Drip... Drip... DRIP!!!

Opening The 7D Box!

<- Click here

Early Saturday morning it arrived. A decent sized brown box with a good feel to it. I was just finishing a workout, so I left it vibrating on the living room coffee table while I sweated out the last super sets. Yeah - vibrate - I could feel the things inside of that package ... their aura was buzzing me right through the wrappings.

Okay, showered, dressed, I Xacto-knifed the thing open in my studio. It was crammed with another box, two 8 gig storage cards, a spare battery with charger, and an envelope with B&H's three year warranty. Okay... okay... then inside of that Canon box were all sorts of cables, CDs, instruction manuals, a strap, another batter with its charger and a bubble wrapped white pouch.

And in the pouch? Heh... heh.... My brand new, black Canon 7D body. And just a tad of disappointment!

"Huh?" you wonder. Disappointment? Well, just the slightest amount. See, when I traded up from my Canon 20D to the 40D, the body was different. Not enormously, but more than subtly. The 7D though is 90% of the 40D body. The LCD is larger, and the buttons are arranged slightly differently. But the real changes are in the processors, the increase by 50% in the megapixels, and the button just above the lens mount... the button that turns this machine into a HDTV quality video camera. I kinda wish though that they'd restyled it a bit differently from the other D-Series cameras, perhaps a tad more like the Mark-series. Canon could use a good Italian or Macintosh designer.

And now for the learning curve. Canon's played a bunch with the firmwear of this baby. And I have to customize it for the different sort of shooting conditions I do. And there were a ton of chores to do today (Sunday) which left me with not too much time to read the new manual. And now it's late and I've gotta be up at 4:55AM for the gym tomorrow, so it's bed time. And the workweek looms full since we are trying to get a bunch of stuff finished before I leave for two weeks next month on the Peru trip. Plus I'm giving a big speech on the regional economy next week, and leading an executive webinar the last week of the month. So with the large feature piece for the February edition I'm writing on the changes in legal and accounting business law for 2010... things are mucho busy.

So... when to get out with this new thing? Will it be before next weekend? Darn, dunno... even though it's vibrating while I sit here and type this. Why is it the world intrudes upon our play? Sigh.... Stay tuned... I'll keep ya posted.

Obsession?

OK enough. Took that one down.... There's a limit to my ego puffery. If you missed the image.... You are among the lucky. Heh heh heh..... <- Click here

We're off for a visit to Peru in February. At least some of the adventure will be way up in the Andes at both Machu Pichu and Lake Titicaca. And I'd not been to the gym for seven years and my job has me sitting in front of computer screens, eating rich meals (not to mention the odd cocktail), well - at my age this trip can challenge this old body.

So.. so.... fifteen weeks ago I started to beat myself back into some sort of shape. Im not just dieting - I am TRAINING! Yea! There's six months between July when this started, and February when we leave. Now is about half way there. So... here's the old guy halfway back into a six month date with running, biking, swimming, and pumping iron thingees between working the gym's devilishly designed devices to pulverize fat!

I've shed thirty pounds and dropped four inches off my pants. But, the holidays are going to tease me big time and they will come at that critical time just before we leave. I know that they can puncture all will power and once lost the momentum will be hard to retrieve in January. Sooooo.... I'm determined to have such a head of steam going into the things that I'll power right through them without stuffing my mouth and body full O'fat.

All of this, scooped atop job has left my muse kind of dazed and reeeely reduced my art attention span. In fact work and training has eaten away the most productive hours leaving me sort of dimwitted in front of art projects.

Hopefully as endurance returns for the trip, it will also return for doing images. But in case you wondered why there's been less posting activity here... just take a look at my album cover and you can see where the creative time's been invested. February's just around the corner.... And by the way... it will be hot summer in Peru. More reason to be totally fit for the Andes, right? Sigh...