Home from Santiago, rather tired. Only had time to take a few pictures from the executive suite in our office (10th floor). Have a nice sunset still in post-processing that I will post later. Oh, ate some fish from Easter Island in one of the restaurant and it was delicious. Also had some Carmenere wines, which is kinda funny since it’s a grape varietal from France that died out there and is basically only grown in Chile.

UPDATE:

This is the sunset shot I was talking about.

Should be back in the US sometime Friday morning. Took just the camera body and the 28mm with me, this time. I’ll probably go again in September anyway, so I can take the rest of the gear next time if I really missed something.

I’ve pulled the TCO concept on customers for years, I can calculate at least a rough approximation of it on these solutions I build for them, pretty much on the fly (or at least on the back of an envelope)… I just never really applied to my life before.

Still, as the Princess and I are now looking to start managing our financial health a little better, you know, being old and married and not so rock and roll anymore, aside from talking to potential advisers I went to the web… and found this little slice of insight.

Don’t own an iPhone ($2,200), or a dog($12,000 average for a small one), or a car($42,000 average), or a house, and my daughter is mostly grown up now… wow, I’ve already saved $1M!

Seriously, tho, when I add up the true costs of all my photography gear, and in particular if I include what that money would be worth now if I’d invested it over the years… well. I love my camera, and my lenses and tripods and filters, I really do. I’m glad I spent, say, at least half what I did. It’s just startling to see how much it really cost me.

In the end, I agree with the conclusion at the end of that link, above, money is a tool, it’s there to be spent to make us happy. Striking the balance between gratification today and tomorrow, between paranoia and enlightened risk management, it’s never easy. Helps to see the numbers, tho, once in a while.

I’m happy to report that Dexpot is fully compatible with the screen rotate utility, so that my extra desktops work in both orientations.

I love the one-click or keyboard shortcut toggling between my email, my word processor and Firefox desktops… yes, as opposed to switching between windows on a single desktop. Never liked that UI paradigm, it feels messy and cluttered to me.

I love the ability to minimize ANY window to the system tray… there are a couple apps that don’t minimize there that I have running 24/7 and this fixes that little blemish in the application tray.

I love the automatic application start on entry on a desktop, and I’ve only scratched the surface… ok, I’ll admit I’m a total obsessive compulsive freak to obsess about such tiny details.

Oh, and the feedback on rotating the LCD between landscape and portrait, after a week of use, is that I have it in portrait 90% of the time. I like landscape only for photo editing and for spreadsheets. Everything else, from Lotus Notes, to Firefox, to Word, etc… feels incredibly cramped in a wide, short screen.

Made some Rye by hand and thawed out the last of the mixer-killing Pumpernickel.

They looked so cute together I had to take a picture.