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With 25″ inches of snow on the ground, the skies started to clear giving way to a hint of a sunset. That’s I-66 and Washington Blvd in the background, with Virginia Hospital Center in the distance.

This picture shows the 23″ of snow currently on the ground here in Arlington, VA. That is I-66 in the background. Every once in a while there are a few cars that drive by, but it is completely snow covered.

And the kicker? It’s still coming down!

A long time ago (like, 2003) I installed Gallery 1.0 on my computer and hosted my first web-based photo album. My internet connection was slow and serving up images added that much more latency. Also, the photos weren’t being backed up properly, and having to constantly upgrade Gallery against new security vulnerabilities was a pain. So in 2006, I switched to a Flickr Pro account.

You can view my photo album on Flickr at the following URL:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lemworld/

And that is the story about my online photo albums. Here are some of my recent photos.

I think I briefly mentioned before that Erin and I won free tickets to Spamalot which I promptly turned into a birthday gift (along with a trip to New York City). Well, we’re here at the Shubert Theater waiting for the show to start. The theater itself is gorgeous, very ornate with all of the trimmings.

More updates and a review to follow!

Did I mention that I’m now a MacBook Pro user? I absolutely love it, and it seems that my cat Minnie does too. The lighted keyboard and hot-air vent (located at the bottom of the screen) generates a great deal of heat, which I believe is why Minnie was so comfortable. Luckily there wasn’t any cat hair permanently ingrained into the keyboard when she was done with her nap…

Last night Erin and I learned we had an uninvited house guest staying with us, a baby chipmunk.

It all started when I noticed our cat Minnie running around the living room chasing something. I figured she was batting around one of her catnip-filled toys, but she looked like she was having too much fun which prompted me to check it out.

I found her chasing a chipmunk! It was fully grown and moving very quickly. It very quickly ran underneath the radiator heater in the kitchen and disappeared into the wall. Minnie stood guard for a while watching for it to return, during which time I heard a small squeaking noise from the living room. When I looked under the table, I found a little ball of fur curled up next to a power strip with several AC adapters (see the picture). With the amount of heat those adapters generate, I imagine it was a warm place to be! We quickly locked Minnie in the bedroom as by this point she was going crazy and wanting to play.

Upon closer inspection, the little ball of fur was a baby chipmunk. We’re not sure how old, but his eyes were open and he did move around a bit. We thought “Chippy” would be a good name for our newest house guest. After a brief phone call, the local SPCA sent someone out at midnight to “rescue” our baby chipmunk. The young woman who came was very nice, said Chippy’s mother would likely not return and took him to a wildlife refuge where Chippy will be raised until he is old enough to be released back into the wild.

Even though some would call Chippy and his kind “rodents”, he was pretty darned cute. Knowing that he will be well cared for despite the disappearance of his mother left me with a nice, fuzzy feeling.

Be sure to check out more of Chippy’s photos.

Finally Yahoo! has formed a partnership I can make use of… they are the e-provider of Target.com’s online photo lab. And since Yahoo acquired Flickr last year, I can make prints directly from Flickr to my local Target store for pickup. That saves a lot of hassle by eliminating the need for re-uploading photos one-by-one, ordering prints, etc. As an added bonus I am comfortable in the fact that I’m not lining Sam Walton’s pockets, and I don’t need to download any additional half-functional, ad-ridden, proprietary store software that barely works.

Last night Erin and I ordered about 90 prints, a mix of 4×9s, 5×7s and 8×10s. We went to the store to pick them up, expecting to pay about $95 plus tax, but when the guy rang it up he said the total was $45. When we asked about the discrepancy they guy explained that we qualified for some insane discount. I prefer not to ask too many questions in situations like that, so we swiped the credit card and left!

So the arrangement between Yahoo, Flickr, and Target has benefited me like few other corporate partnerships ever have.

One other thing I want to do next weekend in NYC is go to the new Bamn Automat. They seem to be developing a new cult following, but I’m up for new experiences! For more pictures, check out this blog entry that I found through Google.

And people seem to really love it. The reviews are great. Apparently no single item of food sits out for more than 15 minutes so everything is fresh and tasty.

I’d love to open one of these in Adams Morgan!

I won free tickets to see Spamalot next weekend on Broadway!

Not only has it been over a year since I have been in New York City, but I’ve never seen a Broadway show. When I tell most people that, their jaw drops in amazement. But then again most people forget that I have only lived on the East Coast for 5 years now, and that for three of them I was a poor college student. At $80 per ticket, Broadway is pretty much cost prohibitive when you’re a student (and before you mention the discount ticket booth in Times Square, I’ll say that I’m just too lazy to stand in line for several hours).

In this case, I actually won two free tickets from American Express as part of their Membership Changes Everything campaign. They have some pretty sweet deals available, I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Oh, and this will also mark my first experience taking the $20/seat Chinatown bus. According to the hard-hitting news reports that aired recently on the local networks, I should be fearing for my life and all. But actually, I’m just really looking forward to going!

A little over a year ago I had the opportunity to play around with ’s Mac Mini, and loved how it seamlessly integrated with so many devices. I’ve come to accept over the years that while Apple’s products may be a little more expensive, you are also buying a package of components specifically designed to work with each other. My desktop PC, which I built myself back in 2002, has a mishmash of parts from manufacturers that I’ve never even heard of. Forget downloading a driver to make that old hardware run on the latest version of Windows!

And then, Apple went Intel. I knew that if I was going to buy one of these new Intel-based Macs, I would want to make sure it had been out on the market, had been fully vetted by those claiming Mac-guru status, and had the proverbial “kinks” worked out. From the reading I have done over the past year, there were definitely many rough patches, especially in terms of backwards compatibility with older applications. However, my IBM ThinkPad (some call them “craptops” or “StinkPads”) has no remaining battery life, and recently the DVD/CD-RW combo drive went kaput.

I decided to include Apple’s MacBook line as part of my search for a new laptop. The sweet deal known as “IBM’s Employee, Friends, and Family Discount,” which allowed savings of up to 20% off new IBM hardware just by knowing someone at the company, seems now to limited only to used/refurbished equipment. I knew that a consumer-oriented model from Best Buy was just not going to cut it in terms of durability. Price isn’t the problem, I’m looking for good value. Summer is apparently a perfect time to shop Apple, because they offer some sweet back-to-school deals.

All told, I bought a new Apple MacBook Pro 2.16GHz at a reasonable education-discounted price (I had Erin, a college senior this year, buy it in her name with her student ID), along with an academic version of Microsoft Office (which, coincidentally, is the first time I’ve actually ever paid for any Microsoft software, before that there was always ResNet with Phynd), and a new 30GB iPod (which came not only with a discount, but a huge rebate). I now have most of my files moved over, and so far so good!