A Gulf Fritillary or Passion Butterfly (Agraulis vanillae) feeding on a flower's nectar next to the lake at Jacksonville's Kathryn Abbey Hanna Park.

Near Pioneer Drive, Jacksonville, Florida: 24 November 2012

Happy New Year!

I may host a few events over the course of a year, but I have come to always host an annual New Year's Eve party here in Tallahassee. Like the six or so before it, tonight's celebration was a fun success.

Some of these parties have been quite busy all night, while others had different groups of people coming and going throughout. Tonight's gathering was more like the latter, which is just as well considering I bill my private event as the most laid back celebration in town.

Although several friends had other plans that required them to depart prior to midnight, I am pleased that I was able to see most of my local friends and serve them Newcastle and Smithwick's.

Several of my guests remarked that they were glad to be ushering in 2013 because 2012 was not a spectacular year for them. Fortunately, this was not the case for me.

First and foremost, a goal to advance my career finally came to fruition when I was promoted to the Florida Department of Transportation's Emergency Management office where I am in charge of all plans, information and technology during regular and emergency operations.

This substantial but rather logical shift in gears has already provided me with various new opportunities to learn, grow and make a difference. I may not see things from the boots on the ground perspective, but it is no less fulfilling to be able to do work that directly and indirectly informs and assists both those in need and those responding during states of emergency.

Business trips to Fort Lauderdale and Orlando were both fun and educational, lest I mention my tour of the National Hurricane Center. But I obviously took the most away from the various activations during the Atlantic hurricane season and my ongoing role as one of the department's on-call duty officers.

I am also fortunate to have been able to take several camping trips with Mom and Ross, continuing our informal mission to visit and/or camp at every Florida state park.

We also tried out a local park and had our family Thanksgiving at the City of Jacksonville's Kathryn Abbey Hanna Park just south of Naval Station Mayport on the Atlantic coast.

The year also brought several technological upgrades. I continue to be very pleased with the performance of my Canon EOS 550D/Rebel T2i and lenses, seeing the ever-growing backlog of RAW photographs to be processed as a sign of success.

While I maintain that great pictures need not necessarily require great equipment, I can see my work improving and am sure the camera and lenses are at least in part to thank.

More recently for Christmas (and my upcoming birthday), Mom and Ross got me a modern television set and accompanying Sony BDP-BX18 Blu-ray player. The Toshiba 40L5200U has a beautiful picture and renders images at 120 Hz with LCD backlighting. My outgoing Panasonic TC-28WG25H 16:9 widescreen CRT is nice but nothing can compare to today's technology.

While I await a few new Blu-ray discs from Amazon, I am loving every minute of the first two remastered seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation. As I tell everyone lately who will listen, I find it absolutely incredible that I am able to see exquisite detailing in episodes I have seen literally hundreds of times.

Holodeck episodes like "The Big Goodbye", "Elementary, Dear Data" and "Manhunt" are particularly fetching to me, with period sets and costumes with details the art department should be pleased to see are finally visible.

In short, I am moving into this year filled with excitement over what is yet to come. Best wishes in the new year!

I did not realize earlier today that the heavy rains were going to subside so quickly, otherwise I may very well have waited. In hindsight, I am glad that I did not and instead decided to use a small break in the storm to take a quick trip to the store. It was about 1400 and seeing on radar that the pause would be brief, I threw on a T-shirt and jeans, grabbed my wallet and keys and swiftly headed out.

After locking the door and climbing down only one or two stairs, I stopped in my tracks and stared ahead. Near the foot of the stairs, walking the sidewalk adjacent to the parking lot was a medium-sized turtle.

View the entire Turtle Encounter photoset on Flickr

Upon seeing me, it also stopped and seemed to look up at me. Trip to the store and rain break be damned; I ran back up, quickly unlocked my door and went in to retrieve my camera.

With my hands moving as quickly as possible—think: Data assembling the Temple of Kural-Hanesh model—I grabbed my Lowepro Nova 170 AW shoulder bag and put the Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8-4.5 lens on my Canon EOS 550D/Rebel T2i. When I returned outside, the turtle had made his way into onto the asphalt.

The rain was picking up, I was paranoid about getting my equipment wet and the turtle was moving away from where I could safely stand. The lens was too short. I had apparently been moving faster than my brain before, so I ran back upstairs to switch lenses. I put on the Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 and returned only to find that the turtle had retreated out of view under my car.

When I was purchasing the camera earlier this year, Mom cautioned me that having too many lenses could make things more difficult in the field. Today's turtle encounter provides two lessons in that vein. First, always default to the longest lens when photographing wildlife. Second, always bring the Lowepro along no matter how close it may seem.

As the rain continued to increase in intensity and my view of the turtle diminished, I returned inside to see things from my guest room window. After a few minutes, the turtle started making his way through the lot against the strong flow of water. Emerging from the flow, the turtle stopped right in the middle of the road.

Knowing that people frequently drive too quickly through here, I feared that the turtle might meet an unfortunate end. I decided to intervene immediately. The last time I moved a turtle, it was a much larger creature on a much larger roadway. My only hope here was that it would go quietly, unlike the previous experience where the turtle was pissed and tried to bite me.

I approached the turtle from behind and told it that I was there to help. It did not react much when I picked it up, slowly retracting its limbs and then its head somewhat. It was also much lighter than I expected.

Already completely soaked, I did not stick around after placing the turtle in an adjacent grassy area and ran back upstairs. The turtle looked around for a few moments and then walked into the bushes, once again out of sight.

After the rain stopped, I returned outside to try to find it again but did not. Checking periodically throughout the afternoon, the turtle is nowhere to be found. With all of the wooded park space nearby, it hopefully made its way to some safe place far away from traffic.

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!

For the past few months, I have been developing a new website for the Second Judicial Circuit Guardian ad Litem Program. Serving Franklin, Gadsden, Jefferson, Leon, Liberty and Wakulla counties in northwest Florida, the program is part of a statewide coalition of volunteers, community partners and professional staff. Guardians ad litem are court-appointed volunteers who protect the rights of and advocate for the best interests of a child involved in a court proceeding, frequently as a result of alleged abuse or neglect.

I could not be working pro bono for a nicer group of people or a better organization. The work the program does is important and so are their fundraising, recruitment and training efforts. My greatest hope is that the new website will help the program better meet their mission, improve overall efficiency when dealing with volunteers and the public, more efficiently provide information and increase the program's online profile.

The people I have met are extremely friendly and a pleasure to work with, a trait that should not be uncommon but my experience says differently (see Clients From Hell). Special thanks to Deborah Moore, Leigh Merritt and Stacey Burns for making the entire process fun and painless.

It has been a challenging but extremely fun project. With my current day job workload—among other duties, I am an assistant project manager on the massive data center consolidation project for the Florida Department of Transportation—I have been working on the website nearly every weeknight and weekend. Although it has been an exhausting time, getting this website built and online as quickly as possible has been a driving force.

In addition to significantly improving my PHP programming, WordPress theme development and regular expression skills, this project has rekindled in me a powerful urge to work for good. I last felt this way when I was running a small law office ten years ago. Going home each day with the knowledge that my day's work made a tangible difference in someone's life was a wonderful reward. In the near future, I shall investigate what opportunities may be available for me at not-for-profit organizations. Because you never know—and I would like to have that feeling regularly again.

Please take a few moments to check out the website and learn about the program. I would love to hear any feedback you may have.

In "The Hand Soap Quandary" published 23 February 2011, I discussed how my somewhat compulsive nature was not handling well the abrupt discontinuation of Moonlight Path Anti-Bacterial Deep Cleansing Hand Soap by Bath & Body Works. Most people can relate to the situation of having a valued product disappear from the marketplace, usually without warning. Nobody likes that.

You can therefore imagine my excitation when on 10 June 2011 commenter Megan wrote that Moonlight Path was again for sale on the Bath & Body Works website. I checked things out as soon as I got home from work. The bottle and label were different, but matched the design I saw in the store that fateful December day when I originally learned of the discontinuance.

I placed twenty bottles in my cart and finalized my purchase—$66.60 plus $8.99 shipping and $4.54 tax—convinced that all would be well soon. I received a notification of shipment along with a UPS tracking number on 12 June 2011. By the next day, UPS had the 13.7-pound box in its possession and tracking system in Louisville.

From Louisville, my box travelled to Nashville and then Jacksonville before arriving in Tallahassee. Unbelievably, this is where things get complicated. Although the package arrived at Tallahassee's primary USPS facility on 15 June 2011 at 1115 EDT, I would not see it for twelve days.

At this point, I naturally assume that the package was transported the short distance from 2800 South Adams Street to 221 West Park Avenue, the home of 32302 and my Post Office Box.

As soon as I got home from work, I called Bath & Body Works customer support and spoke with a very friendly and helpful woman. I explained that I had forwarded my residential address to the PO Box and that if the tracking message is true, an unfortunate loop was about to be created. The CSR suggested the message could be interpreted as the act of transferring the package from the Post Office proper to my specific box.

I checked my box the next day and the day after that, no package. Now it is the weekend so I have to wait until Monday to check again. Monday arrives but the package still has not, so I once again call customer service.

The CSR, another friendly and helpful woman, reviewed my case and apologized for the situation. She immediately refunded the $9.53 shipping fee and tax that I had paid and offed to reship all twenty bottles immediately. While I accepted the credit, I told her I would prefer to have a final resolution before shipping another package into the aether.

Two more days pass and then I receive the following notifications from UPS.

The next time I check my PO Box there is indeed a yellow card, which indicates a package has arrived too large to fit in my box. Usually, they leave a key that opens a larger box nearby used explicitly for this purpose. Nevertheless, from time to time, they leave the yellow card instead, which means having to visit during their insufferable hours of operation and queue for fifteen minutes.

When I finally made it before they closed, it was Monday of the following week. I asked the USPS clerk what happened over the past weeks and she said that shipping with UPS to a Post Office Box was a bad idea. Clearly this is the case, but why is it so difficult? I thanked the clerk and left with my package.

When I got the package home, I called Bath & Body Works one last time to inform them of my success so they could note it in my file. I was very excited to open the box and try the soap. The new bottles were an improvement insofar as the old pumps were often difficult to activate the first time.

The first thing of concern I noticed was the color of the soap itself. I thought that perhaps the different bottle might be a factor until I actuated the pump; it pumped far more quickly than before, the viscosity altered to a more liquified state. Finally and most importantly, the smell—one of the key reasons I was enamored with Moonlight Path from the beginning—was changed.

There are two specific things I want to point out before continuing. First, I spoke with three or four different customer service representatives with Bath & Body Works and they were all friendly, professional, knowledgeable and incidentally, female. I never had to wait on hold to speak with them and their notes system meant not having to explain my situation thoroughly each time I called.

Customer support like this does not really exist anymore so I am pleased and impressed with this aspect of my purchase, despite the inconvenience that necessitated the communication in the first place. Other companies would be smart to take advantage of the current economic situation and re-think their customer service operations by hiring people in the United States to perform the jobs they had outsourced and by offering a real service to customers.

Second, I have to admit upfront that I do like the new Moonlight Path reboot. The smell is appealing not overwhelming, the texture is pleasant and I like the way my hands feel after using it. I am using it now and might get more in the future, but I am extremely dissatisfied that Bath & Body Works elected to call this soap Moonlight Path when it is obviously not.

Since I do not have a molecular analyzer at my disposal and cannot quantify the differences sufficiently by description alone, I resorted to typing the listed inactive ingredients on classic Moonlight Path and the new reboot variety—the only active ingredient, Triclosan, is common to both. The task took longer than expected as my fingers are not accustomed to scientific nomenclature and the font size on the bottles was extremely small.

Four classic ingredients are not found in the reboot, while nine reboot ingredients are not found in classic. Indeed, the ingredients found in both versions are listed in a different order suggesting the quantities of each are also different.

Windiff: Classic versus Reboot

Bath & Body Works does everything right in the customer service department but needs some lessons on product naming and marketing. It is interesting to note that if you browse the Moonlight Path fragrance page, the reboot soap product is not listed. It appears on the Deep Cleansing Soaps subcategory page.

Is this because they know it is not truly Moonlight Path?

I am left with my original quandary but have an acceptable, if deceitfully named replacement. In the great scheme of things, all is well. I only wish I understood the decision-making process involved here and will continue to hope that the true, classic Moonlight Path will return some day.