Vacation until the end of the year
News, Work, Photography, Guns ·Sunday December 13, 2009 @ 07:18 EST (link)
I'm on vacation until the end of the year (actually January 2nd, since New Year's Day is a Microsoft holiday). It wasn't exactly by choice; we can only keep twice our annual vacation time; anything over that is subject to forfeiture. I calculated what I'd lose and worked backward from the end of the month, skipping company holidays, and ended up with the 11th.
So far I've been spending most of my vacation on the "MiniJava" compiler for my Master's class, so haven't had much time to relax.
Given the length of vacation (and the price of plane tickets and discomfort of flying in general), we'd considered driving across the country to both our parents' for Christmas, but my camera died, and I sure wasn't going to drive all the way across the nation without a way to take pictures.
The camera, my Nikon D300 was found dead on Thanksgiving, when I brought it in from my car: it alternated between the display not showing anything, to showing the normal shots remaining count that appears when it's off, but not turning on. I don't know what caused the problem; possibly condensation from being in the car (it was just in a soft case). Glazer's, where the camera was bought in December 2007 (not by me; I got it used a few months later when the seller upgraded to a D700), recommended I either send it back to Nikon (long wait) or try nearby repair shop Photo-tronics. Their estimate was just under $500; I decided to go ahead with the repair. (Note: parked at nearby "green" shop parking lot, since said lot was nearly empty.) When I go back to pick it up I may try to sell Glazer's my D100 or F90X, and maybe my Tamron 28-200 lens.
We got a membership (silver annual "family") at West Coast Armory's new indoor range in Bellevue (brochure with rates). It's disappointing that they don't allow steel-cased ammo; many indoor ranges don't because it interferes with the machines that their shell casing pickup company uses. So I either need to re-up my SVRC membership, go to the Sultan pit a lot, or try to sell my steel-cased 7.62x54R and .223. In any case I need to try to find brass-cased in both calibers (I suspect 7.62x54R will be less common, since most surplus is steel-cased).
Books finished: Unfair Competition: The Profits of Nonprofits.
