What Chuck Does

I shot a 108 on a par 60. FML.

Played Scholl Canyon Golf course today. For the life, I could not figure out what was going on with my stroke.

Amy+Ed Hardy+Strobist=WOW!

This is the first picture that I’ve created in a long time where I’ve said to myself, “Wow!”

It usually comes as a direct result of capturing something precious. A moment in time that can not be replicated. Often it’s quite literal, like a hummingbird turned the right way to create saturated highlights. Other times, it’s an emotional gesture that is purely ephemeral. And beyond that there are those moments that are completely accidental where you just get, lucky.

This moment was a combination of all of the above and the culmination of a lot of work in these past few weeks on the computer and on the camera. Here she is in all her glory:

Booyeah. Game over. I hit the proverbial nail on the head with this shot.

If you’ve been following my blog for the last 3 days you’ll see the various influences that went into making this shot. This is basically the Amy version of the Anne Hathaway shot. Except in this instance, Amy is better looking than Anne LOL. Then there’s the B&W post-processing that I’ve been doing. Lastly there’s the new border/signature that I’m adding to all new pics.

Here’s another shot from the set. My brother likes this “sepia-like” version better than the colored-hat version above:
 

Of course, I always pull back the curtain on the setup when I remember :)

There’s actually a 3rd flash not shown above. It was my Lumiquest Softbox III on the ground, but it wasn’t added until later for the colored-hat picture.

There you have it. Probably gonna be my favorite picture of the year!

Mustard Festival 2009

The 2009 Mustard Festival was hosted at the Robert Mondavi Vineyards in Napa Valley marking the beginning of the mustard season. The festival invited several vineyards to showcase their wines. Of course with good wine, there has to be good food! Hamburgers, steak sandwiches, pizza, pasta, ice cream were all available from the various vendors. Here are some of the pictures from the Festival!

Note: the following pictures were all edited using Lightroom 2

Shot this while walking to the Robert Mondavi property. We probably parked a 1/2 mile away.

Lots of mustard on display!

Yugi and Catherine showing off the mustard. The two of them in the same frame provides a challenging exposure because of their skin tonalities.

Dai, Emily and her little nephew.

Where they keep all the good stuff!

Here’s the link to the other pictures!

Grease at The Pantages featuring Taylor Hicks

We watched Grease at The Pantages Theatre yesterday. It wasn’t nearly as good as Rent. The only really good thing about it was that it featured Taylor Hicks as Teen Angel (singing the song Beauty School Dropout). Unfortunately Hicks only had 1 song in the musical, but he did sing a song at the end of the show promoting his new CD release.

There was supposed to be a picture here but I don’t know what happened to it. I guess it never sent from my phone.

The Mystery of the Crying Wall & the Water Heater

3 weeks ago our housekeeper discovered that our water heater had been leaking water into the base pan (the collecting tray at the bottom of the unit). Fortunately, the pan did not appear to overflow thus I was not alarmed. In the picture above you can see the large 40 gallon water heater. The water heater is directly above my room in the attic. In the picture below I zoomed-in for a shot of the pan collecting really gross water (yes there are little pieces of rat shit floating in the pan):
 

Today, the gardeners discovered that the wall outside my bedroom was “crying”. Okay, it wasn’t really “crying” like pictures of Mary (Mother of Jesus) you hear in the news, but the wall was turning orange (mildew) and water was visibly leaking from the wall at the rate of 1 drop per 5 seconds.

Here’s a close-up of the water accumulating in the dirt from the “crying wall”:
 

Great. A leaky wall, what the hell does that mean?

I called my mom’s real estate manager suggested that I contact a General Contractor to tear down the wall and get at the pipes responsible for the leak. Meanwhile my housekeeper tells me that yesterday while cleaning my bathroom the hot water came out orange into the sink.

Great. Orange hot water… but I use my hot water everyday!

So I have 3 clues:

1. Orange hot water inside my bathroom
2. A “crying wall” outside my bathroom
3. A leaky water heater located above my bedroom

Could they all be independent issues or could they perhaps be all connected? The proximity of the faulty heater made me incredibly suspicious and doubtful that these were independent issues. So I called a plumber/water heater specialist first because no matter what I would need to replace the leaky water heater. Hopefully this specialist would be able to examine the leaking wall.

The answer? Rust.

If you look carefully at the image below taken of the 40 gallon water heater, you’ll find that the water heater is from 1989. That’s almost 20 years ago! They’re only supposed to last 10-12 years. 

What’s happening is that the tank has rusted/corroded from the inside. Therefore the rust is turning my water orange (1 mystery solved). The rust has corroded through the tank (likely through a fitting or a small place in the tank) and thus has created a small leak. This leak causes hot water to accumulate on the bottom of the catch-tray (2 mysteries solved). The tray however never overflows because there is a drain attached to a pipe.

Guess where the drain pipe leads? Yup. It leads down the attic along my bedroom wall to the outside of the house. This pipe is made of PVC and is leaking from a joint from the attic and causing water to drip through the wall causing the leaky/crying wall (3 mysteries solved).

The solution? Fix the water heater and all the problems go away. We’ll probably have to replace the broken PVC pipe connected to the catch-tray, but as long as the water heater doesn’t leak, the pipe won’t be in use and the wall should stop “crying”.

By the way, we have 2 water heaters (each 40 gallons) side-by-side in the attic. Only 1 is leaking. Both are about 20 years old. The specialist who provided the diagnosis also provided us an invoice of the repair for a new water heater (tankless) and installation:

Yup. $4,789 to replace 2 old water heaters and install a new one. Fortunately, this heater comes with up to a $1,500 rebate from the government and a $300 rebate from the manufacturer. That brings down the total cost of new water heater to just under $3,000 assuming we can get the rebates.
 

The story continues but most if not all the mysteries are solved. Hopefully the damage in the walls is not extensive enough to warrant a repair job once the leak has been resolved!

Update: I got a new estimate at $700 less than the estimate above. Furthermore I found out that the Noritz 931 needs more BTU than our gas lines can provide (where we are installing the water heater). Also I found out that the Noritz 931 does NOT qualify for the $1,500 federal rebate. Nor the $150 manufacturer’s rebate.

But the 841 does. We’re installing it on Wednesday!

Busy

I can explain my lack of posts recently:

• I am taking Adobe Lightroom 2 classes (after which I’ll take Adobe PS CS4 classes)
• I purchased a new laptop (soon unveiled here)
• Archive/databasing pictures - when you have over 80GB of pictures and growing fast, this becomes quite the dilemma
• Over 7.5 HOURS of exercise this week - surfing, tennis (twice), lifting (twice), volleyball… and the week’s not even over!
• Selling junk around the house - taking pictures and posting them online for sale

I’ll be back with pictures and posts.

Too much good stuff…

Family portraits, Darda, Robert Mondavi vineyard/Mustard Festival, “Get in the chopper!” Car shooting, chilling at Emily/Dai’s house watching youtube vidoes, smoking Cohibas with 18 YO Macallan, foot massages at 99 Ranch, waking up late, no fondue for you! Waiting 2.75 hours at Boiling Crab?!?!

Too much good stuff.

Pictures to follow over the course of the next week. Hope I have time to post-process!

If not, here’s a teaser:

Oops, too bad… you need to be part of facebook and actually I can’t link you to our private photos.

I’ll get them up soon!

I’m trying to turn my PS3 into a Media Center…

With TVersity but I’m still trying to figure out why some of my files are visible and some of them are not…

“We were not supposed to leave…”

What if it doesn’t get any better than this. What if we already have everything that we need and ever wanted? What if our destiny is here and not there? Should we stay? Should we go? What if the life that we imagine we’d have by leaving is not truly what we’ll get?

Those are the questions that the Oceanic 6 asked themselves before leaving the island. Now that we see what their lives have become it is becoming ever apparent that they were not supposed to leave the island…

I ate a McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish sandwich…

because I miss my wife, and that’s what she likes to get at McDonald’s… :)