Sunset @ The Pier

Biking In Redondo

Sunset @ The Beach

Hello Jim & Kim fanatics...and welcome to JimmyPowell.com!
A fun & entertaining site where you can get a glimpse into our little world!

We had to take and submit four photographs using different shutter speeds this week in photography class. One freezing action with a high shutter speed (1), one photo showing an object in motion with a slow shutter speed (2), and finally two pictures of the same moving object shot at both fast and slow shutter speeds (3,4). I don't think I'll be winning any awards with these photos but I definitely passed week one's assignment. (See, I can be humble!)

I should really kick ass on next week's assignment. Among other things, we have to shoot some landscapes following the rule of thirds which is something I've been doing for several years now.

1. Small wave breaking on rocks, notice the water frozen in the air.	2. Kim riding her bike, notice she is in focus but the b/g is blurred
3. Decorative waterfall in Torrance with water frozen in midair	4. Same waterfall at slow speed with water blurred for effect

Happy Birthday

Momma!

Love, Hugs, & Kisses

I had a super Admin Prof Week last week!  The gifts, cards, jewelry, candy, and email wishes started coming in Wednesday.

On Thursday, everyone in my building surprised me w/a Potluck luncheon. There was a huge assortment of foods including cake, fruit, and virgin margaritas. (What do you expect...we were at work!!)  Everything was delicious so I'm sure we all added a few pounds!! Afterwards, I was presented w/a beautiful green garden plant. Later on in the day, I received a lovely flower arrangement of my favorite flowers, Stargazers, along w/a bottle of Realities perfume.

Friday, my boss and I had lunch in Manhattan Beach at a Japanese restaurant called Taiko. We enjoyed soft shell crab w/ponzu sauce and Japanese noodle soup w/julienne vegetables and shrimp tempura on the side. I actually managed to use chop sticks for the whole meal!  Later on, I received another card and a deliciously smelling candle by Archipelago Botanicals...Pineapple Ginger...yum-my!

Thx to everyone in Fab 3 at International Rectifier for an awesome week!

Happy Belated Anniversary

Momma & Deddy!

Love, Hugs, & Kisses

Today marks the 1st Annual Illegal Immigrant Day or National Stupidity Day in my opinion. Today millions of illegal immigrants will be skipping work and taking to the streets to protest the United States government's plans to enforce our immigration laws. Not only will illegal immigrants be skipping work today, but millions of other "open border" and "amnesty" idiots will be taking the day off to "protest" immigration enforcement.
    

You know, America is the only country that allows this kind of stupidity to go on. What other industrialized nation would allow millions of people to stream into their country illegally, work illegally, not pay income tax yet use public resources, send billions of untaxed dollars back to their country of origin, and then protest in the street when said nation decides to enforce its immigration laws? None!!!!! Only in the United States can you find this kind of weak minded insanity.

Mexico strictly enforces its immigration laws and anyone caught inside the country illegally or overstaying their visa can be sentenced to 2 years in prison before being deported. Not only that, the Mexican Army actually guards its northern border (our southern border) to make sure that only things are going into America (illegal immigrants and drugs) and that nothing is coming out of America essentially making the border a way one street.

I for one think that anyone who skips work today should be fired. People can't just skip work to protest the government enforcing just and sensible laws. I also think that today is will be another missed opportunity to round up millions of illegal immigrants and deport them. If our troops weren't dieing in Iraq right now they could be used to guard our border, stop illegal immigration and illegal narcotics from entering the U.S. and helping to capture the illegal immigrants who are bold enough to protest and wave Mexican flags in the streets today.

Sometimes I really hate this country...or maybe just the people and politicians who are hell bent on destroying it. If we allow illegal aliens to blackmail their way into amnesty simply because of their numbers, we will be inviting trouble on a scale we can't yet imagine. Once 11-12 million illegal immigrants are granted amnesty, tens of millions more will start streaming into this country over the next few years in the hopes of trying the same stunt.

I hope everyone that feels the way I do will not just shake their head in disgust but take the time to write, call or email your local, state and federal representatives and voice your opinion. The biggest problem with this issue right now is that the only voices being heard are those of the illegal immigrants while most Americans who feel differently aren't taking to the streets and are silently seething at home.

Take action!

• Write Your Representative - http://www.house.gov/writerep/

• Contact Your Congressman - http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/

• Email the President - president@whitehouse.gov

• Email the Vice-President - vice_president@whitehouse.gov

This is a great clip of a slacker bidding $420 on The Price Is Right. For those not in the know, 420 is pop culture slang signifying one's love of smoking weed. It was started by a group of 12 San Rafael High School students in California back in 1971 who would always meet to smoke pot at 4:20pm everyday. I wonder if Bob Barker has any idea why this guy is betting $420.

• http://www.break.com/index/priceright420.html

A new restaurant chain could be sweeping the country soon. The owners of the Pink Taco Mexican Restaurant in Las Vegas are opening a 2nd location in Scottsdale, Arizona with plans to expand into other cities. Of course not everyone will find the coyly named restaurant as funny as I did and is no doubt causing a little controversy in Scottsdale. (Just laugh, it's funny)

• http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/0422pinktaco0422.html

I actually laughed when I saw the Gillette commercial for the 5-blade Fusion (particularly the battery powered version) but I ignored all logical thought today and bought one at Costco because it was only $8 and came with a whole cartridge of blades. I tried it out tonite and got the same shave I always get with the twin blade razor I've been using ever since I was a teenager. So I guess extra blades don't equal a closer shave, just more expensive refills to buy.

We had a busy Sunday this weekend starting with an early trip to Costco to try and beat the afternoon crowd...which didn't work. After eating some Costco pizza we spent about an hour looking around and picking up some supplies before the mass of people got on our nerves and we quickly checked out.

After that we took our bikes out for a ride around the neighborhood and also I could work on my photography class assignment using Kim as my test subject. Once we were finished with our bike ride we came back to the house and fixed some dinner and then watched an 80's movie classic...The Lost Boys.

I've had the Firefox browser for some time but finally decided to start running it exclusively about two weeks ago and haven't looked back since. I also converted Kim into a Firefox user and it doesn't look like we'll be going back to Internet Explorer...ever! Firefox just rocks as a browser and is so much faster than IE not to mention it is just safer and more secure. It also allows you to customize your browser with all kinds of open source plug-ins to suit your needs. For instance, I have all kinds of web developer tools built into my Firefox while Kim has hers set up for advanced browsing and searching. (She's way beyond your typical surfer at this point...even you Mike...ha-ha!)

For those of you that don't have a clue what I'm talking about...Firefox is a community developed web browser which serves as an alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. It's faster, safer, and just plain better! It absolutely free and I encourage everyone to give it a try and make the switch for a better browsing experience. You can get it here:

• http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

We were at Sharkeez in Manhattan Beach with most of our West coast gang tonight because Janice had won a happy hour party. We had a great time and caught a nice Thursday night buzz while using our new camera for the first time. Big thanks to Janice for inviting us and shout outs to all those who couldn't make it, most notably Casie...we missed you!!!!!

I saw this on Break.com earlier today and I literally laughed out loud! The best part is that it's not on some white trash car but a BMW!

Last night marked the end of the road for Kelly Pickler on American Idol and although it was her time, you still hated to see her go. She wasn't the best singer by any means but at least she wasn't boring. Hopefully she'll get some offers from Hollywood and we'll see more of her ditzy charm. Of course it doesn't really matter that she's gone seeing as how I'm ultimately rooting for Chris and Katherine to make it to the end. Seeing as how they were the top two vote getters this week, everything is going the way I want it despite the fact that all three judges crucified Katherine Tuesday night after she put on one hell of a performance. Sometimes I don't get the judges. I mean what were they thinking...or rather, what were they hearing?

In an effort to further my photography skills I recently enrolled in an intermediate photography class taught by a guy who travels the world taking photos and getting his photos published and on magazine covers, etc. for a living. Although I make a good amount of money doing photography and have had my photos on magazine covers too, I quickly realized I was not gonna be "the star" of my class which will be a new reality for me.

Of course I like being the underdog and even though some of the guys in the class were way beyond me in terms of understanding optics, aperture modes, and f-stops the real test will be when we submit our photos each week for critiquing by the class. And even though I'm gunning to win the "wow" factor from my classmates, I am there to learn and improve my skills and of course to take more great pictures like this one...

Cynthia McKinney is back in the news again after making a "fool" of herself during an interview with a local CBS reporter. As you may recall, McKinney got in hot water a few weeks ago for punching a congressional security guard when she tried to bypass a security checkpoint without her congressional identification pin. She obviously doesn't like talking about it and refused to answer questions about it when asked by a CBS reporter. She then got up and abruptly walked off camera not realizing her microphone was still on and proceeded to call one of her assistants a "fool". Once she realized her mic was still on, she came back and "informed" the reporter she couldn't use any audio that wasn't captured while she was sitting down. Yeah right! What an idiot!

• Watch Cynthia McKinney make a "fool" of herself!

We were getting tired of lugging our "big" cameras around just to take casual shots so I "requisitioned my company" to get us a smaller camera that would be easier to carry with us all the time. We got this new 6 megapixel Cybershot last week. It's slightly bigger than a business card and it's got tons of features and a huge LCD screen on the back!  Cool!

It was fairly nice Sunday so we started off by having a late breakfast i.e., brunch at one of our favorite little dives in Torrance. After that we headed to Target to pick up a few things and ran into Mike & Janice which was a really nice surprise. After getting out of Target, we loaded up our bikes and headed to the beach. We spent the afternoon biking from Redondo Beach to Torrance Beach and back again and then up to Hermosa Beach and back to Redondo. It was a quite a little trek but we could use the exercise. I'm really looking forward to summer and being outdoors more often!

Someone sent me this earlier today and it cracked me up. Everyone knows I'm not against immigrants, just illegal immigrants. Why should I have to pay taxes when illegal immigrants don't and they use more social services than I do? That's bullshit! Anyway, you can find all kinds of funny immigration shirts by clicking on the t-shirt image below. I just may have to buy this one. Enjoy! 

This is great clip from FireFox fans making fun of all the other web browsers out there particularly Internet Explorer. I love the FireFox browser but still have to use IE more often than not because most of my web clients still do and as a designer I still have to design sites that are gonna look good in IE as well as FireFox. I've been trying out the beta version of IE7 and at least they put tabs in it but it's still plagued with little annoying issues. It's weird that the biggest and richest company on the planet can't build a browser that's as fast and stable as FireFox or any of the other open source browsers.

Ok, here's the funny clip...

• http://www.firefoxflicks.com/flick/?id=19542

Try the FireFox browser...

The latest version of FireFox is UNBELIEVABLY FAST compared to IE over a high speed connection and I highly recommend FireFox to everyone! You can download it FREE using the link below!

• http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/