Simon has become a very adept climber, which is pretty exciting given the concerns his OT had about his core strength. My in-laws have a couple of stools in the kitchen, just over three feet if I had to guess, and he really enjoys sitting up on them. It's great to see he can get up on them by himself.

This morning, I was sitting next to him while he was eating some breakfast. He turned around toward me, tried to brace himself using air, and fell off backward. He landed pretty solidly on his back and definitely hit his head, and the cries were epic. It took quite awhile to get him calmed down, and eventually he was happy to lie in my arms on the bed for awhile.

I don't have to tell you how awful I felt, even though logically the only way I could have prevented the fall was to not allow him on the stool. Operating in that mode would mean he'd never do much of anything, but it doesn't make me feel any better.

In any case, we went out to do touristy stuff, and ended up being out pretty late into the afternoon. Simon did not have the opportunity to nap, and he wasn't having it in the car either. Before we got home, he started to scream in a way that was not characteristic of his normal complaining about being in the car. He also kept grabbing the back of his head, so you can imagine what Diana and I were thinking at that point. My cousin's little boy just had a pretty serious head injury, so that had us well versed in the genre, and we know that problems can take many hours or days to manifest.

When we got home, he yacked, big time. That was the symptom I worried most about, and the one that general advice suggests you get your ass to the hospital. We didn't even hesitate to decide to take him to the ER.

He was pretty mellow, and obviously very tired. We had been there nearly an hour, after seeing the triage nurse and the ER nurse, before he started to perk up a little. At least it seemed like the lethargy was lifting.

The physicians assistant examined him (there were more serious things going on in the ER), and said that his neurological indicators were all normal, but the symptoms (the non-normal crying, head grabbing and vomiting) were absolutely consistent with a serious head injury. I kind of needed that validation, because I spent much of the day worried about him even without any symptoms. She also warned that we absolutely need to watch him carefully. The symptoms could also be from fatigue, dehydration and sun, but he could still have a problem, even if it is unlikely.

It was just a scary time for me. You don't want to overreact, but there were just too many things put together that concerned me, and I was selfishly satisfied that she told me it was right to bring him in. I usually stop just short of letting Simon play with knives, but now I'll probably be second-guessing every decision. Parenting is hard.

By the way, we miss the efficiency of the Swedish Hospital ER in Issaquah. That place was awesome. This ER, not so much.

I just realized that I didn't write about opening day at Cedar Point. After missing two years, and generally loathing Ohio lately, this was exactly what I needed.

The interesting thing about Cedar Point isn't the roller coasters or anything like that, it's that the park is one of the most consistent things in my life. Isn't that odd to think about? Places don't go anywhere, you do. You can always go back to places, even if the people come and go. Through two marriages and a child, the park has always been there.

It was pretty great to bring Simon to the park and do stuff. We didn't do a single adult ride, but Diana and I took him on a few things. He's still isn't sure if he enjoys the rides, but I don't think he dislikes them. He just gets bored with sitting in them. I look forward to taking him on Jr. Gemini, eventually.

The park has a link with Diana as well, because we had what I think was our third date there, on the day of Coastermania no less. She was a little freaked out by the 13-year-old kid who stalked me in the Maverick queue, who knew me only from the Web sites. She still ended up staying with me.

Simon seemed to think that the new dinosaurs were kind of cool. I think he'd be more into it if he were a year older. He's definitely more of an explorer than anything else at this point. He just likes to move around and see what he can find. He likes to help people with doors and gates. It's what he does.

For me, there is a great comfort in spending time there, and seeing friends who work there. There are a lot of memories there, mostly good, a few bad, but always opportunities to make more. It's definitely my favorite summer tradition.

I think we'll have some good times out there this year. Maybe we'll even get to ride some adult rides! Really looking forward to the night time stuff next month.

I was just hit with a mess of nostalgia that's making tonight slightly harder. Tonight, we got to use the Facetime on our iPads to see my bro-in-law's family in Seattle. The weather is beautiful there, and my niece and nephew are getting so big. We're not there, and that sucks.

We also got to watch a little big of Sprout, the preschool cable channel, on cable that isn't ours. Where did we last watch that? Seattle, of course. Watching classic shows like that, well, classic to Simon prior to seven months ago, makes us long for those days.

This is a new struggle for me. For the most part, each discreet chapter of my life has been one I was happy to remember, but in no hurry to repeat. Now I have this amazing, transformative period of my life that I long to continue, and I'm not sure what to do with that.

It's not that complicated, I suppose. There are only two real courses of action. The first is to happily remember it, the second is to figure out how to get back to it in some way.

I have to admit that I get a little joy from the story about the Wall Street analyst who is bitching and moaning about Mark Zuckerberg wearing a hoodie to investor presentations. His assertion is that it's disrespectful to the "institution" of Wall Street. I'm not sure how anyone can say that with a straight face, given the cultural disdain for banks and the investment industry.

It's true that I've never owned a suit. I'm not even sure if I have a tie hiding in my closet anymore. When I was a young and naive kid who thought he knew everything, my anti-tie stance was largely rooted in rebellion and distrust for the establishment. Now that I'm older and can admit I don't know even a fraction of what I think I know, my stance is more rooted in the simple notion that the dress code just doesn't matter. It especially doesn't matter in business, which as you might guess is only reinforced by the many years of wearing shorts to work and being paid handsomely anyway.

American business culture is a little screwed up. For most of our history, a job meant you manufactured something, and even today, for a huge number of people, it means you work in some kind of service industry. In these situations, certainly it matters that you be on time, and probably adhere to a uniform for the purpose of branding and customer experience. I totally get that, and it makes sense. However, the world of white collar work tends to still operate as if its people are punching a clock, while a system of reward and punishment crushes the employee's soul. If you're lucky, you work in a place where the only real focus is on the results you provide.

In the book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, the author compiles a lot of research that demonstrates how broken the dominant business model really is. To summarize, human beings tend to perform better and be more productive when they are intrinsically motivated. Business tends to operate on a model of extrinsic motivators. As Matt Ouimet, CEO of Cedar Fair said in a recent interview I did with him, people want to be respected, valued and appreciated. Naturally that doesn't work if money and the threat of not meeting arbitrary and unimportant expectations are your primary motivators.

Issues of respect and results are highly related. If there's anything I've learned in business, it's that the clothes certainly do not make the man (or woman), but really, only results truly define a person and whether or not they deserve respect. Mind you, I'm not taking about basic human respect, like being polite and holding a door for someone, but in the context of business, I care a great deal more about what you can do than what your title is. I've spent a fair amount of time not working because of people with "C" titles making poor decisions.

Zuckerberg has created a business that no one else ever has, and is heading into an IPO that investors are clamoring to be a part of. This one guy has done the work that will make hundreds of new millionaires, and it seems to me that if anyone deserves respect, it's him. His fashion choices are a non-issue.

For reasons I can't explain, other than perhaps the fact that I work from home, I haven't taken any time off in more than four months. While I certainly take week-long vacations now and then, it's more typical that I do three and four-day weekend periodically. I guess I wasn't paying attention.

I won't say that I've been burning out, but at the very least, I think I'm getting mentally fatigued. Work has been challenging, I spent about 10 weeks of free time on the CoasterBuzz re-do, I budget our financial future almost daily... my brain is tired.

So once I take that vacation, my primary goal is to not think about software, if I can at all help it. I think I've already started to follow that desire, given my renewed passion for video lately. I need to spend more time doing right-brained things, like photography and writing. A little roller coaster riding would help, too. A secondary goal is to not allow anyone to destroy my car while traveling.

Above all, I need to commit to doing very little and being OK with it. I don't know how I got to a point where I couldn't relax. I'm a man of leisure.

When I'm back, then I'll tackle my next science project. Maybe. If I feel like it.

We made our triumphant return to the annual Red Cross mini-golf fundraiser at Cedar Point today. Prior to moving, I think I had done it 12 straight years, and some years, we even sponsored two teams. We had a team in 2010, but I wasn't there, and then last year we didn't have anyone. Turn out this year wasn't great, with fewer than 36 teams. Some years, they had to double up teams on most of the holes. This year it was me, Diana, Walt and my friend Jeff.

In any case, the first and biggest change this year was having Simon there. For the most part, he was pretty good about running around the course with us, though he kept charging the green ahead in front of some very understanding ladies. Some dickhead kid behind us made some smartass comment to Diana about him holding up things, getting in the way while we played, but we were generally waiting at the next hole every time. Whatever. He really liked the water features, and he got some practice walking up a few steps here and there without holding on to anything. That was fantastic.

I guess we didn't win anything as a team, but that's OK. Obviously the event is about fundraising, and I'm happy to say that I've donated more to charities this year than probably any prior year. There's a part of me that gets a lot of satisfaction from philanthropy, and while I haven't always had money to donate to stuff, I wish I would have done more in other ways.

This event always has a ton of door prizes, and a raffle to win a stay up in one of the big Breakers rooms. I didn't win the raffle, but I arguably won the best door prize... a night at Great Wolf Lodge! It's good for a year, minus obvious blackout dates, so we'll probably use it next winter, and add a night. The only prizes I've won previously were some golf balls and a $20 certificate for TGI Friday's. Considering the number of years I've done this, I think it was karma that I finally won something awesome!

I've always been hesitant to give money to the national Red Cross, but this local chapter pretty much turns around all of their money and gives it to victims of local disasters, typically house fires. I can really get behind local organizations that have that kind of impact.

It was kind of nice to be back in this particular spring routine. Visiting Cedar Point won't be like it used to be, because clearly we won't get to do as much riding (unless we find more friends willing to watch Simon while at the park), but introducing him to stuff there will be a lot of fun.

They wrapped up another season of The Voice, and even though we generally hate all of the reality/competition bullshit on TV, this one had us hooked to the end, again this season. I think there are a lot of reasons for that, which I'll get to in a moment.

First though, I have to bitch and moan that once again Americans have poor taste in music, and reward sameness. People like to hear the same shit over and over again. That's not a dig on the winner, Jermaine, as I truly believe that he had every right to be up there, and in the top four. It's just that I feel like I've seen him before, and I'm kind of tired of him. I would have actually put him last (Chris third, Tony second).

I said from the first episode that Juliet Simms should be the winner. Hands down. While she had a couple of performances that weren't great, most of them blew me away to an extent that few female singers ever have. I'd buy tickets to see her perform haikus. The power, control and feeling in her performance is something so rare. She is the real deal, rock-n-roll to the core. And if her ability weren't enough, she's flipping gorgeous.

There were a lot of standouts that didn't make the finals, especially Jamar Rogers, Lindsey Pavao and Katrina Parker. Even that little teenage country girl, RaeLynn, was impressive. I think they've all got a future if the screwed up music industry will allow it. For the most part, the entire field of the final 16 or so was exceptional, and much better than last year.

What I dig about the show, more than anything, is that it really celebrates live performance. The blind auditions get people in the game for the right reasons (though, let's be honest, they've been screened by the producers). I think the middle part of the season, the battle rounds, are full of contrived bullshit. I don't care for that part.

When they do get down to the last few people though, the whole tone of the show changes. Let's be honest, the final four will all likely get work if they choose to. So to some extent, the pressure is off, and the competition matters less. When they sing with each other, and their coaches, it's a lot of fun to watch. When Tony and Adam covered the Beatles, that was one of the most special things I've seen on the show. Similarly, to see Juliet do "With A Little Help From My Friends" with some of the eliminated folks, it just makes you a fan of music, and live performance. It doesn't get more awesome.

Fortunately, we DVR'd everything, so we could skip through the non-contestent appearances that add little value to the show (ratings aside), but otherwise, it was really satisfying to watch. The coaches seem very genuine, too, and especially now that they have more of a rapport, are fun to watch. I have a lot of respect for them.

I can't wait to hear what's next for the finalists, especially Juliet.

Got my EZ Pass transponder today from the Ohio Turnpike Commission. I don't know what the usage rate is in Ohio for the thing, but it's clearly underutilized, given the empty toll lanes almost at all times for it. It seems like it gets a lot more love in PA, and in Illinois around Chicago.

It costs .75 a month to have one, but the toll savings seem to negate that pretty quickly. At the absolute bare minimum, I calculate we'll save two years worth of monthly charges before the end of summer.

Ohio was pretty slow to get on this bandwagon, as I recall, and they were also slow to implement it. But now, I wonder why it isn't used more. I would think that anyone living in Northeast Ohio, and not in the city, would use it enough to justify it. Perhaps I'm wrong.

For all of the challenges we've had with Simon lately, it was completely awesome this weekend for the way he was mostly the sweet little boy we hope for. Saturday, Diana took to the little corner of our front yard that prominently said "vacant lot" prior to our return here, and yesterday she finished it up. We had a little helper.

In the morning, Diana started digging out the edge so she could drop the bricks in that I bought yesterday. I vacuumed out the cars, which were in dire need given our smallest occupant's tendency to be messy. Simon helped by bringing mom tools and asking that I be "all done" (he's not a fan of the vacuum cleaner).

For lunch, we packed some stuff and headed out to one of the local parks, where Simon ate a great lunch, enjoyed the playground, pooped twice and did some walking. We had great weather for it. He happily went down for a nap, kinda late, at 2.

He woke up in a good mood, and Diana started to do some planting. Simon instantly wanted to be out there with her. He started yelling "Mom!" in the last day or so, and it's kind of cute. He sat next to her, and "helped" by talking her through the planting process and doing a little hand raking.

It was one of those days that you didn't really do anything "special," exactly, but enjoyed to no end for its simplicity. Put another way, spending an unremarkable day with your wife and little boy is probably one of the best days you could ever have, and I'm thankful for it.

I was very sad today to hear about the passing of Adam Yauch, better known as "MCA" to fans of the Beastie Boys. I was also very surprised to see how many people on Facebook, older and younger, were also struck by the news. The story even made NBC Nightly News. As it turns out, the Beastie Boys are still a big deal to a lot of people.

It's a little hard to explain to non-fans why they're a big deal, and I have to admit that there's a lot of nostalgia I connect with them (more on that momentarily). But I think it's interesting to look at the scope of their work and how it has changed, while staying the same. One of my favorite MCA lyrics is:

"People come up to me, and they try to talk shit, man? I was makin' records when you were suckin' your mother's dick."

That's wonderfully vulgar, circa 1988. It's not particularly clever by B-Boys standards, but it made me smile when I was 14, and it makes me smile now. Consider that this is also the group that, years later, recorded these words in the song, "An Open Letter to NYC:"

"Dear New York, I know a lot has changed
Two towers down but you're still in the game
Home to many, rejecting no one
Accepting peoples of all places, wherever they're from
Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens and Staten
From the Battery to the top of Manhattan
Asian, Middle-Eastern and Latin 
Black, White, New York you make it happen"

In fact, they did a lot of growing up (never letting go of f-bombs, fortunately), and were engaged in politics. MCA was a Buddhist, and very much into efforts to make Tibet an independent state.

More importantly, they helped define and mainstream the rap/hip-hop genre, as part of a relatively small club that includes Run-DMC, LL Cool J and maybe Public Enemy. They were big into sampling, but in a way that they made something totally new from it. Yeah, I'm pretty much calling out all of the crap out today as unimaginative junk. The genre has been getting continuously worse for 15 years, with few bright spots. And yet, through all of that time, the Beastie Boys have been innovative and entertaining. (That's not old man nostalgia talking... I've recognized and enjoyed several resurgences in other genres.)

Lyrically, these cats have packed more pop culture references into their songs than anyone else. I don't even know what most of them are, and I could spend hours looking at the annotated lyric Web site learning about what it is they're talking about.

In terms of the music, they've worked with brilliant DJ's and producers. Again, it's one thing to sample, but quite another to use samples that sound like something new. They've done this consistently. They also fancy themselves as instrumentalists, and while I'm not really into much of that music, I definitely respect it.

And you can't forget the music videos. MTV as Music Television is becoming a distant memory, but a new Beastie Boys video was always a treat. "Sabotage" alone might be one of the best videos of all time.

I was in middle school when Licensed to Ill came out. Honestly, I didn't even understand half the lyrics in "Fight For Your Right." I mean, what's a "porno mag" and why would my mom throw it away? (I don't think any future generation will get it either.) I bet that album was huge in college dorm rooms and at frat house parties.

My favorite is probably Paul's Boutique. I listened to that thing a thousand times. I remember being on a camping trip with my family the summer it came out, and on a rainy day we went to a mall in Zanesville, Ohio. There I had to beg my brother to loan me a dollar so I could buy the cassette, for $8. It was a red tape, too. I listened to it over and over on headphones. I can still feel the warm breezes on the end of the pop-up camper while I listened.

Putting the nostalgia aside, I probably would have to rank Hello Nasty as their best album. It's completely brilliant, start to finish. "Body Movin'" in particular is one of my favorite songs, and I still know around 80% of the words. I very much associate that album with the start (and end) of my broadcast career, leading up to the turn of the century. I can't pin it down to any one moment, but I associate it with driving my blue Corolla, visits to Cedar Point and cranked air conditioning in my cable studio office.

There's no telling what happens now, but honestly, the Beastie Boys without MCA is just weird. Their finish-each-others-line style has been emulated a thousand times over, but no one could ever do it like they did. I think we're all lucky to have had this group in our lifetime.

When I look through a lot of really ancient blog posts, where I talked myself into thinking that life was going pretty well (when clearly it wasn't), I notice I had a consistent theme of life balance. Do this as well as that, and you just function at a higher level. While I was just slightly more full of crap in those days, I'm starting to remember how true the need for balance is.

For example, I'm really getting back into video again. My enthusiasm for it is hitting a level it hasn't seen since I bought the HVX about six years ago (which I finally might be selling). I credit the new camera to an extent, but also the ability to use all of this stuff I've bought over the years. Funny how the cameras change every few years, but all of the audio gear, lenses, lighting and other stuff doesn't. I feel like I have some great tools at my disposal, and it energizes me.

It's true that I get too one-dimensional in what I devote time to. Obviously, being a dad is a high priority, but beyond that, I spent much of the year so far trying to bang out code and do nothing else beyond work. Then I added tennis, and that helped. Then I started planning all of these film projects, and that helped even more.

To be more specific, I think it's the nature of highly creative endeavors that really balance me out and make me happier. If I really look back, I've let this part of me sit on the sidelines for about two and a half years, about the time that the moving and childbirth madness began. Being all left-brained most of the time makes me suck. And yet, when you allow yourself to be creative, it seems like that left-brained stuff you do is consistently better.

So the mental note that I leave myself with is to be creative more. It makes me better. I can't let life be all analytical and logical, because there's no release in that.

I met up with a friend and former mentor from the old Insurance.com group tonight, as he and his wife are moving to Seattle to work for Amazon. There were a number of old ICOM'ers there, and it was exceptionally weird to be sitting on the patio where so many after-work drinker were had. You know, if I were still in Seattle, fully one-third of the dev team from when I started would be out there.

As you might expect, this gathering brings a lot of emotional response for me. I see them starting an adventure that I started on two and a half years ago, and terrifying as it was at the time, it was awesome. For me, that adventure has been interrupted and on hold, and it makes me sad. For a hundred different reasons, I identify far more with the place I live for two years than I do the place where I lived for 36. What do you even do with that feeling?

We talked a bit about our experience at Insurance.com, and one of the things that really stood out was that our dev team had a great deal of longevity, which is rare in our line of work. Sure, some of the earlier folks were waiting for a pay-out that would never come, but we had no real turnover until the layoffs came. Why? Because I think we generally liked working with each other, in part because of good personality fits, but also because professionally we all made each other better. Few things are as satisfying as working with smart people. We collectively think that kind of group just isn't possible anymore in the Cleveland market. Many of the best folks have left town, and businesses don't see the value in building great teams.

There were down sides, of course. With the senior people hanging out for stock pay-outs, it meant the rest of us really had nowhere to go. I was certainly feeling restless when the layoffs came. You need a certain amount of responsibility to stay engaged, and those of us in the class of 2006 definitely weren't getting that.

We took a lot away from that business. We all learned how to think in a higher context about a great many things when it came to software development. It's rare, even in sophisticated shops, to find developers who understand and care deeply about the business of what you're doing. I think we also saw, in retrospect at least, that it's easy to get wrapped up in shit that just doesn't matter. We often automated and engineered stuff that had little return on investment, and invested great effort into things that might yield a .01% better customer conversion rate.

Some of the folks I worked with aren't likely to ever leave Cleveland. I never thought about it back in the day, now I think that sounds kind of sad. Others are already gone. Then there's me, who is back, and in some ways tortured by that. To live in the house I couldn't sell (but at least we sold Diana's), and to end up working remotely for a company that isn't even in the same state, makes for a completely weird situation.

Every day I wonder if the financial wins of our move-back are really worth the emotional toll of it all. It hasn't been a bad seven months, but I feel like I'm missing out on something. My niece and nephew keep getting bigger, friends are doing cool new things in Redmond, the mountains are still awesome... it's tough. I feel like the adventure is on hold.

The weather cooperated enough on Sunday that a little visit to the zoo was in order, offering a chance to finally get out of the house and shoot some stuff with the new camera. As it turns out, this arrangement isn't great for us, because while I carry the gear and shoot, Diana pretty much is a single parent with Simon. I should probably save this kind of thing for solo trips.

In any case, I also bought a new tripod, because my little 12-year-old Manfrotto was really too small to use when you added a lot of gear around the camera. The head in particular was too small for the weight. I decided to stick with the Italians (get it, "stick," as in tripod?), and got a 546B with the 504HD head. I love it. It has the smooth drag of the pro tripods I had back in my broadcast days, only with better controls. It's a little heavy, but not horribly so, as I couldn't justify the carbon fiber anyway.

I also had a bunch of Redrock Micro support gear that I was able to reuse for this camera, including the follow focus and carbon fiber rods. I can't say enough about their stuff. It's really fantastic. The new piece I had to buy (other than the LiveLens) was a lens support, as a precaution, to relieve some of the lens weight from the camera.

Moving around was pretty easy with the entire rig. I brought just my Canon 70-200mm f/4L lens. That made it pretty long, but still easy to cart around by the handle. I mostly moved from one location to the next with the tripod legs' bottom third extended, putting the camera at nipple height. I've wanted a ball socket tripod for years, and dropping it and leveling is stupid easy.

In terms of operation, the camera is ergonomically pretty well designed, and very familiar if you've used Panasonic cameras before. This if the fifth Panasonic pro camera I've used consistently, and it feels super familiar. With that big lens, I wasn't even going to try to do handheld, but around the house with a short lens, it seems pretty manageable. The follow focus was fantastic to use, and I never found myself having to "reset" the gear position at the end of the focusing range (meaning if you hit the end of the range you would eventually end up with the clamp knocking the focus gear). What I really like is how easy it is to go into variable frame rate mode. You just push the dial and you're there. It doesn't record sound in this mode, but it's good enough to tell you that with a big graphic in the viewfinder that says "A.REC" with a red slash through it. Everything I shot was at 60 fps.

The red peaking focus assist works extraordinarily well if you have things with sharp edges in the frame. For example, a lot of the critters had grass around them, and as you turned the focus, you could see the red move near and far from you. Whiskers and eye glints also work well, as does some of the more textured fur. Focus can be pretty dodgy in HD, but with a little practice, I found myself getting it pretty quickly.

Exposure generally went pretty well, except for the gorilla, who was behind glass. I was able to fix it enough in post to be satisfied with that shot. I looked at the waveform once or twice, but the zebras (exposure in the viewfinder, not the animals) generally kept me on target, avoiding blown highlights. Using the LiveLens to adjust aperture isn't as nice as the dial on the camera for "native" lenses, but even in this on-the-go scenario, it wasn't a big deal. The neutral density filters are beyond awesome, though I didn't pay much attention to which one I was using. The lens if f/4, so I have to see what happens when I'm outdoors with something faster, like the 50mm f/1.4 I have. In bright sun, I probably can't go much beyond f/4 without some external ND filters. The camera's slowest speed is ISO 200, unfortunately.

Overall, the effort to get what I did was not large. I wasn't particularly careful, I obviously don't have control over lighting, and the results were still pretty solid. Thoughtful indoor use or on a set should yield outright amazing results.

The image quality is exceptionally good, and the noise in the shadows is surprisingly not upsetting. AVCHD compresses the crap out of the images, and yet, I don't see significant artifacts or compression noise. They're there, but it's relatively minor. Yes, I suppose if you were really concerned about it, you'd want to record externally, but considering most of what I shoot will be delivered via the Web, I'm winning.

Post workflow is something I'll have to think a little more about. I can use Premiere Pro and edit natively, but scrubbing across video, especially with an external drive, isn't particularly quick. The CPU on my 27" iMac gets a little choked up. I suppose transcoding to ProRes or something would make sense.

So far, I couldn't be more pleased with the camera. I absolutely love using my Canon lenses, even if the camera sensor is smaller than the full-frame SLR's. The Four Thirds sensor is actually not that huge of a departure from the APS-C size of my 7D. I generally feel that I have lenses for most use cases, the one hole being a faster wide angle for low light situations and, of course, shallow depth of field. My 24-105mm f/4L could benefit from a few extra stops. I suppose if I get a lens to cover the wider range, it will likely be a Canon so I can use it for all of time. Not sure I want to commit to buying Four Thirds lenses.

Here's the result of some of what I shot. I cut in Premiere Pro CS5.5 and color graded (a little) with Colorista II. I <3 Colorista. (Watch it full screen for HD goodness.)

The rig with the 70-200mm f/4L and the Redrock Micro LiveLens:

Shooting the cheetahs:

One of the stories that comes up a few times a year on CoasterBuzz is the application of various amusement parks for alcohol permits. First of all, the comments by locals on the newspaper sites border on hilarious, but even the comments on my site include a sample of people who assert that amusement parks are "family oriented" and therefore they shouldn't sell alcohol.

First off, let's point out that the Disney parks, not counting Magic Kingdom, all sell alcohol, and I can't imagine any other place more associated with families. In fact, Epcot even has its food and wine festival. Universal sells so much alcohol that I often wonder how they manage to get away with it and still maintain the atmosphere that they do. So at the end of the day, I'm not sure how people equate the sale of alcohol with hordes of drunken lunatics engaging in douchebaggery at every turn.

I'm no stranger to alcoholism and substance abuse. It runs in my family. It's an ugly thing. However, I just don't get how people make the leap that offering beverages somehow means everyone who has one is a drunk. And not just a drunk, but a fall-over vomiting schmuck. I also don't understand how the presence of alcohol is anti-family. (I'm suspect of anything labeled "anti-family," for that matter.) I can't remember a single family gathering in my lifetime where someone didn't have a beer or a glass of wine. And in all of those years, the only person I ever recall being drunk is me, mostly during my college years.

I think the use of alcohol falls into the same category as a great many other things that you teach your kids about. People will do what they do, and the best you can do is try to teach your kids to understand how to be responsible. I can do that even if Legoland sells a few beers.

A friend of mine is moving away from Northeast Ohio after 30-some years, to Seattle no less, and watching him do it fascinates me. Maybe it's because I've been there. Maybe it's because I want to go back there. Maybe it's because I've seen so many friends make the leap to a new life in this way, and it's always striking how it fundamentally changes your soul.

In fact, big moves are on a short list of things that change you in immeasurable ways. What's really cool about that is the changes are permanent. You can't really go back to your previous state. I experienced a ton of these things in a very short, concentrated amount of time, and the changes, I think, made me better in so many ways.

Having this altered soul keeps me a bit on "vibrate" at all times. Life changing events have a funny way of making you realize just how many possibilities there are, if you're willing to see them. I mean, people might think of Hawaii as a place for vacations, but rarely consider it a place you could call home. I'm not considering it (yet), just using it as an example.

And yes, it frustrates me that I didn't figure this out earlier in life. I'm not sure that I'd describe this as regret, because I can't legitimately describe myself, professionally or personally, ever truly "stuck," but taking a few more chances when there was less risk would likely have had positive outcomes.

We watched We Bought A Zoo a few days ago, and recently the special features, and it really is a pretty great story. In the fictional movie version, a guy loses his wife, presumably to cancer, and decides to move his family to a property that includes a broken down zoo. Of course he's looking for bigger meaning in life and a sense of purpose.

The thing is, his story is familiar in terms of people who do extraordinary things. It seems like the impetus for these actions is often some catastrophic or otherwise life changing event. It's certainly not a story limited to fiction either. There are plenty of examples in everyday life.

The question is, does it really have to be that way? Does something big, good or bad, have to happen to us in order to do extraordinary things?

I think you first have to figure out what "extraordinary" is. I think as time passes, it's easier to lower the bar. For some, getting through the next day is extraordinary. For others, raising a child who is at minimum not a drag on society is a big deal. For me, I think I believe that you have to positively affect others. I'm not entirely sure if the scale matters. It might.

That issue of motivation is a big one. The easier thing is always to not do hard things. We definitely seem to follow a curve in terms of desire to do those hard things. When we're young and the experience of life hasn't persistently tried to beat us down, we want to change the world. As we close in on 30, issues of comfort, safety and a lower tolerance for risk cause us to get complacent. In our 40's, I think we start to become acutely aware of the passing of time, and may not do things that one would describe as extraordinary, but definitely less safe and comfortable. By the time we cross 50, a lot of our ability is simply rooted in experience. The more practice you have at life, the better you can be at it. As I theorized before, though, a catastrophic event can render that curve meaningless.

I don't think that ego or desire for recognition plays into it much. A little, perhaps, but I don't think it sits high on the scale.

I think we're in a volatile time in our history where we need people to do extraordinary things. It doesn't matter if that means they write a good song or build a house or cure cancer. Our culture is so fatigued with war, hate, suffering and general malaise. It can't take much more. We all choose to be a part of the problem or a part of the solution.

Diana helped out this morning with the sale of child stuff up at the high school, so it was another one of those half-days where I got to have some exclusive Simon time. Typically, I enjoy these times and look forward to them, because it gives me a chance to be the dad I want to be. Except when I'm not.

Simone had no fewer than three meltdowns this morning. It's easy to write it off as something a 2-year-old does, but I felt like I should be doing more, and working the problem. Most of Simon's frustrations come from either a short tolerance for not being able to do what he wants, and more often, the inability to communicate what he feels. So imagine how I felt like an asshole when, after melting down because I was trying to get him to sit down for lunch, he led me up to his changing table to change a poopy diaper I didn't notice. And by that time, I had become short with him as well, which makes me feel worse, because what the hell is wrong with a grown man that gets angry at a kid who has a vocabulary of a few dozen words?

If it were just a one-off occurrence, I'd just move on, but I feel like this is happening a lot lately when I'm with him. He gets upset about something, I don't know what, and then it's obvious. I sound like a crazy person when I articulate the feeling, but it really messes with my self-esteem as a parent. Nothing makes me feel like more of a failure than when I can't provide for Simon. And if that's not bad enough, my spiral of self-loathing causes me to be short with Diana and anyone else I encounter. If that weren't bad enough, he had epic vomit after dinner in the parking lot tonight. I mean, the result looked like it was from someone who had gotten drunk and revisited several dozen wings and chips. That made me wonder if he was feeling suboptimal all day, and that makes me feel even worse because I never considered it.

Tomorrow, the perspective that comes with a night of sleep (sometimes) will make me see that I'm probably over-reacting tonight. My lack of vacationing and leisure certainly has me holding on too tight. It's just that when it comes to Simon, I sometimes feel like the stakes are impossibly high. I've had so many disappointing relationships in my life, and if I'm only going to have one child, I can't let that happen with him. That's a lot of pressure, even if it is self-applied.

The thing that gives me comfort is that I think Simon sometimes knows how I feel. Last night, he insisted on rocking with me a little before bed, which is ordinarily not a fun time for any of us. Tonight, after his bath, he sat on my lap and held my fingers during his nebulizer treatment, and wasn't shy about cozying up to me during his Sesame Street time.

I have been completely bouncing off of the walls lately. With this bouncing comes a lot of angst that is directed toward a number of different circumstances. Overall, I feel like I'm kind of whining. Nobody likes people like that.

The stir crazy part is pretty easy to explain. I work from home and we haven't had a vacation since Christmas. Furthermore, that was not exactly restful because of the car accident. I don't even remember the last time I went four months without, at the very least, taking a nice long four-day weekend. The working at home part surprisingly doesn't make this easier, it makes it worse.

The angst comes from a lot of different places, not the least of which is also the home I work and live in. While it's a comfortable place that we enjoy, it's also one that is the embodiment of many of our troubles the last few years. In fact, we wouldn't even be here if we sold it two years ago. So even if I like it, it feels a bit like a prison, and now I even work in it! It's a completely bizarre situation.

And that leads to some of the issues around living in Cleveland. I'm always reminded of the scene in the movie Orange County where Kevin Kline tells Colin Hanks that the best writers all exhibited an intense love-hate relationship with the place they were from. Unlike the Hanks character, however, I will not likely embrace the place I used to live. I hate it here. I expend a lot of energy hating it. OK, maybe hate is too strong a word. It's probably less about hating it and more about liking Seattle better. I felt like I belonged there, while I feel like I'm just done with Cleveland.

That causes me to second guess my decisions on a daily basis. I strongly felt that moving back was mastering my destiny, particularly the financial part. Even with the dollar crisis of the car accident and a lot of money spent on home improvement, the planned outcome has, so far, more than come to fruition. But does all of that monetary rightness compensate for living in a backward, homo-hating, income taxing, government failing state make up for it?

Fortunately, things are balancing out a little without any particular action on my part. The first thing is that we've got travel plans. Some plans are more specific than others, but we have the flexibility to drive so many places that we just couldn't go before. That will certainly ease the location issues, for the time being. I even had some scenarios recently crop up where I could see myself being here a lot longer term, and that's quite unexpected. And of course, I'm not a politician, so I reserve the right to change my opinions or feelings at any time.

When I "got home" from work today, Simon was so happy to see me, and my beautiful wife hugged me, and it all felt like the world was right. I felt anti-entitled to be bitching about anything. I've got it good in a lot of ways, and I'm working on the stuff I'm less than happy with. I just need a few more weeks and I'll be able to relax a little. And heck, with Cedar Point opening soon, I can have the kind of summer fun that has been sorely absent in my life.

I posted the Ouimet interview today on CB (and Walt on PB). Really happy with the content, but would've liked the technical side of it to be better. Even with the lighting I had, it was difficult and overcast in places. If I had a grip, I'd have someone with my reflector! Audio was pretty solid though. Buying all of that wireless stuff and a variety of microphones has paid for itself a hundred times over.

With some documentary type stuff this year, I'm going to try and shoot with the AF100 instead. That camera has more dynamic range, and less noise, so as long as I don't blow out exposure (pretty easy to avoid with proper zebras), I'll have an easier time color correcting. The HVX is frustrating because there just isn't enough to work with. Well planned and lit stuff works great, but hostile run-and-gun without a second person doesn't work as well.

I bought a new tripod with the AF100, too, because as soon as you put big lenses, rails, a follow focus and other accessories on it, it starts to get too heavy for my trusty old tripod. That, and I really wanted something with a smoother head and a ball mount so I could quickly level it. I couldn't justify spending on a carbon fiber rig, so the Manfrotto I bought is kind of heavy, but it's really solid.

Aside from shooting some overcranked shots of Simon using his nebulizer (because the mist coming out looks really cool in slow motion), I haven't really shot anything interesting with my new camera. I've been busy, the weather has been poor, and really the little guy is just now getting back to his normal self anyway.

That said, I love being able to use my Canon lenses on that thing. The relatively inexpensive 50mm f/1.4 that I bought way back in the day with my 5D produces really beautiful moving pictures. I never thought that some day I'd shoot video with it, but there it is. If anything, it benefits from being on a smaller sensor camera because the slight vignette that it normally exhibits when wide open is masked because the camera simply doesn't see the corners.

The sensor size is something I'll have to work out in the long run. It's just a little smaller than 35mm motion picture film, so the focal length of lenses obviously aligns with that. Where 50mm is the "normal" for still photography cameras, a 25mm is roughly equivalent on this camera. That means my 50mm is effectively a telephoto lens. That's not a huge problem at all. Working in the f/2 or f/2.8 range on people six to eight feet away gives you a good close up and a nice looking, shallow depth of field. However, if you want more, you need to move back a bit.

This is where being a traditional video guy is hard, because I'm so used to zoom lenses. The average $15k ENG camera I used 15 years ago (with fancy "new" digital tape!) typically shipped with a nice Fujinon lens that could zoom up your subject's nose. Now, I'm relearning how to shoot with prime lenses, mostly as a practical matter. Zooms that have wide open apertures are really expensive, and you want that because all of that light on that big sensor means less noise and gets you the cinematic depth of field you desire.

Canon makes some sub-$500 prime lenses ranging from 20mm to 35mm, with apertures from f/1.8 to f/2.8. They only make one zoom that goes that wide and f/2.8, and it's crazy expensive. I got a 14-42mm cheap lens with the camera that gets the coverage I want no problem, but at full wide it only opens to f/3.5. That's great for shooting landscape type stuff (that's why I bought it), but not as great for shooting indoors or where you want shallow depth. So in the long term, I'll have to think about what I want to do.

My trusty 24-105mm f/4 L is fantastic as ever on that camera. It's really heavy when you're doing handheld, but zoomed out it gets that "normal" field you want. I just wish it opened another stop, to f/2.8. The 70-200mm f/4 L I have also looks pretty good, and that poor lens doesn't get a lot of use other than for sports, which I rarely shoot. I can't wait to take that one to the zoo. I fully expect to capture some great stuff that way.

There's also the issue of handheld shooting and using the tripod. If you're shooting planned films, tripods and prime lenses are awesome. Run-and-gun documentary style stuff is a lot harder, and that's where having a zoom sure would help, especially indoors.

So immediate goals are to do shorts with zoo critters and a music video with Simon. Those little projects will really let me put the camera through its paces. I'm also working on a plan for a documentary that I'll start shooting very soon, and will probably release as a series of three or four episodes. That will be a really cool project. It'd be better if I can get Morgan Freeman to narrate it, but I don't think he does pro bono work for dorks like me.