Last Sunday, I took my new Canon EOS 550D/Rebel T2i for a trial run in the nearby town of Havana. I had originally planned to go out on Saturday, but the overcast weather coupled with my desire to sleep in necessitated the change.

Sunday ended up being partly cloudy but otherwise ideal for a short road trip and walk around Havana. A few of the clouds did block the sun at times, leaving me to simply enjoy the fresh air while waiting for better lighting conditions.

Several friendly people said hello or asked if I was a professional photographer—I thought it amusing the difference a simple lens hood makes in appearances, or rather in the assumptions of others—but it was otherwise fairly quiet around the shops in the historic downtown area.

As I always do when shooting in Havana, I went over to the Seaboard Coast CSX railroad tracks and Havana Station. Originally built in 1939, the station has been transformed into retail shops, primarily consisting of a store with interesting art and furniture. I can only imagine what it must sound like when freight trains roll by only feet from the exterior windows on the building's west side.

Although I had intended to try each of the three lenses I purchased during this trip, I decided that without an appropriate bag it would be too risky to do a bunch of switching. As such, I chose the Sigma 18–50mm f/2.8-4.5 for this first outing figuring it would give me a comfortable range within which to work. I plan to give the Canon 50mm f/1.8 and Canon 55–250mm f/4–5.6 EF-S lenses more shakedown time this upcoming weekend.

At one point, hunger took over and I decided to return to a restaurant I had passed earlier called Oscar's in Havana. Occupying the former Mockingbird Café location, Oscar's has an courtyard that is perfect for outdoor dining on beautiful days.

I had a meatball sub with pasta salad ($8.99). The sub was served open on a flat bread with red onions and ample sauce. It was quite delicious. The pasta salad was also quite good, although I could have done without all the feta cheese.

Once at home, I used Adobe Lightroom 4 to process the raw photographs and started developing (no pun) a new workflow for myself. I definitely have a lot to learn about Lightroom, but so far I am very impressed.

I love that the photographs are never really edited, but that changes are saved as actions in a separate catalog file instead. I also expected some of the tools to operate more like Photoshop than they do. It turns out I like how Lightroom does things better in several cases, foremost being the crop tool.

I anticipate that the biggest time saver will be the excellent meta data and location tools. Not only does it make me happy to have my detailed titles, descriptions and other data exist within the photos instead of only on Flickr, but it makes the upload process the end of my workflow. This is important because my slow internet connection means long uploads for photograph sets.

In all, it was an excellent afternoon. You can see all thirty-seven images from this trip in the First Trip Out 2012 photograph set.

Possibly the biggest hit of Omar and Pam's gathering last night was the incredibly delicious Black Bean Chili Dip they served. I enjoyed it with pita, crisps and by itself.

After Pam sent out her recipe earlier, no doubt due to popular demand, I realized that in ten and a half years I have never featured a recipe on this site. That ends today.
 

Black Bean Chili Dip
by Pamela Moyer

Ingredients

1. 15 ounce can black beans: rinsed, drained and partially mashed
2. 1/2 cup drained whole kernel corn or fiesta corn with diced peppers
3. 1/3 cup thick and chunky medium spiced salsa — I used a little more
4. 1/4 cup water — I used a little less
5. 3 teaspoons chili powder
6. 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper — optional
7. 1 1/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese
8. 3 tablespoons canned diced green chilies
9. cooking spray

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Combine black beans, corn, salsa, water, chili powder and cayenne.
3. Pour into a small casserole dish. I used an 8-inch round; smaller is better.
4. Sprinkle with cheese and chilies.
5. Cover and bake for 20–30 minutes; until dip is bubbly, cheese is melted.
6. Uncover and bake an additional 5 minutes.

 
In my haste to devour the deliciousness, I failed to take a photograph of yesterday's dish. If you make it, please send me a photo of your results!

In the two years since I purchased my Lenovo ThinkPad W500 with a Samsung MMCRE28G8MXP-0VBL1 128 GB SSD, its speed can only be described as scorching. For the past several months however, I have been monitoring a troubling performance issue with the drive.

The most notable symptom is an apparent hang during larger file transfers, although I have seen it happen during more unusual circumstances. During instances of this behavior where I was able to capture diagnostic data, the drive seemed to be saturated and overworked. Given the age and health of the drive, I should not be seeing this.

Imagine my surprise when I determined that although Windows and the drive itself support TRIM, the installed firmware on the drive does not. I had previously checked to ensure TRIM was enabled, but I apparently did not use a tool that was more thorough in its analysis. I suspect the firmware to be the cause of my problems.

Amazingly, Lenovo has still not provided a firmware release that remedies this issue, for which I found numerous threads on Lenovo's customer support forum. Since Samsung no longer even acknowledges this drive on their website, I thought I might be screwed. Thanks to resourceful individuals on the internet, that no longer seems to be my situation.

Samsung had previously released a firmware update on their site that addressed this and presumably other issues. Some people figured out that it was possible to load this firmware, erase the drive and start over with TRIM enabled and functioning.

I was excited to find that a RAR with all the necessary software—the firmware update along with tools to make boot media—had been put together and then equally disappointed to see it was hosted on the now-shuttered Megaupload.

Long live the internet. After several requests in the thread, alternative download locations surfaced and I now have a copy. My plan is to perform the upgrade procedure this weekend, hopefully not bricking the SSD in the process, use the built-in factory wipe utility to zero the drive, and reinstall my system.

Should all go well, Windows will be back up and running in eleven minutes leaving the installation and configuration of my software, which will take the balance of the weekend. I have read numerous success stories from those brave souls who have already done this, on both Lenovo and other hardware, so I feel fairly confident in the procedure and firmware.

Should all not go well, I will suddenly find myself in the market for an even faster and larger SSD. Of course, they are $350+ so keep your fingers crossed that my upgrade goes well.