BrianHursey.com

I have finally put up new pictures of the nursery we have done allot since last time. I think Lillie will like it.

This past weekend I had the privilege to go to my sister in laws wedding in Pigeon Forge TN. I was not the main photographer but here are the photos I was able to take during the wedding. For the past 3 days I have been getting photos organized and uploaded so that family members can order prints and view them. The task is finally done.

If you have not gotten the link to order photos from please email me at brian@brianhursey.com

Well we decided to go ahead and get Gabby's holloween costume. I dont know what it is but I thought it was so funny and cute. I have been wanting to do this for the past 3 years we have had her. So Katrina wanted me to take pictures of her and post them on the website. 

Well a tornado hit my wife’s school. Don’t worry no one was hurt. My wife works at Oakwood Elementary School in Oakwood Ga in Hall county. She already was at home. However the after school program was still in session. The school did a very good job in getting every one to safe areas in the school to protect them from the storm. They had an interesting day while I was at work 30 miles away. About 3:30 a F1 tornado hit the school causing major damage to the first grade wing. This made four classrooms un inhabitable.  The path was a half a mile long and ran parallel to Thurmon Tanner Pkwy crossing Chamblee Rd and then finally crossing Oak and Allen Street in old town Oakwood hitting the school. I have a couple crappy photos of the damage with my cell phone taken while I drove Down Allen Street past the school. However the video link is much more impressive. It is of the actual tornado as it moves toward the school. Yesterday after watching the video I drove down Thurmon Tanner Pkwy and sure enough behind all of the industrial buildings you could see a path of tree damage. I don’t know what it is about storms and me but I feel they are very interesting and I get excited about them. Especially since this was only one mile from my house.

Video Link 

Tree damage across from the school:   Baseball complex building roof damage: 

News story

Well this past weekend we added to our owl theme in the baby's room. We went by poetry barn kids to get the bedding for the crib. Katrina was so excited about making more progress in getting the nursery done. She, of course wanted to document the process and I of course took pictures. I think it is neat that we will be seeing Lillie Kate there in the future.

This always happens to me for some reason we finally get out of the money. A few months ago my wifes front left wheel started making noise. Later on I found out my tire was cupped and the saturn dealership said I would be fine on my trip to Slidell LA and they said I had about 5k left in my tire. On our way back home the tire blew. So I had to replace the front two tires. Next my truck had a flat tire and I had to replace all of the tires because there was not tread really left. Today we found out that it is going the cost 300+ to fix my wifes car and a week to get the parts. I have a feeling that this will never end.

Why the heck do my cars keep on breaking and when will this stop.

This is a serious subject, but one I think about all the time. I have Cerebral arteriovenous malformation (AVM) it is defined as a malformed collection of blood vessels within the brain, characterized by tangle(s) of veins and arteries. Why is this a bad thing you may ask?  Well, over time the integrity of my blood vessels in my brain decreases. This can cause sort of like bubbles in the week spots. These can burst causing aneurysms. This can very easily kill me, or severely damage my brain.  I know it is scary but it was a realization that I had to find out at thirteen years old, that is when they discovered my AVM.  

You see I have epilepsy, I had my first seizure when I was 7 years old on a trip to my grandparents in Louisiana. I had a seizure and went face down right into my pizza. They originally thought that I had meningitis. However they never found any evidence of that.  I remember having the worst headache of my life while driving to my family’s house. Next thing we stopped at pizza hut in Montgomery and I remember watching mtv on a big screen. Next thing I knew it felt like some one was grabbing my head and shoving it towards the floor. It is a very weird feeling. I woke up with every one crying and looking very worried. It is interesting. It sounds like you are listening through a sea shell when you wake up. Hearing is slowly regained.  You wake up not knowing where you are and scared. It is a very helpless feeling. I spent the next 4 days in the hospital undergoing tests and I got to use one of the first MRI’s…. It was new technology then. Well I think I have had a total of 7 grand mall seizures I think they call them something else now days. I have more not as sever seizures in my life. This can include loss of time, to just seeing stars..  Well MRI’s slowly got better and better over the years. When I was 13 they saw white spots on my results. At first they thought it was tumors.. Ya 13 years old and you might have brain tomors. Kind of scary… Well they sent me to Gwinnet medical center to get an angio gram.  They then discovered that I have a AVM.  The interesting thing is, now this is not 100% proven, but when I was a child I was slow development wise.  Then all through school I had sever learning disabilities. This includes dyslexia, dysgraphia, and ADD or some people call it ADHD… I was a very hyper child. So I struggled all the way through school. People told me I would never graduate high school. Now I am a college graduate and I do unix support with EMC corp.  Well school was the hardest thing I have ever done, but with the support of family and friends I was able to succeed. So I think this covers most of the history behind my disorder. I might have missed something. However everything most likely revolves around my avm.

What made me think to write this post is I get head aches all of the time and the scare me.  Headaches for normal people are just a nuisance. However for me if I get headaches in the left back of my head that scares the crap out of me. This morning I was on my way to work and I felt a couple pulses of sharp pain from that area. The problem is I don’t know when it is severe enough to go to the hospital. I am not a big judge of that. I don’t like the doctor and I never have.  So its constantly a worry of mine and Katrina’s. I love my wife and I hope I never have a issue that she would have to go through with me.  

I also worry about treatment. You see it is a rare disorder AVM-afflicted people in the United States range from 0.1% to 0.001%, and there is only one place in Atlanta that can treat me.  The scary thing is to try and relay that information to the hospital when I get there. I may be completely out of commission. Emory hospital is the only place that can treat me. Ok now for the gross part they will have to drill a hole in my head to release pressure. Then they will need to life flight me to Emory and do angio procedure to send a catheter into my brain to cauterize or block the leak.  I am afraid that some dr at the local hospital will not know this and try to do brain surgery on me. This will probably kill me because you can not get to it that way.  So if any of my friends are reading this. If this does happen I need to be life flown to Emory.

So there it is my AVM post that I have never written. Hope I did not scare any of my family and friends. Its better to understand and accept the issue instead of hiding it. I know I will go to haven to be with Jesus. I just don’t want to leave my wife and family.

 PS: Ohh forgot one thing.. My seizures are under control by using Lamictal... 

Well we has some super cells came through the aria. They were lined up like a train cars, two of them came through oakwood ga producing winds, hail, and torrential rain that caused localized flooding of streets. The first cell me and my dog were in the bathroom under the stairs. We heard hail and banging for 4 min and than came out.  The second cell about 20 -40 min later, I got locked out of my house and truck when the second cell came through the area. My wife talked me into trying to make it 1 mile down the road to a friends basement where she was.  So I grabbed my dog and in a big hurry to get out of the door and make it to that house in 6 min. I locked my self out of the house and out of the car. So with my dog in the car and my self locked out I only could seek refuge in the garage. I left the door open so I could keep a eye of my dog and my car. Wore a hard back "Unix Network Programing" book as a hat and prayed. I knew the book would come in handy one day.  It was a very intense rainfall and hail storm.  I did get quite worried because channel 2 was piloting a coarse of a tornado towards the general direction of my neighborhood.   So I survived, scared my wife to death when she heard me in the garage and not able to into the house. 

I have always been fascinated by severe storms.  I knew I should not of left. I did not feel safe with out a basement.  Moral of the story is do not leave your house in storms. 

 CNN saw my pictures I submitted and selected them for CNN. They called me and asked me if they could use them I agreed. I dont know where they put them. Here are the links and the photos I submitted. 

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-4035

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-4034

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-4033 

First Super cell:

Second Super Cell:(Stuck in garage)

This past weekend my club went to the Piedmont Division NMRA train show.  It is actually quite a bit of work to go to one . You have one day each to breakdown layout, load layout, setup layout at show, run trains, break down and load after the show, and finally unload and set layout back up at the house it stays at. I personally think it is worth it. It is sort of like a lan party, but you drive trains.  The thing I liked about the most was the kids. They were asking you questions and pointing and they were so excited to see the trains. Some try to touch, but we just have to remind them not to. However I remember being one of those kids at the train shows. I think that trains will always fascinate me. 

I am a new user to digital SLR’s and I’ve had my Canon 350D for about a year. I got a new 75-300mm for Christmas. The lens is a very small and light weight long focal length lens. For this focal rage this lens is very inexpensive. You can get a much higher quality professional 70-200 L series lens for about 1k more. However how many amateur photographers would need such a lens? Now if you are the paparazzi needing to get that distant photo of celebrities on the beach maybe you want the expensive lens. However if you are the average joe like me you want a decent priced lens.

Build: The build quality of the Canon EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 is ok. It is light which is a benefit. You will not find a smooth zoom and focus with this lens though. I also would not recommend any abusing this lens because I feel it would have the same fate as my cheaper 50m f1.8 lens.

Image quality: The image quality of this lens is OK… I have noticed some softening of the image at long focal lengths. The sharpness decreases the longer the lens is zoomed out. See the two images below. One is shot at 75 and the other at 300. Both are of the same subject. See the softening of the subjects at 300mm? I would not recommend using this lens in low light conditions. This is a slow lens so I would recommend a tripod and a flash if you are going to use it in low light conditions. I would even recommend a remote to use so you don’t move the camera when you depress the shutter. I would use this lens for brighter out door conditions. The lense suffers from CA (Chromatic Aberration) this degrades the image quality, but hey you get what you pay for. It still is a good entry level telephoto.

75mm:

300mm:

Conclusions: If you are on a budget and do not need a top of the line telephoto lens. Just one for every day photos this one is for you. If you want award winning crisp long focal length photos this lens is not for you.