Thanks to suggestions from readers of this blog, I have ordered a Nikon Coolscan V. I’m really looking forward to it. Once I considered the volume of photos I want to scan, it really makes sense to buy such a thing myself.

First off, Dan Zukowski has some very informative articles about Amtrak. It’s particularly funny listening to Mineta say that the Bush administration wants to support Amtrak. After they proposed $0 for it in their most recent budget proposal, saying that bankrupting Amtrak would be a good thing. Hmm. Doublespeek seems to be in vogue these days.

I’ve watched about half of this week’s 4-hour hearing about Amtrak governance. One very interesting thing about it is that the Amtrak board, which fired David Gunn, may not have had a quorom for months, or even years, including the meeting where they fired Gunn.

Secretary of Transportation Mineta, who holds a seat on the Amtrak Board, appears to have never actually attended an Amtrak Board meeting.

I wonder what will come out next about all this…

Why is it that the media always uses “detained” instead of “arrested”, “jailed”, “tortured”, etc? Jordan isn’t delaying terrorists from reaching their destination… they’re putting them in jail. Let’s call it what it is.

It’s recently become apparent that I need to scan a bunch of slides and 35mm negatives into digital form. My church has a bunch of very nice slides from the 60s, my parents and grandparents have quite a few as well, and I have a bunch of 35mm negatives that I’d like to get digital.

It’s also quite obvious that flatbed scanners aren’t going to do the trick for me.

Scanners that start to approach the quality I’m after seem to start at about $1000. Does anybody know of a good scanning service? Or have some other ideas? Ideally, I’d like to scan hundreds of photos, but the $1000 is a bit tough.

I found this service, which looks decent.

If you’re like me, you get credit card solicitations in the mail almost every day. I really don’t care to have a card other than the one I have. Most of these solicitations arrive because credit bureaus sell lists of customers with specific credit attributes.

I’ve known for awhile that you can call 888-5-OPT-OUT to get the credit bureaus to stop sending you these things. But it’s annoying.

There’s a new feature now: you can go to their website at www.optoutprescreen.com and opt out there. Well, maybe it’s not new, but it’s new to me anyway.

Yesterday, Amtrak’s board of directors fired Amtrak president David Gunn.

Here’s something unusual about this firing. David Gunn actually was the best thing to happen to Amtrak in years. He improved the physical condition of the railroad’s equipment, raised ridership, cut costs, and even ended this year with a net surplus despite a crippling brake problem on Amtrak’s high-speed Acela equipment that took the entire fleet out of commision for most of the summer.

The Amtrak board knew this too, and even testified to that fact before Congress a few months ago.

The board, though, is made up of Bush appointees. You might remember that Bush’s budget proposal contained a plan to bankrupt Amtrak as a way of “reforming” it. That failed to pass Congress, and David Gunn failed to be incompetant.

So you have the odd case of firing David Gunn for improving things on the railroad.

Yikes. I will be so glad when this administration is gone.