My commencement photos are online!

Seventy-six of ‘em in all, which is a bit less than half of the total. Some were taken with my camera, some with Becky’s mom’s camera. Enjoy!

A few highlights are after the jump, starting with some bulletin-board material for the Message Board That Must Not Be Named:

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We’re here! 706 miles in 9 hours and 42 minutes.

UPDATE: Er, 506 miles, rather. Sorry. I did the math very quickly, as we were pulling into the complex, and somehow managed to be off by 200. Heh.

Almost! Getting into the outskirts of Knoxville now.

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And suddenly I feel this mysterious urge to volunteer…

New Mexico governor Bill Richardson has officially joined the race for President. None of the other 3,781 candidates could be reached for comment.

I think we’re officially in the South:

Heh.

Our three-vehicle caravan — Ted in the Penske, us (and the animals) in our car and Ginny in their car — is now rolling down I-75, heading through Kentucky toward Tennessee. This highway will actually take us right to the street in Knoxville where our apartment complex is located, so that’s pretty nice. We’re a little over 200 miles away now. (You can see our route at right.)

So, how full is the Penske, you ask? Very, very full:

The big space in the middle was eventually filled by our mattress, and then we stuffed a bunch of small items and blankets in as well. Just about every last inch of available space in our 12-foot truck was being used by the time Ted finally closed it up for good. Becky’s parents are excellent packers. :) Indeed, this is probably a good opportunity to publicly pay tribute to them for their amazing helpfulness in getting us all packed up for the move. We couldn’t have done it without ‘em! And my parents were very helpful, too. ‘Twas a team effort!

Anyway… you can see more photos of our move here. I’m still working on the graduation photos and other related stuff… stay tuned.

This blog has seen some recent, passionate discussions about the idea of mandatory vaccination using the new HPV vaccine, and in light of that, I thought this article would be a good cautionary tale.

Apparently a soldier who was to be deployed to Iraq was vaccinated against smallpox. Unfortunately the vaccinia virus which helps the body develop an immunity to smallpox was spread to his wife and his 2-year old son. While the wife developed some mild lesions which healed easily, the son suffered from kidney failure and lost most of his skin due to the vaccinia induced disease. Fortunately the young boy has recovered due to excellent medical care and some luck, but it just goes to show that vaccines come with risks.

Although in this case, much if not all of the risk could have been avoided — the soldier and his son, because of pre-existing eczema, were both particularly susceptible to the disease — in large-scale vaccinations such edge cases slipping through the cracks would be more likely and should be considered along with potential benefits of mandatory vaccination.

Just crossed the Ohio River. Now in Kentucky.

Getting lunch just north of the Kentucky border.

We took a ton of pictures yesterday of Becky and me in front of the Golden Dome, but due to a variety of factors — poor lighting conditions, camera malfunctions, miscommunication between photographer and photo subject, the fact that we were in a hurry, etc. — none of them came out terribly well. In the ones where the lighting is okay, inevitably one of us has a dumb look on our face, or there are people right behind us, or something. Very frustrating. One of the photos, however, is decent enough that I think it could be salvaged into a pretty good shot… but the exposure is way too low, and there are some serious shadows going on, so it definitely needs to be worked on.

Unfortunately, I’m not very skilled at touching up photos in Photoshop or its equivalents. The photo in question is the second picture in my controversially hyphenated post below; I improved it somewhat for the blog, but I think it’s possible to do a better job. So I’m going to post a link to the original, full-size photo here, with a challenge to my blog readers: Can you fix this photo? Send your touched-up versions to brendanloy [at] alumni.usc.edu. Whoever does the best job, I’ll give you credit on the blog, and buy you a beer (or an alternate beverage of your choice) the next time I’m in your city. :)

In addition to being underexposed, the photo is crooked, but don’t worry about that — I can fix that easily enough in iPhoto. It’s the lighting problems I have trouble with. And maybe I’m wrong; maybe it’s not salvagable. But I think there’s enough information there that a skilled Photoshop artist can improve it substantially. Somebody prove me right!

Needless to say, I have lots and lots of pictures (and a few videos) from today’s festivities. But I’m completely exhausted from a very long day of pomp and circumstance, and we’re planning to leave for Knoxville at like 7:30 AM tomorrow, so I need to get some sleep. I’ll try to organize my graduation photos — as well as my still-unblogged 3L Week and tornado pics — and post them from the car tomorrow, or from Knoxville on Tuesday. No guarantees, but I’ll do my best. In the mean time, here’s a cute shot to tide you over:

Hee hee.

P.S. One more: