MCC Relief Sale: We had a good time

Rachel  & I went to the annual MCC Relief Sale in Rocky Ford, Colorado this past weekend (Friday and Saturday).  It’s for a good cause.  Our sister-in-law Deanna was running the Ten Thousand Villages booth (actually a small building within the Rocky Ford fairgrounds),  and so we decided to be there to help out.  It was our second time in two years.  They needed help unpacking and setting up various home décor and crafts items to be sold.  These are items handcrafted by people in various countries around the world.  The money pays these folks a living wage, and in return, we make a little bit of money to be added to the relief effort.

I can’t claim credit for a lot of work, but we helped out for a day.  Deanna and her husband Calvin did a lot even before this weekend.  A lot of people did more than we did, but we contributed and it all helps.  I think Deanna appreciated having the help.  Last year was particularly difficult.  This time, we had more help and the work went faster.

The main part of the sale is the auction, which raises the bulk of the money from the event.  Various items are donated and then auctioned off.  The sale stated off with a brief prayer and then the first item auctioned was a loaf of handmade bread.  It went for  $1850 and then we immediately donated back to be auctioned off by the slide.

The next two buyers bought a slice of bread and a jar of apple butter.  The price was $525 each buyer.  I lost track of what the other slices went for, but the loaf of bread raised over $3200 in total.  It was a great start to the auction.

Various items were sold in the auction, but the higher ticket items are typically the quilts.  That’s what everyone waits to see.  My father-in-law bought three of them, and I believe one of my brothers-in-law also bought three.

Calvin donated beef and pork for the sale.  He had it processed and then loaded freezers (which he also had to round up and haul to the sale) packed full to be sold off.  This stuff luckily goes pretty fast.  Rachel & I bought $100 worth went the sale started Friday evening at 17:00.

Among items sold besides things at the auction or at Ten Thousand Villages, were hamburger meat, sausage, pies, apple butter, apple cider, cakes, cookies, various potted plants, handmade craft items, nuts, fruit, ice cream, soda pop, sausage sandwiches, you-name-it; all proceeds going towards the total relief fund.

I took lots of photographs during the weekend.  Some were on the way to Rocky Ford and some were on the way home.  Some were on Calvin and Deanna’s farm, most were at the sale.  Some were family and/or friends.  Some were of total strangers.  I hopefully got some good ones out of the weekend.

Rachel & I took a different route home so that we could avoid some construction on the road between Lamar, Colorado and Boise City, Oklahoma.  In retrospect, it still would’ve been faster if we’d stuck to that route, but we drove east through Kansas instead.  It was a fun drive, but it took longer and it wore us out.  I’m still recovering.

We drove through Greensburg, Kansas, that was virtually wiped out by an EF5 tornado May 4, 2007.  http://www.kansas.com/static/slides/050507tornadoaerials/

We remembered driving through Greensburg many times in the past, and what we saw was devastation not unlike that of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.  We had heard of a lot of “green” rebuilding, but we didn’t see it.  I guess if we’d driven around town more we might’ve seen it, but we stayed on the main road through town and never saw anything we recognized except for a tire storage building that seemed to have weathered the storm due to its rounded shape and low profile.

Most of my photos of Greensburg didn’t come out well as I was shooting from a moving vehicle and had a slow shutter speed.  It was a bit of a disappointment, but most disappointing is not seeing any signs of the “green building” efforts.  We saw lots of prefab temporary buildings, including those used as the town hospital.  About the only thing we recognized was the high school, that somehow managed to remain after the storm.

I could go on about Greensburg, but there’s no point.  We do hope to return when there’ll be more signs of progress in the rebuilding efforts.

We drove through Dodge City, which is where my brother-in-law Bob and his family live.  I photographed some earth homes just west of Dodge, and a bit disappointed that the photographs weren’t better.  Somehow, the camera was set on that slow shutter speed and it really impacted my photo efforts.  If we hadn’t been in the car, I would’ve probably spent more efforts in making sure my camera settings were better.

We drove through Harper, Kansas, which Rachel has some family history there.  Her family lived there for a while, and her brother Bob built and lived in a geodesic dome (in a tree row on the farm)(with a dirt floor) which still stands today.  Most photos taken in Harper didn’t come out well because of car movement and slow shutter speed.  I did get a photo of a pretty church just east of town.  Somehow, that came out better, although not pristine.

Despite my photography mistakes on the way home, I had great photographic success in Rocky Ford, and so from a photography perspective, I considered it a success.  I hope to return to Greensburg and Harper in the future.  I hope it won’t be a distant future. (See http://www.flickr.com/photos/les_stockton/sets/)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/les_stockton/sets/72157608187289572/


http://www.flickr.com/photos/les_stockton/sets/72157608195740787/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/les_stockton/sets/72157608189035696/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/les_stockton/sets/72157608189035706/

On the way to Rocky Ford, we passed a wind farm west of Ft. Supply, and then we found another north of Springfield, Colorado (if I remember right).  We briefly stopped to change drivers and I noticed a truck that had a couple of blades on its trailer that it was obviously hauling to the wind farm.  I managed to get a couple of good photographs (just for fun).  Seeing these on the ground, before they’re lifted into the air, you see how truly large these wind turbines can be.  On the ground, these blades seem huge. 


Oh, a side-note: if you’re ever in Boise City, Oklahoma, try to get some of No Man’s Land Beef Jerky.  I normally got the hottest stuff I can, but in this case, the mild has such a fantastic flavor.  I recommend this jerky.  It is the best that I have found, other than what we occasionally make at home.  They have a website and it can be ordered on-line if you can’t find it in a local store.  I do know it’s available in Boise City because we bought some and thoroughly enjoyed it.  (http://www.nmlbeefjerky.com/)

There is another MCC Sale scheduled in early November.  This one will be in Enid, Oklahoma and we are actually considering attending this one.  We have so many things going on, that I’m not sure if we can work it in, but we’d like to go.

500mm mirror lens

IMG_0864_1600x1067
Originally uploaded by Les_Stockton

This is a shot of my 500mm mirror lens sitting next to a 75-300mm zoom lens. The zoom, oddly enough, is the longer lens. The mirror lens is much more compact and less conspicuous. The thing is, 500mm is harder to steady and to take good photographs with, unless you have a monopod or tripod, or else a really high shutter speed.

I bought the mirror lens because I was hoping to get around a restriction at some of the concert halls, where they see the longer lens and decide that it's "professional" equipment and wont let me in with it. They seem fine with the standard 55mm lens, and since this mirror lens is just a tiny bit longer than a standard prime lens, my hope is that I'll be able to get into concerts with it.

The lens has great power, obviously. I have an extension tube to double it's power to a 1000mm, but to-date, I have not tried that.

From what I can tell so far, the lens isn't quite as sharp as a standard lens, but this is because of the distortion due to the mirrors.

I have been spoiled to using the newer lenses that have automatic focus and automatic aperture features. This lens is a fixed aperture lens, and it's manual focus. So to use it, I'll need to manually focus and use manual settings for aperture and shutter speed. In a concert hall, I don't have much issue with this. In the old days of 35mm film, I worked manual all the time.

Click here to view a set I took with the 500mm lens.  The first portion of this set (up until and including the electric meter) was taken with the 500mm mirror lens.

So Far, I Like My New Job

I started a new job on October 1st.  It's a little early to tell how the job will be, but I'm optimistic.  The company is considered to be one of the top 100 best places to work in the US.  So I feel privileged.  I thought I'd start keeping a few notes on my initial observations this week, and I'm listing these in order of how I observed them.

The office I have is a nice big office.  It's not a walled office, but a cubicle type, but it's large.  It's about 4 to 6 times the amount of space that I've had on any of my previous jobs clear back to when I was a supervisor at the Williams Companies.

I don't have windows, but there are plenty of windows within eye of my office if I step out into the hall.  There is a skylight directly above my desk, so I"m getting natural light.  They draped fabric over the skylight to tone down the amount of light (and presumably heat) that comes through.

My phone is a Cisco 7961 IP Phone.  It's tied into the network and any voice mail messages are automatically routed to my e-mail so that I can get them there.  This could be an advantage, I would think, if I were not at the office and were remotely connected to the network and able to check e-mail, but not right there to access the phone.

There is a fingerprint scanner on my laptop pc.  This is cool because it is used to log into the computer.  There's no need to type in a username and password.  That's very cool.

One thing that I don't like on this job is that it is the first employer that I have had that strictly filter what websites I have access to from my workstation (the laptop).  I can't check my private e-mail (because they don't allow access to gmail).  They do allow access to google, but there are a lot of sites they don't allow access to.  It's frustrating because some of these are forum sites that I often use to get answers to technical questions dealing with software development.

I understand them filtering twitter, identi.ca, and other social networking sites; but I wish I at least to access my e-mail.  Their reasoning isn't to restrict the workstation to work-related things only; but to protect the workstation from virus infection.  Their theory is that these viruses often appear on computers due to external e-mail sights, forum sites and sometimes social networking sites.  So they are blocked.

Supposedly, there are pcs located in "public areas" in the building, but so far, I haven't found these pcs.

This employer is the headquarters of a convenience store chain.  They provide free soda to the employees.  When I heard this, I wasn't too excited, because I figured they didn't provide the kind of soda that I drink.  I try to have Diet Mountain Dew, because it's a diet drink, but it's a diet drink that tastes good to me.  Diet Pepsi, Diet Dr. Pepper, Diet Code, etc do not taste good to me.
To my surprise, they have Diet Mountain Dew available in the soda machine on the first floor.  So a couple of times during the day, I take a walk downstairs and avail myself to this privilege.

Currently, I am on a 90-day contract to hire arrangement.  That means that if things work out, they will hire me as a full-time employee in early January.  This will be a good thing, as their benefits are very good.  One bad thing is that they hold a dress code standard with what the store employees adhere to.  This means no beards and no ponytail.  I'll have to shave my beard and remove my ponytail.

I'm allowed to have a moustache, but I'm not sure I see a point to that.  My whole reason for having the beard is so I wouldn't have to shave it, because that part of my chin seems to be cut every time I shave.  Shaving above my mouth really isn't a problem for me.

Shaving is one of those things that I looked forward to as a kid, but as an adult consider to be a curse.  Losing the pony tail isn't really that big of an issue.  I knew the day would come sooner or later, that I'd take a job where they'd want me to cut my hair.  It's a small price to pay in order to work for such a good company.  It will be a bit of culture shock for me, I think, as I have had my hair long for the last 20 years or so.

I figured out that although I can't hit ping.fm, twitter or identi.ca, that I can make status updates periodically during the day (for benefit of friends that follow me on those sites) by sending to ping.fm either by my smartphone (which I hate typing on), or via the ping.fm e-mail interface (which is sometimes a bit delayed from when I send the e-mail).

The office is roomy and so is the entire floor that my office is on.  It's quiet compared to other offices I've been in that are this big.  I think they have room to grow, because a lot of the offices seem to be empty.

In a week or so, the group I work in will be spending two days out of town (Joplin) for an annual group outing.  They will have a few meetings, but there'll be golf, paintball, wine tasting, shopping and other activities to participate in.

Yesterday afternoon around 15:30, I heard people talking in the testing lab, which is just around the corner from my office.  The doors were open and I saw most of the team in there standing around talking.  It was casual.  They were having a few beers and talking.  This was for someone's birthday.  They limited the beers and stopped at 16:00, to give people time before 17:00 when they'd be driving home.

I think that's nice that they do this for the employees.  A lot of companies would be too uptight to allow beer, much less to allow them to goof off for a birthday celebration.

Oh, somehow I forgot to write this earlier, but as far as dress code, I've seen jeans, tennis shoes, flowery shirts, t-shirts and shorts in the office.  It seems to be a fairly casual and comfortable atmosphere to work in.