Mr. Reynolds

For those of you who were previously unaware, on this day, July the twenty fifth, year two thousand and five, Mr. Scott T. Reynolds has completed his twenty first year of life on this earth. As such he is now entitled to all the benefits, privileges, and responsibilities such a milestone carries with it.



Happy Birthday Scott.

SAWYER IS EIGHTEEN!

Attention:

The ever elusive, Sawyer Cade Williams is now 18. That is correct, my bigger little brother, who recently completed his tenure at Coppell High School, is preparing to make his fall debut at Abilene Christian University. Having just returned from Honduras, where he was working with orphans and helping to construct four complete homes, I’m sure he’s got a couple pieces of nice, Honduran, smoke able candy, to properly celebrate this momentous occasion. Enjoy Bro. Congratulations. See you soon.

My afternoon with NASCAR

“Now I see why NASCAR has fans!”


My friend, apartment mate, coworker, and co-producer Scott Reynolds uttered one of the more poignant lines of the day soon after we arrived at Irwindale Speedway. Both Scott and I accepted an invitation to join Pepperdine alumnus Mike Hurd and the HDNet Production team for the NASCAR event with some degree of trepidation. The thought of driving an hour and a half through LA traffic to watch people make four left turns over and over and over again was, quite frankly, not the most luring prospect in the world. However, the invitation carried with it free pit passes, and a behind the scenes, all access look inside a mobile production unit; an offer we could not possibly pass up.



While waiting for Mike to get back from running a couple errands Scott and I took our first peak at what was to be our entertainment for the following five hours. Though, at the moment, we were merely looking at a few practice warm up laps, the adrenaline rush was instantaneous. This was indeed something very, very cool that we were getting to be a part of.

Throughout the rest of the evening, Scott and I picked Mike’s brain about the television industry and enjoyed the privileges that the HDNet orange wristband bestowed upon us. We were living the high life. After watching a few of the cars go through the screening process to ensure that they were abiding by race regulations, we went for a stroll down the parking lot where all of the race teams were setting up shop. Scott approached the guys sitting around the Goodyear truck and inquired as to what happened to the tires after a race. Though most of them are taken back to Goodyear for post race analysis to ensure that they are wearing in the manor they are expected to, the good ole boys at Goodyear offered Scott as many of the used racing slicks as he wanted. Needless to say, we drove home with as many of the huge worn out tires in the back of Scott’s GTI as we could fit. What really set that experience apart for me was that when we were going to pull the car from the far parking lot, the gentleman at the pit entrance called the shuttle for us rather than having us walk over to our car, something we had not even considered. We were invited to drive Scott’s car in, with and through the racecars, and park it in the pit while we loaded up the tires.

The shuttle then met us at Scott’s parking place once more to bring us back to the pit entrance. This is not the standard operating procedure for your average race-goer who decides to fork up the money to get pit passes. We were being treated as if we were somebody. Quite an intoxicating experience.

As much fun as we had wandering around Irwindale Speedway, in and out of the pits at will, I must say the pinnacle of the evening for me came when we stole a peak inside the Production trailer for forty-five minutes during the race.

There were about fourteen people and a monstrous amount of equipment crammed into a trailer producing a live, high definition, tv broadcast. The level of insanity in the room was astounding. At the moment we chose to step in, there were two cameras currently not working, and a bad data feed from the official NASCAR ranking crew. This meant that the already enormous stress burden on the crew was even more elevated. It took a moment to get my wits together in order to follow what was going on in the control truck, but I soon realized that, though there was constant shouting, it was purposeful, smooth, effective, and the crew managed to throw little one-liners around, proving that they were above the situation, and could handle anything that was thrown at them.

What made the afternoon so incredible was undeniably the quality of the people Scott and I were surrounded with. Mike had gone out of his way to extend the invitation, and made it known to us that his crew was just about as laid back, easy going a crew that a national television network can field at the moment. They were open to any question, however uneducated, I could toss out there, and were enthusiastic about sharing their knowledge and love for what they do. Even more than that though was the knowledge that when I was down in the pits, I was back amongst good ole boys. There was no sense of grandeur, warranted or otherwise. Scott and I were even roped into helping one driver push his car out to the track. When the national anthem was sung, there was not a hat that wasn’t removed or a heart that wasn’t crossed. When the prayer was given before the race started, “our boys overseas” were remembered and the amen was followed by cheers. When the day was said and done, the race was ran and won, something that didn’t seem to make sense before the experience was left perfectly clear; now I see why NASCAR has fans.



For more pictures Scott and I took this evening, visit my smugmug gallery.

Photo-blog

For those of you who actually read this and are tired of so many photograph-laden posts of late, I refuse to apologize. However, I would like to announce that I am starting a photolog (yes, that's right, web log, with photos is a photolog). Have no fear, I still plan on posting my political, social, and otherwise worthless rants when time allows and words remain.

The photolog is available at toadphoto.blogspot.com

I will provide links to the full size pictures posted on my smugmug page so that you may download the photographs for use as desktop backgrounds.


**DISCLAIMER:
Please note that all images are the original, copyrighted work of Taylor Williams, intended for non-commercial use as desktops (wallpapers,) and any other usage is prohibited without expressed written consent.

DPChallenge

I thought I would endeavor to bring you something a little different in the blog today. I’ve noticed a distinct trend while surfing the Internet recently; it seems that with the advent of digital cameras, or at least scanners, everyone is now an exhibiting photographer. I’m not complaining. Clearly, I also enjoy the ease of photo sharing the digital revolution provides. Therefore I would like to share with you one of my favorite sites on the world wide web.

DPChallenge.com

Digital Photography Challenge dot com is a site that provides weekly challenges for your digital creativity, and allows you to compete against other photographers, amateur and professional, worldwide.

My most recent entry fetched 16th place out of 501 for a challenge entitled Metal… my highest scored/ranked photo so far. Let me know if you join so that I can check out your pics, and I highly encourage you to do so.




Some of my entries for previous competitions:

Challenge: In the beginning…




Challenge: Strength




Challenge: Wheels

Playing with Pictures

I was playing around with a few black and white photographs from my first month in London and decided to edit a few of them for desktop background resolutions. In case you might be looking to spice up your computer, I have posted them in the Desktop Backgrounds gallery on my smugmug site. The original, unedited versions of the pictures can still be found in the FLM B&W Genesis gallery.

If you decide to use the pictures, please be sure you download the correct picture for either Mac or PC screen resolution. The resolution will be denoted in the photo’s caption.

un-trumpeted return

I have had more than one person inform me this week that I have been less than diligent in continuing to post on my blog since returning from Europe. I, of course, was completely aware of this shortcoming, however, had not done anything to remedy the situation. This evening I took the chance to catch up on a good friend, future roommate, and, more than probably, your future commander in chief’s blog, and felt compelled to scribble a few words of my own. While my blog to sum up this summer thus far will not contain stories of boot camp or government camp, as this evening’s inspiration does, it will cover a lot of ground, in what I hope is a relatively succinct manor.

First of all, I have been given repetitive leave to acquire a healthy amount of cynicism, perhaps just enough to curb my naturally idealistic outlook, some would say more. That to say I have joined, once more, the ranks of the brokenhearted. It is a complicated story which, in the telling of, even my telling of, I tend to come off as something of an idiot. Therefore, if you don’t know what happened already, chances are good that it’s not worth the explanation.

I have been here at Pepperdine University for the summer working for the Housing Department replacing hundreds of matrices, raising and lowering small countries’ worth of beds, and relocating enough furniture to supply living arrangements for the entirety China’s standing army. The net effect of all this is that I am in better shape physically than I have been in since the end of freshman football two-a-days, and I tend to spend more evenings bored silly than I can handle. So, I got a second job working in the library, and now I get paid to spend my evenings bored silly watching over an empty library.

Finally, I feel compelled to round out my largely un-trumpeted return to the blogosphere with a rant. I love Pepperdine University. I have no doubts that I have made the best choice possible for my so-called higher education. That said, I thought this was supposed to be college! In my mind, college life, especially with respect to living in on campus housing, carries with it certain concessions that must be made. Chief of which is the fact that, as a dorm resident, one must forgo the thought that it is their right to have silence in which to sleep in at night. Because of this, I learned to sleep in a room that was literally rocked, swayed, vibrated, jack hammered by the overly large subwoofer the residents above me insisted on blowing at full blast freshman year. Twice already this week I have been instructed by my RA, whom I live, with, to quiet down. First in regard to my car, which has a worthlessly large exhaust that is louder in idle than most cars are as they approach their engine’s redline. There’s nothing I can do about that, seeing as how I can’t very well turn my engine off and coast uphill and into the parking garage. Secondly with regard to my music, which is played out of a simple bookshelf stereo, not capable of approaching the earthshaking force that left me wondering all freshman year long if I had finally actually felt what 5.0 on the Richter scale feels like. Moreover, I never play my music loud except between the hours of noon and ten pm when every college student in the known, and it’s speculated the unknown as well, universe is wide awake. Ladies and gentlemen, please, oh please realize that you’re in a college dorm… not the Ritz Carrolton, it’s part of the experience, deal with it.