The Facets Updates Newsletter

Life after death

   Few things had me as frustrated as the day my Canon camera broke down with the "E18" error. Well, today, I finally got to do something about it. I wish to announce that I just got the awesomest digital camera I have ever had.... Fixed! That's right, the Canon is fixed. Holy cow, I am just sooo extremely blissfully happy tonight, I dunno when I will be able to sleep again.. Oh my.. and I just realized the clock on my computer is way off. I need to update that... done. Well, that means the timestamps on these first pictures are 2 hours, 50 minutes fast.. Who cares? Back to photography! If nothing else could convince you, here is the first of hopefully at least another five thousand pictures yet to come.

Image captured: Saturday, March 13, 2004 7:26:20 PM (before time correction) Subject: The eagle sculpture, an anniversary present from my dad to my mom last year, sits on top of the entertainment center in the living room. I believe the two eagles represent my sister and brother, who graduated from Pasadena High School in 1991 and 1992 respectively.

Enjoy!

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Happy New Year!

   I know, the new year wishes are a little late, but its still new to this page, since I'm updating for the first time this year. For now, I'm adding backgrounds to some pages I thought needed it. I'll be rummaging around my computer to see what else I can throw in the other pages. The background for the Drawings page is nothing more than some doodling that had been retouched with the site's purple, and the Paint Art was a previously unused blue background I had drawn but later changed to purple. I'll be adding other backgrounds to other pages as I go along, but not fixing the dates until I have some new content for them as well.

   I have some more legos on display! I made pictures of my entire collection publicly available recently and am now trying to integrate it with the rest of the site's styles. The pictures were taken around August with my Canon and so they do not reflect some of the newer sets. I might use the new Digitrex or the Lego Cam to take pictures of the collection as it is now, but that might not happen for a long time, seeing as I want to straighten everything out in my room before I let it look like a Lego bomb went off in here.

   The Calculator Skins page has also been updated, reducing the images of the older skins, adding zip file links to the new ones, and adding two other "In progress" skin images.

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The Beginning

   How ironic is it that I would post this on the day before new Year's Eve? Anyway, my Christmas has been pleasant and rather surprising. My parents actually went to the trouble of not only getting me a new camera, but also a laptop! Wow. Anyway, I'm back on a Lego fix, so maybe I might actually update that section soon! hehe

   I spent most of yesterday with friends to celebrate Amy's 25th b-day! Happy b-day! *ahem* So I got to hang out with them, shared a little comics (they actually read more manga and webcomics than I could ever hope to catch up.), and go sightseeing while they search for the ultimate coffeehouse in Houston. I hadn't paid much attention to that before, y'know? Since Indy and Flip both came from Seattle, they are very picky about their coffeehouses and explained that they didn't call the majority of coffee-serving establishments here coffeehouses since, apparently, it is like "calling McDonald's a restaurant." They have told me that they have found some places with great coffee but terrible decor, and vice versa. They appear to have found one that was to their liking though. I rather appreciated the use of Greek decor, drawings of columns and the like, but not as much as the way the sunlight filtered through the second floor rails into the rest of the building.

   Anyway, I snapped a couple pictures there and just about everywhere else on the trip. Amy is not in the pictures; last time I snapped a camera shutter in her direction, she chased me ranting death threats that, being from her, were very serious ones. I think she only let me live because (while I was running for my life, mind you) I proved to her my Nikon had no film in it. Ahhh... those days. *shivers*

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The end?

   Today, I mourn the loss of a beloved camera. My Canon PowerShot S20 digital camera has officially been considered a lost cause after the dreaded E18 error, one I had never known until today. Today, just before 4 PM Central time, I was preparing to take picture #5443, a shot of a large jet preparing to land on Ellington field, when all of a sudden it started whirring oddly. I noticed teh battery indicator was low, so I powered off the camera to change the battery, but the camera's lens did not retract. Nothing new, especially if the batteries are extremely low. But then when I inserted a fresh battery, the lens did not correct itself. It remained sticking out, with the indicator "E18" on the top LCD display. Hitting the shutter button only repeated that heartwrenching act. It was broken, and my manual efforts would not cure it. I have had broken camera scares before, but this one was over the top. A second opinion from the internet screamed out words like "total loss", "permanent", "dead", "last picture", and others that cannot be repeated here. So, today, I post this in memory of my camera. I intend to provide another page in memory of my camera and the more than five thousand pictures it had given me in its service.

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