A Day in My Life

I always find graphics that help explain taxes and government spending to be very interesting. I just saw this graphic today that displays the differences in tax rates per salary level and how the taxes are distributed throughout the government. It is especially interesting to look at your salary level to see how your taxes are distributed. Enjoy!

Free Tax Filing, Efile Taxes, Income Tax Returns – TurboTax.com

I have now had my camera for about a month-and-a-half. From the day I got it, I have been learning a tremendous amount about the way cameras work and about photography in general. Many of the things I have been learning apply not only to fancy dSLR’s, but also to regular point-and-shoots. I wanted to pass along one very important thing I’ve learned to you. My topic for today is one of those things that can be simply done on any camera to improve your pictures.

I’m sure that you are aware that photography is all about capturing light. This isn’t rocket science. However, how often do you think of taking a picture of light? I know I don’t. I am always focused on taking a picture of the dog or of a plant or something like that, not on capturing light. If you focus simply on capturing your subject instead of the light around you, you can end up with some funky colors that you didn’t expect. One simple thing you can do to reduce the number of pictures you take with crazy colors is to manually set your camera’s white balance (WB). Your camera uses the WB setting to determine how blue or amber (orange) your pictures will be. (Check out this page for some examples on how WB effects the colors of your photos.) As the type of lighting you are in changes, how blue or amber your pictures are will change right along side. This should be the first setting you adjust when you go to take a picture in a new location.

Since I got my camera, I have been taking pictures using the Auto WB setting. For the most part, this has worked out pretty well for me. I assume that you are probably taking pictures using auto as well. For the most part, auto WB does a pretty good job at figuring out the area lighting so your pictures will accurately capture the colors around you. But just like the main auto setting’s on your camera, auto has its limitations. It doesn’t always get the colors exactly right. It may be close, but what your eyes see as white won’t necessarily be what your camera sees as white.

Most camera’s have many WB settings that should be used in various lighting situations. Some common settings are Tungsten, Sunlight, Shade, and Cloudy. Making a change to one of these settings based on your location and light type can make a BIG, immediate difference in your pictures.

I’d like to challenge you to go a little bit further with your WB setting. Most cameras have a Custom WB setting as their last option. If you’re not sure what you should use or if the other settings are not quite right, this might be where you should turn. Each manufacturer and each camera is a little different on how you set the custom white balance so you’ll have to check your manual to figure out how to set it. Some require you to use something that is white (like a piece of paper or a t-shirt) for the camera to use as a white reference point and some don’t. Using this custom setting will set your camera’s WB based on the exact lighting you are currently experiencing.

I’ve been noticing that many of my pictures have been slightly warmer (more amber) when I’ve been taking them inside my house at night. Here is an example of what I mean:

A lot of the colors in this picture are off slightly from what they really are. Take the little green cactus as an example. It is pretty dark in this shot and starts to blend in to what is around it. This was taken using auto white balance. It’s not too bad, but it could be a lot better.

Here is one I took of the same cactus last night:

See how the green of the cactus is much brighter and jumps out more? The little spines on the cactus are also must whiter rather than being a beige or brownish color. They are must easier to distinguish in this shot from the rest of the cactus. This one was taken using my custom white balance setting. This is a big improvement from the original that only took a small, quick adjustment.

Next time you go to take a picture, be aware of your white balance. Making a quick change here can help the outcome of all your pictures. Happy shooting!

For many people, myself included, the weekend is the best part of your week. There were a few things I was looking forward to this weekend. The first of which was the newest, and probably last major addition for a while, to my camera setup. If you recall in my original camera post, I was limited to zooming to 55mm. That is no longer the case. On Friday, I received my new lens, the Nikon 55-200mm VR!

My total zoom is now from 18-200mm, all with VR. For you point-and-shooters, that equates to an 11.1x zoom. I am quite excited for this addition. While my original lens will continue to be my primary lens, I’m glad I now have the option to go further.

The second big thing that happened on Friday, which wasn’t entirely expected, was that Bethany got her acceptance letter for grad school! That’s right, she is now officially a PhD student at the University of Minnesota! She will be going for a PhD in nursing which will allow her to eventually teach nursing on the college level. We are both really excited to begin this new journey.

On Saturday, I went over to the Bleess house for Austin’s graduation party. He is now a master, a Master of Public Administration that is. It was good to see him and his wonderful wife at the party. I took a couple pictures at the party for your viewing pleasure:

Today was a pretty lazy day for me. I spent most of the day listening to podcasts and uploading pictures. As you can see here, it was a pretty lazy day for Copland as well:

Over the course of time, BGerdin.com has gone through a few major changes. Here is how I classify these changes:

• 1.0: The original instance of my website was built on pretty simplistic HTML with Blogger being used to host my blog. I had a basic main page with a few pages based on that same format. Nothing special, but it worked. This remained the format of my website for quite a number of years and allowed me to experiment with the world of web. Along the way, I made minor changes and additions that I wouldn’t really call major updates.
• 2.0: The way I see it, my first major upgrade to my website actually happened less than a year ago. This occurred when I switched my blog hosting from Blogger over to Wordpress. When I made this move, Austin told me I would never look back, and I sure haven’t. Wordpress is a much nicer blogging package to work with and it allows me to do many more customizations that I couldn’t do with blogger. The templates are also a lot nicer which enhances my site that much more. Along with this change, I eliminated the remaining portions of my site that were written in simple HTML and started to replace them with Wordpress pages.
• 3.0: That brings us to my latest major site upgrade. Many of you only check out my blog through RSS and probably haven’t noticed this change up until now. With the purchase of my camera in the last month, I have started to take many more pictures. Up until now, I haven’t had a real good way to display my pictures in a way that I have liked. All my options forced me link to outside hosting sites. While this worked, I didn’t like that I didn’t have control of my pictures and how they were presented. That, my friends, is now history. I now have complete control of my pictures and control over the way my galleries are displayed through the use of Smugmug! For those of you who don’t know, Smugmug is regularly listed as one of the best photo hosting site on the web. Using Smugmug, I am able to have professional looking galleries that are contained in the realm of BGerdin.com. With moving to Smugmug, I have also gotten rid of my main page and now have a great looking Smugmug slideshow as the main BGerdin.com page. If you haven’t been to my main page recently, you should really check it out. I am much happier with the way my site looks and with the functionality I have with this great addition.

One other thing that you may or may not be interested in is that a New Years resolution of mine was to take a picture every day of 2010. It can be of anything I see or experience throughout the day. This is to help me better understand my camera and to start visualizing pictures so I become a better photographer. I’m writing this on the 22nd day of January and so far, I haven’t missed a day. To give you a taste of my pictures and to show off a little of what Smugmug and Wordpress can do, here are three of my recent pictures for you to look at. Click on each to see them larger:

You will find a link to the full gallery under these three pictures. If you want to keep up to date with my daily pictures, you can add this gallery to your RSS reader. I have also added a little picture preview on the right side of my blog that shows off the most recent pictures I have added to this gallery. One caveat for you RSS people is that you won’t get to experience any of these cool features on my site unless you actually go to my site to check them out.

2009 has left us and 2010 is now in full swing. Before we get too far from 2009, I want to give a little recap from the year past:

January started off right where December had left off with me playing a lot of broomball. This was the year that I experienced my first penalty and saw my first major broomball injury. On my birthday this year, my good friends Marc and Sarah Beth welcomed their new baby girl into the world. I now get the pleasure of sharing my birthday with the newest Aune.

In February, we were able to use up our free night in a Hyatt hotel. We built up the points for this on our honeymoon and used it at the Hyatt in Bloomington. It is always fun to get away from the normal routine and stay somewhere new. This was a very nice hotel and we would definitely recommend it for anyone coming in to Minnesota.

With April came Easter. This Easter, along with my normal trumpeting duties, I also sang in the church choir. This was my first choir experience and I have to say it was very enjoyable. At the end of April, Bethany went down to St. Louis for her sister’s baby shower. A few weeks later, baby Liv was born making me an uncle for the sixth time!

In May, we were confronted with some much needed home repairs in the form of a rusted out water heater. Thankfully, we were able to have our old one replaced in a very short amount of time. I don’t want to think about what would have happened if we had waited any longer than we did. For Memorial Day this year, we made the trek out to Eureka, SD to visit Bethany’s parents. We spend a few days in South Dakota relaxing and watching some horse racing. We wrapped up the month with a trip up to Duluth for our friend’s Kari and Per’s wedding. We went up a day early to do a little site seeing before the wedding. What a great time of year to be in Duluth!

June took us down to St. Louis to visit our newest little niece and her parents. We spent a few days in St. Louis visiting and seeing the sites around town. We were also able to see the Cardinals play the Twins at Busch Stadium. It was an insanely hot day we went to the game, but we had a great time watching the baseball game outside.

In July, I took part in the musical put on at Bethel called The 1940’s Radio Hour. I had a great time playing in the musical with a lot of my old band friends and with Dr. Thompson. Also in July, we made the decision to get a basset hound puppy. It took Bethany a long time to convince me that getting a dog was a good idea. That month, we looked all over for breeders and once we found one with puppies, Bethany went and picked out a puppy.

In August, we took our annual trip up to Trout Lake Camp. Daniel spent his summer at camp this summer so we got the chance to hang out with him as well. We did some boating and a lot of relaxing while we were there. That next weekend we played host to Bethany’s parents. They happened to come to visit over Bethany’s birthday. We went out on a river boat cruise on the St. Croix with both of our parents for her birthday. We had never done that before and had a great time. At the end of August, we got together with all of Bethany’s family out in Spicer, MN on Nest Lake where we had rented a cabin. We had a lot of fun in the water that weekend. After that weekend, we hosted Liv and Erika at our house for the next week. We had a lot of fun with them over that week.

September brought with it the day we picked up Copland from the breeder. With him brought the end of our quiet days at home and to our clean house. Even so, we wouldn’t take back our decision to get that little guy. Looking back at these pictures makes me amazed that he was ever that small!

On October 4th we hit our one year anniversary! Where did the time go? To celebrate this year, we went to the last regularly scheduled home game of the season for the Twins at the Metrodome, which happened to be on our anniversary day. That was a fun way to celebrate since it was a once in a lifetime event we got to be apart of. Later that month, I took a class to become a certified Crown Money Map Coach. This ministry is one that helps people move from their current financial situation towards one of financial freedom. I am really happy to be apart of this great ministry.

Over the end of October and beginning of November, we went down to Edgerton, MN to visit Bethany’s sister Rachel and her family. This was Copland’s first trip away from home. We had a great time visiting with Rachel, Paul, and the boys while we were there and Copland had a great time away from the cities.

Then came December. Each year my dad take all of his employees to a show at the Chanhassen Dinner Theatre. This year we all went to see Oklahoma. We had a wonderful time at the show. It was Bethany’s first time seeing this show and she had a great time. Also in December, we replaced the flooring in our living room because Copland decided that it would be fun to rip up the carpet. While this was something we hadn’t anticipated, our new flooring looks great. For Christmas this year, we made the rounds by visiting both of our families. We started out in South Dakota with all of Bethany’s family. Peter was even able to join us this year from England. We spent five days there and then headed out to St. Francis to visit my family, including a bunch of relative from out east. We spent three days there before heading home. Copland did very well throughout the trip and especially had a lot of fun running around on the farm without his leash. It’s nice to be out in the country where thare are no leash laws! Tyler also came home over Christmas and spent a couple days with us. It was great to see him too.

Also during December, I finally purchased and received my new digital SLR! I have had a great time learning all about my camera and taking many pictures throughout Christmas. I intend to fill up my site with even more pictures from it in the future.

Finally, I wanted to give my annual Fantasy Football results for 2009. This year I took part in three leagues. In the first, I ended up finishing in tenth out of twelve teams. I’m trying to forget about this one. In the Jazz League, for the second year in a row I took the consolation 10:20 trophy. And finally in Austin’s league, I took home the championship for the second straight year! Also, in my spread pick-em contest, I beat out all the competition to take first! Even with my awful finish in the first league, I must say that this was my best Fantasy Football year yet. Bring on FF 2010!

Well, I think that brings us to the end of the year. You should give yourself a pat on the back for making it all the way through this lengthy post. As we move forward in the year, I hope to be posting more frequently here as well as posting more pictures. May you have a blessed 2010!

It’s been well over a month since I last posted. As with everyone, a lot has happened in the last month, especially factoring in the holidays. So here’s a quick little wrap up from when I last wrote:

For Thanksgiving this year, we went up to my parents house in good ‘ol St. Francis. This was Bethany’s holiday to work so we ended up eating in the evening rather than the usual afternoon dinner. In the afternoon, I changed the oil and switched out the tires on her car to snow tires. (I later did the same procedure on my car the following Saturday.) We had a nice dinner before we had to head out for Bethany to get to work on time.

Also at about this time, I made a basic website for one of the guys that works for my dad. He runs a towing company with his brother based out of Coon Rapids. I just created a one page site for them to start getting some online exposure. You can check it out their site at AandJTowingLLC.com. The site went live in mid-December.

Over the past year, I have been reading and learning a lot about photography. You could call it a budding new hobby of mine. What was really holding me back from really getting into taking pictures was my old camera. It was very limiting what I was able to do. That all changed in the beginning of December when I got a new dSLR camera, a Nikon D90 to be specific.

After reading a million reviews from a ton of different places, I determined that this was the best camera for the money. Rather than getting the kit lens that they have it paired with, I opted to get the AF-S DX Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR lens with the plan to get the 55-200mm VR soon for the expanded zoom.

I read that this lens has better optics than the 18-105mm kit lens. It was also less expensive which helped to make my decision a little bit easier. I am now picture crazy. There are a ton of different settings on this camera than were on any camera I had previously used. It is so much fun to play with and will take me quite a while to become proficient with it. However, right out of the box, the camera can take pictures my old point-and-shoot could only dream of taking.

That brings us to Christmas. This year we made the trip up to Bethany’s parents house with Copland in tow. All of her siblings were able to be there this year which made it that much more fun. We were planning on heading up there on Christmas Eve, however, with the ensuing snow storm, we were able to both get off work and leave a day early and miss the storm. Copland did pretty well on the trip, both in the car and at their house. There were 15 people total in the house so it was a busy place. While we missed the bad weather driving up, it was incredibly cold while we were there. The snow didn’t pile up too much on the farm because the 30-40 mph wind blew it right away. As you could imagine, there were some pretty massive drifts around the house. We stayed there until the Sunday after Christmas. You can see picture from this trip here.

Following our visit to South Dakota, we went straight to my parents house in St. Francis. I was no less busy at my parents house than it had been at Bethany’s. Tyler had come home along with my family from the east coast and everyone was hanging out at the house when we arrived. While there weren’t any babies there, the volume seemed to be higher with all the jokes and stories being told. On Monday, we had a big game day where we played board games and watched the sorry Vikings lose. While we had never had a game day before, everyone had a great time with it and it was a great hit. We hung out with my family in St. Francis until about noon on Wednesday. You can see picture from this trip here.

Bethany had to work this New Years eve so Tyler and I ended up going over to Bethany Fast’s and Sarah Joy’s house for their party. They have a pretty fun old house with a bunch of odd storage and crawl spaces. There, we played a rousing game of boys vs. girls Trivial Pursuit. Even though the guys finished up the pie first, the girls ended up winning due to our poor rolling at the end. We had fun seeing old band people and talking about the good ‘ol times in the BWS. You can see my pictures from the party here.

Well, that about brings us up to today. I’ll work on a year round up like I did last year and hopefully get it posted in the next week. Until then, Happy New Year to you all and may 2010 be a blessed year for you!

For my first installment on the ever important and timely topic of health care reform, I wanted to give you all some of the facts on the bills that have currently past congressional committees. Rather than write out the details of each of the plans in paragraph form, I have found a handy table created by the Wall Street Journal that does it way better job than I could. You can view this table by simply clicking on the image below.

This table is a great resource and will hopefully help you compare and contrast each of the pending bills. While this isn’t an exhaustive table of all of the elements of the bill, it does highlight the most discussed and contentious issues of each of the bills. I hope you will use it as as reference to come back to when considering reform and as the legislation moves through congress.

I also wanted to quickly address the process for those who may not follow legislation. As I mentioned earlier, these bills have all only passed congressional committees. There are currently two bills that have passed senate committees and three bill that have passed committees in the house. The two committees in the senate who oversee health care and have passed bills are the Senate Finance Committee chaired by Senator Max Baucus and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee chaired by Senator Tom Harkin. The committees in the house that have passed health reform legislation are the House Ways and Means Committee chaired by Rep. Charles Rangel, the House Energy and Commerce Committee chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman and the House Education and Labor Committee chaired by Rep. George Miller. Now that these bills have all passed in their respective committees, they are now brought to the full House or Senate and combined into one bill in each chamber. Once the committee bills are combined, they are then debated and amended by their respective chamber, the full House or the full Senate, and voted upon. To pass the House, a bill must receive 218 votes which is a simply majority. In the Senate, however, a bill must receive 60 votes to pass. There are currently 60 democratic senators which is considered a super-majority as a bill can pass with only members of one party voting in favor. (To arrive at 60, there technically are only 58 democratic senators and two independent senators who caucus with with democrats. Also, this is the regular legislative process and doesn’t include the process under budget reconciliation rules.)

Once the bills pass both chambers of Congress, they are then brought to a conference committee made up of members of both the House and the Senate. At this point, the two bills that were passed are different and the conference committee works to meld these bills into one bill which is sent back to each chamber. When the bill arrives back in each chamber in it’s final form, it is then voted on again by each chamber and passed on the same number of votes as referenced above. Once the bill passes both chambers of congress, you guessed it, it will finally go to President Obama to sign. Needless to say, the legislation that has currently passed each committee is subject to a lot of changes in the coming weeks and months.

Your reward for making it this far in my post is a fun video you may have seen in grade school. Yes, here is the famous School House Rock video on the legislative process. Enjoy:

(If you are viewing this in Facebook, click the “View Original Post” link below to read the full post and view the video.)