Today's Sun-Shiney Walk

Today I decided to give Lois Lane some one on one attention so we took a nice long walk down our street.  It was a bit chilly, but the sun was shining and it was great to finally get outside for a while. I think Lois was quite happy as well.

Good Morning!

L.B. was up and at em' early this morning - I foresee no need for an alarm clock in our future!  He did good all night in his crate and he's settling in very well!

Introducing "Spartacus" (Aka L.B. - Little Bit)

Today we picked up our second "foster" dog from the Humane Society. Spartacus (aka Sparky) is a 3 year old red chihuahua. His original owner had to surrender him due to severe health issues. He was then adopted again, but returned the next day because he would not eat or go to the bathroom. He obviously wasn't given enough time at his second "home", especially knowing how skittish chihuahua's can be. Being a second time owner surrender, his time was limited and he becomes a high kill risk in a shelter.  Via the powers of Facebook he was brought to our attention and we decided to give fostering a go again. (If you recall, our first foster was a failure and Giant Dawg, aka Buddy, has been with us ever since.)

So, I introduce you to Sparky! Who we now call L.B. - short for Little Bit. He didn't respond to any of his other names anyway.   As it turns out, we never really agreed that this one would be a foster  so he's now the newest addition to the Mesker clan.  ;)  We have also since figured out that he is a chihuahua mixed with dachshund, thus a Chiweenie - which is is other nickname.

Go Cards!

Today, on Valentine's Day, I'm going to my very first University of Louisville Cardinals basketball game!  C. found a good deal on decent tickets and the boys had no interest in going, so we went on a Valentine's Day date to the game! We started with drinks at bar just outside the Yum Center and had a great time!  The Cards won!

Dog or Cat?

Lois Lane sometimes thinks she's a cat - or rather she's just totally spoiled and she pretty much does what she wants.  Here she was laying on part of Jason's desk while we worked.  He figured he may as well make her comfy and put her blanket up there. Rotten.

Sound Triggered Photography

Jason has been messing around with electronic design and micro-processor coding lately and decided to try his hand at creating me a sound trigger to set off my flash for photography.  Tonight we got to play with a test run of his first pass by popping balloons.  The equipment used was a Nikon D-80 on a tripod; one Nikor SB-600 flash mounted to a separate stand, camera right, which was attached to the built device - an Arduino based ATMega 328 micro-controller on a custom breadboard.    We only had a handful of balloons to test with (I will be buying more tomorrow) so we documented the results below.  Once he gets this one sorted out he will being working on a visual sensor for me for my bird photography, which I will also document.  Once I get some more test material, I will also be updating with more photos and test runs, hopefully with some better focusing!  ;)

Feel free to ask questions in the comments section for any setup or Arduino related questions - one of us will answer depending on the subject of the question.

This is the Arduino breadboard build - SB600 to the left - AC adapter to the right:

Balloon Pop #1 (you can see the controller board sitting on his lap) :

Balloon Pop #2 (yes, it caught me off-guard - it was dark and I wasn't sure when it was going to pop - ha!) :

Balloon Pop #3 Closeup - splits right down the middle! :

Tiny Chicken Egg

This is the smallest chicken egg I've ever seen! This often happens when a new hen or a young hen begins laying for the first time.