simply click on Filters, then Blur, then average blur. This effectively averages all of the R, B, and G pixels in the image and produces a single color image. If all is balanced, the result should look gray. Otherwise, the result will appear colored. That color is the cast that is predominant in the photograph.

Although I use this step to determine the WB of photos I process, a good many of you know that I use a somewhat unique WB setting in my camera. So, I'm not going to post any photos I've taken to avoid the diversion from this topic. If some of you would care to let me use your posted photos to illustrate this observation, I'd certainly appreciate it.
--Bob

I finished up mopping the Ministry floors early last night, and with nothing else to do, GoGo van Gogh-Gogh (the Ministry of Mayhem's talented Artist-in-Residence) and I ended up sharing a bottle of the Martian's Plutonium Joy Juice. I know better than to have more than a single shot of the stuff, while GoGo has developed something of a tolerance over the years and has no such compunctions. He's a sot, to be blunt, and quite liberal with his intake. No one seems to mind, as a hangover apparently helps him paint.

I can't recall how we ended up sitting on the floor in the blackness of the Ministry's dungeon, singing "Hotel California" and "Desperado" (both with mumbled lyrics--who can remember all the words, especially with Joy Juice on board) at the top of our lungs, arms around each other's shoulders. The singing was loud enough (or bad enough) to attract unwanted attention. Footsteps sounded, and a Dark Lady appeared in a beam of moonlight shining through the room's single tiny window. With a disapproving look, she glared at us, shook her head, gestured at the stairs leading back to the main floor, and said, "Scoot."

We scooted.