DLU tags
I don't think I've ever had such a massive overabundance of DLU (Daily Lunch Update) photos backlogged. As you can see by today's entry, it's three months later and I am still burning through photos from Shobhit's and my anniversary trip to Yellowstone National Park. I have a tagging system for these photos on Flickr: until I use them, I tag them as "dlunused". After using them, I replace "dlunused" with "dlused." I've been doing this for many, many years now, so it's little surprise that the photos I have tagged "dlused" now number 7,485. That's how many of my own photos I have used in Daily Lunch Updates. Bearing in mind that I always use 3 photos per DLU, that represents about 2,495 separate posts. And the same number of days -- I never thought of this until now, but that means I have 6.83 years (or six years and about ten months) worth of DLU posts. I've actually been doing the "DLU" thing for well over a decade, mind you -- these numbers are condensed because a "DLU" is only done on a weekday on which I've gone to work.
Anyway! Typically, my backlog of "dlunused" photos -- those not yet featured in a DLU -- numbers a couple hundred at most, and usually much less. I've had many times where I've literally run out of them and had to get creative to find something usable that hasn't already been used. But right now, my backlogged "dlunused" photos number 891. And that's after using a whole bunch of the Yellowstone photos over the past three months -- deliberately breaking them up much of the time just so it doesn't get too monotonous with all of these geysers and hot springs. Why use them all then, you may ask? Uh, because they're still great pictures! Also I've been slowly but steadily getting more and more of my massive number of Yellowstone photos captioned as I typically ad captions to those not yet captioned when I pick three for the day -- even if it has to be a relatively bland and brief description.
The thing is, I still have 252 "dlunused" photos left to get through from Yellowstone National Park alone. And I've done plenty of photogenic things since June -- Pride ("dlunused" + "pride" = 27 photos), two different PCC "store to farm" bike rides (26 "dlunused" photos), the weekend with a bike ride with Dad and then the family reunion (17 photos), the weekend Ivan came to visit and we went to both the illuminated art exhibit at Volunteer Park (45) and to the Space Needle (8), a weekend visit with Ivan in Vancouver (33), and even yet another 8 "dlunused" photos from this past weekend when Jennifer came to visit. And this is all not even to mention the "dlunused" photos I have yet to burn through from before Yellowstone, such as from my Birth Week (211 still to go -- holy shit I did not realize there were still that many! most, of course, from botanical gardens), the weekend Uncle David and Mary Ann came to visit (31 -- 26 of those from our visit to the Amazon Spheres), and quite a lot I still haven't used from photos Ivan sent me from his travels through Europe between February and May (99). There's also a few from a couple of protest marches I went to, plus the usual sprinkled random things I took photos of here and there.
Taking stock of them all like this, though, has indicated one thing for sure: from now on I should alternate between days I use to burn through Yellowstone photos and days I use to burn through Birth Week photos, as those numbers are respectively pretty comparable. And since Ivan-travel photos are roughly half that, maybe for every two days I burn through either Yellowstone or Birth Week photos, I should burn through Ivan travels photos. I've got a system here!
I guess this is just what happens when I don't have anything very exciting going on in my life -- I collate data from my Flickr account and write about it.
Speaking of Flickr, they recently underwent new ownership, and I just got an email indicating my annual "pro" account's price has doubled -- it was $25; now it's $49.99. That's some major sticker shock there, but . . . whatever. I'm going to live with it. I've been paying $25 a year with no increases since 2005. I mean, okay, if it had only gone up according to U.S. inflation rates since 2005, the current annual fee would be all of $33 -- a 32% increase. This increase is more than triple that. That said, something like this would specifically typically increase in price quite a bit more than standard inflation rates. Also, I'm kind of stuck. I have nearly 54,000 photos uploaded to that site, and although I do have files for all of them saved on my external hard drive at home, those do not have the massive amount of information about them in the captions I have on Flickr. And, evidently, if I did not maintain the pro account, people coming to view my photos would be seeing ads -- and I really, really don't want that.
Last night was mostly just eating dinner (pizza bagels! which were delicious) and watching two episodes of season three of Fargo on Hulu, and now we're about halfway through. It's interesting to me that season three's MetaScore is as incredibly high as 89, as compared to season 2's 96 -- both still higher than season 1's 85. So far, I agree with Shobhit's assessment that both thematically and story-wise, season 3 seems just to be largely a combination of seasons 1 and seasons 2, which were otherwise very distinct from each other. That said, the more I watch, the more impressed I become with Ewan McGregor's double performances as the brothers in this season. Also, I do believe strongly that with something like this, judgment should be reserved until the entire season has been seen -- I won't be officially disappointed in any way until the show has a chance to redeem itself from what seems at the moment to be a lot of recycling.
Shobhit predictably went to news programs after that, what with Brett Kavanaugh chaos going on. He did get into bed when I was in the middle of an episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon Prime, and he was instantly compelled by it and basically watched the rest of the episode on my iPad with me. He even said, "It's good writing" -- and, I should say, when it comes to how the characters are drawn and the dialogue itself, yes, that is absolutely true. I still take issue with the contrivances of the broader story beats, which happen way too quickly to seem at all realistic. It also annoys me how little her two children really ever seem to be paid any attention to, as if in the real world any extended family, or specifically any like this one, would just be okay with that. But, again, whatever: the chemistry and dynamic between Midge and would-be manager Susie is alone entertaining enough to watch the show.
I just took a little more time than expected at lunch, because I chatted with Sara for a bit as I was getting my burrito out of the oven, after she told me she saw me by the ferry terminal on Monday as she was driving by, and then right as I finished my burrito out on the patio, Alicia came out and sat with me and chatted for quite the little while.
There were so many people in the kitchen it was annoying -- and kind of loud. I was astonished no one was sitting outside. It's sunny and 71° outside! Arvin did go out and sit at another table while we were out there, as did another lady whose name I don't know. Chris J came out just as Alicia and I were leaving our table, and he even said, "There's not too many days left where we can eat outside." I said, "I know, and everyone's inside! It's weird."
But, well, now I'm back inside again and need to get back to work.
[posted 12:44 pm]