Here are closer views of a red dragonfly for your viewing pleasure.

The damselflies, dragonflies and hummingbirds were out in force early this morning. They all like the irrigation water, and swarm, play and chase each other around. The dragonflies like to hover over the water and dip their tails in it. I could seen these little ringed ripples in the water, similar to when fish catch insects on the water’s surface, but since I knew there wasn’t fish in it, I had to look really closely to see an almost perfectly camouflaged dragonfly flying over the water dipping its tail in it.

This damselfly drew my attention and allowed me to get within about 2 inches of it with my macro lens. Through the lens I could see it had something in its mouth. After a closer look I could see it had a tiny winged ant. I didn’t know damselflies ate ants. Turns out I had my arm in the ant pile it was plucking ants from, while photographing it. After I got up I felt some biting me, looked at my arm and there were several hundred tiny black ants crawling on me and a couple had taken to biting me. Fortunately, tiny black ant bites are not like big red and black ant stings.

Carry Grant cut quite a figure, backlit by the early morning sun.

The hummingbirds were frisky, and to expose them properly against the early morning back lighting, the colors came out very soft and pastel. I am really happy with the results. There were two of them playing and chasing each other around, but I could not get both of them in focus at the same time.

I went out later in the afternoon, and the dragonflies where having a fiesta. Irrigation water was still standing in the meadow where they were playing, so I had to wade out to them. There were four different types of dragonflies at their fiesta, but only a couple let me get very close to them. One of the red dragonflies let me stick my macro lens in its face, and I got some really close photos. I didn’t have time to finish processing those photos, so I’ll include them later.

The yellow dragonfly in tonight’s set of photos would not let me near it with my macro lens, but it let me get to with in three feet of it with Le Long Lens. I got involved in working its photos because it had a very expressive face, and it’s a color I hadn’t photographed before.

I built a simple light box to photograph flowers, fruit and anything that’s translucent with a strong backlight, yet exposed well on the surface. The pinwheel is half dried hibiscus I unfurled.  Stretch was lying on my light box tonight but I didn’t get a chance to photograph him to see how he would come out.

I got the tail end of the sunset on my way home from what has been a very rough week. Tomorrow will be the start of a great week.

Got most everything restored on another server today. There’s light at the end of the tunnel.

This praying mantis was in the sink on the deck, not a very good place for a photograph. When I tried to get it to change position, it flew over into Pink Iceberg. I had to pul out my flashlight to light it, and it was staring at me like “what are you doing?”  He’s a cute little guy.

Server repairs are ever so slow. The RAID utility was unable to build a RAID 5 out of the three new drives I installed yesterday. I think one of the drives is bad, so I pulled it and am now seeing if the RAID utility can build a RAID 1 out of the other two drives.  I found a new RAID card and ordered it, but it will take at least a week to ship, so I’ve started migrating databases and websites to another server from the backups. I have a few sites restored, but migration to another server from backups is a slow processes, as well.

Lola is expressing how I feel today.

In the grand tradition of everything breaking at the same time, the RAID failed in one of our servers at work, taking the server down. The problem is that the RAID utility shows all three drives are good, which, if it’s not lying, would indicate a possible failure in the RAID card, because it normally takes two drives to go bad at the same time to take down a RAID 5; however, the system profiler is saying the RAID card is good, which, if it’s not lying, would indicate at least two drives have gone bad at the same time, which is really rare. The other possibility is the drives got out of sync and the RAID card can’t re-sync the drives. All of this makes trouble shooting very difficult and frustrating; Currently, there is no quick or easy fix; therefore I have my ears back like Lola.

The PET scan was little changed from the last scan, which is great news. Two lymph nodes that showed elevated SUV in the last scan had none in this scan, and another node that had an SUV of 4.2 in the last scan was 4.0 in this scan. An SUV of 5 or lower is considered physiological, and since that node didn’t increase its SUV over the past two months, it’s not cancer. Therefore, I am still in complete remission. My next PET scan is in December.

A Painted Lady butterfly and a lot of bumble bees were on the echinacea this morning

My plans for today were to irrigate, clean house, cook and make a flash set up for photographing backlight flowers, fruit and other things; however, I ended up working on the truck and spending a lot of time working on the swamp cooler.  I think I was up on the roof a dozen times today.

While working on the swamp cooler yesterday, I noticed that pads had gotten pretty well calcified. I got new pads at Lowe’s yesterday, but, of course, they were out of the right sized pads, and are not getting any more this season. So I had to buy larger pads. The box stores complain about people buying on-line, but when they can’t figure out the right supply, I have no sympathy. For almost anything else I would have left the store and ordered on-line, but I knew I could make the larger pads work, and didn’t want to wait for the correct sized pads to ship.

I installed the new pads in first thing this morning, then the pump quit working. I hadn’t planned to go out anywhere today, but I had to go out and get a new pump for the swamp cooler, so I made a run to Costco while I was out. I installed the new pump, and it worked so well that the cooler started sucking water off the oversized pads into the cooler and dripping on the floor. After investigating the issue, I determined it’s a flaw in the cooler and tried one remedy. That didn’t work, so I ended up sealing the problem area with silicone.

The kitty water fountain started leaking, so I have to replace it. I didn’t even bother going to PetsMart or Petsco out here. I searched and found a really elegant, ceramic kitty fountain on Amazon and ordered it.

The only critter I ran into at 3:30 this morning when I went out to let the irrigation water in was a skunk. I tried to do a photo but only got a grainy photo of his tail up looking like he’s aiming at me.

I did make one of the best green chile, chicken enchiladas I’ve ever made. The only reason it’s not the best is because I had to use frozen green chile from Costco.

Stretch was working on math with Laurie when she got this series of him working on a problem. He wasn’t shy about showing off after he “licked” the problem. I suppose it’s the kitty equivalent of blowing the smoke of the barrel of a pistol.

I spent most of the day working on the yard, the truck, the swamp cooler, the mower and doing some house work. Our dishwasher died, so now we have to wash dishes by hand. We’ve gone through two dishwashers in three years. This one just quit working. Seems to be a problem with the electronics. We have problems with water pressure, but I don’t know how low water pressure would cause the electronics to mess up.

I did manage to get out in the afternoon and do a few photos.