Absurd Singularity

I'm not sure what it is with credit card companies and their payment protection plans but activating your credit cards these days just got a whole lot more annoying. Before, you would call a toll-free #, enter your new credit card number, and voila, your card was activated. Everything was automated and it took less than 5 minutes. I guess not enough people were signing up for those stupid plans cause now they're then connecting you to a customer service person who recites the whole stupid spiel (which takes like a good 5 minutes or so) about the plan and then words it so that you have half a second to reject their offer. I feel bad for the people who have to recite this stuff to us customers every time (cause it really is a long-winded speech they have to give) so I usually let them prattle on until the very end when I tell them I don't want it. They're just doing their job after all. At least they haven't gotten around to being very pushy about it when you reject them.

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.

is to have low expectations. =)

Anyway, some good advice although I don't agree with everything.

Braved the midafternoon heat today to sit out in my parent's backyard for a little bit to see if I could catch some wildlife with my 70-200IS lens + 1.4x extender. The animals were smarter than I apparently as all I could see was a robin, a blackbird, and a chipmunk.

This fella actually landed about 20 feet or so away from me which was surprising. Usually the birds will take off at the first sign of movement but I guess this one had seen me sitting there for awhile so didn't think I was dangerous. Plus I guess landing that worm didn't hurt either.

I haven't seen a chipmunk in quite awhile at my parent's place so I was glad to see this one. Good to see that our chipmunk family apparently has been doing quite well in the past 20 some odd years. I had originally spotted him climbing up this wall while I was sitting down on the patio so I was surprised to see him still in the area when I walked back towards the wall. He sat there snacking on something for a while and staring at me about 15 feet away.

After he was done eating he scampered off to find more goodies I guess. But not before taking another glance back at me to make sure I wasn't about to hunt him down.

Above pictures were processed in PS2, auto-leveled, contrasted, and colored if I felt it looked better, and sharpened up one notch. For those photo buffs you can see 100% crops (non-sharpened) of the critters here:

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