So I go to the local "Pro" camera shop, which has been around for probably 30 years. It used to be a pretty good camera store, and was the only place in town to buy pro or medium format gear. About 8 years ago, they were taken over by Ritz Camera. They still advertise themselves as a "Pro" camera shop, but they're still just another Ritz Camera. Every time I go in there, I just get pissed off and leave.
This last time I should have known better. I went in three days before Christmas to see if they had a Nikon D100 I could check out. I'm in the store about 5 minutes and the girl asks if there's anything they can show me.
Me: "Do you have a Nikon D100 I can see?"
Salesgirl: (Looks at pretentious salesguy) "Are we showing THE D100? Or is it, like, give me your credit card and I'll give it to you?"
Pretentious salesguy shakes head and mumbles: "Credit card."
Salesgirl: (to me) "Sorry, we're not showing it unless you're buying it."
Me: (not quite believing what I heard) "You're serious."
Salesgirl: "Yeah, it's our last one, and we figure whoever buys it will want one that hasn't been demo'ed."
Me: "I've spent my last nickel in your store. You guys could care less about the people who come in here. All I ever get here is attitude and misinformation. Seeya."
One time I was in there, the pretentious salesguy told me mail-order companies like B&H only sell gray-market camera equipment. Another time he told me the mail-order places only sell imported film as well. Both statements are false.
Another time I was looking for a bubble-level that fits in the camera's hotshoe; it makes it easier to level the camera with the horizon, since I have a ballhead. The Ritz guy didn't know what I was talking about, and tried to sell me a cheap Bogen ballhead with a level on the mount.
So I go to the real camera store in town, which sells mostly used camera gear and darkroom equipment. I sold my dad's darkroom stuff to them a few months ago, and they were great to deal with.
The guy tells me they have two D100s, one new and one slightly used (the owner returned it for a D1X). Did I want to see the new one? No, the used one is fine. So he takes it down, slaps a 28-70 f/2.8 AFS on it and a CompactFlash card in the slot and tells me to take some test shots.
So, there I am wandering around the store with a $2000 camera body and a $1400 lens, and my guy goes off to help another customer. I could have walked out the front door. Never again will I spend money at a Ritz.
The D100 is a pretty neat camera. The guy at Southeastern told me they sold 6 the Saturday before Christmas.
Great.
So much for Macromedia. Better get the latest versions of Dreamweaver etc now, before they get bastardized into some Windows-only pieces of crap software.
Frickin Microsoft. At least there's still Adobe.
Joe Strummer died today. Bummer. Always liked the Clash, although sometimes I thought they tried a little too hard to be punk. Now that I think about it, how the hell do you tell if a band is genuinely punk??
Today is my dad's birthday. He would have been 67.
Miss you, dad.
I'm looking for a web-based photo gallery, and the two most likely candidates are Alex King's Gallery, and, obviously, Gallery.
I used to name image files descriptively, but that just got too confusing. All of the images currently referenced on this site use those old image files. I've gone through the exercise of re-scanning most of the photos that don't completely suck, and have gone so far as to label them all with a unique ID. So, what I'd like is a database that I can use to reference all these images by key word, location, emulsion, etc.
There are lots of tools that will do this. I use IView Media Pro on my home computer, but that doesn't help the website out. Two potential solutions are using mySQL, like this guy, or going with the php-style web gallery. Haven't really had time to investigate either possibility yet, but it does look as if either would do fine.
Guess there is an advantage to going with a giant faceless corporation for your broadband access, as opposed to a medium-sized faceless corporation. DirecTV, which bought Telocity DSL, is scuttling their broadband service. Seems they were losing money on the thing...
What a pain in the ass. Guess it's Earthlink for my DSL.
Haven't posted much lately. Not much going on, really, so I haven't had much reason to write anything.
Kids have been sick, that's always fun. And we had an ice storm, that was cool. Nothing like being without power for 30 hours to remind you why you're not Amish. Well, there's the whole religion thing, too, but electricity and hot water and synching my Palm Pilot are pretty high on the list.
Last day for my on call rotation. Being on call during an ice storm was not a good plan.