June 5th, 2002:

Those of you who believe in the energy of thought, or in prayer, or in any of those things, I have a favor to ask of you.

Jess has some very tough decisions to make, and the situation that she is in is not making those decisions any easier. Please direct your good energy, or your prayers, or your thoughts, or whatever it is that you do, to help her be of clear mind, and sound judgement. To help her to follow her instincts, follow her heart, and follow her mind. To give her the courage to see through what she knows is right, and the strength to knock down those things that might get in her way.

Thank you.

I’m hungry. I guess I should just go get more breakfast Taquitos from Whataburger. I have to stop eating so late at night.

I miss my baby. I’d call her, but I don’t want to bug her, since I know she is out with her friends. So I’ll just keep missing her.

Okay. I have GOT to stop editing photos using this computer. This is the only machine I have that I have bothered to ensure that all of my gamma settings are correct and that it is balanced to appear to be a middle-of-the-road 2.2 gamma system (2.5 being the average PC gamma, and 1.8 being the average Macintosh gamma). All of the colors on this machine are balanced properly, and everything looks great. I edit a bunch of images, making minor level adjustments to the contrast, brightness, and saturation values. Then I publish them.

THEN I look at the same images on another machine (that has not been gamma corrected) and they are OVER-saturated and a little on the dark side of the spectrum.

Is it just me, or does anyone else see this as well? Is there WAY too much orange/rust in the pipe pictures? Is there WAY too much blue in the lake picture? To me, on this other machine, the pipe looks glowing hot, and the lake looks mildly radioactive.

Comments please.

[Mundane]

Squished

Median of I-635, just East of 75
Dallas, TX

There was a lack of clarity regarding just how large these objects are. This should clear things up a bit.

[Mundane]

Curled

Crushed

Median of I-635, just East of 75
Dallas, TX

Almost daily, I drive past these two giant objects. They are sitting in the median of the freeway in an area that is under heavy construction. They are about 25 feet (or more) long and wide/tall enough to walk in with minimal amounts of ducking. They are laying end to end. Basically, each of them is a giant cylinder. They are very rusted, and have been smashed up a lot, shredding much of the metal. I finally decided that I should photograph them, afraid that they will be cleared away some day. I’m not quite sure what they are used for. Brad thinks it might be some kind of a cement mold.

The hardest part about taking these photographs was getting there. You can’t exactly walk across 5 lanes of traffic on 635. Maybe at night, but then, the photos wouldn’t have been the same. Actually getting to them wasn’t that difficult. The cement wall that usually lines the freeway is not there, so the construction trucks can get in and out, I assume. However, leaving was a bit tougher. I had to jump, from the dirt onto the pavement, into the fast lane of midday traffic with only about 10 feet of shoulder to use for acceleration. And of course, since this is Dallas, no one was going to be nice and let me in without a fight.

On Saturday, Jess and I walked down a gravel trail hand-in-hand to some rocks that looked out over this beautiful lake, made only more beautiful by her presence. I’m not sure how long we sat there, but I would have been content in never leaving.