Question Mark Man

A recent, well-dressed client of mine, poses for the shot.

X FAKTOR PHOTO!

C-ing Beef and Twisted Metal

Corned Beef, that is. Lot's of it, and I have no relation to or take part in anything Irish whatsoever.  My emails start with "cornbeef"! Ugh!

I like the color orange, and I like oranges, but I don't like the color when applied to natural hair.

I like lime too.

Classic.

Winter Games '09

Real winter came late this year. March 1st and 2nd, and we get like 13inches of snow and nasty 10-degree wind-chills on the "Cemetary Hill" in Eatontown, NJ, as the little snot-nosed brats fly down the hill till their boogers freeze across their cheeks. Woo!

Everything was white..

Somewhere around 13 inches of snow fell between last nite and today.

The above pic: That's the actual color and light intensity at 12:30am last nite.

Just wanted to take a macro pic, then I picked up my 30-06 shell

...and my knife from TN.

New Logo!

If anyone, out of the billions of people out there, cares...I redesigned my logo above. :)

Moving on from day 1.

My cup runneth over...

My meta-physical sponge of learning is saturated, thus, my cup runneth over...

My tolerance for the ridiculous abstract has come to an end, thus, my cup runneth over...

The things I have to worry about have yet to subside, thus, my cup runneth over...

Responsibility is a never ending list, thus, my cup runneth over...

My ability to function efficiently is decreasing at an exponential rate, thus, my cup runneth over...

In all of this, you understand, hopefully, that I am overwhelmed, and therefore cannot function further due to an excess of 100% stress on my soul.

What to do when your cup runneth over?

Drink or Spill it.

Start filling it up again.

FEAR 2 & diNovo Keyboard

First off, FEAR 2 is disgusting.  Disgustingly disgusting and distgustingly amazing.

And so is the diNovo keyboard I just received last night.  Great solid keyboard with wireless freedom. woo!  With the supplied SetPoint software, I can customize both the MX Revolution mouse and the diNovo keyboard so that it's no different than when I'm at the desk with my customized G17 keyboard and Razer mouse.

And another thing about FEAR 2......yuck.  I believe I played it to halfway through all just yesterday.  I cannot yet describe how awesome or gore-ily disgusting this game is, but I can say that if you like Call of Duty gameplay and graphics, and like Resident Evil and probably all other horror games, check this out.

Loaded.

the XF theater in its current state

that's my receiver displaying the "X FAKTOR" input.

SIGMA Lenses

Sigma 17-70mm F2.8-4.5 DC MACRO Lens

My intentions when buying this lens were to replace both my kit Sony lens (18-70mm) and my Sony T500 camera (macro camera).  I bought it off eBay and received it this night for $320.  It retails for $610. This lens is highly versatile. I took it out of the box and was impressed with its macro capabilities.  When zoom set at 70mm, I can focus as close as one centimeter from the lens, with a 1/4.5 aperature.  Excellent.  Great quality, great finish, and compatibility with my Sony Alpha.  A very solid, yet durable and versatile lens.

SIGMA 70-300mm f/4-5.6

This lens, however, I just bought tonight after seeing how great the first one was, I couldn't help but want to replace my Sony 75-300mm lens.  This one retails for $210, I bought new for $150, (but only because I added $10 for 2nd day air shipping)  Should be nice.

Upgrades.

That's a beautiful SIGMA 17-70mm Macro Lens, finally got one.

The Vizio 42" 1080p HD LCDTV

Western Digital 2TB Mirror Edition External HardDrive

Logitech MX Revolution wireless mouse

DE M85A Airsoft Shotgun

F.IRST E.NCOUNTER A.SSAULT R.ECON 2 for 360

The ultraslim Logitech diNovo wireless keyboard

Yep, so those are the upgrades for the first quarter of 2009. Party time.

The Million-Dollar Keyboard

Apparently, since this Logitech diNovo Keyboard is "Temporarily Out of Stock", it would take the sum of $1,019,448.55 to increse their efforts and get that keyboard to you. Amazing. I wonder how the system came up with that number?

Michael & Mary together again!

um, yeah, I'm pretty sure it explains itself.

If you want the cereal box featured atop, I'll be posting an auction in eBay soon, so check back here for the link. :P

Gears of Noir

IN OTHER NEWS:

- I [finally] bought a new external hard drive for my ever-expanding collection of photographs and films.  I bought a 2TB Western Digital Mirror Edition.  The 500GB WD drive is still workin' like a pro, but I wouldn't mind having a 500GB Passport Elite to move around. Yes, lots of space.

- Bought F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, the first one was addictingly intense, so I can't wait for this one to come in, prob around V-Day.

-The "fourty-two inch liquid crystal" should be here by V-Day. hehe it's big :) Just not sure what I'm gonna do with my Samsung "twenty-two inch liquid crystal" yet.

-My M58A shotgun should be here today or tomorrow.

- I got Tinkerbell yesterday.

phew, lotta good (covert) news today

i was beginning to think i'd never get an email with some real good news....and i just had like 3 awesome ones tonight, so i'm really psyched about what is to come.

Like fourty-two inches of liquid crystal...hehe.

very covert though, can't let the surprise out to my woman by any means. :P

codename: Operation: ALPHA

oh boy.

Looks like I'll be getting some awesome packages in the mail this week...hehe. 

Oh, and it looks like AOL finally closed my email account. :(

Yeah, so "lotto@xfaktorfilms.com" is no longer a valid email address, which sucks, but I don't necessarily do film anymore so I guess it's not that bad.

Pip Boy

Look at 'im!

He's pretty cool, doesn't say much, but certainly stands for something and whenever ya look at him, it just makes you wanna do something with a smile on your face. lol.

it's a PipBoy Vault-Tec Bobblehead from Fallout 3 game package

Super.

Super-what?  Yeah, I didn't watch it. Ho-hum drum.  But I can say that it certainly didn't mean my day (or night for that matter) wasn't super, 'cause it was.

Taken, that movie with Liam Neeson that actually came out sometime last year....came out January 30th in theaters... huh?  I don't get it either.

AutoPortrait

Good contrast, and smooth lighting; I like it.

Sony Alpha + 650mm-1300mm lens

Nikonic

Nikon F2 35mm SLR

For my Photography class I needed a 35mm camera, so I asked my photo-centered grandfather and he supplied for me his gem from back in his 35mm days.  A Nikon F2 SLR, but a beauty nonetheless, with a 70-210mm lens.  I'll have fun in his footsteps.

Update Jan.31st: I loaded Kodak iso400 film, and have some 400 B/W for my next roll.  We'll see how this goes.

Seismic Proportions.

The X-SYSTEM as of January 20th consists of:

• Two 10" Cerwin-Vega! 3-way towers
• Two 15" Fisher 3-way floorstanding towers
• Five Zenith surround speakers (to be upgraded)
• One big-nasty 12" Infinity PS212 subwoofer (new this month) wired with digital coax
• Sony STR-DG720 7.1 Digital Receiver/Amplifier (also brand new this month)
• Wired to my XF Machine and 360 by optical cable

~in my efforts to upgrade my entire audio/video system~

I just recently received the subwoofer I ordered from eBay, brand-new:  a 12" INFINITY 400WATT RMS/700W peak power subwoofer.  I must say, I am impressed.  With all of the subs these days going for 400-1000 bucks a pop (a good one will cost you more towards the latter), I did some sifting on eBay and found this gem for less than the previous budget range.  It just made sense.  Otherwise I was going to get an 8" Polk (PSW111) sub for $30 less, running 150watts RMS...but decided this one was worth the 6-day wait (due to a Sunday and MiLK day).  Which it certainly was worth it.

There's the new 12"/400W Infinity subwoofer next to my old Zenith package-sub (8"/120watts)  |The bass port is about 3x as big as the one on the Zenith|

(all i need now is less crap in the room so there's less to rattle. ;)

IN OTHER NEWS:

-My 250GB external hard drive failed. :(

-I attained a plausible Dolby Digital & DTS signal from The Machine to the DG720...finally.

-I updated my 360, and it changed everything around...and added what I highly anticipated- support for my Samsung's native resolution, 1680 x 1050, which is great, so now I'm officially gaming in HD with HD sound.  (It's crossed my mind a few times to invest in a 42" Plasma/LCD tv or a bigger PC monitor)

-Freed up 50 gigs on my internal HDD just by moving my pictures over to The Vault (500gb HDD).