Greetings from Pennsylvania

It was hard to tear ourselves away from 'The Island.' Can you see why?

From Geeks on Tour Blog 200809

Then we passed by Philadelphia. In all the times we've been near here - I've never visited. I have yet to see the Liberty Bell. Ok, next time for sure.

From Geeks on Tour Blog 200809

Now we're in Thousand Trails at Hershey. It feels like home!

From Geeks on Tour Blog 200809

From Geeks on Tour Blog 200809

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Catching up with Statistics

Before there was Blogger, and before we became 'Geeks on Tour' - we had a website called JimandChris.com . It's still there, and I use it as a kind of Table of Contents for this blog. This blog now covers over 5 years and has 1,043 posts. I like to see the big picture, so I keep a list on the JimandChris.com home page with just a few words about each month.

One of the things I do is keep some simple statistics - number of miles we traveled, and what we spent on gas and campsites. I took a look the other day and I hadn't updated it since May! So I brought that up to date. Since we left Florida the first of June, we've traveled 5,000 miles, apent $2,760 in gas, and $695 in site fees. I used to keep statistics on all expenditures, but not now. If you're interested in more detail of what it costs to live on the road like we do, I recommend http://www.rv-dreams.com/ they publish lots of information for people who are interested in full-time RVing including all their budget details.

We're in Hershey, Pennsylvania right now at a Thousand Trails park. It was so hard to tear ourselves away from our beautiful spot on Long Beach Island! Maybe next year we'll spend a month there!

It appears that the modems on our Satellite Internet system may have bit the dust - Jim has had the whole system on 'life support' for a couple years now - they're way beyond their normal life expectancy! So, we brought our laptops up to the Rec center where they have free WiFi. Don't have enough Verizon signal to use the Broadband on our phone either.

We have to leave tomorrow to be in time for the Gypsy Journal rally in Celina, Ohio. Jim is going to try to take a peek at the big RV show that happens to be here in Hershey this week.

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Cancer-Free photo retouching

After the storm last night, I thought the beach might have some dramatic scenery this morning. So I grabbed my camera and headed across the street (yep, it's only 2 blocks to the beach from here - so nice.)

The storm didn't seem to make much difference in the ocean - it was more of an inland storm - but it was pretty anyway.

From Geeks on Tour Blog 200809

As much as I like taking the photos, I also like working with them in Picasa and making them look better. Like this flower photo. Here's the original:

From Geeks on Tour Blog 200809

And here it is after a few clicks in Picasa:

From Geeks on Tour Blog 200809

Or these birds in the wave. Original: Edited version:

From Geeks on Tour Blog 200809

In the bird photo, I even used Picasa 3's new 'retouching' feature to erase some white spots of water drops from the brown bird. So much fun! Lots of videos at www.GeeksOnTour.com will show you how to work with Picasa. And, you can bet there'll be lots more videos coming now with Picasa 3! One of my first jobs out of college was as a photo 'spotter' at a color photo lab in San Francisco. This meant taking a very fine point paint brush, dipping it in paints and touching up the dust spots, or any other blemishes on prints. Sometimes they were 8X10s and sometimes they were wall-size murals. I would keep the brush moist by touching it to my tongue. People told me that I was probably going to develop cancer in my tongue one day from doing this. Now I've traded the brush for a mouse. All I'm in danger of now is carpal-tunnel syndrome!

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Hello Hannah

This is why it's important to write at the time of the events. I wanted to tell you about the absolutely PERFECT weather we've had here on the Jersey Shore. Sunny but cool, a slight breeze and very low humidity. Then, day before yesterday, it turned hot and humid ... 99% humid! It's kind of hard to write about perfect weather when now it's pouring and gusting 50mph winds from what remains of Hurricane Hannah. And, we thought we were being so smart by staying away from S Florida during hurricane season?@#!

Oh well, here's some pictures of perfect weather anyway ...

From Geeks on Tour Blog 200809

From Geeks on Tour Blog 200809

We did know that Hannah was coming ... so we scheduled the dinner party for Thursday night. Jimmy made his traditional corned ham.

From Geeks on Tour Blog 200809

From Geeks on Tour Blog 200809

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OMG - Picasa 3!

I just downloaded the new Beta version of Picasa ... Picasa 3. Oh Boy! This is going to be fun. They've added all sorts of features that people have been asking for. I sure hope they haven't lost any of the past benefits that make Picasa so great. I'm always afraid when software adds new features that it gets bloated, difficult and slow. I've only played with it for an hour or so, but it still seems plenty fast - and the features they've added are ones that I know people are going to love. In all our teaching of Picasa, one feature I never bothered to show was the 'Collage' feature. In Picasa 2 it was basically worthless unless you just wanted a jumble of a bunch of photos. In Picasa 3 - this feature comes mighty close to 'scrapbooking.' Look what I was able to do with a few recent photos in just a matter of minutes.

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