Origins
Now the lady I called my mother had always told me I was adopted. I had no desire to meet them or go live with them, I just wanted to know their names. I had asked her if I could and she got upset with me. No matter how much I tried to explain. Now after 60 years of life I finally know who my parents were, I even know my grandparents name. The beautiful and wonderful lady I married 20 years ago found the right people in Indiana for this information. I know I would be pushing it to know the name of my 14 month older sister but I am happy with what I have. It is like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders, it is truly a Great Christmas gift.
Some people are lucky to have two good parents, in a strange but twisted way I have had several. I was told the reason I was left for adoption was my parents were getting a divorce and couldn’t raise my sister and I. Okay, I can understand marrying for the wrong reasons and later realizing this and needing to right the wrong. I myself made such a mistake. I would love to change that mistake in my life, but I would not have two wonderful children who make me proud every day. Now one of my parents who took me in was my Step-Father. Yes I had a father, but my step-father was the most important man in my life, even though I have not been able to see him in years. He taught me the values I hold dear today, I am sure he would not be happy I still live on credit more than I should. I thank you for all you gave me Rocky.
It has been a while since Posting
I am trying to figure out why I keep spending the 10 dollars a year to keep this domain; it is not like I post very often. But it has been a very good year all in all. We are almost done for the year taking photos of events, the Toy run is Saturday, one of our favorites. We had an article written by Kyle Marksteiner with “Focus on Carlsbad” magazine. He wrote a great article and it made us look very good, but I am not much for attention. “Desert Photos” is what we love to do and what we are all about, taking photos of Landscapes and taking photos of Events that promote our community is what we love to do. We have been asked many times to do personal photos but we prefer to let the people that charge money and do it for a living do that. We are asked why we don’t cover more events around the community, but we do this on our own dime and we just can’t afford to do it all the time. We cover the most important that promote our community that we can. Every year we say we are not going to do as many, as it is getting harder for me to get to them. Then we see or hear of another “non-profit” organization or like our Service men coming home having an event and we show up with cameras in hand. In a couple weeks there is going to be an “Artist Showing” at the Carlsbad Museum and Thanks to Mayor Janway and Patsy Jackson we are going to be the first “Local Artists” to have a showing. There are so many good local artists here in our community I hope they soon get to show their work as well. I have always wanted to be a “Professional Photographer” but had other responsibilities and simply couldn’t afford to take the chance. If at all possible I hope that young people see our work and realize they can do the same thing if they just go for it. I am still amazed at the traffic our Desert Photos website gets and how large it has grown. I check the traffic manager to see if I need to delete photos and even stuff from 2002 still gets traffic. At 26 gigabytes of space and 60,000 photos I guess our “Hobby” is still going strong. If I didn’t keep a duplicate copy of our site on my hard drive I still wouldn’t believe it. So for those of you who would love to do what we do and don’t know where to start, find a good host company (we prefer “Domains Priced Right”) and go for it. Out Hosting company will even let you setup a Word Press or Drupal site so you don’t have to know HTML. As I am getting lazier in my old age it is so much easier than building this all in notepad as I did for 13 years. So good luck and have a great holiday season.
Merry Christmas to all of you and Happy New Year
Prejudice and Todays World
I have spent most of my life indifferent to the prejudice in the world, as I hoped humans would out grow it. I remember listening to my parents complain about one race or another and did not like it, but there was little I could change about them. I tried but they just told me I had no idea about the way things were. I knew I was adopted, but never knew who my real parents were and my mother and step father would never tell me. So I continued through life clueless and accepted people for whom they are and not the color of their skin or the way they believed. Later in life I found more about my real parents, it seems my adopted parents chose to ignore my blood line if they knew. Perhaps they thought my blood line did not matter so much. The problem is I am seeing more hatred in the world today than I did in the 50′s and 60′s. That or I chose to keep my head buried in the sand; again I was pretty much clueless. I still have hope that people will change, but it seems they do not. The issue that keeps coming up about illegal aliens, and I am told my stand is prejudice. I suppose I don’t understand how people make up their own truth and ignore my true thoughts. I don’t care where people come from, what they believe, the color of their skin, or their politics, I think if they want to live here, do it legally. If the first act they make is to break the law, the rest of their life seems in question. I don’t like the president’s political stand; I think he is far too liberal to the point of a socialist, as is most of the congress in this day and age. I understand change; if anything is constant it is change. History teaches me that the type of change we are headed for is disaster. I still have hope that the world will lose its hatred based on stupidity, but I am not going to hold my breath.
I think I might be behind
Good thing I keep the passwords and log-ins saved on hard copy. I couldn’t remember the login and password. What is worse I couldn’t remember where I saved them. Not a lot has happened since the last post. Nikon and I have been attending the city council meetings since Nov, and I have to admit it is very educational and fun. Nikon even got appointed to a committee for handicapped. We did photograph the Brotherhood of the 74 Toy run, those photos can be seen on our main website desertphotos.net
Fall Hunter/Jumper Dressage Show, Combined Test & Clinic
Okay Nikon and I get a real kick out of these shows, no the horse didn’t kick us. Watching the people who have spent many hours learning and teaching with their horses. They put on a great show and I think more people would really enjoy it. But for now I suppose you will just have to enjoy the photos we take. Now we are trying very hard to get action shots, I suppose when you see the horses in flight it is close?
On this software you can scroll down to the main page and click on help and it will explain how to use the view, slideshow as well as how to download the full size photos. As usual if you use these photos for your personal use they are free to download. Enjoy the photos!
Hunter-Jumper 1 camera 1 | Hunter-Jumper 2 camera 1 | Hunter-Jumper 3 camera 1
Hunter-Jumper 1 camera 2 | Hunter-Jumper 2 camera 2
Finding Family
Okay I am terrible for being able to keep in touch with loved ones. However my wife is great at finding things and people on the internet. She found my favorite cousin, whom I had lost connection with (again) for some time. So to my wife Nikonlady I bow to your greatness and to Joyce, I am so glad we are in touch again. I promise………I will try never to loose touch again! So good to hear from you again!
National Night Out 2009
Ok that was a lot of fun. Running around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to make as many parties as we could. Everyone was great, hamming it up for the cameras, showing that great Carlsbad Spirit. The Kick off Night was fantastic, everyone looked to be having a great time. All in all it was a terrific event; I know we enjoyed it completely.
National Night Out 2009 Party Photos
Kickoff Run Run Camera 2
Now I love my wife dearly, but I sometimes worry about her affinity to stand in the middle of the road to get photos of anyone coming at her. Granted she gets some great shots, but it do worry me. So if she is going to stand in the middle of the road to get you these photos, I am going to leave them in so you can see the action in the shots.
Kickoff Run Run Camera 1 folder 1
Kickoff Run Run Camera 1 folder 2
As usual if you see some you like just email us the photo number and we will email them back to you no cost. If you want more than a few, feel free to bring a cd or jump drive by the house and we will copy to your media device for free. If you don’t know where we live email us for the address.
I was putting the code on here for people to play the videos, but due to some slower internet connections they simply did not work. So I am going to put the links here to the videos available and you can right click and download them to your computer to view or left click and see what happens.
http://desertphotos.net/ohara2/nno09/nnofunrun1.wmv
http://desertphotos.net/ohara2/nno09/nnofunrun2.wmv
http://desertphotos.net/ohara2/nno09/mcgruff.wmv
http://desertphotos.net/ohara2/nno09/mcgruff2.wmv
http://desertphotos.net/ohara2/nno09/andtheydancedinthestreets.wmv
http://desertphotos.net/ohara2/nno09/andtheydancedinthestreets2.wmv
http://desertphotos.net/ohara2/nno09/gomomma.wmv
Know this year I did something just a bit out side the norm. I uploaded 3 videos to You Tube. Okay I know I might be nuts, but I thought the world needs to see Carlsbad has it together check them out;
National Night Out Fun Run
And they danced in the Streets
And they danced in the Streets again
Enjoying Life
One of the greater pleasures in my life is going with my wife to take photos. It can be taking landscape photos which we enjoy the most, or taking photos of an event here in our community. The entire reason for our website is to share what we see through the cameras.
We spend hours together driving around some days just looking for different things to photograph. If you look through the 50,000 + photos on our site you will see we find a lot to take photos of. Everyone tries to find things to entertain themselves, but the greatest pleasure in my life is spending and enjoying time with the love of my life, my wife.
Just a thinkin
I was counting my blessings the other day and run plum outta fingers and toes and figured hey I’ll just blog instead. This is what happens when you give an old man a computer and internet and say; “Hey, you should put your thoughts on a blog!” and the old man goes…HUH?
Yeah I know the voices are running amok.
Well I see another Carlsbad business is closing………not to fret, someone could separate the building into apartments and reduce the housing shortage. All it takes is just a little positive thinking.
What Self? Oh all right I will shut up then………ppppppfffffffffttttttttt!
A Beginning
I was layin on the couch with a dazed and confused look on my face (normal look by the way) when I said to myself…..Self, I might as well have a blog, it seems like the thing to do.
And self answered, yeah right like anyone cares what you think!
Self is not a very nice person as you can tell. Ah but so are the rest of the voices in my head.
But I will do my best to share with you my infinte wisdom…….
Lord have mercy on us all!
Self will you knock that off!
