Xmas Letter 2008

Xmas Letter 2008

Welcome to the 2008 equivalent to the Traveling Roths' Microsoft Word Update Letter. (thanks to Snide for the term). If you're following the link on the Christmas Card, and this is your first visit to travelingroths.com, welcome. We hope you'll check back regularly, and maybe even subscribe to the feed.

It's been a year for us, so we'll give you the summary in words and pictures. All pictures are hosted on Zooomr. Check out these and others there when you get the chance.

January
We traveled to Winterplace Ski Resort in West Virginia for our first ever family ski trip. Dave and the kids snowboarded, and everybody went tubing.




February
Zoe turns eight, gets her picture published in JPG Magazine, and enjoys her first solo Big Mac. We photowalk the UNC campus and 9th Street in Durham






March
Soccer resumes, spring arrives, and so does Easter.






April
Evidently nothing happened, but we took pictures of it anyway.






May
Pig Pickin 3: Triple Figures. This time with a whole slew of Roths from four different states.




June
Jennifer spends the better part of two weeks in Senegal, and the kids take their first solo flight to Chicago.




July
Jennifer receives her Masters degree, and we take our first whole-family international trip to Morocco












August
Vacationing with the Roths in Black Mountain, North Carolina, the Saias in Washington DC, and a beach weekend at Fort Macon State Park.






August was also back to school time; Fourth Grade for Tristan, and Third Grade for Zoe.

September
Fall Soccer for Tristan, Girls on the Run for Zoe, and the Ben Folds Five reunion concert for Dave and Jennifer.


October
Our eighth annual trip to the North Carolina State Fair for the family, a trip to Las Vegas and In-N-Out Burger for Dave, and the Owen J. Roberts Class of 1988 20th Reunion for Dave. Zoe also became Disaster Girl, a new internet meme.

November
Tristan turns 10, and Dave's truck turns over 300,000 miles.


December
Zoe, with her Girls on the Run group, runs her first 5K race; the third annual Reindeer Romp in Cary, NC with a time of ~35 minutes. She didn't even break a sweat. Tristan performs in Duke Chapel with the North Carolina Boys Choir in the training choir to an audience of several hundred people. Tristan and Zoe both perform solos in the church children's Christmas program, to much acclaim.

And in case we hadn't had enough excitement for the year, Tristan, executing a sweet move at recess of jumping from a picnic table to a tree manged to score a supracondylar fracture of his right humerus, as well as a fracture of his distal right radius, or in other words, he broke his arm in two places, but at least he made points with the ladies. He spent all day Friday the 19th in the University of North Carolina Emergency Department, followed by surgery that evening. What kind of surgery? Closed reduction with percutaneous pinning; two or three pins in his elbow and one in his wrist. After an overnight stay at UNC Childrens Hospital (big kudos), he came home to start his six weeks with a fully-wrapped arm and sling. He's been a real trooper through this whole thing, and hasn't needed any pain meds since he got out of surgery Friday night.

And that's the year in words and pictures.

Happy Hannukah, Merry Christmas, Happy Festivus, Joyeaux Noel, Buon Natale, [Happy Birthday] and Happy New Year to all.

Stay tuned to this space next year to see where we go next.

The Roths: Dave, Jennifer, Tristan, and Zoe.
Mebane, North Carolina, USA


http://tinyurl.com/563xmj
http://bit.ly/rhhV

I Have a Meme: Disaster Girl

Almost four years ago, one dreary January Saturday morning, the kids and I were hanging out at home, watching TV and waiting for springtime, when Jennifer came home and said "I can't believe you're not up the street at that huge fire."

Huge fire? We gotta go see that, so we grabbed the camera and the kids and took of up the street to check it out. Two blocks away was a single-family home that was fully engulfed in flames. The Mebane Fire Department was already on the scene, but not really doing anything, other than wishing they could drive up and down the street with their sirens on some more. . . but I digress. It appeared that this house was donated to the fire department for training, as no one really seemed very intent on extinguishing it. They were even letting kids hold the firehose and point the spray at the house.

Regardless, it made for some great photos. I shot what was a bunch for me at the time, probably 20 or 30, including a couple of the kids with the fire in the background. Most noteworthy of those was this one of Zoe, that I call "Firestarter"

It got a lot of positive attention on Zooomr, where it was originally hosted, even earning some kudos from photographers I admire, like Daniel Krieger, Thomas Hawk, Jeremy Brooks, and others. That was posted in early 2007 and I didn't give it much thought for about a year.

I was checking out JPG Magazine, which publishes a full-color glossy magazine of user-submitted photos. They had a theme at the time called "Emotion Capture." I thought this shot may be appropriate, so I uploaded it, and submitted to the magazine. Lo and behold, the picture was selected for publication! I got my picture in a national magazine, a free subscription, and a hundred bucks! This photography stuff is fun! The picture on the JPG Magazine website got a lot of positive attention, views, and kudos. JPG had me shoot another photo of Zoe, holding her copy of JPG Magazine, and used that picture in a blog post.

Once again, I didn't think too much about it, until Ben Dan Hawks, a contact over at Zooomr let me know that my picture was on digg.com and reddit.com in various caption and photoshop contests. From there it made it to Fark.com and then more places than I could keep up with. My picture on the JPG Magazine site is now up over 95,000 views.

The fun part are the photoshopped revisions of the original photo, crediting Zoe with whatever disaster is pictured

There's even a history of "Disaster Girl," Forest Gump-style at many important events through history.

And a video!

JPG Magazine has done a follow-up blog post on the image's Internet meme status.

I've had people, so-called "image experts" e-mail me and inquire about the photo, and what alterations I've done to it, whether is was photoshopped or not. They have these tremendous theories about the alterations I've made, but the truth is, this shot is straight out of the camera, no processing whatsoever. Take that, image experts! And as far as getting Zoe to pose like that with that subtle smirk. . .just dumb luck. I wish I could say the whole thing was masterfully skillful on my part, but it really wasn't. If you take enough pictures, you're bound to get a few keepers, regardless of your skill level.

All the while, Zoe, who did not start that fire, is mildly amused.

And now you know the true story of Disaster Girl.

UPDATE: 12/29/2008

Disaster Girl was featured on an episode of Rocketboom


Update, June 27, 2009

You can now buy your own officially licensed copy of the Disaster Girl photo from Redbubble, with a part of the proceeds going to Zoe herself. Just follow this link

http://www.redbubble.com/people/travelingroths/art/3326855-3-the-original-disaster-girl

Owen J. Roberts Class of 1988 20-Year Reunion Teaser

For those of you looking for pictures from the class reunion this past weekend, here they are:

On Zooomr (my preference)

On Flickr

So far (as of 10/27 at 11 pm) I have the morning party shots processed and uploaded. I should have the evening party shots up probably tomorrow night. The night party shots are now also posted. For others with pictures hosted online, label them with the ojr88reunion tag. For other Zooomr users, that tag will add your photos to my reunion set automatically.

Now as a disclaimer: I may not have pictures of everybody, your name might be misspelled or missing altogether, and not all the photos I took are online. If anyone wants full resolution copies of any of these pictures, e-mail me at diamonddaveroth at gmail dot com, and I'll be happy to send them to you.

In a few days, I'll have more to say about the parties, if anyone wants to check back to see that. In the meantime, enjoy the photos. I definitely enjoyed taking them.

How to Walk to In-N-Out Burger from the Las Vegas Strip

I talk about food on this blog. I talk about it a lot. This post is no exception. Actually, this post is all about food. Food in the context of a small personal victory. This post was two and a half years in the making.

In May 2006, when we were out at Lake Tahoe for Jennifer's brother Jonas's college graduation, we ate at In-N-Out Burger for the first time. Jonas has spoken of the restaurant in glowing terms, and their brother Jordan seconded the endorsement of Jonas. So when we ate at the In-N-Out in Reno, we quickly agreed with Jordan and Jonas.

In-N-Out is a privately-owned burger chain that exists only in the American West. It has always been owned and run by the same family since its founding in 1948. It has never been a public company, and never franchised. They've also never installed a freezer in their restaurants. Everything comes in the door fresh, the meat, the buns, and the fries come in the restaurant as potatoes. The restaurants are spotless, the employees loyal, cheerful, and well-compensated. So as you can guess, the food's pretty good. The menu consists of four items: hamburger, cheeseburger, double-double, and french fries. You'd think that's simple, but it's not. There is a whole list of customizations to your food, and that's known as "the secret menu." The secret menu items are already laid out on the cashier's terminals, so it's not much of a secret, but you need to know what you want before you come in, as those special upgrades aren't advertised in the store.

There also isn't an In-N-Out burger within 2000+ miles of my house, so the only time I get to return is when I'm traveling to the west. My first chance to return to In-N-Out was September 2007 when I was in Las Vegas for work. Despite my best efforts, I failed to make it to the restaurant. I knew where it was, scoped out the route on Google Earth, figured out the schedule of The Deuce, and headed off on foot on a 100 degree day. Despite my best efforts, I never discovered the Northwest Passage over I-15. I should've taken a taxi, I guess, but it seemed excessive to spend $20 for a $6 meal. I determined that I would take a taxi the next time, if it came to that.

But I was hoping it didn't come to that this year. I'm back in Las Vegas for work again, and I did my homework. I found three In-N-Out restaurants within reasonable walking distance, and definitely within taxi distance. One on the UNLV campus didn't require an Interstate crossing, though it was a three mile trek from the hotel, or a little under two from the Deuce stop. The one I attempted last year was about 0.6 miles from the bus. . .provided I could get over the interstate. I opened Google Earth and Google Maps with street view, and researched the route to see if there was anything I had missed.

And it turns out there was! One thing I saw on the map, and one thing I didn't see until I was on foot today.

First, in the green circle, what are those stripes? A crosswalk! Since there was a crosswalk, there must be a sidewalk. That's a good start.

So with a break at lunchtime, I made my second attempt at the summit. Here's how to do it.

Take The Deuce to the Excalibur

Near the main drawbridge entrance to the casino is an escalator up to the overpass. Take the sidewalk around the escalator,

heading West parallel to W Tropicana Ave.

Once the sidewalk takes you under the on-ramp, you have a choice to make. This is where I screwed up last year. The sidewalk bifurcates, with one path headed West toward the restaurant, and the other heading East.

Take the eastbound (right) sidewalk. That sounds counterintuitive, since it's heading away from the restaurant. It snakes around, up onto the bridge, heading West... the way you want to go. (see the green path in the Google Earth capture above.)

Here's that crosswalk that was visible from space.

From there, it's a piece of cake. Cross I-15 on the bridge, then via lighted crosswalks, cross the on-ramp, Tropicana Ave (headed north), and the on-ramp again (headed East), and you're there!

And now back to the food.

It was noon, and the place was packed. They had a ton of friendly people working, so the line moved quickly.

I ordered a double-double, animal-style, extra toast, with french fries, well-done, and a chocolate shake. You'll need to do your own research on the secret menu to see what that means. $6.39 including tax

Here's what it looks like though.

How did it taste? You'll just have to visit In-N-Out for yourself. I don't know if it was that burger I was in love with, or the idea of that burger, but this was a cheeseburger I could be happy with for the rest of my life. And rolling-back the failures of last year's quest made lunch taste all that much better. Now the only question is, do I go again for lunch tomorrow, or wait 'til next year. I think you know the answer ;-)

Made it to Nevada

I'm here in Las Vegas, and for proof, here's a picture of me in my room.

Leaving (for) Las Vegas

I'm headed to Las Vegas again for work, returning once again to the Infor user conference, Inforum 2008. It's foggy here at Raleigh-Durham International Airport, so my 8:15 plane had to divert to Norfolk to refuel, is supposed to land here at 9, and depart at 9:15. It's 8:40, and still pretty foggy, so I'm not placing my bets on a 9:15 departure either. At least Southwest Airlines does usually appear to make a real effort to be on time.

Track my flight here: Flight Tracker SWA298

And another: Flightview

and another: Flightaware

A Shooting in the Theater

Our local theater company, The Mebane Acting Company, knows that I like to take pictures, so with their current show, Steel Magnolias, opening this week, they invited me to the dress rehearsals to get some shots for their scrapbook.

At first, I was hesitant to do it. After all, I lost my good camera a few months ago and haven't replaced it yet, so I wasn't very excited about what I'd be able to do with any of the point-and-shoots we have sitting around the house. Going backwards in equipment quality has really taken the wind out of my sails. Plus indoor shots in a dark room (preferably without flash) are tough under the best of circumstances, and trying it with snapshot-quality gear would only make it worse. But I decided to do it anyway, because they were going to get pictures anyhow, and at least I know how to use my cheap(er) cameras, so I should be able to get something usable, as frustrating as it may be

I was happily surprised! Using a tripod and the High ISO setting on my Sony DSC-H2, yielded some not-too-shabby pictures. There's blatant sensor noise in there, but it's not nearly as bad as I had anticipated. Kudos, Sony!








And there were some other parts of the task that made it more fun than I had anticipated. First, since I was the "official" photographer, and it was a dress rehearsal (empty theater), I could feel free to go wherever I wanted to to get the shot. I was all over the place, and the actors were instructed to ignore me, which was perfect. That's so much nicer than trying to get a decent photo from wherever you happen to be sitting in a crowded theater, while not using a flash and not disturbing the other patrons. . . . and all that's assuming that photography is even allowed, which it usually isn't.

Another enjoyable part of the process is that I had my iPod on and cranked while I was shooting. Since Steel Magnlolias is really a chick-flick of amateur theater, I didn't really care about the dialogue. With the music blasting, the whole process was kind of surreal, with the disconnect between the sight and the sound. I highly recommend this process.

Once I took what I thought were enough shots, I left the theater and shot some surprisingly cool stuff in downtown Graham, using my same loud rock soundtrack in the process.





I left Graham that night feeling pretty satisfied with the work I'd done, and realized that this was the most enjoyment I'd had with a camera since losing my 40D in July . Photography is fun again.

UPDATE: 05-October-2008

The theater company was happy with my work, and asked me to return to shoot the remaining three scenes of the play. (It turns out that I had previously only shot one scene.) Since Jennifer wanted to see the show anyway, she came with me to the Sunday matinee, where she watched the play, and I got an additional 280 shots. Actually listening to the dialogue, I and the other three men in the audience (in addition to a few dozen women there) found some really funny lines, and some excellent acting.

Fall Soccer

What's going on while we're all at home most of the time?

Soccer!

And other stuff, but the soccer makes the best photos.

Tristan's playing his 3rd season for the U10 Terminators, and is having a great year, scoring at least one goal in every game so far.

And here are some pictures to prove it.






Zoe's not playing this year, but she is participating in an after-school running program called "Girls on the Run," and really enjoying it. She'll be running a 5K race at the end of the fall.



In unrelated photography news, I'm saving my money for the soon-to-be-released Canon 50D, my current "good" camera (Sony DSC-H2) has a half-busted shutter release button, so the shutter lag is a full one second or longer, which makes shooting action an absolute pleasure, Zoe's broken Canon A570IS is in for warranty repair (!), and Tristan has been doing some fun work with his Lego minifigs recently. Check out his pictures on Tristan's Zooomr Account. Hopefully he hasn't snuck in any colorful obscenities that he's currently so fascinated with.

One of these days, I plan on posting about:

• our early August weekend in Washington DC where we met our new nephew Zane Saia
• our Roth Family Vacation to Black Rock, NC
• the Ben Folds Five reunion concert

One of these days.