Heard it from a friend who, heard it from a friend, who...

Amazing just how things get around the web so fast. And if you are the source of the "thing", you get temporarily elevated to celebrity status! Last week, a couple of old locomotives with some historical value were scrapped here in Oakdale. For those reading who are not fellow Hack Amateur Historians of the Sierra Railroad, I won't bore you with the details, but it seems like I was among the few who got pictures of the demolition.

As a courtesy to my fellow Hack Amateurs, I posted a Picassa Web Album to a couple of discussion forums I haunt. Within a few days, apparently the link had made its way on to other forums and logs, and I started receiving requests to use some of the images for websites devoted to that particular branding and style of locomotive. I don't consider myself a photographer, just a guys who takes pictures and occasionally gets a good one here and there, so I had no problem with sharing my photos around. I guess if I made my living with a camera, I might be less inclined. But a long time ago, I gave up on the idea that anything posted to the internet was anything less than a de-facto public domain, so I don't let myself worry about it too much. Frankly, (and back to the self editing issue) I have to know, that if I offer my writings to the World Wide Web, I shouldn't write anything that I may have to account for later in life. Especially if I believe what the Tin Foil Hat folks tell me that John Ashcroft -- in his retirement -- is personally reading every bit of e-mail and web-log post I create!

It's been a week since I posted, and time is tight this morning as well. Glad to be generating revenue again, but the balance must be maintained. Soon I will be following up on things I wrote about earlier, including the singing Valentines, Boris and the other cats and my internal struggle with the whole concept of "Blogging".

Oh... and by the way, the company that hosts this web-log informed me that I had created an account three years ago, and I never really used it. I think "Random Notes" will be devoted to my experiences with Barbershop Harmony. That should be fun. And if I really keep up with all of this, I may never get any sleep! As a local talk show host has proclaimed "Sleep is a Lousy replacement for coffee!"