Absurd Singularity

just a quick one to get it out of the way. =) Hope everyone had a great holiday season and best of luck in the new year! Big changes for me in this first month of the year so I'll be busy. That's all for now.

Spent the morning upgrading the hard drive on my Powerbook to a Seagate Momentus 5400.2 120GB drive. That's 40GB (theoretically) more space than the 80GB that I have already and which I had basically filled up (RAW images and MP3s being the primary culprits). Was surprisingly easy to get up and running again.

As mentioned in my previous post I've been attempting to clone the 2 partitions in Erin's existing laptop hard drive to the 80GB hard drive I had just swapped out of my Powerbook. I had high hopes for this software that I found, DriveImage XML, because it was a free (bonus!) program that seemed like it could do something similar to CCC on the Mac.

Exchange Place is just so dead on the weekends.

12mm, f/8, 1/125s

Well, the minor remodeling that we had scheduled was finally completed along with the new carpet for the master bedroom and second floor hallway. Unfortunately, miscommunication between us and the contractor led us to having all the walls in all the rooms painted an off-white instead of the four different colors that we had originally wanted. Kinda pissed about that but Erin doesn't mind so I guess we'll be adding color via furniture/rugs/accessories/etc. All that's left is to have our new shades and blinds installed and our furniture delivered. Still missing pieces but those we can fill in over time. Gonna spend the upcoming extended weekend cleaning till it's sparkling and attempting to patch some holes in the drywall. Hope my back and knees will hold out. ;-p

I rarely get sick but I've been battling it out with a rather persistent cold for the past week or so. Sneaky bastard. Manifested itself as a sore throat and progressed from there. Sore throat was gone within a day or two to be replaced by a constant mucus pool that regenerates rather quickly no matter how often I clear my sinus passages. Now a sporadic cough has been introduced as well. Damn thing just won't go away. There were a few times already where I thought I had turned the corner but it just lingers, annoying the hell out of me. Grrr.... I guess it doesn't help that I have tons of stuff to do both work-wise and moving-wise so haven't been able to get enough rest. *sigh*

Looks like we won't be entirely moved in to our new place till this weekend. Which means an entire week without TV cause I just sold our 2 old ones yesterday. =( Ah well, for the better probably since I don't have the time for it. At least we have most of our moving done. Most of the stuff left to bring over are our clothes and kitchen stuff.

On the cold front, was still plagued by mucus until last night when we went out and bought a bottle of Mucinex. This shit ain't cheap but none of the normal "severe cold" and/or antihistamine medication we were taking seemed to be doing anything. But I gotta say, Mucinex seems to be pretty darn effective. No longer plagued by that batch of really sticky mucus that sorta sits at the back of your nose/throat and won't come up enough to get blown out or go down enough to get swallowed. I can't believe I'm talking about mucus on my blog but I promise, this will be the last time. =)

On the work front, I'm swamped. Tons of things going on from many different places. Of course, being in the middle of a prolonged move as well as being inflicted with an annoying cold doesn't help. Gotta get crackin'!

Forgot to mention that I caught The Lion King on Broadway over the weekend. I'm not entirely sure why they had to make a musical out of the movie but some of the costumes were great. The elephants and giraffes were impressive and Scar's costume was very, very clever and well-executed. Anyhoo, probably not worth the $110/seat that we paid (although they were good seats) but a nice afternoon spent nonetheless.

Also grabbed lunch at the nearby John's Pizzeria which was quite good. The mozzarella that they use on the pizzas is quite tasty and their desserts are very good as well. Definitely a good place to go for a pre- or post-show bite.

Spent the last 2 says finalizing our move to our new place and I'm so... bleepin'... tired. Was up till 4 Saturday night and then 3 last night cleaning up and assembling one of two work desks that we got from Staples. Had to get up early today cause Circuit City is supposed to deliver sometime between 8am and 11am while Comcast is supposed to come sometime between 9am and noon.

My body's sore, my brain's exhausted, and that damn cold's mounting a comeback and yet, I don't mind so much. Cause it's our own place. =) But man, you never know exactly how much crap you've accumulated until you go through ALL your drawers and shelves. And I guess we didn't make it any easier on ourselves by choosing NOT to go with movers and doing everything ourselves.

Even though I never made a purchase from FreshDirect while at our old place, they did come in real handy this past weekend as we were able to dig up a lot of nice boxes from them from the trash room to help us cart our stuff over. ;-) Unfortunately they don't deliver to where I am now, nor do I think they will anytime soon; otherwise I may have placed an order just to say thanks.

Anyway, this is my first post from my new home. I'd post a pic but the interior is an absolute mess. Although I should probably post one anyway and do a "before and after" sort of thing but I'm too tired to get my ass off this comfy couch to dig out my wide angle lens and take some shots.

18 and a half minutes to go before the game

Last night took my mother to see the Knicks vs Nets game at Continental Arena for her birthday. Got pretty good seats (8 rows back from the floor) for a cheap (relatively speaking) price since one team almost no one cares about and the other team sucks in a big way. But they're both amongst my mom's favorite teams so double points for me. ;-)

Jump Ball!

Anyway, it was interesting to see first-hand the defensive inability of the Knicks. I've heard about it all season but man they couldn't D anything last night. At the half the Nets' 3-point shooting was 60 freaking %. And the majority of those were wide open looks. It was ridiculous. On the Nets side, Vince Carter put on a show last night. Quite a phenomenal athlete and an exciting player to watch.

Eddy Curry going over the center

The Nets pretty much blew the game open in the middle of the second quarter, building and maintaining a 21 point lead until they started sitting their starters with about 8 minutes left in the final quarter. Once they did that though, the bench players stunk it up REAL bad. The entire last 7 minutes of the game the Nets bench scored 5 points total. 2 of them coming from free throws. Good lord that was a pathetic display. Not that the Knicks did much better against the Nets bench but they did cut the lead down to 13 at the final buzzer. But I feel bad for Larry Brown. I'm not sure what it is but the Knicks just don't seem to understand how to play good defense which is surprising since Brown's the coach.

Umm, what is Vince doing?

At least he knows what's important. ;-)

Anyway, I made do with a 50mm f/1.4 lens throughout the game which turned out to be a bit shorter than ideal but I didn't think security was going to let me through with the 70-200IS. Plus I actually fit the camera body and lens in separate pockets of my jacket. The security person who patted me down felt the camera but all he asked was if it was a bottle (no outside beverages!) and that was it. Didn't even ask me to take it out. Maybe I should get the 85mm f/1.8 or 135 f/2 after all. ;-p

Curry going over the defender again

Took the majority of the action shots using shutter priority set at 1/125s and later 1/160s. At that speed the lens was wide open at 1.4 constantly so getting a well-focused shot was a bit of a pain as any slight discrepency meant a shot that was focused where I didn't want. But managed to come away with some decent shots (with some extra help from Photoshop ;-). But the 50mm never fails to impress me. 100% crops of some of the pics revealed quite detailed shots of the people on the other side of the floor. Too bad I'll be selling it off in a little while.

Vince Carter and Jason Kidd having fun

Jefferson going for the 3

Vince with the dunk!

A subdued bench, for good reason.

Whew, that took longer than expected but everything's finally back up! With no data loss to boot. Whoo hoo! =)

I originally put this up a little over a week ago so am just linking to it now. Basically I lucked out and was actually in a Best Buy one day that had the premium XBox 360 system in stock that day. So I picked one up. And proceeded to let it gather dust in my living room for like half a month before I got a chance to set it up. So this documents my first impressions.

Caught V for Vendetta this weekend and it turned out to be much better than I thought it'd be. Quite a pleasant surprise. Pretty long flick too but I'd definitely suggest catching it if you can.

What I am going to relate right now may not be news to anyone else but me but I found it sufficiently odd to document for posterity.

One of the typical tourist attractions that we usually take out of towners to is the big bronze bull down in the Bowling Green Park near Wall Street. The bull itself has an interesting history and personally I think it's pretty well made. And since it's such a quick attraction to see, we usually swing by on the way to the South Street Seaport. Typically we'll just take a few obligatory pics near the front and be on our merry way. We haven't actually done touristy stuff during the weekends for a while now, most of the time I'll take a day or so off to take guests around during the weekday. Saner and more pleasant that way. So this was the first time I was seeing the bull on a weekend with the superb weather bringing out tourists and local residents in full force.

After taking a few pictures at the front of the beast, I noticed that there was a crowd gathered at the other end as well so we wandered back to take a look. First time I've been to that side and thus, first time I noticed that the bull's ... anatomically correct. But everyone, and I mean everyone (young, old, guy, gal) back there seemed to be having a blast getting their pictures taken while fondling the bull's massive bronze balls. The poor beast's testes may very well be the most polished part of its body. And apparently tourists aren't the only ones manhandling the bull on a daily basis. But anyway, I was fine with all this animal lovin' picture taking but while I was turning to walk away, I caught a quick glance of one European fella having his picture taken while he was in the act of... fisting the bull. It took me a few steps for the scene to register in my brain. "Wait... what the hell was that???" Was he just an anti-capitalist? But still, leave the poor molested bull some dignity at least.

Someone should sew together a giant pair of pants for the poor guy to put an end to this indignity.

This past weekend had some pretty nice weather, ideal for being outside and doing some photography. So that's what I did. Erin's friend was in town so we hit a few tourist spots. I brought along my Tokina 12-24 and Sigma 24-70. The Sigma I hadn't used in quite some time so thought I'd dust it off a bit and refresh my memory on what it was capable of. I wasn't disappointed. Both lenses are capable of putting out some wonderfully sharp and colorful photos. Then again it was a bright, sunny day so it wasn't as if we were stretching the limits of the lenses or anything. Good pics nonetheless.

Sigma 24-70 f/2.8 @ 70mm, f/8, 1/500s, ISO 800

Sigma 24-70 f/2.8 @ 42mm, f/9, 1/500s, ISO 100

Sigma 24-70 f/2.8 @ 70mm, f/4, 1/100s, ISO 100

Tokina 12-24 f/4 @ 12mm, f/10, 1/200s, ISO 100

Tokina 12-24 f/4 @ 12mm, f/7.1, 1/200s, ISO 100

Sigma 24-70 f/2.8 @ 70mm, f/8, 1/500s, ISO 100

Just got my Canon 35mm f/1.4 lens back from the Canon Service Center here in Jamesburg, NJ and I'm sooooo psyched! They done fixed this baby up good! =) I had sent it in cause I noticed a larger than normal gap between the rear lens and the mount and they were able to fix it under the repair warranty since I had sent it in 3 months ago to fix a squeaky focus ring. And it came back lookin' great! Now it's pretty much brand spankin' new. So glad to have this lens back. ^o^

After looking at the lens mount after the fix, man, there's a HUGE difference before and after. This is what it looked like before the fix:

And this is what it looks like after:

If you look at the before picture, I had basically sent it in to get the areas circled in blue (melted, bubbly spot) and red (big gap) fixed. What I got back not only fixed those 2 areas but it also looks like the lens itself should have been mounted like a quarter of an inch further up the barrel to begin with! Makes me wonder how the heck I was shooting with no problems before. But anyway, I'm just glad it's back. =)

Well, I finally caught up with my Tivo'd shows over the weekend. Last I remember I was pretty much 2 weeks behind but thanks to the DVR automatically deleting shows once it runs out of space, I lost a bunch of stuff that I had been saving from way back. Now I can move on to whittling down my Netflix queue along with my BitTorrent queue. I have way too many lists of things I need to do and the number of lists seems to increase the older I get. Will this madness never end???

Anyway, really dreary weather these last few days so thought I'd post up this from an earlier, sunnier day:

Sigma 24-70 f/2.8 @ 56mm, f/7.1, 1/400s, ISO 100

Realized I haven't posted in awhile and it's mainly due to the convergence of multiple factors. The main one being life in general, in every aspect, has just been insanely busy. Then every new day brings a new story about the Bush administration that just serves to annoy me even more. I can't remember if there was ever a time where I've been constantly annoyed by the government for so many consecutive weeks straight. So that just puts me in a bad mood in general. *sigh* Well, not really much I can do 'cept buckle down and plow through it. All I can say is... it's going to be an interesting year...

On an unrelated note, I finally took the time out to clear out my Mail's inbox. I had emails in there from 2 years ago that I hadn't sorted yet. Kinda scary. Anyway, time to accumulate another 2 years worth of emails. ;-p

Anyway, a few images taken in my parent's front yard. I have a suspicion that my Canon 70-200IS is a bit soft wide open so thinking of sending it in to Canon for calibration.

Either it's soft or front/back focusing. Maybe I should send in my XT as well.

But my Canon 24-105IS continues to impress me every time I use it. Pretty super pics right out of the camera. Although its bokeh is a little... odd sometimes. The 70-200 definitely is better in that department.

toy?

Whatever could it be? ;-p

Valid points Lee, although I couldn't tell if you were being sarcastic or not. ;-) But, in case you weren't...

1. I haven't had a desire for a Mac desktop in ages. When it comes to Macs, I'm strictly mobile.
2. Are you kidding? I used to be king of the first iteration Mac products. ;-) I had the first Powerbook G3 model, first Titanium Powerbook G4, and first Aluminum Powerbook G4.
3. Isn't it $150? But yeah, that's stretching it a bit. However, since it was only a $10 premium after all was said and done...

My 2 gigs of RAM for me ol' MacBook arrived today. Installation, while definitely a breeze compared to the older iBooks, does require a bit of muscle as you gotta really cram those RAM chips into their slots. First time around I didn't do that so the machine wouldn't boot up. Plus the little levers that you use to eject the chips are made of somewhat flimsy plastic so I'm always afraid of accidentally snapping them off.

As for the heat issue, the MacBook to me appears to run no hotter than my Powerbook G4 1.25Ghz. It does get a bit toasty but I wouldn't say it's abnormally so. Plus the heat is mostly confined to the left side of the machine towards the rear so I can balance it on my right leg without a problem. Will probably just get another CoolPad.

Anyhoo, gotta wait till after Memorial Day for my HD to arrive so unfortunately another week or so before I can finally start testing this sucka out. Grrrr.....

Spent the better part of the last 2 days finally unpacking and installing my sound system. Good lord this stuff is a pain in the ass. And this is with the hard part already done for me. The previous owner had wall-mounted his speakers so he already had speaker wire running through the walls and ceiling for a Dolby 5.1 system. Unfortunately, the parts of the wire that was available at each speaker location was just a smidgen too short to reach my satellite speaker connectors. On two of them I was able to yank out enough wire to make them reach but the other two wouldn't budge so I had to make a trip out to Home Depot to grab some lengths of wire, electrical tape and wire connectors. Actually I wound up making three trips to Home Depot cause I got the wire size wrong the first time (good thing I only bought 5 feet then) and I had to make the third trip to buy some dry wall screws cause I forgot to buy a speaker mount for the center speaker.

Mounting the satellites onto the wall wasn't particularly hard but I always feel nervous when drilling holes into dry wall cause I hate having to patch up the holes if I mess up. The stud finder worked pretty well and out of 10 screws I had to use, only 2 needed support cause there was no stud where it was needed.

The 7200 rpm 100GB drive finally came in for my MacBook earlier this week. Swapping the hard drive was ridiculously easy. Easier than swapping RAM. The only thing to be aware of is the accursed Torx screws that Apple likes to use, in this case on the slim piece of aluminum that cradles the hard drive. Luckily I had a Torx screwdriver from way back when I was swapping things out of the original Powerbook G4 and even luckier, it was the right size that was needed in this case as well. Apple used a smaller screw on their Aluminum Powerbooks which pissed me off to no end when I was swapping out the HD on that machine cause I had to run out to a local computer shop and borrow the screwdriver from them.

My cousin was in town again from Taiwan so we went to catch the Yankees vs. Red Sox game last night since Taiwan native Chien-Ming Wang was taking the mound. I wasn't expecting much of a game since Wang hasn't had a good track record against Boston this year and Boston's starting pitcher was a no name that they just brought up from the minor leagues. Boy was I wrong as it turned out to be one of the best games I've ever been to. Was a night full of ups and downs both on and off the field.

Down: Got out of the subway station at Yankee Stadium and it was raining. Damn weather reports!
Down: Stadium security refused to let me in with my Timbuk2 computer laptop bag that had my camera equipment in it. Not because of the camera equipment (they didn't even look in the bag), but because of the bag itself. Huh? Told me to go put it in a pay locker at a bowling alley across the street from the stadium. Was on the way there when I remembered that my cousin had driven to the stadium so I went back and got his car keys and dumped my bag in his car. Didn't bother bringing the camera since the body wasn't outfitted with a neck strap and I wasn't about to hand carry the 70-200IS lens mounted all throughout the game.
Up: Got to our seats and was relatively pleased with the section. Closest to the field I've ever been. Slightly to the right of home plate on the first-base side, first row of the section behind the boxes that are right on the field behind the Yankee dugout.
Down: Walkway was basically right in front of us so we had to deal with a constant stream of people blocking our view throughout the game.
Up: People watching can be nice too especially when there's attractive women involved.
Up: It stopped raining.
Down: Wang gave up a screaming shot to Ortiz that bounced off the top facade in right field. That ball was still rising I think when it hit the wall. On a side note, on the way to the park, a NY fan had on a shirt that read "Big Papi has a Small Wee Wee." Heh. Fans.
Up: Rudy Giuliani showed up with his gf/wife(?) in tow. Looking pretty dapper in his off-white suit.
Up: Saw Spike Lee shepherding his kid back to their seats.
Up: Bernie tied it up with just his 3rd home run of the season. Long shot a bit to the right of center field.
Up: Manny narrowly avoided a brushback pitch that made a beeline for his head. Got the crowd up and cheering/jeering. Posada couldn't even catch the ball, it went straight to the backstop.
Down: On a 3-2 count of the same at-bat, Manny singles to center field.
Up: He inexplicably decides to try to extend it into a double even though it was a shallow field hit and gets gunned down at second base.
Up: Fan runs out onto the field from somewhere in left field. Crowd erupts in cheers as security streams out from left, center and right fields. Guy basically just runs across the outfield, not interacting with any of the players, but hamming it up for the crowd. Realizing he has no where to go once he's in right field as security has him boxed in, he comes pretty much to a complete stop. Crowd cheers the loudest when the first security personnel to reach the guy takes him down with a flying tackle. Not entirely sure if that was necessary since he was stopped and had his hands up but it was pretty fun to watch. Of course, none of this was mentioned in the media.
Up: Yanks go up by one when Seanez walked in the go-ahead run. That's just a sad way to lose a game.
Up: Melky makes a phenomenal catch in left field, bringing back a Manny home run that would have tied the game. It was an amazing catch not only because he had to jump up and time it correctly, he also had to make sure he held on to it as he bounced off the padding on the wall and sprawled to the ground. Great play.
Up: Mo quickly closed out the game in the top of the ninth for the suspenseful win.

So, it turned out to be a pretty entertaining game with solid pitching on both sides. Wasn't a blow out so we actually had to stay through the entire game and had its share of drama, comedy, celebrities, and some really hot women. Not a bad way to spend a Tuesday night. =)

Erin came into the city this evening to catch dinner down at one of our favorite standbys, the matter-of-factly named "Excellent Pork Chop House" on Doyers. It's a bit of a farther walk to get to from the subway stations but the good food and prices are tough to beat.

The main reason that we frequent it as much as we do is because it's the only place we know of that serves the Din Tai Fung style chicken soup that we just absolutely love. Excellent Pork Chop House has the soup in chicken and spare rib form and both are pretty good. They taste pretty much the same except one has chicken and the other has spare ribs. A bit more oily than the Din Tai Fung version but still tastes good.

My usual fare is their Braised Chicken/Spare Rib Soup with Vegetable Rice combo. Oddly enough, and a warning to vegetarians, their "Vegetable Rice" has meat (pork bits specifically) in it. Basically it's lettuce, some sort of pickled veggie, and pork meat sauce over rice. It's the same rice you get if you order their rice dishes (e.g. Pork Chop/Chicken Leg over Rice). I usually order the combo and get a pork chop on the side. I think it's slightly cheaper that way (instead of getting a Pork Chop over Rice and the soup separately) but I may be mistaken. This time around the waitress made it even more slightly cheaper for us by charging us beef noodle soup w/beef price for Erin's beef noodle soup (no beef) and swapping out her beef for my pork chop.

When the name of your restaurant is "Excellent Pork Chop House", your pork chop should live up to the hype. There's no disappointment in that regard here. Their pork chop is seasoned and salted well and fried to perfection. Nice, tender and juicy. The Vietnamese style grilled pork chop is still my favorite way to season a pork chop but this is a pretty close second.

The only dish that I don't like here is their wonton noodle soup. Not that great. Had it once, never again.

Typically a trip to Chinatown with Erin usually involves me winding up as a pack mule as she stocks up on fruits from the roadside vendors. We didn't get any lychee this time around (she prefers to buy them still stuck on the branches instead of individually like in the above pic) and was more in the mood for guava anyway. But the prices they charge for guava here in the US is highway robbery. $4 per pound. In Taiwan you can get like half a dozen for $1 or something ridiculous like that.

I had the Tokina 12-24 lens on hand during this outing and got some interesting shooting from the hip type shots on the way home.

Motion blur's fun every now and then. =)

Yesterday we took a trip to visit what I thought was the New Jersey State Aquarium in Camden, NJ. It had apparently been renamed Adventure Aquarium for some reason. Wasn't until I was doing some research for this entry when I read that it had been going downhill for some years now before shutting down near the end of 2004 and then reopening last year under private management. But apparently the new and improved aquarium is much better than the old so I guess we picked a good time to go.

to a theat... well, ok, to just our house.

to all problems.

In this modern day and age where machines, electricity and the Internet rules all, there will arise an occassion every now and again where they must still bow down to the power of brute human strength. Yesterday I had pegged a few hours to take the time to finally wall mount our plasma TV. We had purchased the wall mount kit along with the TV but was too cheap to pay for professional installation (something ridiculous like $2-300). Since wall-mounting is a 2 person job I had my cousin come over to provide the extra muscle during the last step. I figured actually mounting the TV to the wall bracket would be the toughest part of the whole procedure but boy was I wrong.

Anyway, long story short, it took about 7 hours, 4 trips to Home Depot and 1 to Lowes to get the screen up on the wall. A tip for posterity (for people with drywall and wood studs):

Electric drills won't work. Unless you get some huge multi-hundred dollar one. Anything below $200 probably isn't going to cut it. Simply not powerful enough to drive a giant 3/8 inch wide screw with a huge hex head 2 inches into the wall. I started out with a 7.2V battery-driven drill, moved on to a 6.2 amp corded drill and then finished with a 6 amp corded drill with a keyless chuck and none of them could cut it. Either I have some super hard wood studs or people who say it's easy are packing some serious equipment (or knew beforehand that electric wasn't gonna work).

How did we finally get the bolts into the wall? On our last trip to Home Depot, we returned the 2 drills that I had attempted to use (~$150 combined) and settled for a long handled half inch ratchet and a half inch to 3/8 inch adapter so I could fit the Gator Grip Universal Socket on it. New total? $18. Cranked those screws in by arm and lever. Pain in the !@#$&!@$# ass.

Interesting moment during the whole process: when I was trying to use a quarter inch drill to first drill 2 inches into the wall, the drill bit got superheated and smoke started wafting out of the whole. Touching the drill bit itself was a nasty surprise as that sucker was scorching. In retrospect I'm glad I stopped when I did otherwise something in the wall might have flat out burst into flames.

Spent a few hours at the Jersey Shore today. Ventured out with my 10-22mm w/Circular Polarizer and 70-200IS w/1.4x Extender. There were 3 novice surfers playing around, no comparison to the guys we saw on the North Shore of Oahu. Tough to surf when the waves are miniscule. Click on the pic above for the small picture gallery.

My mother told us about a family of cats that suddenly showed up in her backyard and lo and behold, I caught sight of them late in the afternoon.

I first saw the mother chilling out on the ledge. She would look at me whenever she heard my shutter go off. Just your typical gray tabby. Not sure if she was abandoned but I do remember we had cat sightings going a decade or so back so maybe there is a family of wild cats roaming our neighborhood.

After a little while the mother jumped off the ledge and headed off towards our neighbors yard. Then this kitten appeared from the other side of the ledge. S/he immediately jumped back down after catching sight of me when I took this shot.

Intrigued, my mother and I took a closer look at our wall back there to see where this family was staying and discovered that there were 2 holes in the back side of the wall where they were hiding out in. Just 2 kittens and their mom. So I camped out on top of the wall a good distance away to see if I could get some shots. This kitten would stick his head out and then duck back in when he caught site of me.

Eventually I moved to a closer position that gave me a clear shot of their hideaway. The two holes seemed to be connected in the back. But it's definitely a good hideout for them as you wouldn't even suspect they were there unless you were looking for them.

The two siblings would take turns peeking out. They knew I was still there and didn't seem to be overly afraid but wouldn't come out while I was there.

With the sun setting too quickly I took a last few shots and left them alone. Hopefully we didn't scare the mother away and she'll come back for her kids. Wonder how long they'll stay here and what they're eating.