Tech

R Names

/ ronnyjames / 1 Comment

Rick, Russ, Ron, Rodney, Ralph, and Randy: apparently the “Rs” were very popular in my extended family. Oh, I forgot Rex, so that makes seven of us with first initial R, last name Hilbig. You can only imagine our mom’s keeping us all straight, let alone how emails could get messed up!

In the 1950s, my birth decade, Rs weren’t as popular as I had thought. Both of my brothers’ names were more popular than mine. David ranked 5th, Richard ranked 7th. Ronald was 15th. You can find your own ranking online here: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/decades/names1950s.html My honor is redeemed knowing that my middle name, James, actually ranked first during the 50s. In the top 100 popular names, Rs placed 11 times. Sorry Rex, you are 198th! A decade later, Ronald had dropped five positions to 24th.

I only caught on to this confusion of names recently after an email never arrived in my in box. Check your spam folder (I had) was the sender’s suggestion. His email had not bounced back so apparently someone, a recipient, had read it and discarded it— or it ended up in his spam folder. 

Emails are tricky that way; they aren’t case-sensitive but they do require a level of accuracy that my spelling can seldom attain. I’ve been plagued by the curse/blessing of auto correct on my iPhone. The “suggested” spelling can be over ridden, but I’m not always aware of it when it happens. (Shakes his cane)

I had given what I assumed would be an adequate amount of time to receive a letter. Four days had passed after a Monday holiday so I wasn’t too concerned not having received the expected correspondence. Luckily the sender reached out to me via text wondering about my reply, or lack of one as it were. He had asked for my home address and I (naturally) thought he had sent the information we were looking for via USPS. But I was wrong. 

The postal service will make a best guess and deliver your mail regardless if the address is missing a digit or the street name has been misspelled. But email doesn’t work that way. 

He had sent it thru email to my gmail account. Not “my” gmail account, as it turned out, but perhaps one of my relatives. There are quite a number of us whose first name begins with R. So I am guessing that one of them has received an unexpected and unsolicited correspondence. I have a thought to email him, or her, and find out. I’m not sure I want to learn if there are more of us Rs out there that I haven’t met! I know there is another Ronald Hilbig, who lives in Canada. We had already confused people on Facebook. Glad that was straightened out, though he could be a clone. I’m not doubting anything anymore.

Sincerely yours, but certainly not the only one,

Ronny James

Memories and Mementos

/ ronnyjames / Leave a comment

“What are we going to do with all of these pictures?”

“What pictures, which ones?” I replied.

“All of them: all of the pictures, photos, albums, frames, paintings, prints, just everything.”

Well, I hadn’t given it much thought, but really, what are we going to do with all of this stuff? We had downsized and moved from our single family home to a smaller townhome several years ago. In the process of getting that home ready to sell, I had taken down all of our pictures, photos of family and family vacations, and packed them away in plastic bins. Now nearly four years after that move we are still wondering what to do with many of these mementos and memories, most of them still packed away.

When I was younger and first started taking photographs, I concentrated primarily on landscape photography. Years before digital cameras became popular I would shoot slide film in my Canon AE1 and occasionally have enlargements printed, many of which I framed and decorated my apartment. The prints are long gone but the slide film still looks great, beautiful rich colors after more than forty years.

I switched to a digital camera, also a Canon, when they came out and began taking more pictures of family and friends, documenting our trips and vacations, birthdays and holidays. And that introduced the beginnings of what would be a lifelong challenge: how to share and display, or store for posterity, the many, many images a digital camera produced.

When I got my first iPhone I was all set. Whereas before, one had to remember to bring the camera (or leave it in the car, always at the ready) an iPhone was the perfect accessory: I never went anywhere without my phone and consequently my camera was always with me.

Still the problem remained, what to do with all of these images? Before cloud storage enabled us to archive unlimited amounts of data, and images, I would back up my digital images on the computer and eventually transfer them to CDs. Great for storing photos, not so great for sharing them.

I’ve since been uploading many of my photos to Shutterfly. They have sharing options and also print capabilities for cards, enlargements, even photo books. I have friends who use digital frames that act like mini slideshows; the newer frames allow uploading the images to the internet (cloud servers!) and as long as the display is connected to the internet, any family member can view the display. Bluetooth or wifi-enabled devices are another option.

I’ve been printing photobooks now for years. They have taken the place of photo albums in our home. But like albums from our past, they have started to take up room on the book shelves. We visited friends recently and enjoyed looking through one of their old leather-bound albums, many of the photographs in black and white or sepia-toned. One could almost imagine the passage of time slowing down for a bit as we leafed-through and commented on their old family photos. It doesn’t feel quite the same when you scroll thru endless images on your phone!

I still don’t have a solution for the boxes of photos and albums we have accumulated through the years. We have thought about scanning all of the “pre digital” images. I am a little distraught over having lost or misplaced the CDs I used for “safe secure image storage” in the past. I have found several of the CDs I created have not held up well: the data has either become corrupted or otherwise unreadable. Perhaps storing the images on a DVD would work better. At some point I will probably upload all of our images to Shutterfly or some other third party service. I’ve put many images on a small external hard drive, not sure if that is my final answer yet or not.

What about you all? Is this a problem you have faced before? Any possible solutions you have tried successfully? If so, please share your success stories in the comments below. Love to hear from you!

Post-Apocalypse Now

/ ronnyjames / Leave a comment

There seems to be no end to “end of the world” movies and TV shows recently. A twist in the plot here or there but they all share similar DNA. Whether it’s an individual (“only you can save the world!”) or a group of survivors just trying to make it to the end of that night’s episode alive— they all explore how we might react under the harshest of conditions.

The director M. Night Shyamalan has a new movie out, Knock at the Cabin that updates the biblical End of the World story. I haven’t seen the movie yet, and this isn’t really a movie review, but it’s premise and themes are oddly tracking with a show that I am watching, The Last of Us, over on HBO. While the one is about ushering in or preventing the Apocalypse, the television series is about living in a dystopian post-apocalyptic world structured around a quest narrative. Love, loss, sacrifice, vengeance, judgment, and hope are some of the big themes both shows work through in varying ways.

However, before we compare and contrast these two shows, I want to take a side trip. For the past several months I have been reading and hearing ALOT about AI and ChatGPT. So in the interests of trying something new I thought I would interview the bot and let it (he/she/them?) write my blogpost today. The results were very…interesting. My questions below in bold type, the Chat’s answers follow.

I asked the Chatbot to write a paragraph describing the similarities in the apocalyptic worldview of the movie “Knock at the Cabin” and the HBO series “The Last of Us” and the presence, or lack thereof, of hope.

Both “Knock at the Cabin” and “The Last of Us” present a bleak and devastating world, post-apocalyptic and characterized by the collapse of human society due to a catastrophic event. The movies depict a world where survival is the main priority and people are struggling to make ends meet while facing various obstacles and threats, including mutated creatures and hostile human factions. Despite the grim reality, there is still a glimmer of hope in both stories, as the main characters work towards rebuilding and preserving what’s left of humanity. However, this hope is often fragile and uncertain, constantly tested by the harsh realities of the new world.

Overall, both works present a similar bleak worldview of a post-apocalyptic world but with a nuanced portrayal of the presence of hope.

“Knock at the Cabin” portrays the four figures of the Apocalypse demanding a sacrifice. How does this subvert our normal reading of the Four Horsemen?

“Knock at the Cabin” portrays the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as demanding a sacrifice, which subverts the typical interpretation of the Four Horsemen as symbols of destruction and judgement in the book of Revelation in the Bible. In the movie, the Horsemen are not just passive symbols of the end of the world, but active agents who require a sacrifice to be made in order to bring about the end. This shift in the role of the Horsemen adds a new layer of meaning to the story, as it emphasizes the idea that the end of the world is not just a inevitable outcome, but something that can be actively brought about through the actions of human beings.

By presenting the Horsemen as demanding a sacrifice, “Knock at the Cabin” challenges our conventional understanding of the Four Horsemen and their role in the end of the world, suggesting that the end is not just a matter of fate but also a result of human agency.

Are there any biblical themes in “The Last of Us” show on HBO?

Yes, “The Last of Us” series on HBO draws on various biblical themes. For example, the story of a father-daughter relationship and the theme of sacrifice, can be seen as references to the story of Abraham and Isaac from the Bible. The concept of a pandemic bringing about the end of the world can also be interpreted as a commentary on the biblical notion of judgement and the end times. Additionally, the idea of a chosen one or messiah figure, who must sacrifice themselves for the greater good, is also a recurring biblical theme that appears in the show. These themes add depth to the story and bring a spiritual dimension to the post-apocalyptic world portrayed in “The Last of Us.”

If the character of Ellie in “The Last of Us” is portrayed as a messiah figure, what would be her likely future?

If Ellie in “The Last of Us” is portrayed as a messiah figure, her future would likely involve her making significant sacrifices and facing significant challenges in her quest to save humanity and bring about a better future. In such a portrayal, Ellie would be seen as a symbol of hope, who brings about change and redemption in the bleak and desolate world of the post-apocalyptic setting.

However, her journey would also likely be fraught with difficulties, as she would face resistance from those who are unwilling to change, as well as the harsh realities of the post-apocalyptic world, such as the threat of infected creatures and hostile human factions.

Ultimately, the future of Ellie as a messiah figure would be shaped by the choices she makes and the sacrifices she is willing to make in the pursuit of a better future. Whether she succeeds in bringing about a new dawn or not, her journey as a messiah figure would likely be one of struggle, sacrifice, and ultimate redemption.

If the character of Ellie in “the last of us” is accurately portrayed as being immune from the cordyceps infection, how would her condition be exploited by the ruling authorities?

In a world where the majority of the population is affected by the cordyceps infection, a person who is immune would be considered a valuable asset. For example, the ruling authorities might try to use Ellie as a source of information and research to better understand the nature of the infection and find a cure. They may also try to use her as a weapon, forcing her to venture into infected areas to gather information or carry out dangerous missions.

Additionally, the ruling authorities may try to use Ellie’s immunity as a means of maintaining control over the population. By exploiting her condition, they could manipulate the public into following their rules and regulations, or even use her as a propaganda tool to promote their own interests.

Overall, if Ellie is portrayed as being immune from the cordyceps infection, her condition would likely be exploited by the ruling authorities in a variety of ways, as they would see her as a valuable asset in their attempts to maintain control over the world and find a cure for the infection.

If the cordyceps infection controls the victims brain, and if Ellie is immune, would examining her brain likely reveal clues to her immunity?

Yes, if the cordyceps infection is portrayed as controlling the victim’s brain and Ellie is immune, examining her brain would likely reveal clues to her immunity. As the cordyceps infection takes over the victim’s brain, it would likely leave its mark on the brain’s structure and function. By comparing Ellie’s brain to the brains of infected individuals, researchers could potentially identify the differences that confer her immunity and gain insights into the mechanism of the cordyceps infection.

This information could be crucial in developing a cure for the infection, as understanding the basis of Ellie’s immunity could provide a starting point for developing a vaccine or other treatment. Additionally, by examining Ellie’s brain, researchers could gain a better understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying the control of the cordyceps infection, which could be applied to developing more effective therapies.

Overall, examining Ellie’s brain would likely be a valuable tool in gaining insights into the cordyceps infection and developing a cure for those affected.

So a likely scenario would be the sacrifice of Ellie, her resulting death, in order to save the rest of the population?

It is possible that a scenario could emerge in which Ellie’s death is seen as necessary in order to save the rest of the population. If her immunity is crucial to understanding the cordyceps infection and developing a cure, the ruling authorities or scientific community might believe that the only way to obtain this information is to sacrifice Ellie through dissection of her brain or other means.

Such a scenario would likely be a difficult and controversial decision, as it raises ethical questions about the value of one life versus the potential to save many others. It would also likely have a profound impact on the characters and the world of the story, as the decision to sacrifice Ellie would be a significant turning point in the narrative.

Ultimately, the outcome would depend on the specific details of the story and the motivations of the characters involved. While a sacrifice scenario is possible, it is not guaranteed and could be challenged or avoided altogether by the characters in the story.

My interaction with ChatGPT raised a number of ideas regarding both the movie and the TV show that I had not considered initially. The amount of agency and control over their individual destinies the characters exhibit and how their decisions could possibly affect the outcome of the scenarios was very intriguing to me. Both shows present similar End of the World viewpoints. However “The Last of Us”, perhaps because it seems more grounded in real-world (recent?) or plausible events, holds out a hope for the future that I was not expecting, especially from an adaptation of a video game. What do you think? Is there hope at the End of the World?

https://www.knockatthecabin.com

https://www.hbo.com/the-last-of-us

Images copyright their respective copyright holders, taken from their websites.

Fading Away

/ ronnyjames / Leave a comment

Mark asked me why I took so many photos of places, landscapes, trees, buildings: was I planning on being a professional photographer when I got out of the Army? Really. I hadn’t really given it that much thought. “Why do you take so many pictures of people?” I asked him. Thirty plus years later, I think I am beginning to know why.

A Baroque church somewhere in Germany
Montmartre in Paris
Matterhorn Zermatt Switzerland
Mittenwald train station

My time as an enlisted soldier stationed in Heidelberg, Germany during the mid-80s was a great time to get out, see the world. Who knew if I would ever be back there again? As circumstances have played out, I haven’t returned. But my brief two years there were filled with work and travel. England, France, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, and Lichtenstein: these were all a bus tour or train ride away for a weekend visit or a four-day vacation.

Fading away. It’s not just the photo prints that are beginning to fade. Mark convinced me to switch from print film to slide film. The slides from that time still look bright and crisp; the prints have begun to fade, the colors blending towards yellow. Scanning and a bit of photo editing has brought back much of their original color, I think, but I’m not sure.

Trier Amphitheater
Mark
Gasthof in Austria
Who are all these people?

No, it isn’t just the colors that have begun to fade. It seems I never was one to label things or write on the back of photos (thank you Mom for the photos you captioned years ago!) Looking back, younger Me must have thought he would always remember the names of places he went and the people he went with. And certainly he would have remembered those dates! Not so, not so.

Since the advent of the iPhone, I have used its prodigious data collecting capabilities to help me remember where and when my photos were taken. With facial recognition it helps me search for pictures of my granddaughter or other family members, even geocoding where the picture was taken. 

Like many people, I upload quite a lot of photos to a third party site “in the Cloud.” I have been using Shutterfly not primarily for photo storage but to print out photo books of our trips and family events. For me they have replaced the ancient slide carousel (remember those?) and the boxes of prints that seemed to never make it into a photo album. The books are piling up on a shelf, and I know the children will likely throw them out when I’m gone, but for now they help to stave off the effects of fading memory. Our trip to Spain is up there on the shelf as is my 60th birthday celebration at DisneyWorld. Well, my 70th birthday is also up there,  but who is counting birthdays anymore?!

Old photos fade, memories fade, events recede in time and eventually fade from our recollection.

“The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever.” Isaiah 40:8

What Goes Up

/ ronnyjames / 2 Comments

There is a general adage, perhaps an aphorism, that aptly describes much about our modern life. “What goes up, must/will/eventually come down.”

The price of gas goes up one week; it comes down, a little, a week later. Unemployment goes up, gradually it comes down. Home prices in our area seem to be the exception, and there are perhaps other exclusions. But what strikes me is how dependable the phrase is. It doesn’t just describe our experience with gravity: watch the kids on a trampoline, for instance. Thankfully they always return to the ground and don’t go drifting off into space somewhere. What goes up invariably comes down.

During my lifetime I’ve seen a number of things go up, buildings primarily, and for the most part they are still standing. But that’s not always given. Growing up in Reno I watched a small town transformed into an entertainment destination, not on the scale of Las Vegas, but still impressive. After having been away for several decades, I was amazed at the number of new hotels which were built during the boom years of the 80s.

But not all of those are still standing. I’ve been following the story of Harrah’s Hotel & Casino in Reno. Opened in 1937 as a small venture, Harrah’s eventually grew to a billion dollar entertainment corporation with more than 15 venues across the US. While the rest of the corporation’s investments seem to be doing well, the original building in Reno was closed permanently in 2020 and is now being converted to apartments and retail-office space. 

I was in grade school when the original Park Lane Mall in Reno was constructed. In the 70s, following the pattern of many outdoor malls, it was roofed over and became an enclosed mall. But times and peoples’ shopping patterns change. In 2018 the mall was demolished and paved over, eventually to be revitalized as an urban living construction named the Reno Experience District RED.   https://redreno.com   From what I’ve seen, it closely parallels our One Loudoun urban community. Change. What goes up. 

The Woodrow Wilson Bridge crossing the Potomac River was begun in 1958 and finished in 1961. The original bridge, that is. I wasn’t here for that project, but I was living in Virginia when it was torn down and the new  twelve lane bridge began construction in 2000, completed in 2009. More change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson_Bridge

All of which brings me to today. 

This week I drove past a building in Ashburn where I had once worked. Back in the late 80s, Ashburn was still a small village surrounded by turf farms and the beginnings of new suburbs. AOL (remember them?) moved to Loudoun County in 1996 and began the transformation of Loudoun County into a Data Center empire. Years later, AOL abandoned the property. In 2015 AOL was acquired by Verizon and eventually all of their properties here were sold off, later to be developed into data centers. But in 1990, there was virtually nothing out here other than acres and acres of fields.

The properties along Beaumeade Circle remained undeveloped for years. When Explus moved from Fairfax County out to Loudoun in 1990, we were the first tenants to occupy the large concrete-walled structure. I bought a townhouse nearby in Sterling the same year and was able to watch our building go in, from the initial pouring of the concrete floors to the final installation of the HVAC and the buildout of the interiors. I worked with the company for a total of thirteen years, most of that time at their third location closer to Dulles Airport.

Christian Fellowship Church purchased the property in the mid-90s, added a worship center, classrooms, and a gym for their school, parking areas and recreational ballfields. In 2018 we started attending CFC, 28 years after I watched the same building go up. In 2020 the church sold the building and moved to a new location in One Loudoun. The old building stood empty for two years until recently when demolition began in preparation of constructing another data center. What goes up, inevitably comes down.

Explus, Inc when I worked here.
The production area I worked in was just to the left of this entrance.
Worship Center demolition.

Get a Map

/ ronnyjames / Leave a comment

Virginia’s 57,867-mile state-maintained roads system is divided into these categories: Interstate – 1,118 miles of four-to-ten lane highways that connect states and major cities. Primary – 8,111 miles of two-to-six-lane roads that connect cities and towns with each other and with interstates. Secondary – 48,305 miles of local connector or county roads. Frontage – 333 miles of frontage roads. (VDOT)

And Google maps (Apple maps) has most of them readily accessible on your car’s navigation system or smart phone. 

But there are just times when only an old fashioned printed map will suffice. Or save you from wandering endless backroads thru hills and hollows without internet reception. 

A weekend drive to a recommended winery gave us an afternoon of exploring some of the most pastoral landscape I’ve yet seen here in Virginia. Climbing hills, green pastures outlined with white-painted fences, cattle at rest in the shade of oak trees or standing belly deep in a pond, a tiny church across from a well-tended cemetery—the type of scenery you might only come across in a Charles Wysocki 1,000 piece puzzle. 

But on the way back, looking for another winery we knew to be located nearby, the road we had previously traveled seemed a little unfamiliar. Had we turned left at that intersection? Have we already gone past the farm with the two llamas out front? Did we go across this narrow bridge, I don’t remember following a stream (ooh that looks great for fly fishing!).

All the while the late afternoon sun is hidden behind a grey overcast sky and the road has continued to narrow. When the pavement turned to hard packed gravel, I knew it was time to turn around. “We’re not lost,” I thought, “just exploring the backroads of Virginia!”

I grew up with a map in my lap, calling out turns, intersections, bridges and land features as my Dad or Mom drove the family car on our family vacations. Long before an interest in aerial photography and the layed-out landscape would lead me to Army cartographic school, I was fascinated with the relationship between the constructed landscape and the natural. The patchwork of farmlands we drove thru as a youngster resolved into magnificent tapestries of colors and shapes bounded by roads or water features when I finally saw them for the first time from an airplane window. Those patterns and colors eventually found their way into my pencil drawings and water colors years later in college art courses.

Learning to drive, or rather, to navigate with the digital map on my iphone has been challenging. In the Boy Scouts and later in the Army, we were taught to orient the map to Magnetic North, then find your location and proceed. I find it confusing then to be following the moving locator on the screen’s map, it heading towards the bottom of the screen, when I am driving forward (up on the screen?). When my wife calls out a turn to the left or right, I’m tempted to ask if the map (digital screen) is oriented properly. My left? Your left? The iPhone’s left? I’m confused!

With a full tank of gas I’m not as concerned as I used to be with directions-eventually we’ll get there. Though in the case of the winery, well, we are saving that for another day. But I am concerned about my friends who drive EVs.

I talked on the phone to my brother the other day about his Tesla. Don’t you get Range Anxiety, I asked him? After a long discussion about batteries, the dual motor capabilities, the growing number of charging stations, and the rundown on their last bi-state road trip, he replied: No. His vehicle gets about 326 miles when charged up (nearly the same mileage as my Nissan Frontier, truthfully). Surely that’s sufficient to glide along any of the backroads of Virginia without worrying about a fill up, I thought. But still, aren’t you concerned about your onboard map/guidance system? What if the satellite coverage drops out? What if line-of-sight is obscured by mountain driving? What if, what if? From their website, I take some reassurance: As updated maps become available, they are automatically sent to Model S over Wi-Fi. To ensure you receive them, periodically connect Model S to a Wi-Fi network. OK.

Thinking about our transitioning to the new, all digital age: does anyone remember getting letters in the mail? Finding a collection of old letters carefully ribboned together and saved in shoeboxes, perhaps for generations? They were our maps and guide to the past, connecting us to people and places a text or an email never can. I’m looking at you, Major Sullivan Ballou (https://www.nps.gov/articles/-my-very-dear-wife-the-last-letter-of-major-sullivan-ballou.htm)

I wonder what we will leave behind in the way of ephemera, love letters, birthday cards, train stubs and such. Or will our future be one of the now, driving along our digital highways and not looking back. Never lost, always here.

If you are a map or data junky, Virginia Roads website has an amazing set of tools designed to create apps, or maps which incorporate their data. Again from their website: Build exciting new apps with no code. Story Maps are a great way to share your message interactively. Quickly combine your maps, analysis and data int a purposeful app – with no code!

That’s pretty exciting for me to see, the cartographic world was just beginning the transition to digital environment when I left the Army in 1986.

Sorting Through Things

/ ronnyjames / Leave a comment

A few years ago, on a visit to see my mother out in Oregon, we spent some time with her going through boxes of photos. I wasn’t quite sure what we would find, or even what to expect amidst that pile of envelopes, sleeves of brittle negatives, and assorted black and white memories. She’d had them stored away for years, pictures taken during her and my Dad’s honeymoon; photos from our brief time spent on the ranch in Smith Valley, Nevada; our first house in Sparks, Nevada, three boys playing in the yard. There were photos of a parade my brother and I marched in; for some reason we are wearing Hawaiian outfits, paper leis over our tshirts and cut-off jeans. I like to think of this one as the Sparks, Nevada answer to the Pasadena Rose Bowl Parade! *update 08/31/2021 Jack’s Carnival History page for more info on this event.

Children marching in parade 1961
Ron marching in children’s parade, 1961 Sparks NV

There were a number of photos even older than these. Pictures of a blended family taken during the early 1930s, my Mother posing with three of her siblings in front of their home in Colorado before their move to Southern California. The girls are wearing light-colored dresses, bunched-up socks over black leather shoes, my Uncle Robert sits quietly with his hands folded in his lap. Mom wears a large, quite large, bow in her hair as she appears to study her nails. My Grandmother doesn’t appear in any of these. I have to imagine she was the photographer in the family as my Mom would later be in ours. 

Four of seven children sitting on rock wall
Three boys sitting on a piano bench, black white
Three boys at the piano, 1958

My brothers and I were not immune to posing for family photos. This might have been Easter, I can’t think of any other reason three youngsters would be dressed in their finest jackets sporting bow ties. Though the photo is dated August 1958, my Dad was known for taking his time dropping off film to be developed and printed. Quite a few of the photos have handwritten details on the back of them, dates or locations written to help identify them years later I suspect. It’s a habit I never acquired and wished I had. Today I rely on filing digital images in online folders with the date taken, trusting that the meta data stored with each photo will still be available years from now. 

I had hoped to piece together more of our family’s history as we browsed through Mom’s collection. Not surprisingly, Mom remembered many details. The photos of my Dad and her posing with their 1936 Dodge Coupe at the Chandelier Tree in Leggett, California I found particularly interesting. The tree is still standing and many years back, my wife and son and I drove through it, stopping in the middle of the tree to take the same shot. Had I known of these photos at the time, I would surely have tried to recreate the look, Dad leaning casually back against the trunk of the tree, one leg resting on the car’s fender.

  • Boulder Dam 1049
    Hoover Dam, Nevada
  • View of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco CA in 1948. View from inside the car window.
    The view of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco CA in 1948
  • Chandelier Tree with Dad and car
    Chandelier Tree with my Dad , 1948 Underwood Park (Leggett, California)
  • Chandelier Tree with Mom, 1948
    Chandelier Tree with my Mom, 1948 Underwood Park (Leggett, California)

It seems we have inadvertently taken many of the same photos as did my folks back in the late 1940s and early 1950s. California and Nevada have many natural and man-made sites that lend themselves to photo memorialization and there are several my family has visited. Hoover Dam (known to many when I was growing up in Nevada as Boulder Dam) is surely the most famous of the Nevada landmarks, and one that my folks had visited in 1949. It was many years later that friends and I visited the same place, taking nearly the same photo. Even our recent trip to San Francisco calls back to a snapshot my Mom made thru the windshield of their car while crossing the Golden Gate Bridge.

Hoover Dam
Hoover Dam
Golden Gate Bridge San Francisco CA 2021

I had seen a trend on Facebook for a time that really caught my attention. Individuals would hold up an old photo—perhaps a faded Polaroid or a black and white print—of a location from some time in the past, superimposed over the same location now in the present. The passage of time caught between the two realities, separated by decades in some cases, has fascinated me. The photos seemingly bookend moments in a person’s life and invite comparisons and contrasts that we don’t normally expect to see.

One thing has become abundantly clear dash I have been browsing through these past moments captured on film. What to do with or how to organize what we have? And where are the “missing” photos? We have boxes of photos, some in black and white, most in color. We have several binders of Kodachrome slides in plastic sleeves (no dates or other identification); we have a number of photo CDs but they seem to be clustered around just a few years time; and increasingly, we have digital images scattered everywhere.

Photo CD
Kodak photo CD 2003

Shutterfly sends me an update periodically. This week it was: “Remember these memories from 13 years ago? Hi Ron, we thought you’d like to press rewind and relive these times.” And it seems my Apple photo account likes to do the same thing with the images I have stored on (in ?) the cloud.

I’ve got images stored on my computer (currently a Mac Mini) that have been transferred from the last four computers I’ve owned. I’ve got images stored on a number of external hard drives, some of which no longer work. And I have a lot of images on “read/write” CDs that I burned off back in the early 2000s when I switched over to a digital camera. Some of those CDs are no longer readable for whatever reason. Who knows what they contain. My plan to scan and digitize our remaining “hard copy” photos has been dealt a minor setback by the very medium itself. Once the photos are digitized, do I throw away the originals? Or pack them away somewhere, safe and secure for my kids to find one day?

Have we really found it easier to switch formats, saving our family photos on CDs, hard drives, or parked somewhere online? Do we view them any more often, or are they tucked away and forgotten like the boxes of photo albums I have downstairs?

Mom holding black white photo
Mom sorting through a pile of black and white photos

I haven’t found an easy answer for any of this, though early on I did decide to save all the images I transferred from my digital cameras with a unique ID based on the transfer date, for instance 20210825-001. But oh my, the images do start to accumulate! As I start to digitize many of our old photos, the process has begun to restore a sense of order to the beast, though most are still in photo boxes tucked away in plastic storage bins.

More recently I’ve begun to have photo books printed (Shutterfly.com) of our vacations and special memories. Our recent vacation to Nevada became a book as did my Mom’s 90th birthday celebration. Hopefully they will serve as a convenient way to browse old memories and a place to collect, store, and maybe one day pass on the photos we are taking now. They are certainly more attractive than a stack of hard drives sitting in the bookshelves!

High Grade Kodak finishing, available through Hilbig’s Pharmacy in San Bernardino, CA 1948

A Google search for “how to organize home photos” yielded about 369,000,000 results. Below are a few you might find useful in taking on your own projects. Good luck with that closet full of boxes!

Photography Life ideas for organizing your photos

New York Times article on organizing your photos

From the Library of Congress, a guide to preserving and caring for your photography originals: https://www.loc.gov/preservation/care/photo.html

Big Real Big

/ ronnyjames / 1 Comment

I first learned silkscreen printing when I went to work for a sign company printing billboards back in the 1970s. It was a part time job while I attended the University of Nevada. Today billboards come in a lot of varying sizes and the technology has changed dramatically over the past 40 plus years. Many billboards are now printed digitally (think of a gigantic HP plotter), or even comprised of small LED units to create vivid moving graphic displays. But back in the day, we printed on sheets of paper, 42” x 60”, 12 sheets to a sign. The screens were huge compared to the little screens we had used in art class. The squeegees were big. We mixed up the ink up in 5 gallon buckets. Everything was big.

Checking the registration between the screen and the printing substrate.

When I moved to San Diego after college, I found a job in another screen printing company doing the same thing as before. We still used hand cut paper stencils, adhered to the bottom of the screen, to make our impressions. But this company had an industrial-sized copy camera and a dark room, so we produced a lot of signs using film and photosensitive emulsion coated onto the screens for the stencil. 

I left them and helped to start another printing company (a competitor with several former employees from our previous company—not sure how I feel about that now). 

But those positions and experiences all prepared me for the move to the Really Big  Show. Robert Keith and Company, San Diego was a design and fabrication company specializing in custom made Giant Inflatable Product Replicas, along with inflatable college mascots, logos, scenic props, and advertising. Everything we made was BIG.

When they received an order for multiple copies of twenty foot tall Budweiser cans, the decision was made to create an in-house screen printing department which would augment their hand-painted graphic capabilities.

We created twelve foot long screens to print labels directly on the fabric pieces which would then be sewn together to create the product replicas. We printed for Budweiser, Miller Beer, Corona and Dos Equis, San Miguel and Tecate,  Strohs and Pabst beers, and Pepsi. Bottles and cans, even a giant six-pack created as an inflatable building, were some of the many oversized projects I helped to create.

The company changed hands and names a couple of times thru the years. I got back in touch with them several years ago. I was surprised and more than a little impressed to see they are still in business, making things BIG as http://www.biggerthanlife.com

Oh! Side note here. For years one of my unofficial nicknames has been Hon Real Big. I like it! I think I might have preferred “Slim” or “Speedy,” but none of those quite seem to fit now.

Catching Up

/ ronnyjames / Leave a comment

One of the most exciting aspects of reconnecting with friends has been to discover what they are doing now. While Facebook has been a great resource to find and reestablish friendships from years ago, I’ve discovered it’s not the only way to do that.

Recently I found an old college roommate (old as in the sense, from years ago!) while searching online for someone else. Google returned a vast array of individuals with the same name as my search; when I cross-referenced a few of them through LinkedIn I was surprised at who I had found. I wrote about reconnecting and catching up with John last week (here). Since then we’ve done a deeper dive and spoken on the phone, he refreshing my fading memory and sketching in more details of his life now.

Another friend from my time in the service, US Army 83-86, moved back to the Pacific Northwest upon retiring from the Army. I follow him on Instagram and was encouraged to see that he and his wife have started a podcast primarily focused on travel and the adventures of a blended family. More power to them! Just as the internet has allowed for a wider audience for writers, it has also opened up the broadcast medium to more voices speaking from their own experiences. Take a listen here https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lifetrek/id1553717951

Last year I had plans to join my fellow high school graduates to celebrate our 50th Reunion. While those plans were cancelled due to Covid-19, I was able to reconnect with a number of friends thru the Facebook Group one of them had set up for a previous reunion. Catching up online, looking at pictures of children ( and grandchildren!) was itself a small consolation for missing out. And truthfully, we didn’t get fingerprints all over the photo albums that inevitably get passed around. 

Last year I spent some time searching online for information about a Nevada artist, one of whose paintings my parents used to own. When I came across a photo of his painting on a website devoted to Western artists, I was intrigued. It had been used to illustrate an article, a review of a new book comparing the lives of two prominent Nevada artists, one an author, the other a painter. I found the book on Amazon and ordered it; read it; loved it. The book’s author had moved to Reno, my hometown, so I tracked him down and shot off a letter to him. I was agreeably surprised to receive a reply. Anthony noted that he has a new book to be published this spring on another Western artist from the same time period and that he would alert me as to the date. A nice touchstone with an important part of my distant past.

Filing box with old cards
Paper filing card system.

Last year we had a mobile shredding service come out and destroy dozens of boxes of old business records, files and notes on people, some of whom I know have passed on. But what of the rest? What has become of some of these names in files from decades ago? What of their families, their children? Where are they all now? And what about us, have you gotten in touch with someone from your past? No guarantees but it is nice to see how some stories have turned out years later, when perhaps we had only seen the first chapter.

I Missed It

/ ronnyjames / 1 Comment

This past Christmas I drove out to our local Target to pick up a new Christmas CD for the wife. No luck. I drove over to Best Buy, home of everything electronic, and was surprised by how much they had…changed. The vast rows of CDs and DVDs—which, along with the equipment to play them, had once been a major part of the store—were gone. Somehow I had missed a major change in the cultural landscape. 

Though I haven’t  been a big consumer of music on CD, still I feel I’ve done my part to keep the music industry running, often picking up a couple of CDs for the holidays or gifts for birthdays. The same for DVDs, purchasing a few every year. When the collectors edition of Star Wars came out on DVD, I picked up a copy along with The Lord of the Rings (and the Hobbit!). I’ve added to my James Bond collection all of the Daniel Craig movies as they came out. The same with Batman and of course The Avengers. Building my audio video library piece by piece through the years, I was surprised by how much we had when it came time to pack and move to our new place two years ago.

Blockbuster sold DVDs as well as rented them.

On March 31, 1997, digital video disc (DVD) video players were first released for sale in the United States. Remember Netflix and their DVDs in a self return mailer? Netflix began in 1997 mailing out DVDs in a self return mailer based on your list of favorites. Within ten years they had switched to a streaming service. Before we switched to Netflix we would stop by our local Blockbuster and grab a few movies for the weekend. Remember Blockbuster? They filed for bankruptcy in 2010. Culture shift. Movies online, no more standing in line.

Best Buy announced that they would be phasing out all CD sales by July 1, 2018. Target was expected to make a similar move, selling CDs only on consignment. The digital disc was destined to be sold in only a few holdouts such as Walmart, smaller record shops, and of course Amazon. I missed this announcement. https://www.digitaltrends.com/features/the-history-of-the-cds-rise-and-fall/

At the same time as the introduction of the CD and DVD, in October 2001 Apple unleashed a little MP3 player known as the iPod. Twenty years later players can be found in many sizes, shapes, and configurations. Best Products lists their top ten players here. With entries from Sony, FiiO, Sandisc, and of course Apple, these little go-anywhere devices offer incredible sound quality, music on demand where and when you want to hear it. They replaced the big boom boxes from my younger days.

Pandora, the internet music streaming service which began in January 2000, has lost ground to an array of new services: Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, SiriusXM, Tidal, and YouTube Music (which replaced Google Play Music) all offer a selection of add-supported or subscription-based music systems that you can stream to your phone, MP3 player, computer or automobile.

So where does that leave us, those folks who are left holding on to boxes full of movies and music CDs from the past couple of decades? What do we do with the remnants of older technology, not quite obsolete but “quaint,” in the same way that my desktop computer was replaced with a smaller, faster laptop? Do we finally adapt and adopt?

Was there a memo? If so, I think I missed it.