Well, my computer has upped and died. It’s not a big shock nor surprise – it had been acting shaky and shady for a while, and it hadn’t been built by a professional initially anyhow. So, the ol’ beast finally went toes-up. Because I had an inkling this day would be coming sooner rather than later, I backed up everything important. Actually, I started backing up the good shit this past summer when I got a good deal on an external hard drive. I have backed up my MA dissertation, all of my photos, music, and music videos. Since the main hard-drive of the computer started kicking out errors, I had taken to downloading the pictures from my camera straight on to the external drive. I checked the external drive on Joel’s computer, and everything made the transition just fine.
Everything interesting or important is backed up, so I really don’t care HOW dead my computer may be. This time around, I will be paying professionals to revive it, and asking them to make it as stable and foolproof as possible. If the hard-drive is toast, I’ll spring for a new one. I’m not stressed about this little fit of malfunction.
I’m updating from Joel’s computer now, therefore my updates are likely to be a little further in between until my own machine is resurrected. My machine croaked yesterday, just shortly after I’d downloaded the most recent batch of “around Kansas City” photos. I got six of the uploaded to my Flickr, and they were the ones I meant to write an entry around, anyway.
The entry would have been “Reasons Why It Is Awesome To Carry A Camera Around Everywhere,” and I do intend to expand upon this theme visually.
What you see here is a helicopter hooking on to a large piece of equipment – possibly a generator, possibly a compressor for a very large HVAC system.
When I first heard the helicopter, I thought it would be something bad – an airlift from a grisly traffic accident or the police helicopter tracking a fugitive. I was prepared to keep my head down and just pass on by, but then I saw the shadow of the helicopter on a building and noticed that it wasn’t the right shape for the Life Flight or police helicopters. It was much bigger. I took a quick detour over to where it was hovering, the intersection of 11th & Walnut. The helicopter was hovering mid-block, between 10th & 11th on Walnut, and was being hooked up to a large piece of equipment that was staged out in the center of the street. I barely had time to get my camera out and turned on before the helicopter took off. It was only seconds before it was high in the air, and you could barely make out what it was carrying.
Up, up, and…
awaaaaaaaay!
After it passed beyond that brown office block, I lost sight of it. I believe that it was headed for Fidelity Tower, a large apartment/condo conversion in an old Art Deco skyscraper. They’ve been doing loads of high-end renovation in that building and a production as elaborate and dramatic as helicoptering equipment up on to the roof seems to fit with the tenor of the whole project.