I’ve been doing some soul searching and I think I want to migrate my site to another domain not so photography centric. Any ideas? I know all four of my readers can help me here… And once I move the site I’ll promise to post more frequently, but will fail to do so in the end.
Some of you may have heard, Dell slipped from once being the dominant #1 in the industry to now being #3 (surpassed by HP and Acer). I used to be quite supportive of Dell, but I recently had a horrendous experience trying to modify an order. I’ll recount the details of my experience for any interested, but there is one crucial piece of information I wanted to relay in case it is helpful for anyone else. If you ever need to modify an order, use the following number: (800) 247-2076 Option 2 That saved the day for me.
Now back to my story. So I wanted to upgrade Ashley’s laptop as a surprise for Christmas (I let her know because I wanted to make sure it was what she wanted. We’re waiting for the new Intel mobile processors that come out in January or for even better discounts which is why I let her know early). But a couple weeks ago, I got a really good deal on a Studio 15 (when they were doing Dell 20% cashback through Bing). But I didn’t realize the monitor I had selected was a lower resolution monitor and I wanted to switch to the higher resolution (more money for Dell so you would think this would be easy right).
Every single time I called in the evening or in the daytime, I sat on hold for half an hour. I went to a meeting because I had been waiting for twenty minutes and while I was waiting for the meeting to start I was hoping they would answer so I wouldn’t have to wait another half hour. I wasn’t so lucky. So I wait for half an hour and finally talk to someone. Well of course that person does not know how to help me, but they will transfer me to someone that can (every time I am talking to someone in India which is a little challenging in the language area). Well they transfer me to a number that says this number is no longer valid, please start my call again. AGAIN?!?! I’ve just waited half an hour and you are telling me to get back in line. (A friend says they have an incentive to get you off the call as quickly as possible so dropping you is actually beneficial for the help on the other end. I can’t verify the claim, but it does make sense). This business of dropping me happened three times.
After being dropped repeatedly, I started searching for how to cancel my order. Turns out there is no easy way to cancel your order. You can’t go to your order page and cancel it. That would be too easy (some theorize Dell is happy with the difficulties in changing your order since some give up and Dell makes a quick buck while losing the customer). There is no number you can call other than the one where everyone drops me. But I found the number above on a forum. You get through relatively quickly and she canceled my order. I actually really didn’t want to cancel the order. But as a matter of principle for such horrible customer service, I felt compelled to cancel. What if they made a mistake on modifying the order and I had to go through this whole ritual again.
So now I’m hunting for a new laptop company while still having a hard time not creeping back over to Dell…
I can’t stand motion blur in my images. Indoor photography is especially troublesome given the limited amount of light. As we were putting up our Christmas tree, one of us took this photograph (we’ve gone back and forth and each of us is convinced the other took the image. I’d be happy to say it was mine, but I’m pretty sure Ashley took it). The shutter speed was too slow, but for some reason I really like it. It turned out better than if it had been shot with a faster shutter speed. Sometimes not paying attention to how you are taking the picture can be a good thing:)
I do remember taking this one. Merry Christmas!
I don’t know if Bret Favre is the best analogy, but I thought I would formally announce my retirement from taking portraits. Ashley is the only one who really knows and understands the why and I don’t plan on really explaining it. Now the question is how do you spread the word from this blog that no one reads to the one or two people that would have me take their portraits :)
After I removed my portraits, people began asking where they went. Well too late :) I made the announcement on the blog and let people respond. Not much was said so I kept the course…
Now another decision point is here and I’m mulling around with removing the rating system. Let me hear your thoughts both good, bad, and indifferent…
Before I begin, I did receive a copy of Windows 7 for hosting a house party. Doesn’t relate too much but getting bias out in the open.
Windows 7 officially launched yesterday and I really didn’t care much. But watching some TV last night they kept showin those Mac ads. Originally I thought they were humorous. Now they are down right annoying. Obviously Apple feels threatened… These ads are so repetitive it reminds me of political season. In fact, it is the same style of attack ads that you would expect from a politician. I don’t care if you use a Mac or a PC, but please Apple stop the commercials.
And as an aside, I really like Windows 7. And if you want an example of good creative advertising, look at Intel’s new ads.
Some of you may know I shot a wedding recently. These are a couple of shots from Judy and Jay’s wedding…
Gift giving is a difficult subject. It is tough to bring up without sounding ungrateful. I might fail, but I’m giving it a try anyway. I should also point out that in the recent future, the gift givers that have thought of me have done a great job getting me something I appreciated. But really, this post isn’t about me getting gifts but you getting good gifts. :)
Getting kids gifts is pretty simple since anything is exciting. Now adults are different because we have income. So anything we really really want (that is right TWO reallys), we buy for ourselves. But there are lots of things we really want (one really), but don’t own. For me, this magical list used to exist exclusively in my head.
Whenever Christmas or my birthday rolled around, people would often end up asking me, “What do you want? You are hard to shop for.” To me that person is a good gift giver because they thought about what I would want. Like my Mom got me a remote release for my camera on my birthday which was one of my favorite gifts (I did help her). Sure she could have picked out a shirt and I would have been grateful, but I enjoy the release a lot more. You can only buy so many shirts to say, “I really don’t know what you like but everyone wears shirts. So, here is a shirt.” Not everyone knows the details about your hobbies or other things that interest you to get you a really good gift.
But not that getting gifts is the only use. I only tell people if they ask (not like I send out invites with a note, “I’m registered at Amazon”). But think about when you get a gift card and wind up buying junk capriciously. And when you want to buy something for yourself you keep track of what you want ( and probably save yourself money as your interests change as you wait to but things; think of it as prioritizing what you want ). But really so someone like me can get you a nice gift for whatever occasion.
To the title of the post, Amazon has a really good wish list. Amazon sells mostly everything you can imagine. I used it to keep track of Amazon items I was interested in purchasing. But a while back, it went from an 8 to a 10. They added an ability to put anything from any website in the universe (Jupiter was just added last Thursday to complete the universe compatibility list). You use the Universal Wishlist button. Several photographic items I like are either cheaper somewhere else or not available on Amazon. So everyone should create a wishlist to help out those that are trying to be thoughtful but having a hard time reading your mind.
Oh and while I’ve written this post, I realize this all sounds materialistic. Its really not that though. I’m just trying to help. :)
I’m not going to update on every camera that comes out, but with respect to my last post…I’m not sure they have it right anymore. Most have said the 50D was a step back in image quality compared to the 40D (15 megapixels compared to 10 or 12). Well the new 7D with the same size sensor has 18.
Now for me personally, I would much rather have higher image quality than more megapixels. Some professionals shoot fairly exclusively in the daytime. So they don’t care much about low light performance. Also when you downsize the image it will look better. Lastly some photographers need to crop heavily. Like a sports photographer that captures the extreme close up shots of a moment in a game likely cropped that from a larger image.
I’m not impressed by all the megapixels, but maybe it is aimed more at someone else…
I noticed some news today that confirms my complaint with megapixels and image quality. In a recent post, I took note of Canon’s push for pixels over quality.
Today, Canon released a slew of new point and shoot cameras. At their high end is the Canon G11 with a 1/1.7″ sensor with 10 megapixels. How does that compare to the G10? The G10 had the same size sensor but 14 megapixels. I’m glad they took a step forward and realized image quality matters more than the number of pixels.
Oh and if you want, I’ll let you buy me a G11. :)
