The Great American Photo Tour: Hold on to your hats folks, Tuesday begins the first of my great American Photo Tours. May 31 I will begin a 15 stretch away from home (lot of business) in which I plan to shoot like crazy in the little free time that I have. I will start the trip in Lousiville, head to Columbus and then kind of back and forth between Cincinnati and Columbus. At this point I am hoping to be home June 15, but I won't hold my breath. Watch the site for (hopefully) some great pictures.

Syndicated Humor: Are you like me, missing the good ol' days of syndicate humor articles? I would love to do this, but I get funny like I get hiccups. Every now and then it is just there, but I couldn't make it happen if I had to.

I was looking up something on the net this afternoon and I stumbled across Bruce Cameron (who is now famous so he refers to him self as W.Bruce Cameron, probably an attempt to make sure that he isn't confused with the thousands of other Bruce Camerons out there). I remember a couple of his articles and read his "8 rules for dating my daughter". I never put two and two together to realize that this was the premise for "8 Simple Rules" the show featuring the late John Ridder. Kudos to Cameron, too bad he stopped working.

Reality Check: I consider myself a pretty fair photographer. Certainly not the best, but I think better than average. I joined PhotoBlogs.org a year back and since the beginning of April have been posting a daily photograph. They have a ranking system that gives you a "point" whenever someone makes your site their favorite. An honor to be sure. The top two sites have over 1,000 favorites (people saying that they favor their sites), the next dozen are all over 500, and you need 40 just to make it in the top 500 web sites (164 would get me in the top 100).

Tonight I discovered that many folks have discovered a neat little way of getting some favorites, actually there are two. Neither of them apparently has anything to do with making good images. I had to stop and really think about why it is that I do this. Is it so that I have a high ranking or is it to share my pictures with the world. I really want to improve in my art, so I welcome feedback, although I rarely get any. By placing a new picture on the site each day (haven't missed yet), I am making a committment to myself and the world that I will produce fresh work daily. I have "4" favorites this evening. I am flattered. I hope that maybe by the end of the year I have 10, but I will make this committment: I won't cheat the system to get 10. If you happen to be one of the 4 - thanks. Gratefully Brandon has turned off the identities of those who vote for me so I don't know. This keeps me from "exchanging" favorites. If you voted for me, the chances are very good that I didn't vote for you since there are 10,000 photoblogs.

On to better images!!!

Best journalist piece that I have ever read: Here. Excellent writing Ms. Coulter!

Blown shot: I was working in my hotel room and heard some noise outside. I am staying next to the Blue Ash fire department and they were getting ready to practice using the jaws-of-life on a wrecked car. I thought that might make a neat picture so I started to get ready to go out when I saw all the guys running to one of the trucks. Thirty seconds later the place is empty. Oh well.

To Blog, or not to Blog; That is the Question. I have so much to share, but because of increased readership I dare not. Back in the old days I would blather about this and that, knowing that no one really read anything. Things are different now.

Lately I have been waking very early excited about the start of the day, a renewed interest in life. This morning was no different. After laying there for the traditional 10 minutes into the first snooze alarm we both shot up to start the day. I have so much to do today. I have the usualy plethora of e-mails that need to be done (6am, they are really mostly done) and then packing for the next couple of days. Today takes me to Indianapolis and tonight I will drive over to Cincinnati. I have interviews scheduled throughout the day and then another career fair tomorrow night. I am going to try to bug out early so that I can get home in time to take the family to the midnight showing of "Revenge of the Sith", the final installment of Star Wars! Friday is a day off. Mary and I will celebrate 21 years of blissful marriage. I think that we will go shoot some pictures at Bernheim Forest, then we are taking the dinner train in Bardstown at night. It is a murder mystery train, so that should prove to be a fun adventure. Should be home around midnight.

Off to Indy.

Color My World: I can't help all of the flower shots lately, they are just so beautiful. My wife has done such a great job in our garden and all she can see is the weeds, I can only see the beauty. I look at some of the great street photographers out there and am glad for their contributions, but I also am sad that they don't have the beauty of nature to shoot.

When I first got my Canon 20d I had aspirations of some great black and white photographs. I love black and white, especially Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and Henri Cartier-Besson. But the more and more that I shoot the more that I like the color that I am seeing, thus all of the flower pictures.

Talked with Mary and decided that I am going to get a couple of my pictures framed. The first is going to be the horses at sunrise, I have really come to love this picture. I am thinking that I may give it as a gift to some of my Kentucky friends, but not sure that anyone will really want it. I gave a few prints a couple of years ago and no one said a word except my beloved. So, I might just frame it and keep it to myself. Who knows.

I was listening to a business presentation (CD) and the speaker made an interesting statement. According to research by Yahoo!, the fast growing sector of Internet users is that of people over 55 years of age. On the other end of the scale are those in elementry school, in which research shows that 85% of all kids in elementry school are active with e-mail. Wow, what a change in the times. I was thinking about this the other day when one of my kids asked me a question. My parents would have proudly exclaimed "look it up" which meant "go grab an encyclopedia and get your answer". I said "Look it up" and they went to the computer. Google has replaced the encyclopedia in our home, and I expect in most.

I am moving to a Treo 600 in the next couple of months. My company is transition its field managers to the new phone/camera/PDA with Verizon. My hopes is that the local provider can get theirs in stock at the same time and I can switch to them. The reason that I want the Treo is that it has a full fledged e-mail program. I could now check my e-mail anywhere at anytime. Since I prefer e-mail as my main method of communication this will really make my life better. The other side is the web access to go Google anything that I want.

Digitally Delighted: I am constantly surprised at who is reading my web site, people that I really didn't think about. I made a couple of different comments this past week which were picked up and commented on by people I know. In both cases I assumed that they didn't know what they knew from my website and when I asked them how they knew what they were talking about they said that read it on my site. Wow, I am flattered.

Back from a quick hop to Cincinnati. Man I love that city. I could have stayed all week and not got enough. The trip down memory lane was incredible. I realized that while I had been back a lot over the past 20 years, I hadn't been back to the college. It has changed so much, and all for the better. When I graduated I knew that they were going to demolish "Old Main" and build a new student enter, but I never dreamed that it would be that nice. I think that I need to schedule a trip there when I can spend a couple of hours on campus.

Part of my trip to the Quenn City was to take in a business forum. I learned some great marketing techniques that involve e-mail (not spam) and photography. Really made me wish that I was a field manager instead of the guy that hires them. I know that 80% of the people who attended will never apply one single thing that they learned there. Frustrating.

The best part of the trip was coming home though. I had suffered two nights of extreme insomnia (2 hours a night) and I jsut crashed last night as soon as I got home. I slept a blissful 11 hours and feel back to my old self.

Skip This, I'm Rambling: I added a "Contact" link to the site this morning. I realized that I didn't have one and I wanted people to be able to contact me if they didn't already know how. I suppose that I will now get a ton of Spam, but I have pretty good filters and only get about one a week. Before the filters I got 40 a day, so this is not that big a deal.

Can't sleep tonight (this morning). I am working out complex math equations having to do with probablility and business trending. Just when I think that I have something down I realize that I forgot something and have to start all over. I really should take a class on statistical analysis, but I have a pretty full plate right now. I read in a magazine yesterday that Kutzweiler (father of the modern music synthesizer) has developed an investment business based on his pattern recognition models. The theory is that if you trend things long enough they develop patterns and you can predict what they are going to do going forward. Lots of people have guessed at this, but as far as I know he is the only true mathematician to actually apply the principles to real cash. He has done it for two years, gaining 80% and 90% returns. Sounds like he figured it out to me! He is putting a hedge fund in play, I think the wise investor would jump on that. But, if everyone does then who assumes the losses? Never mind, no one invest, I surely won't (wink).

Do you think that Waren Buffett wakes up and thinks about playing monopoly? I really like this guy. He is smart, and he is pro-America and pro-capitalism. Same reasons why I like Sam Walton, Dave Thomas, Bill Gates, and Zig Ziglar. They have it figured out (okay, I know a couple of those guys are dead, but they HAD it figured out before they left). But, in each case there are millions who protest them or their companies. That is the downside with that kind of fame. I read an article in Fortune today about Wal-Mart and the whole article was about how they are battling so many lawsuits and image problems. Wendys? Man did they struggle with that whole finger-in-the-chili thing, even though 99% believe the woman who found the finger was probably the one who put it there. I now make it a habit to drop a dollar once a week on a bowl of chili.

Got to leave in 3 hours, better hit the sack.

Movie Review: For those who know me, I love movies. Can hardly get enough. I even like musicals, if they have some acting and a purpose. For instance, I like My Fair Lady because of its treatment of the Pygmalian Effect. I love The Sound of Music because of the desire for a man to serve his country, but stay faithful to his morals, as well as the struggle that Maria has with her faith.

But this weekend I was forced against my will to watch Phantom of the Opera...3 times! There is nothing but a lot of singing. Not a bad story plot considering it was written nearly 100 years ago, but all they do is sing! Its like an opera. Yuck!

Off to Cincinnati for a couple of days. Going to try to get down to Fountain Square early Tuesday morning to shoot a couple fo pictures of the fountain. They are considering moving it. How stupid is that? Its like moving the Eiffel Tower or the London Bridge. Oh, that's right, they did move the London Bridge - its now in Arizona. Okay, but admit it, that is stupid.

My Letter to Senator Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader:

Sir,

I applaud your courage to publicly call the President of the United States a “loser”. I feared that when Senator Daschle lost his seat that the new Democratic leadership would abandon its policies of obstructionism and high level name calling. But you have set new marks! I would have thought after the humiliating defeat of the last election that the Democrats would have tried something new like bipartisanship, optimism, or at the very least trying to come up with a plan for America. What courage you have to continue to lead your party down the same path. My sincerest gratitude. I will continue to praise your leadership wherever I can.

Rick Abbott

Cave City, KY - USA