Amy in the sun

Amy in the sun.

When I was in college, I took a photography class. That was when a camera actually used film and you had to develop the film using chemicals in a dark room. I took a series of pictures (virtually portraits) of most everyone in my family individually standing in the backyard facing the sun. The lighting was fantastic but each one had to squint. So it wasn't my most successful project.

To mark Amy's birthday, one of her portraits from that series is posted above. Happy Birthday Amy!

Devils Vanquished

The outcome was not favorable for the Blue Devils today.  In a rare 12 noon start, the Devils were not fully awake for most of the game, which ended in a 54-21 defeat by the Robert Morris Colonials.

The weather was challengingly cool (45F) and cloudy during the game.  Perhaps that's what kept attendance down to 2004.  Hardly any fans sat on the Students/Visitors side. Richard and I sat on the Home side because that was closest to the refreshment booth and restrooms.  We should've worn gloves. Instead, I bought a cup of hot coffee (2X) mostly to hold to warm our hands. Toward the end of the game, we moved to the Student stands because it was getting the sunshine (which made it slightly warmer.

Richard bundled up during Half-time.

RMU is the most distant school in the conference that we play. It is located in Moon Township outside Pittsburgh, PA. Perhaps today's early start time was to offset the long commute the Colonials had to return home.

In addition to the two (2) cups of hot coffee (which I only had a few sips), Richard enjoyed a pulled pork sandwich (heavenly aroma) and I had a Frito pie.

Usually, there is some sort of free promotional item given away. We have received illuminated devils horns, rally towel, and back sack. This time nothing was distributed at the gate but later the mascot passed out rally signs.  There was not much use for the "Beat RMU" side.

  

In addition to cheerleaders and dancers, the Blue Devils have a very fine marching band (for its small size). In the picture below you can see how empty the (Student/Visitor) stands are.

Two other humorous episodes that we witnessed during the game: a young kid next to us got his picture on the scoreboard via the fan camera but he was holding his rally sign upside down (until I told him). Despite the success of the Colonials,they were not perfect. In one case, the quarterback threw an incomplete pass and hit one of his players standing on the sideline who went down for about 5 minutes. Hope it wasn't a season ending injury.

Links:
http://www.ccsubluedevils.com/sports/fball/2013-14/boxscores/20131109_90r1.xml
http://www.rmu.edu/

I Voted Today!

Today was my first live in-person election at my new/current residence. Last year I had to do an absentee ballot because I was out of town for work.  This year I was working from home. Since it was a beautiful sunny day, I walked to the middle school which is my voting place. It was about a 10 minute walk. We use the computer card (fill in the bubble) and then insert it into a machine that looks suspiciously like a shredder.

In my town, there wasn't much to vote for: only the town council and the school board. The results were rather depressing since all of the incumbents were re-elected.  There is only 1 new person on the council.

My criteria for voting this time was:

     * No incumbents;
     * No Democrats.

I wanted to also rule out supporting lawyers but that would've eliminated almost everyone. What a sad state of affairs. Status Quo.

Ironically, election day coincided with Guy Fawkes Day but nothing happened (Thank God). Later, I heard about a Million Mask March. Pretty clever. I especially enjoyed the "We're Gonna Trip the Light" video clip by Matt.

Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes_Night
http://millionmaskmarch.org/
http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/

Trick-or-Treat (Not)

This is what the school website looked for much of the incident.

On Monday November 4th, Lynn called me at 12:09 p.m. while I was at the office. She informed me that she and Richard were safe and no longer on campus but something weird was going on. She had arrived to pick him up and was going to meet him at the Student Center.

She parked the car nearby and as she walked toward the building, a loud siren started to sound and there was an announcement to get inside immediately and stay away from windows. Lynn retreated to her nearby car just as Richard arrived. He hopped in and they got out of there. She called me to let me know they were safe so I wouldn't worry if I heard/saw anything on the news. But she had no idea what was going on.

My initial thought was that someone screwed up and a drill had inadvertently gone live. However, when I went to the school website, it was gone and had been replaced by a stark white screen with blood red letter screaming "Campus Emergency" (see picture above).

The whole thing lasted about three (3) hours. The information didn't change much for essentially the first hour and half. Something about a suspicious person on campus that looked to be carrying a sword and may have a gun.  The next update indicated that a suspect had been "contained" in a dormitory, James Hall. (see map above),  For a while, there was the implication that there might be hostages.

The police were reported to be onsite only they looked more like the military (see pictures above). Ironically, an active shooter training workshop was being conducted a few miles away.

After a couple hours, a number of students got bored and started leaving the buildings. Finally, it was announced that three (3) people of "student-age" were in custody.  Later, it was announced that the suspicious person was actually a student returning from a weekend at another campus.  He was still dressed in his Halloween costume (a ninja fighter) and had gone to his dorm to drop off his stuff and change clothes. For the first hour or so, he was unaware that he was the center of attention.  They eventually charged him with breach of peace.

The suspicious person taking elevator to his dorm room.

The next day, the university released security pictures of the student.  They were quickly able to pinpoint point his location because of his security swipe card needed to enter the building.  The Huffington Post had a pretty good summary (but inaccurately indicated a BB gun was present).

As you can see from the picture, the student is wearing a hoodie. What may not be apparent is that he is the same race as Trayvon Martin. So far the race card has not been played even though there are some striking similarities (although no one was killed at CCSU).

Links:
http://www.ct.gov/demhs/ical/eventDetail_page.asp?date_ID=C9CECBCFCD83CDCACC
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/06/ccsu-lockdown-ninja-costume_n_4222689.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trayvon_Martin

Fr Hattie Email Letter

The above letter arrived today via email. Fr. Hattie's last letter arrived in the mail and was printed on a half sheet of paper with text on the opposite side about the terrorist attack on the mall in Nairobi, Kenya in September. Since Father lived in Nairobi for a while (after Uganda) I emailed him about it.

As you can see from the picture of the letter, Father still types his letters and then has them scanned as a jpeg file.  I did a bit of basic tweaking to improve the readability of the file-I think I did a pretty good job so I am not going to transcribe the text in this post. If you want a larger image, click on the picture above (you can also right click to save a copy to your computer). Call me if you need help doing this.

As you will notice as you read Father's letter, a bit of ingenuity is required in order to decipher some of the typos. But you should be able to figure it out based on context.

Links:
http://ricketwrite.blogspot.com/2013/10/back-from-africa-uganda.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westgate_shopping_mall_attack