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Monday, 01 May 2006, 19:30:39 EDT

I suppose it was because the semester was so stressful, but it is almost surreal that my last classes of the semester were today. Now I have to complete a take home final and finish preparing for one on Thursday. I have a review sheet with seventeen, tough, questions; the final will be comprised of about eight of these questions. Just a couple more days...

Yesterday, my brother and I went to the Braves game. He wanted to see a game before he heads back to Montana (tomorrow). There was a threat of rain but it held off. It was unseasonably cold and overcast, but the sun broke through the clouds enough to keep it comfortable when not sitting under an overhang. We had awesome seats, too. About two weeks ago I found out that one of my class mates works at a bar at Turner Field. Last Monday I asked him about the price of drinks at the place where he works and what the name of it is. Turns out, he bar tends at the 755 Club. To my surprise he said he would bring me a couple passes to the club. I am glad he did (thank you again Stephen); the club is really nice and the seats outside were open (probably because of the weather). So, we got to sit right beside the left field foul pole for most of the game. Before the seventh inning we decided to go check out the seats for which Brad had purchased tickets. They were great too; they were down close to the field, over the Braves dugout. The only downside to those seats was having to look over people to see the game. I had a great time at the game and got a bit of sun. Thanks for the ticket, Brad :)

Unlike last year, I was smart enough to take my camera. I took a lot lot of pictures. This was the second weekend in a row where I have actually used my camera. I hadn't been using it for a while because I feel silly when I am taking pictures. But I do find it nice to be able to take them. After looking at my pictures from these past two weekends, I realized just how crappy my camera really is. I would like to get a Nikon D50, but they are really expensive. I like to think that if I had a good camera, like that D50, then I would be more eager to learn how to take good photographs and not be so anxious while taking them. Plus, even my crappy pictures would be a lot better than they are now. For example, I managed to take a picture of Jeff Francoeur making the winning, diving, catch yesterday, but the picture doesn't have the effect that it should because my camera can't take pictures that far away.

While we were in Atlanta I made a decision about this summer. I planning to take at least a couple days off for little vacations up to Atlanta. I think on one of them I will go up and check out the capital building and the surrounding area. Maybe go to the zoo on another. Just something to get out of Stockbridge/Morrow and relax. They should be cheap one day vacations. Park at the closest MARTA station, take the train into town, and then walk to the rest of my destinations. Should be fun and make for good pictures; though, not too good considering my horrible camera.

Speaking of pictures, I decided to go with Zen Photo to manage my photo gallery. I will write more about why I made this decision later this week or early next week; it is a long post in itself (I think) and I really must be getting started on my test that is due Wednesday. The short version is Zen Photo matches my requirements more than any other third party product and looks to be headed in a favorable direction with development. I may even make a couple additions to it myself this summer. But I'm not sure about that. The biggest reason I went with the third party product is lack of time. But more on that later. As of right now, I have populated the gallery with my pictures from yesterday's game and some pictures I have taken on campus. I probably won't be putting any more up for a while because the software doesn't support subalbums yet. I was planning on waiting for this feature before making my gallery "live," but I wanted to share my pictures from yesterday and development is kind of slow (at least the main developer is still in college as well).