Jason Buscema

Is it too much pressure on a 2 year old to bank my entire retirement on his future NFL career? I’d even settle for a sub-par team like the Broncos or the Patriots just as long as it wasn’t the Raiders. I’m sure the San Diego Chargers will be calling on Isaac soon after seeing this photo. I’d rather have to work my entire life then to have a son play football for the Raiders

He is a natural when it comes to sports. I didn’t teach him to tuck the ball to protect it. He does watch football with me though which is evident in the way he tackles other kids. We finally figured that one out. I guess watching football can be a little confusing for young kids as they see grown ups yelling, screaming and trying to destroy the person across from them. Hmmm…

Notice anything strange in this x-ray of my 2 year old son? The little dot at the bottom is not a raisin, grape or any other food substance. It is a watch battery from circa 1988. The battery was in the LEGO drawer mixed in with the massive collection of LEGOs from my childhood. I was always really big on the city, town and early space LEGOSs. I just never got into the castle series or the newer Star Wars/movie stuff. Go with the classic ones. Anyway… Isaac and I were playing LEGOS and we found the battery. Being the responsible parent that I am, I put it aside to throw away but got distracted building the coolest helicopter in the world. Do keep in mind building something awesome out of LEGOs and building something awesome that will be somewhat 2-year-old safe are too different things. Needless to say, I spent some serious time and energy on this copter and it lasted throughout the day! A few hours later at nap time Isaac said “Daddy, I swallowed battery”.  Oops.

Steven Ballmer "Developers, Developers"

Every time he speaks or is interviewed I simply just can’t wait to check it out. I’m more intrigued by what Steve Ballmer has to say than the mythical wisdom of Steve Jobs. Sure Jobs might have the “reality distortion field” following him around Apple but I don’t find his speeches and interviews as entertaining as Ballmers’. For starters, Jobs obviously isn’t excited enough about Apple products to get up and do a monkey dance. A true leader would take one for the team. Or two.

Today Ballmer drops more of his infinite wisdom on us by talking about the recent slide on computer sales and how the economy hurts Apple more than other PC companies. His reasoning is sound right? In this economy, who would ever pay $500 more just to have an Apple logo on the hardware? Because naturally Apple hardware and that of say Dell and PC are exactly the same  and no one is going to consider paying $500 more just for Apple software. 

“The economy is helpful. Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment — same piece of hardware — paying $500 more to get a logo on it? I think that’s a more challenging proposition for the average person than it used to be,” Ballmer said.

How can Apple can compete with this type of business wisdom and insight? After all, Apple has never made innovative products that I know of worth spending an extra amount to get. Take for example the iPod vs the Zune. They both play music, they both do lots of stuff and the Zune is less expensive so why would anyone pay extra money just to have the Apple logo on the same player, right?

Hopefully you sense a bit of sarcasm here. This guy just kills me. How is he CEO? Good comedy routine.

This past weekend we took the boys to two different parks on two different days. That’s big time in our household! On Sunday we went to the park up the street from our house and Isaac had free reign of the play structure. I just got my Canon 5D Mark II camera and figured this would be a good time to test out the HD video capabilities the camera possesses. I’ll tell you, it’s not super intuitive like you may expect from Canon.

This video was shot obviously using the Canon 5D Mark II camera and the 70-200 2.8 non IS L series lens. Sorry for the shaky video. I wonder if a IS lens would work in video mode? 

This is one of my very first test videos taken w/ the Canon 5D Mark II camera and the Canon 15mm fisheye lens. It’s a little interesting shooting video with the camera but hopefully with some practice I’ll figure it out. I must admit I had to break out the manual to figure out how to do it which isn’t a good sign for starters. I need to spend some time and read up about if it’s possible to auto-focus during the recording of a video. My guess is no. 

I had the opportunity to go out on a friend’s yacht yesterday off the coast of San Diego. Initially we hit a bank of fog but within 45 minutes the fog burned off and it was a killer San Diego day. The water was very calm and flat and there was no wind. Truly incredible.

Around 16 miles out at sea we found ourselves in a large pod of dolphin. They were all over the place and I quickly grabbed my camera. I had brought along my Canon 1D Mark II, and both a 70-200 2.8 lens and a 17-35 2.8 lens. I wish I had a 300 or 400mm lens with me, although shooting that tight on a moving boat would prove to be a bit of a challenge.

Continue Reading…

For the past 20+ months I have been using Dreamhost for the web hosting of many various websites. Some of these web sites and projects are for friends and family while others were for myself. The cost was very reasonable and the service quite good for a shared hosting provider. Everything was moving along just fine until the past week.

Continue Reading…