Today’s layoff reminds me of the first time this happened, three years ago this month.

Well, the first time with this product, at least. It seems I’m getting to be an old pro at losing my job!

I was thrilled the day Raleigh native Josh Hamilton got his first at-bat in a big-league baseball game. He took such a long, rough road to get there. Finally it seems he’s gotten control of his demons and will make something of himself. Even better is that baseball is beginning to get glimpses of his amazing athleticism. From all accounts, he has the ability to dominate baseball.

Hard not to like a kid who can turn his life around like that. Go Josh!

My frequent travel has earned us some free plane tickets. We’ve been considering making a trip to the Pacific Northwest for a week or so. Instead, the cool, wet weather’s brought the Pacific Northwest to us.

Kinda nice, actually. Good writing weather.

Last week Rush Limbaugh joined the bee brigade when he mentioned the bogus Einstein bee quote. To his credit, today he admitted to being fooled.

“There’s a line in the story about this mysterious bee disappearance that is attributed to Einstein, says if the bees went away, that humanity would expire in four to five years, that we couldn’t survive without them. And Einstein never said it. It’s one of the these popular myths that circulating. It might be true, but Einstein didn’t say it.”

“But I was totally taken in by it,” Limbaugh said. “Even I, the great El Rushbo was taken in. I apologize for that, too.”

Wow … Rush Limbaugh is capable of occasionally telling the truth!

(By the way, friends, this is the first and last Rush Limbaugh link you’ll ever see on MT.Net.)

Inevitably whenever I’m out in public shooting pictures, a total stranger will walk up to me and try to hire me to shoot pictures at his or her event. Last night’s fundraiser at Ess Lounge was no exception. A woman asked if photography is “what I do,” and when I nodded she invited me to shoot at tomorrow night’s Derby Party. I had to tell her I was already booked, having plans to visit our friends the Naylors, but I did appreciate the offer. There will be lots of classily-dressed people at that party so shooting pictures is bound to be fun.

The hook of local mags Social and zSpotlight is publishing party pictures. I could easily do that, perhaps for my own website. That was the idea behind my Eventwire domain before I sold it to its current owner. Certainly I could make some money doing photography on the side.

It also would’ve been a great occasion to have my calling cards with me (no, not the ones that say BMF, the ones that say “photographer”). I keep a pack of them in my car but we took Kelly’s car to the event and I neglected to bring them along. Parties like that are really the reason I got them. Who knows how many photography gigs I might have lined up just from last night?

I caved in today and purchased an external flash for my Nikon D50: the new Nikon SB-400. Its compact, uses only TWO (!) AA batteries, and can handle bounce flash, too. Ken Rockwell loves his, and that was good enough for me.

It was also helpful to learn why my old Vivitar flash doesn’t work with the Nikon: CCDs are too shiny for the camera to judge proper lighting. The Internets are good for all kinds of information.

AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein laid the smackdown on the Einstein bee quote with his Cellphones, rapture or Einstein? Ideas, myths swirl around bees’ disappearance article today:

Also on the Internet is a quote attributed to Albert Einstein on how humans would die off in four years if not for honeybees. It’s wrong on two counts.

First, Einstein probably never said it, according to Alice Calaprice, author of “The Quotable Einstein” and five other books on the physicist.

“I’ve never come across it in anything Einstein has written,” Calaprice said. “it could be that someone had made it up and put Einstein’s name on it.”

Second, it’s incorrect scientifically, [U.S. Department of Agriculture bee researcher Jeff] Pettis said. There would be food left for humans because some food is wind-pollinated.

I stopped checking Einstein experts at Walter Isaacson since his word was good enough for me. Alice Calaprice, as author of “The Quotable Einstein” is probably in a better position to know an Einstein quote when she saw it.

Kudos to Seth Borenstein for helping shoo this myth away!

I know I said I was done with the Einstein bee thing, but I was checking out David Byrne’s website and was dismayed to see he is a victim of the bees.

When one of the smartest musicians on the planet gets tripped up, you might as well wave the white flag.

My company recently moved into nice new digs in our existing office building. It ocurred to me that this is the second time that I was assigned a desk located as far as possible from the office entrance.

Hmm. What is the message here? Should I start wearing pants?

I recently went back over my huge collection of film photographs and realized just how many pictures I’ve got that should rightfully be scanned in. I’ve been taking pictures with my own camera for twenty years. Most of the photographs I took while in the Navy – of the cool stuff like Soviet TU-95 Bombers overflying me – wound up in the hands of another shipboard photographer. A truly spectacular photograph I took of three generations of warships sailing together graces my cruise book but again is in someone else’s hands.

I need to find time to add my film library to the digital library I already have. I’m looking for a good film scanner (i.e., negative scanner) to do the work. If y’all come across any good ones, I’d appreciate you letting me know.