the redbox-good samaritan-avenger

I have been using redbox for a while now. When I fly on planes, sometimes I have work to do. Sometimes I catch up on some reading or even sleeping, especially if it's an early flight and I've been up since 4 or 5 in the morning. But many times I watch movies. I have always liked movies. I don't remember the first movie I ever saw, but I love a good story and I have come to enjoy all genres of film over the years. I hear that cool people call them films at least.

What I'm about to share might incriminate me. I'm not sure, but so far my conscious has not led me to believe that what I do is wrong, though it may be illegal? I'm sure the laws have changed a lot in the past couple of years, but I digress.

I own an iPad and happen to believe that it's more convenient while traveling to watch content like movies on it as opposed to my laptop. Smaller, lighter and just cool, right? So I hop onto redbox's convenient website that allows me to pick a particular location, my favorite is the 7-eleven just up the street, and can reserve up to 5 movies. Now redbox is pretty good. They have new releases and once in a while they bring back an oldie, like Home Alone or something like that. Buyer beware, sometimes they have some of those straight to dvd movies and I've been tricked a time or two, but no more.

So last week on Thursday I did the above. Picked out my movies. Took the short trip to 7-eleven, swiped my card and got 5 new movies. Melissa and Charlotte were with me and Charlotte has always like playing with the cases that the redbox movies come in. She figured out how to open the cases a while back, so I try not to let her play with them anymore, but if she sees one she grunts until you give one to her. So I handed her one, she played with it on the short drive home and we pulled into the driveway. I collected the 4 other dvd's and snatched the fifth from Charlotte. She got upset, so when she wasn't looking I just put all five of them on the top of my car. Remember that. We'll come back to that.

After running a few errands that afternoon we decided to go out for dinner because the two meals we had left took well over an hour to prepare and all three of us were showing hunger signs. We hopped in the car and sped off towards a pizza place. After the first stop sign we heard something sound like it fell off the roof of our car. Now, since our recent move we now have lots of oak trees around our house and so consequently, a lot of acorns that gravity is constantly pulling toward the ground. They hit our porch, our heads, our deck and our cars that sit in the driveway, so without thinking, we hear the noise as we sped off and I say oh, its just some acorns. You see where this is going don't you?

We eat dinner, head home and after we put Charlotte down for the night I begin my process of putting dvd's on my iPad for my upcoming trip. It's takes anywhere from 30-60 minutes per dvd, so I wanted to get started so I could be sure to return the dvd's the next day. Redbox only charges $1.20 per dvd per day. So it's pretty cheap. They make their money on people who forget to return them by 9pm or lose them, etc. And up to this day I felt like I was sticking it to the redbox man, by being prompt and responsible and returning my dvd'd the next day before 9pm.

So I go to find the dvd's so I can start and they can't be found. I check inside the car, I check every room in our little house and then like a lightbulb over the cartoon character's head I remembered, "I think I put the dvd's on top of the car and I don't think that the noise that we heard was a couple of acorns." I inform Melissa of my hypothesis and she tells me to go look outside on the street. The noise we hard wasn't long after we pulled down our street so maybe they would still be there. I rush out and look, but nothing. Melissa finally convinces me to let her go outside with a flashlight and look herself. No dvd's anywhere. The "oh no" feeling settles in my stomach because I'm pretty certain I know how this plays out. So I go to the faq's section of the redbox website and my worst nightmares are confirmed. After so many days of the dvd's not being returned there is a flat fee that will be charged to my credit card kind of like when you lose the ticket that you get in a parking garage and they just charge you the full amount because you can't prove when you arrived.

$25.....each.....noooooooooooooooo!!!!!!

I majored in bible, not math, but my brain quickly calculated a $125 charge. It was my fault. I put them on top of the car. I brushed the sound off as a couple of acorns and now I'd have to pay the piper. My only hope was that a nice person in our neighborhood saw them, picked them up and decided to be a good samaritan.

After accepting my $125 fate, I sat and waited. Redbox sends an email as soon as you return a dvd, so I kept checking my email every five minutes. At 8:11pm that evening I checked my email and wouldn't you know, I had an email from redbox. At 7:53pm, someone returned one of the dvd's to a redbox location at a local grocery store we shop at. My first feeling was excitement, but then my second was to drive over to the grocery store and demand to see the video footage for the camera with the redbox machine in sight so I could track down and catch the person who returned it. After I realized that my idea was ridiculous I went to bed knowing that my debt to redbox had been decreased by $25. Now I just had to wait to see if the other 4 dvd's were returned.

I checked my email with excitement the next morning hoping that maybe another dvd had been returned, but nothing. I continued to check my email frequently all morning hoping for the best. I put Charlotte down for a nap around 12:30 and worked on a few things for work. I checked my email around 2pm and to my surprise I found that three more dvd's had been returned to a different location at 1:42pm. Wow! Now the maximum that I owe redbox is only $25. One of my theories from very early on in my experience has come true as I write this. One of the five dvd's I rented was a small little known film called The Avengers. I hear it did OK in the theaters, but nothing exceptional. Unless you live under a rock, you know that my last two sentences were a sarcastic's dream. The fifth dvd has yet to be returned and I'm betting good money...at least $25...that it will never see the inside of a redbox machine again..

My best guess is that my good samaritan watched the other 4 movies and returned them, but to compensate themselves for their good deeds kept just one token in the form of The Avengers dvd.

I can't be mad. Anyone could have picked those dvd's up and I'm just thankful that it has only become a $25 lesson and not a $125 lesson.

Redbox-1

Good Samaritan-1

Me-0

You can't win them all...

-jay

jay and charlotte on vacation

It's beach time. My parents planned on getting a house down at the beach earlier this summer. My sister, her husband and daughter came down and it was Melissa's second week back at school so it meant that Charlotte and I went down for a couple of days to enjoy the sand and the sun minus Melissa. I wish she could have been there, but we managed to get along without her   :)   Just wanted to share a little bit of our trip. We only were there for a few days, but Charlotte had a lot of fun with her grandparents, aunt, uncle and cousin that is just six months younger than herself.

The house next door had this awesome weather vane. I have always loved the shape of a whale and I admittedly took way to many pictures of it. Here was one I took the first night we arrived. The colors are so awesome.

It was really nice going down to the beach this time of the year, because there are not as many people around at all. We had a great house with a great view. But don't just take my word for it...

The dunes in between our house and the water were great and the house had a long and narrow walkway to access the dunes and water. Charlotte loved running down the catwalk every time we would go outside.

A few of the shells that families gathered and lined up over the course of the summer season.

Did I say that I like whales?

Now for wildlife. I have never seen so many dragonflies in one spot before. They are beautiful creatures. It was tough to get close and I never had the right lens on hand, but here's a look at one little guy that took a break from his flight to rest for a bit. Ah, the beach is so relaxing, even for the bugs!

Cool aloe-ish kind of plant. Hello depth of field.

Apparently there are deer at the beach too. At first glance I thought it was a baby, but dad says that's as big as they get around the beach. Bambi made her way through the dunes. Strange juxtaposition if you ask me.

The path in between the walkway and the beach. One of the coolest beach houses I've ever stayed at.

This little beauty is my niece, Honor. She will be a year old next month. Charlotte loved playing and talking with Honor and it gave me a good idea of how she'll be when we have our second in March 2013.

I loved this shot.

An aerial view of her precious curls. She is beautiful, huh?

Another favorite of mine. We took a lot of walks on the beach and there's nothing better  in my book than a dad and his little girl.

The water and clouds look fake to me, but they are real. I need to move to the beach.

Charlotte and her "Tiki" having a fun walk together. Check out Charlotte's face.

More walking, with me, my sister, her husband and their daughter in the foreground.

Charlotte loved watching all of the different birds that fly around the beach. I also caught her digging for buried treasure at one point while bird watching.

Pointing at a bird up in the sky that flew away.

Waving bye-bye to a bird that soared down the beach.

And a couple of my favorites to round things out. I love watching this little girl grow and even though we had other family with us, it was fun to go on a trip, just the two of us. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

photographing fireworks for dummies...me included

When we bought our "real" camera back in November I was excited. The first camera we bought was a great camera and it captured a lot of shots that we'll have forever, but it pails in comparison to the range and capability of having a dslr. With that said, I am by no means an authority on photography. I'm a little sponge just trying to soak up as much know how and experience as I can, so when we made plans to brave the crowds and break Charlotte's strict "in bed no later than 7pm" routine, I got my game face on and prepared to take my first shots with my big boy camera. So here are some tips that I picked up along the way. Sure, there is nothing wrong with a point and shoot. I even saw some great shots on Instagram over the course of the week, but if you want to get some great shots consistently, here's a few ideas to keep in mind: 1-Use a tripod. This is going to be an essential if you want to get shots that aren't blurred and shaky. A big part of shooting fireworks deals with the shutter speed and so when that shutter is open for seconds at a time, I don't care how sturdy you think your hands are, if you want good shots you'll need something stationary and that means a good tripod.

2-Play with your shutter speed. This is the number on the camera that looks like 1/250 or something like that, which would be normal for an everyday well lit shot. When shooting fireworks, you'll need the shutter to be open for a few seconds at a time so the sensor can capture all of the light possible amidst the darkness. When we take a picture we think of a noise that sounds like "click". When you have a slow shutter speed you will hear "click.............click". The longer the shutter speed the more periods or time in between this two clicks. The first click is the shutter opening and the second is the shutter closing. I'll put the stats on each photo below so you can see what I mean. I only used a few different shutter speeds because I liked the results I was getting. Your camera might even have a shutter speed labeled "bulb". This means that as long as you hold the shutter button your shutter will be open and when you release, it will shut. If you are going to go that route you may want to use a remote shutter release so your hands don't bump the camera, resulting in blurry shots...hence the tripod once again.

3-Set your ISO correctly. ISO deals with how sensitive to light your film or in most cases your digital sensor is. The lower the ISO number, the less sensitive your camera will be to light. The higher ISO, the camera will me more sensitive to light. If you have your camera set to an automatic setting (boo-hiss) and it is darker, you camera will usually bump up the ISO to allow more light, but it usually equates to grainy or noisy pictures. Think of how your vision is worse at night. A camera can bump up the ISO to try to help, but you lose quality and crispness as a trade off. I set my ISO to 100, which sounds counter intuitive because it is dark outside and you'd think that a little extra ISO would help. I didn't want grainy shots so I manually set my ISO to 100 and I was happy with the results, but feel free to play around with you camera and see what your camera does in darker scenes.

4-Set your aperture correctly. The aperture is the opening that decides how much light gets in through the lens. You may see something like f/1.4 or f/8 or hear someone mention an f-stop when looking at the stats on an exposure. A lot of people would think, OK, it's dark so I'll want to open up the aperture as much as possible, but not so. I went with a few different settings, but generally you'll want something between f/8 and f/16. That means the hole is smaller which will let in less light, but we'll make up for that with a slow shutter speed. This will also allow for deeper depth of field, so more will be in focus from front to back.

5-Chose a wider angle lens. The wider the angle the more you'll capture in the frame. The fireworks we went to were at different heights and varied from left to right depending on where they shot them from and the wind and other variables, so using a wider lens let me get more action. This is called focal length and you'll see something like 18mm or 50mm when you hear people talking about lenses. I used the kit lens that came with our camera and had it set between 18mm and 30mm depending on where the fireworks were in the air. Sometimes zooming in a bit and sometimes zooming out a bit.

6-Miscellaneous settings. Don't use a flash. Most flashes only fire about 10-20 feet anyway, so it won't do much for you except make things look over exposed. Use manual mode if you can. Mose cameras have a setting that is marked with an "M". You can set the shutter speed, aperture, ISO and other settings when shooting in manual mode. Don't use a preset mode that has fireworks as the icon, just don't.

I'm sure there are more things that could be added, so please share if you have any ideas or questions. Again, this was my first time, but being prepared paid off and I am pleased with the shots I captured. I'll put the stats for each shot below. Enjoy!

18mm    f/11    6secs    ISO-100

18mm    f/11    3.2secs    ISO-100

18mm    f/11    3.2secs    ISO-100

 18mm    f/11    3.2secs    ISO-100

29mm    f/11    3.2secs    ISO-100

29mm    f/11    3.2secs    ISO-100

29mm    f/11    4secs    ISO-100

29mm    f/11    4secs    ISO-100

29mm    f/11    4secs    ISO-100

29mm    f/11    4secs    ISO-100

29mm    f/11    4secs    ISO-100

29mm    f/11    4secs    ISO-100

29mm    f/11    4secs    ISO-100

we have been busy...

Life has been real crazy around these parts this week.  School is winding down, Charlotte is winding up and Jay has been winding his way all over the country. What Jay has been up to-

What I have been up to (not finished, don't judge)-

What C has been up to (she is still training in the fine arts of dance, again don't judge)-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLlBpfNGvNQ

Have a good weekend!