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They are filming scenes for the HBO show The Wire tomorrow morning on the roof of the garage above my office building. Leaving work this afternoon, I saw a couple of guys driving prop cars (painted like Baltimore police cars) up to the sixth floor. I’m bringing in my camera tomorrow; I hope to get a couple of shots of the action…. or maybe a walk-on role as an extra??

Last Christmas, Dennis and Kim bought me a Gorillapod SLR, a flexible tripod that “secures your camera to just about anything anywhere and everywhere.” Haven’t been able to try it out until recently, when I had some field work in the Towson area.

I needed to shoot some video of a traffic roundabout in operation, to show to people at a public meeting who’ve probably never driven in a roundabout before. Of course, the Towson circle isn’t the best example of a two-lane roundabout, with its oblong oval shape, and also it seems that people in Towson don’t know how to drive in a roundabout either (we’re going to have to do a lot of clipping and patching to make a decent video without showing all the bad drivers).

Anyways, Towson had the best vantage point out of all the other roundabouts we’d thought of, so I headed out to the mall garage on the northeast side of the roundabout. On the roof of the garage, I tried a traditional tripod at first, which worked okay. The only problem was that it was very windy and wind gusts were shaking the tripod and camera around, which wasn’t good for my video.

I set up the Gorillapod next. You’ll need a quarter or something to tighten the screw and securely attach your camera to the ‘pod. There was railing on the garage roof that was fat and round, perfect for my Gorillapod to wrap around. I adjusted the legs a little for a firm grip, and that was it. Since the ‘pod had such a low profile, it wasn’t really affected by the wind like the traditional tripod.

The Gorillapod is great tool for all photographers. There’s also a mini-version for use with smaller cameras. I can’t wait to try the ‘pod with some night-time shots.

A blog on consumer issues, these guys update all the time with consumer stories that we’d all find interesting.

Hmm, haven’t looked for a couple of days, let’s see what I missed:
Free Dunkin Donuts Iced Coffee
Rats in the Walmart
USPS Rate Hike

Postage stamp rate hikes again? I just got used to 39 cents… even have some 37 cent stamps lying around.

Today I woke up at 10 o’clock. It’s a great way to start your Mondays, although I do not recommend this for people who’d like to keep their day jobs.

Eventually, I rolled into work at 11am. In college I’d end up skipping classes because I was too embarrassed to walk in 30 minutes late in front of the prof and the rest of the class. Too bad you have to show up to work to get paid.

So this week I’m taking a couple of days off to visit my grandma in Cali. Spending the weekend actually. Just bought the tickets the other day, albeit for more than I wanted to pay. Well, what are you going to do, when you’re buying airline tickets a week in advance. Managed to keep the flights to one stop each way and got a rental car for a reasonable price.

I’ve been putting off this visit for a while — don’t know what to think of it. Scared, mostly. Not knowing what to expect is pretty unnerving. My aunt’s been guilt-tripping me about my grandmother for the past month and I guess I decided to man up and do what I got to do. Better at a hospital than at a funeral. I mean, she was there to raise me and all. It’s sad, but it is what it is. I want to be there for her.

The new Tylenol Cold Multi-Symptom has the exact same ingredients as Vicks Dayquil: 325 mg of acetaminophen, 10 mg of dextromehtrophan HBr, and 5 mg of Phenylephrine HCl. Tylenol’s caplets are a lot smaller than Dayquil’s liquicaps.

It’s tax season. Waiting for your 1099-INT from HSBC Direct? If you’ve set up to receive your statements electronically-only, you probably already have it, although you may not know it.

HSBC Direct sends out your 1099-INT with your January statement. The problem is, if you chose not to receive statements by mail, HSBC never really gives a heads up to expect it online. For me, I just check the “Account Detail” every once in a while, and I don’t bother to check my “eStatements” at all. But if you’ll take a peek your eStatement for the end of January, you’ll see your 1099-INT hidden in page two.

Update: For the 2009 tax season, HSBC has included a separate link to your 1099-INT. Look in the left sidebar for “eStatements”. Click on that once to expand the sub-menu, and then you’ll see “View Income Tax eStatements”. Click on that and then a link to a pdf of your HSBC 1099-INT will appear.

Meanwhile, over at ING Direct they have a link to your tax documents right in the middle of your account summary page. I guess it’s the little things that make ING the better bank.

Work or live downtown? Want to feel proud of your own city, Bawlmer? Keep track of the city-wide murder rate at burgersub.org where murder news and info is updated daily, with homicides geo-coded on Google Maps.

On Friday morning we were on pace with one murder per day but I noticed a lull over the weekend so far. Makes me want to watch The Wire again.

…that story to be told another day.