In the past few months I've had several friends show up on billboards around town for various ad campaigns. Those were cool to see, and my little toddlers love pointing them out. This sign, however, is my new favorite! It points right toward the Federal Building on 3rd and Rosser, and I think it's visible from Earl Pomeroy's office windows! In many ways, the view from his Fortress of Solitude isn't so lovely these days.
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This beautiful Christmas display is still providing a much-needed splash of color to the trees near Sleepy Hollow on east Divide Avenue in Bismarck. As I've said before, I put the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack in my truck's minidisc player with the first snowfall and don't remove it until the snow's gone the following Spring. I will gladly take an extended Christmas season, and I notice that there are a few kindred spirits around Bismarck and Mandan.
As things begin to transition from white and gray to gray and brown, it's nice to see some bold color breaking up the monotony. The melting snow is going to make things pretty dirty for a while, and green grass and leafy trees are still several weeks away. In the mean time, it's sights like this that give the eye a break from all the dreary grays and browns.
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( 3.1 / 168 )
When you've got a toddler coughing every couple of minutes and went to bed VERY early due to a migraine, then you'll find yourself up at 4am making quotes from the movie Spaceballs. I'm just sayin'.
I spent a chunk of time indoors this weekend, scanning slides and film negatives before returning our ultra-sweet Canon film & slide scanner to the office. While watching the Class B, I saw a bit of an epic transmission fail (pictured above). When I worked at KFYR I built an edit suite in my home office that blew away the setup I had at the TV station, including a quick "F7" macro to make a screen shot of whatever is piping through my house's AV system. This is what I got Thursday night.
I only show this screen capture to make a point...no, not about KFYR. It's about digital. Remember your old analog cell phone? Sometimes it got fuzzy but you could usually make out what was being said on the other end. Now it simply drops out. How about digital TV, if you don't have cable? Instead of a fuzzy picture, you get gibberish or a frozen frame. Those are the pitfalls of replacing analog with digital.
The western North Dakota NBC stations ditched their analog microwave ICR (Inter City Relay) system a long time ago in favor of fiber optic digital. Well, when something goes wacky there, you can about imagine how much fun it is. No fuzzy image until the problem gets sorted out...no, you get to be a Spaceballs reference. Seeing this on the air made me glad I wasn't in the truck or the control room for this one :) I've had my share of those moments.
I didn't get to watch the finals because I was working Saturday night, directing the internal feed for the WDA tournament. I haven't directed anything in a while; I've only run cameras or replays this season. It was fun to get the captain's seat for a little while, especially with camera operators and a replay guy that make the job easy. I like to think I started getting back into the swing of things by the end of the second half of the last game ;-)
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( 2.8 / 235 )
This slab of ice, jutting straight upward to the tune of twelve feet or more, was part of a pressure ridge on Lake Audubon, north of Bismarck about an hour (or less, if you drive like some people). Being the adventurous sort and having checked out the ice's stability, I ventured to an adjacent high point to snap a few photos.
As the title implies, these photos were not taken this winter. They date back a couple of years, since we've had way too much snow for something like this to be available. This particular pressure ridge is WAY out on the lake, near an island that's only accessible by boat for most of the year.
The past couple of years have seen the ice covered by so much snow, it's nearly impossible to drive on much of the lake. I bet that's a bummer for the ice fishermen! Well, it's not fun for us photographer's either. Check out the amazing colors in the ice and water in that shot. I'd love a chance to chase down more images like these.
We do, of course, still have dramatic winter skies. At the end of this trip, a wave of weather was on its way. You can see the band of clouds approaching. Having parked our vehicle a long ways away from the pressure ridge, it wsa time to hike back to it and roam around the ice some more. Sadly, I didn't get to take a repeat trip this year, since I was told that the snow makes it an impossibility. I do like to dig up these photos and share them every now and then, though. Someday I'll get the opportunity for more.
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( 3 / 232 )
It gets its picture taken, I suppose! This fine example sits in the snow on 93rd Street southeast of town. The frost is from the haze that's been hanging over Bismarck-Mandan every morning lately.
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