Post a good thing that happened in your life today

[Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg]

On 20/05/2023 at 17:14, John Mitchell said:

...secret is that he really enjoys what he does

😯 HE HAS A PASSION FOR IT

 

😛 BUT HE ESPECIALLY LOVES THE BIG SALE, THE BIG PLACEMENT

 

😲 SO WHAT SO DO MOST STOCK SHOOTERS...

[NYCat]

We have robin babies. I was afraid they had abandoned the nest because I wasn't seeing anyone sitting on it. Then I saw two little heads sticking up. Last year we had four that fledged. This mom looks very small. I wonder if she was born here last year. Nature surviving in the Big City.

 

Paulette

[John Mitchell]

19 hours ago, Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg said:

😯 HE HAS A PASSION FOR IT

 

😛 BUT HE ESPECIALLY LOVES THE BIG SALE, THE BIG PLACEMENT

 

😲 SO WHAT SO DO MOST STOCK SHOOTERS...

 

📷 Keep on snappin', Jeff.

[Rebecca Ore]

The good thing today is rain.   We're supposed to be in the rainy season until the "Little Winter" in July, then more rain until October.

Normally this starts in the middle of May, bit late and hot in Jinotega this year. 

[ACC]

On 21/03/2020 at 09:00, geogphotos said:

Having made almost 50 bottles of elderberry wine I am pleasantly surprised by how it is already very drinkable. 

 

It will improve with age - that is the hard part!

Hi Ian,

I’ve not been getting out with my camera much due to ill health but in the last few weeks three new ferries have started up nearby.  These are perfect for me. I can sit on a boat and the scenery moves past me. ! Lots of photo ops 👍. Check out Suffolk River Trips. They go from Woodbridge, Orford and Snape.

[Betty LaRue]

I’ve really doubled down on uploading in May. The most images I’ve processed in a month for ages. What has gotten into me? Part of it is my son has been on a weeks-long vacation, & hasn’t been popping in on me at all times of the day. Mind you, that’s ok, family comes first. Although  I can’t tell you the times I’ve fired up my computer to work only to end up missing out on the free time I’d scheduled to work.

My biggest constraints on how long I can sit at the computer is the neck pain & when I can’t bear it anymore for that session. I’ve discovered I’m a winter chicken now. I’ve forgotten how it felt to be a spring chicken!

[Betty LaRue]

On 23/05/2023 at 10:11, NYCat said:

We have robin babies. I was afraid they had abandoned the nest because I wasn't seeing anyone sitting on it. Then I saw two little heads sticking up. Last year we had four that fledged. This mom looks very small. I wonder if she was born here last year. Nature surviving in the Big City.

 

Paulette

I love it that robins around here aren’t afraid of people. One can be digging for worms in my lawn & when I open the door & step out, it just looks at me & continues hunting. They probably are the calmest birds around.

[IKuzmin]

Finally installed Photoshop 24.5.0 and tried the Remove tool. Outstanding. Most of my images would benefit from heavy (yet fast and easy) use of this tool. But do I want to do this, and what about images already in portfolio(s)?.. Wonder if I want to call this program "Photoshop" or "Photokiller" meaning the traditional photography. All in line with my previous suggestion that our photographs will soon be good only for feeding the AI machines. 

Edited May 29, 2023 by IKuzmin

[Michael Ventura]

10 minutes ago, IKuzmin said:

Finally installed Photoshop 24.5.0 and tried the Remove tool. Outstanding. Most of my images would benefit from heavy (yet fast and easy) use of this tool. But do I want to do this, and what about images already in portfolio(s)?.. Wonder if I want to call this program "Photoshop" or "Photokiller" meaning the traditional photography. All in line with my previous suggestion that our photographs will soon be good only for feeding the AI machines. 

 

Yes, really tough to say how AI will affect photography and to what extent.  I downloaded the PS Beta yesterday and played around with the new Generative Fill and Remove tools.  Pretty amazing and a bit scary.  It will only get more sophisticated with time. 

[Ognyan Yosifov]

My 999th, 1000th, and 1001st submissions just passed QC successfully.

The positive thing - not a single fail with it over the years 🙂

[Bryan]

We've been using the mobile phone rather than our aged TomTom satnav lately. Driving home on Monday it spotted that there were major hold ups on the M6 motorway north and guided us onto an alternative route via the A6.  We had to join the M6 eventually and did get delayed, but it could have been much worse. The wonders of technology !

[Gnans]

On 31/05/2023 at 22:16, Bryan said:

We've been using the mobile phone rather than our aged TomTom satnav lately. Driving home on Monday it spotted that there were major hold ups on the M6 motorway north and guided us onto an alternative route via the A6.  We had to join the M6 eventually and did get delayed, but it could have been much worse. The wonders of technology !

Tech is a double edged sword. Waze(Google) uses community live status and updates traffic on the go. When driving in Scotland Waze directed few drivers including me into ‘C’ road due to few minutes delay on ‘B’ road due to roadworks. Resulted in ‘C’ road clogged up with less pass by spaces. In city /urban creates a lot of traffic on what would be quieter roads.

 

I agree it helps to avoid some traffic at times.

[Betty LaRue]

Five years ago, when we moved from Oklahoma City to Wichita, our new-to-us house had a huge basement storage room. While I unpacked all of the necessary things I needed…linens, kitchen stuff, our clothes & such, like many people do if they have ample storage, many boxes went to the basement, taped shut. Most were marked as to contents, but many weren’t, because they contained a hodgepodge of things and there were 5 family members besides me packing & labeling. 3 of them were guys!

I had a garage sale a couple of years ago & got rid of surplus linens, blankets, dishes, clothes, fishing lures and much more from the basement. Still, there was a lot left. 30 yrs of accumulation.

My son plans on putting up some shelving down there & urged me to go through everything and get rid of what I don’t need. I’ve been doing that.
Funny thing. We stayed with my daughter & son-in-law for a week when we moved, waiting for the truck to deliver our furniture & packed boxes. I packed enough for hubby & I to last the week during our stay with the kids. One thing I had in my overnight bag was a baggy that contained about 10 pair of my favorite earrings, which I donned a pair to go to the house closing right after we got to Wichita. After moving into our house, I couldn’t find the bag of earrings.

I searched my daughter’s house, she searched, & I went through every bag we’d taken to her house. No luck, so over time, I bought new earrings. I puzzled over those earrings many times.

Today I opened a box that was taped shut, stored in the basement & filled with a jumbled of miscellaneous things. There was the baggy of earrings. The mystery is how in the world did they get there, considering I wore earrings from that bag during the week we were waiting for our stuff to be delivered. That box I opened today was in the moving van, the baggy was in my overnight bag & never in the moving van.
After moving in, had I opened that box then retaped it? Maybe, but I sure wouldn’t have added my bag of favorite earrings to it. They would have joined the rest of my jewelry.
Did my husband? Maybe..he was suffering from severe dementia by then & did many things that didn’t make sense. I became very ill by the time the moving van came & was sick for several weeks. it was after I recovered that I looked for the earrings. He might have done something while I napped, but he seldom allowed me to nap without demanding I wake up after 15-20 minutes.

My head hurts thinking about it! 😁

I wore a pair of the missing earrings this evening when I went out to dinner with my kids. Yay! 5 years later.

Edited June 4, 2023 by Betty LaRue

[gvallee]

2 hours ago, Betty LaRue said:

Five years ago, when we moved from Oklahoma City to Wichita, our new-to-us house had a huge basement storage room. While I unpacked all of the necessary things I needed…linens, kitchen stuff, our clothes & such, like many people do if they have ample storage, many boxes went to the basement, taped shut. Most were marked as to contents, but many weren’t, because they contained a hodgepodge of things and there were 5 family members besides me packing & labeling. 3 of them were guys!

I had a garage sale a couple of years ago & got rid of surplus linens, blankets, dishes, clothes, fishing lures and much more from the basement. Still, there was a lot left. 30 yrs of accumulation.

My son plans on putting up some shelving down there & urged me to go through everything and get rid of what I don’t need. I’ve been doing that.
Funny thing. We stayed with my daughter & son-in-law for a week when we moved, waiting for the truck to deliver our furniture & packed boxes. I packed enough for hubby & I to last the week during our stay with the kids. One thing I had in my overnight bag was a baggy that contained about 10 pair of my favorite earrings, which I donned a pair to go to the house closing right after we got to Wichita. After moving into our house, I couldn’t find the bag of earrings.

I searched my daughter’s house, she searched, & I went through every bag we’d taken to her house. No luck, so over time, I bought new earrings. I puzzled over those earrings many times.

Today I opened a box that was taped shut, stored in the basement & filled with a jumbled of miscellaneous things. There was the baggy of earrings. The mystery is how in the world did they get there, considering I wore earrings from that bag during the week we were waiting for our stuff to be delivered. That box I opened today was in the moving van, the baggy was in my overnight bag & never in the moving van.
After moving in, had I opened that box then retaped it? Maybe, but I sure wouldn’t have added my bag of favorite earrings to it. They would have joined the rest of my jewelry.
Did my husband? Maybe..he was suffering from severe dementia by then & did many things that didn’t make sense. I became very ill by the time the moving van came & was sick for several weeks. it was after I recovered that I looked for the earrings. He might have done something while I napped, but he seldom allowed me to nap without demanding I wake up after 15-20 minutes.

My head hurts thinking about it! 😁

I wore a pair of the missing earrings this evening when I went out to dinner with my kids. Yay! 5 years later.

 

Ah Betty! We're in the middle of a 'house contents move', that is we are waiting for a container with all our worldly possessions which were stored in UK. We didn't want them to start with, as in four years of nomadic life, we delight every day at how little one really needs to survive. A couple of shorts, t-shirts, a fleece, rain jacket, sandals, underwear. Then we have 2 plates, 3 cups, 6 glasses, cutlery. And that's about it. We were just talking about it again today.

 

Then the saga of our container.... It left the UK about 2 months ago. Arrived in Brisbane and waited to go through Customs. Said Customs required a list of contents per box. We had 179 boxes coming from 3 different properties 12 years ago. Needless to say, memory was hazy, so we built up a list as best we could. We knew they were mostly books, kitchen stuff and clothes. Customs opened all boxes. It went like this: oh! a pair of muddy walking boots (photo included), tsss tsss tsss.... they'll need cleaning: $200 or discard. Lawn mower: no no, it contains soil. $200 to clean or discard. Etc etc... We said discard all. Oh but wait! The lawn mower doesn't fit in our bin so you will have to have it. In total, we paid $1,200 to get things we don't want. It didn't make sense for us to travel to the UK to sort things out there, it would have been x2 airfares from Oz, airfares to north of England where they were stored, accommodation, rent a car, etc etc. The container arrives in Cairns next week and will remain in a depot patrolled by rottweilers. For how long? Who knows. We were going to Oz for 2 years (hence the storage), that's 12 years ago. I hate removals.

 

Glad you found your earrings Betty. During a previous removal, I lost a collection of snuff bottles I had gathered from all over the world. No idea what happened to them. I was sad then but life went on.

 

 

 

 

 

[Betty LaRue]

14 hours ago, gvallee said:

 

Ah Betty! We're in the middle of a 'house contents move', that is we are waiting for a container with all our worldly possessions which were stored in UK. We didn't want them to start with, as in four years of nomadic life, we delight every day at how little one really needs to survive. A couple of shorts, t-shirts, a fleece, rain jacket, sandals, underwear. Then we have 2 plates, 3 cups, 6 glasses, cutlery. And that's about it. We were just talking about it again today.

 

Then the saga of our container.... It left the UK about 2 months ago. Arrived in Brisbane and waited to go through Customs. Said Customs required a list of contents per box. We had 179 boxes coming from 3 different properties 12 years ago. Needless to say, memory was hazy, so we built up a list as best we could. We knew they were mostly books, kitchen stuff and clothes. Customs opened all boxes. It went like this: oh! a pair of muddy walking boots (photo included), tsss tsss tsss.... they'll need cleaning: $200 or discard. Lawn mower: no no, it contains soil. $200 to clean or discard. Etc etc... We said discard all. Oh but wait! The lawn mower doesn't fit in our bin so you will have to have it. In total, we paid $1,200 to get things we don't want. It didn't make sense for us to travel to the UK to sort things out there, it would have been x2 airfares from Oz, airfares to north of England where they were stored, accommodation, rent a car, etc etc. The container arrives in Cairns next week and will remain in a depot patrolled by rottweilers. For how long? Who knows. We were going to Oz for 2 years (hence the storage), that's 12 years ago. I hate removals.

 

Glad you found your earrings Betty. During a previous removal, I lost a collection of snuff bottles I had gathered from all over the world. No idea what happened to them. I was sad then but life went on.

 

 

 

 

 

That doesn’t sound like fun, paying someone that kind of money to do a $25 job. A 15 minute good strong hose stream of water would take care of the lawnmower soil.

I lament the loss of your collection. I’m sure a lot of time & rummaging was involved.

There are many big mysteries in this world, but we are overrun with the little ones that cause us to scratch our heads & spend way too much time thinking about them. I searched my daughter’s house at least 3 times. She searched, her husband searched. I think this happened thru the first part. I had them in my overnight bag, but was so sick by the time we moved into our house, I only took things like my makeup & toiletries out initially. While the earrings still lingered in my overnight bag, the mystery of them getting into a box during the couple of weeks I was ill is still unknown & always will be.

My question about the lawnmower is this. If it is a no-no to bring foreign soil into OZ, then what do they do with the washed off soil from the cleaning?

Another mystery….

[Michael Ventura]

4 hours ago, Betty LaRue said:

That doesn’t sound like fun, paying someone that kind of money to do a $25 job. A 15 minute good strong hose stream of water would take care of the lawnmower soil.

I lament the loss of your collection. I’m sure a lot of time & rummaging was involved.

There are many big mysteries in this world, but we are overrun with the little ones that cause us to scratch our heads & spend way too much time thinking about them. I searched my daughter’s house at least 3 times. She searched, her husband searched. I think this happened thru the first part. I had them in my overnight bag, but was so sick by the time we moved into our house, I only took things like my makeup & toiletries out initially. While the earrings still lingered in my overnight bag, the mystery of them getting into a box during the couple of weeks I was ill is still unknown & always will be.

My question about the lawnmower is this. If it is a no-no to bring foreign soil into OZ, then what do they do with the washed off soil from the cleaning?

Another mystery….

 

Crazy story about your lost earrings showing up much later in a bigger box. Glad you were finally reunited with them!!  I imagine that Oz has a facility where they can contain foreign soil and vegetation that comes into the country that doesn't meet their requirements.  I was traveling somewhere in Southeast Asia and while I was at the airport a cricket team, arriving, was detained while all their cleats (boots) were inspected and cleaned of any soil they had not cleaned off before arriving.  Also I know that U.S. international airports have an incinerator, on site, where all confiscated biological items, such as food items, especially fruits and vegetation, are destroyed.  So maybe the high fees that OZ charges is another way to discourage importing soiled items. 

Edited June 5, 2023 by Michael Ventura

[gvallee]

36 minutes ago, Michael Ventura said:

 

Crazy story about your lost earrings showing up much later in a bigger box. Glad you were finally reunited with them!!  I imagine that Oz has a facility where they can contain foreign soil and vegetation that comes into the country that doesn't meet their requirements.  I was traveling somewhere in Southeast Asia and while I was at the airport, cricket team, arriving, was detained while all their cleats (boots) were inspected and cleaned of any soil they had not cleaned off before arriving.  Also I know that U.S. international airports have an incinerator, on site, where all confiscated biological items, such as food items, especially fruits and vegetation, are destroyed.  So maybe the high fees that OZ charges is another way to discourage importing soiled items. 

 

We had initially imported our pushbikes. Instructions were very strict: tyres had to be desinfected with a product. Did they stink! The thing with our lawn mower, shoes, etc is that being in quarantine, we had no access to clean them ourselves. So in effect, it's a fine for bringing in soil.

[spacecadet]

11 hours ago, gvallee said:

 

We had initially imported our pushbikes. Instructions were very strict: tyres had to be desinfected with a product. Did they stink! The thing with our lawn mower, shoes, etc is that being in quarantine, we had no access to clean them ourselves. So in effect, it's a fine for bringing in soil.

To be fair, they can't know what you intended years ago (nor probably can you even remember!)

No. 2 Son managed to get everything into NZ except a leather dog collar- irradiate for $70 or the bin. It was the bin. NZ also found a tiny grass seed on my walking boots but kindly didn't burn them. I kept the biosecurity inspection tape as a souvenir for some while- like I saved boarding passes when they were a thing.

[Betty LaRue]

17 hours ago, Michael Ventura said:

 

Crazy story about your lost earrings showing up much later in a bigger box. Glad you were finally reunited with them!!  I imagine that Oz has a facility where they can contain foreign soil and vegetation that comes into the country that doesn't meet their requirements.  I was traveling somewhere in Southeast Asia and while I was at the airport a cricket team, arriving, was detained while all their cleats (boots) were inspected and cleaned of any soil they had not cleaned off before arriving.  Also I know that U.S. international airports have an incinerator, on site, where all confiscated biological items, such as food items, especially fruits and vegetation, are destroyed.  So maybe the high fees that OZ charges is another way to discourage importing soiled items. 

And yet we, the US, have a lot of undesirable things come in to the country through shipping containers, especially, insects hitching a ride.

[Michael Ventura]

1 hour ago, Betty LaRue said:

And yet we, the US, have a lot of undesirable things come in to the country through shipping containers, especially, insects hitching a ride.

 

I'm sure you are correct, I bet only a small percentage of undesirable things get caught.   Once, while coming back home from Italy, I bought a salami in the airport, right next to my plane's gate.  I figured it had to be okay since it was being sold in the international departures terminal....but no, it was confiscated at customs at the U.S. airport, on arrival.  Those guys must love it when planes come in from Europe 😄

[spacecadet]

15 minutes ago, Michael Ventura said:

I bought a salami in the airport, right next to my plane's gate.  I figured it had to be okay since it was being sold in the international departures terminal....but no, it was confiscated at customs at the U.S. airport,

It would have been legal to take it into any EU country, of course, under the single market rules- so no reason for it not to be sold airside.

Now we're out of the EU we can't even take a tin of curry or a carton of milk across the Channel. Fortunately we can bring back lots of lovely French groceries- but there's a wine limit now.

Welcome to the Brexit, sir.

[Rebecca Ore]

Baked grain goods and roasted coffee pass  through US customs okay from my experience.  Flesh products (prions may not be killed at cooking temperatures) and any fruit or vegetables, nope.  Nicaraguan customs confiscates any seeds they find that haven't been legally imported with proper plant and seed health certificates or on the banned list, which I understand and agree with, but a lot of people whine about.

 

 

[Allan Bell]

 

Arrived back home from holiday at around 11am today and bungalow was still standing.

 

Allan

 

[Rebecca Ore]

Rainy season continues.   Luis got the house cleaned and dog walked before the afternoon downpour, and the landlord collected the rent.  Creative Cloud keeps reminding me about the Photoshop AI Beta, which I've updated to day and may end up deleting until the damned thing is on full release. Or maybe cancel Adobe and switch to the other ones only next year.

 

Rainy season continuing is a very good thing until sometime in October when we all get thoroughly tired of it.  The dry season comes on slowly, but the rainy season is like someone did a test shower or two, then flipped a switch.   It doesn't rain all day but does rain dump, then slows down, and the sun's out for a while.  Then it rains again.

[Mr Standfast]

 

🙂