Ryan Murphy

Piper had her first shot this week and also one oral vaccine. There was much screaming when the needle went in but she soon recovered and forgot all about it!

So last week, right before the election, I had a chance to shoot a model at the capitol in Madison. My Flickr group got together and we all chipped in for someone we could shoot. Unfortunately I only got to shoot a few frames of her. It ended up conflicting with my election training since the models were late. Surprisingly, I did get a few usable shots of her. Looks like we'll be doing this again soon if we can find some studio space. Let me know what you think.

This was taken with my new Canon 50mm F1.4 lens. I'm loving it. I really wished I had a decent zoom on this day but I think the results were good. I've made things work for this long without one :)

Congrats, good sir.

Just a few thoughts on my day:

I started out the day as a Poll Observer but that quickly changed. We were a bit overstaffed and I was in a position to help out so I got 'deputized' as an Election Official. The guy who I replaced took a sit down job registering people instead. He was having trouble keeping up with directing people and I was running at full speed and ready to get my hands dirty. Turned out to be a perfect day to vote and I was super pumped all day. Best election experience I've had to date. Now I'm just hoping Obama wins and watching CNN.com's live election coverage.

Fingers crossed

Tomorrow is election day! I'm working the polls as a poll observer. This will be the first time I'm actually working at a polling place. I will be taking notes on what's happening and signing people up for absentee ballots for the April 2009 election. I'm brining my video camera just in case but I'm hoping I won't have to use it since I'm actually not allowed to.

On a side note, we've only had Obama supporters come to our door the past few weeks. They mainly want to get people to vote early, which we already did last week. It's going to be a busy few days as I don't think things will be decided until at least Wednesday sometime (if we're lucky).

Go vote and go Obama!

One of the funniest things we get to see every day. Enjoy!

We had Piper out to her first farmer's market and ran into Barack Obama. Okay maybe it was the cardboard version but the picture is still funny!

So I'm finally back to work after being off for 2.5 weeks with the baby. Carla gets to stay home with Piper and Sparky for almost another 3 months. It's sorta nice to be back in the swing of things outside the house but I really miss my family during the day now. It makes it hard to leave in the morning now.

Here's another pic:

She was born at St. Mary's hospital in Madison, WI on September 12th at 12:45 AM. 5 lbs. 12 oz. with a full head of dark hair. She's the cutest baby we've ever seen (obviously). Check out more photos of here on my Flickr page.

I'm not much for birthdays but wanted to say thanks for the gifts I received. A couple of gift cards from Amazon and a case of my favorite beer, Autumnal Fire from Captial Brewery.

It's Google's brand new browser and it's fast and slim. Chrome really delivers so far but they'd better do some updating soon. It's very similar to Firefox but I'm not seeing many customization options yet. It really needs bookmark sync support for starters. Also, I only run Firefox portable at work so I didn't see an option to import bookmarks from a file. I really don't want to export from FF, import to Internet Explorer and then import to Chrome. IE is already setup anyway. I'm curious to see how this all plays out.

I watched the whole Democratic National Convention on Thursday and I thought it was good. I didn't feel blown away by Barack's speech but it was damn good. For me, the main speakers leading up to him did a great job and he did about the same. John Kerry I liked, Biden was decent and Al Gore did a great job.

So McCain picked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for VP. She's younger than Obama with not a whole lot of experience. Can she lead the country if he happens to expire? Who even knows. I guess they can try to steal all the pro-gun Hillary supporters now. I'm very anxious to see the VP debate and I think Gramps McCain will get owned by Obama. I hope Barack can say just the right things and get him to lose his temper on national television. It'd be nice for people to see the real angry grandpa.

Well, I think Hillary did what she needed to do to get her supporters behind Barack Obama. I'm hoping that the bitterness is wearing off and we can get most of those votes for Obama. She sounded sincere and genuine and it was pretty much what I had expected of her. Kudos to you, Hillary.

For me, either of these 2 would make a great president. I think Barack would've done the same for her if the roles were reversed. Now I'm waiting to hear Biden speak. I think he'll be good but I can't say that for sure without hearing him talk now that he's the VP nominee.

I'm glad that Barack Obama has finally picked his VP but I have mixed feelings about Joe Biden. I guess the main thing being talked about right now is his support of the RIAA. The RIAA sues children and the homeless. I guess I'll see how things go in the next few weeks. I plan on watching the Democratic National Convention. PBS has 3 hours of coverage in HD, compared with only 1 hour each for the main networks. I'm hoping to fast forward through commercials and take in as much as I can. Several Air America personalities will be there so it'll be nice to see some of them instead of just hearing them.

I forgot all about our trip on the Betty Lou cruise boat arranged by Carla's work peeps. It was a nice relaxing trip around lake Monona in Madison. Drinks were not so cheap but it was a good time and someone got to sound the air horn. I should've taken a longer video with my Flip Mino, but I didn't want to be 'that guy' :)

One of 2 deer roaming around our neighborhood lately. We think they're sleeping in someone's backyard since they're always around now. They're not scared of people either. I got about 6ft away from him and I'm sure he would've eaten out of my hand if I'd had any food to give him. I headed back to the house and grabbed the camera.

House guests will be arriving soon so we've been getting the house ready for them and baby Murphy. Lots to do and this week it's crunch time. New lamps, bedding, toilet and ceiling fan for the downstairs guest room just went in. There's some yard work yet to do and more stuff inside. Most of the baby gifts we already have are put together and waiting to be used. By the way, learning to use Craigslist is a good thing. I'm finally selling stuff and donating the rest to Goodwill.

So on Friday before the Great Taste, I got to try some of Bell's special beers at Maduro in downtown Madison. Let me just say that Batch 6000 was one of the best beers I've ever tasted. And at 10.5%, it had a nice kick to it. They had 17 other beers and I tried a few, but I still found myself going back to Batch 6000 :)

The midwest's largest beer tasting festival held in Madison, Wisconsin at Olin Park on the shore of Lake Monona. Had a great time and enjoyed some awesome beers. Maybe a few too many Bourbon barrel aged varieties from the Ale tent but that's okay.


Great Taste of the Midwest from Ryan Murphy on Vimeo.

Trying to start updating again with the baby coming. We're having a girl!!