Category: rambling

  • commit

    Amidst the holiday glow, I’ve committed to a camera lens. Well, amidst figuring out how to spend some Christmas payola on a smaller item, I discovered that the Canon 70-200mm f2.8L IS II USM was on sale. Actually, it was slightly cheaper on Amazon than the B&H so I bought it there. We’ve all heard […]

  • room with a view

    And with the news that we’ll be stuffing our faces with treats for the next three weeks, I should mention that I’ve joined the gym. Well, Amy joined me a month ago as a little gift and I have renewed the membership. I like it quite a lot. Since moving to the woods five years […]

  • here’s to your health

    We were informed today that our joint health insurance is going up $100/month next year. I’m not sure about Amy, but I haven’t received a raise since 2007. Not only have I not increased my income, but I’ve recently seen a significant decrease as my company attempts to stay afloat. I wish I could understand […]

  • 70-300

    This lens I was excited about back in August has finally been priced. It’s $99 more than what I had heard it might be, which makes it still rather expensive but not so far off the estimated price that I’m scandalized. It seems like a cool lens, I just wish it was faster. f4-5.6 isn’t […]

  • running out of steam

    I’m really running out of steam with this blog. It’s not that I don’t have things to posts or things to say. We’ve done work to the house that I want to share, I haven’t done a music post in ages… it’s this whole Internet situation. Carving out time at work, or tapping stuff out […]

  • let there be red tape

    Wow. Okay, got a phone call from Topsham on Friday at home. Naturally, I wasn’t able to hear that message and then respond until today (Monday). Apparently a crew came to the house on Thursday or Friday and discovered that power and communications run from the pole to my house underground. They won’t perform that […]

  • let there be light

    If you’ve been following my noble quest to sit around and wait helplessly for internet, you know that I’ve been savagely beaten at every turn for 5 years. Well, it’s time for Ben to take back the night…. with light. That’s right. Fiber optics, my friends. To recap, there are theoretically two providers now operating […]

  • death race

    I have a subscription to Outside magazine which I enjoy reading despite the feeling of unworthiness it leaves me with every time I put it down. I finally tucked into the November issue last night and was most drawn to the story by Mark Jenkins about his 2010 attempt at the Death Race. Even though […]

  • lenses, lenses everywhere

    Amy and I are heading out to Glacier and Yellowstone parks next summer! If our trip to Alaska last year taught me anything about lenses – it’s that 70mm is not enough when you’re looking at things really far away. More below.

  • kill-a-watt

    I recently purchased a watt meter for the house and it came in the mail yesterday. Nothing fancy but it does the job. And that job is to measure the electrical usage of individual items in your house. They do make systems that integrate with your home at the panel – giving you immediate feedback […]