Archive for the ‘Rant’ Category

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

Monday, September 14th, 2009

Instead of racing like the original plan entailed I got a call for work. Since I am poor and need the money I decided to show up and earn some money instead of spend it. I got to shoot a benefit on Sunday, Friday night entailed a football game and Monday I did a golf meet in the morning. So this is the busiest I have been with work in a LONG time.

I found out at a soccer game, the true football game, that I don’t have a big enough lens for the long distance stuff. So I was talking to another photographer there and asked him what he had for a lens, I thought it was a 400mm. I was right in my guess and then I went to a website and tried to find out how much it costs and I nearly passed out. A Nikon 400mm f2.8 lens is $8,900 new but I found a used one for the BARGAIN price of $4,700. Needless to say that I won’t be owning one of those anytime soon. Remember that is only one lens and I need to get a couple more to complete the collection. This freelancing stuff can get expensive, the pro I was talking to said it was a big change going from a paper to freelance just because of the equipment costs. I thought that biking was expensive.

Here is a link to the article that I had to take the photos for.

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20090914/GPG0101/909140550&referrer=FRONTPAGECAROUSEL

Hopefully everyone had a great weekend at Treadfest. I like that course even though there is a fair amount of climbing.

Posted in Photography, Rant | No Comments »

Mercury marine

Sunday, August 23rd, 2009

In my opinion Mercury should stick to their decision to go to Oklahoma.  If the union is stupid enough not to take a pay cut and keep the jobs here they should lose them.  In my opinion if they can’t make the concessions necessary to keep the jobs they deserve whatever happens.  What got me was channel 26 interviewed some woman that said she was better off on unemployment than to take the pay cut to $13/hr.  I know that it would take some changes in lifestyle to accommodate the pay-cut but it would be better than losing the job.  With thinking like that that woman deserves what is coming to her.

What manufacturing jobs are there left around here?  Almost all of the jobs in that sector are being moved out of state or out of country.  Another question to be proposed is where does a high school educated person find another job that pays $13/hr or more?  I have been looking for a job and with my education it is hard to find a job that pays more than that around here.

They all had a comment about the longevity of work that they performed.  The company really doesn’t look at that like they used to.  My grandparent’s generation was more concerned with that way of thinking, think of the nuclear family.  On average people hold 5-15 jobs in their lifetime, that shows that a person doesn’t really stay at one position for very long.  If the person is starting work at 18 and retires at 65 that is 47 years of work, with the high of 15 jobs that is an average of only ~3 years and the low of 5 that is an average of ~9 years.

I may be wrong but that is my opinion.  Let me know what you think.

Later

Posted in Rant | 2 Comments »

Another crack.

Sunday, August 23rd, 2009

After riding at the camp yesterday I noticed a crack in the GF, Grand Failure as I say.  It has been squeaking for the last month and now I noticed the crack.   The Grand Failure has only lasted about a year, just like every other one that I have had.  I think it is time to start saving to get this bike.

I am now recommending that anyone looking to get a new mountain bike not get a Gary Fisher.  I know a lot of other people that have had this very same problem.  I know Bubba has went through a ton of frames that have cracked in the very same spot.  I know that the Superfly has had a lot more problems associated with the frame design.  You would think that the company would redesign the frame or something so they don’t fail constantly.

Pics to come later.

Later

Posted in Cycling, Rant | No Comments »

Close call

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

Tonight on the road ride I had an awesome close call with the bike.  I was following a dude to the front of the line in order to get ready for a sprint.  I looked out of the corner of my eye and seen the shadow of someone jumping early and then I made the decision to go with him.  I stand up to try and go with him and all of a sudden the chain decided to jump off of the big ring.  I don’t know how I saved it but I did manage to stay on the bike.  If I would have went down I would have taken about 8 riders with me.  After the ride I paid a visit to the shop and purchased a new chain to be installed tomorrow on the bike.

On another note I heard about the demise of the USPS.  I heard that they are on target to be $14 billion in the hole at the end of the year, they are only allowed to borrow $9 billion and they are almost at that limit.  So now Congress is going to, maybe, raise the cap on the amount of money the USPS can borrow.  On WPR today, a caller, said that the government primarily use FEDEX for delivery of packages.  My thought would be if the government agency, USPS, is in dire straights wouldn’t you abandon FEDEX and use USPS to deliver your packages.  Give the money to a government agency that actually needs it.  Without the USPS, I think, we will have trouble with mail delivery.  I don’t think that FEDEX and UPS can do it as cheaply as the USPS.

Posted in Cycling, Rant | No Comments »

GROUP rides

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

Some people don’t understand the term “group ride.”  If the ride is not a race they don’t want to have anything to do with it.  I figure why show up and then decide to ride off of the front, go and ride by yourself to begin with.  It just discourages people from coming back again because of people that want to do interval work in a group ride.

Two years ago when I went on the InComp ride the jackasses at the front decided they were going to slow and the pace picked up significantly.  I am not the type to give up because of that but it is very discouraging when that happens.  If it wasn’t for Dallas to pull me and his old man back through the rest of the ride it would have been a long solo ride.  If I wanted to ride solo I wouldn’t show up at a GROUP ride.  The same thing could be said about Jed a couple weeks ago, people have to go out and show who has the biggest cock and screw the rest of the people.  Jed got dropped on the Shirley road climb and I slowed my pace for him to catch on because the supposed 18mph average was closer to 20-21mph to the top of the hill.  But before I get dropped I sped up to catch the rest of the group so Jed had to ride by himself.

It just is annoying when that happens, to get to the point there is a time and place for racing group riding is not one of them.

Posted in Cycling, Rant | 2 Comments »

Driving laws

Friday, June 12th, 2009

After reading this story it brings up rules/laws that in my opinion should be made.  I have heard that there is a car breathalyzers out there.  I think that if you are arrested for drunk driving ONCE you should be REQUIRED to have one of these devices in your vehicle.  According to some articles that I have read if you have a blood alcohol content over .01 the vehicle wouldn’t start.  I think that it would bring down the drunk driving accidents.  If you live in Green Bay there is a taxi cab service that you can use to get a ride home instead of risking your life and maybe another persons life to make the drive home.  If you don’t live in the city have a designated driver to give you a ride back.  I have no sympathy towards drunk drivers at all the lady in the story should be put away for life for MURDERING the cyclists.  Crying and saying, “I didn’t mean to do it” doesn’t work and I think that if you get a repeat offense there should be a MAJOR penalty for it.

Another thing that could change is that there should be a change to the way that they teach drivers education.  Not just the temporary license for the new drivers out there.  Maybe there should be a retest every few, less than 5, years.  There could be more bike lanes in the city to help with car avoidance, but then cars would just drive down the lane like I have noticed in the past.

I have had my fair share of close calls from idiots that say that bikes shouldn’t be allowed on the road.  Other people told me of similar situations to what I have had.  In a battle of car v. bike the car will always win.

Don’t get me wrong cyclists NEED to obey the traffic signs in town and people should be REQUIRED to wear helmets or other safety gear.

Later

Posted in Cycling, Rant | No Comments »

Memorial Day Weekend

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

This weekend was interesting.  On Friday night I decided to go out and photograph the carnival that was in town.  After a few comments from people saying take my picture, I finally got irritated and I started giving smart assed comments back.  The last dude I told I can take the picture but he can’t be in it.  I thought that I got some good shots from the carnival.

On Saturday I slacked until the afternoon and then went for a ride.  I managed 19.5 ave solo for the 40 miles that I did.  It is finally nice to get the speed back.  The thing I have to work on now is hills, so I don’t have a massive heart attack as I TRY to climb them.

Sunday I decided it was time to go and ride the mountain bike somewhere where I haven’t been before.  I went up to Langlade and decided to attack some of the trails around there.  After riding those trails I forgot how much I would love to have a full suspension bike again.  They are some AWESOME trails.  I had a guide to help me navigate the tornado damaged sections.  I managed to fall off of one of the big obstacles that are up there, all I have to show from it is some scratches on my right leg.  The trails remind me somewhat of bluemounds because of all of the rocks in the trails and really tight sections.  If you haven’t been there I would recommend it.

On Monday I decided to go and photograph the parade and the car show.  I forgot how much these small town parades suck.  I don’t mean to take away anything for the people that they are trying to show case, veterans.  The people that line up at the back of the parade are the low lives of the town.  They have their “race car” and are revving the piss out of it.  Their V8 sounds like crap as it backfires while revving up.  Then you have the trucking companies trucks lined up, the guy has a stretched out truck with a train horn on it, so when he pulls the string you can hear the thing from about a mile away.  Then they decided to jake brake their truck as the rev it up and slow down, I never knew that was so cool to do.

The car show was interesting, some of the cars there were cool and it is interesting to see how much time and dedication it takes to build one of those.  Then you get some redneck who decides to put his jacked up piece of shit in there and decides to call it a show truck.  My old Ford Ranger was of the same caliber as some of those trucks.  It seems like the truck was telling all the guys with mullets to come over by me and drool.

Later

Posted in Cycling, Photography, Rant | No Comments »

Censor?

Saturday, March 7th, 2009

Today while listening to the radio I heard something that made me think.  The censors decided that instead of getting ride of damn in goddamn that they would just get ride of god and leave damn.  To me that seems to be the opposite of what usually happens.  Needless to say that I felt a need to bring that thought to everyone who reads this blog.

Today was the last Women’s home basketball game at UWGB.  It was an interesting game, I was just tired and zoning out when I was supposed to be shooting the game.  I have come to hate my lens that came with my camera.  I have to set the f-stop at 5.6 so when I zoom the exposure doesn’t change, but the lighting in the Kress Center is crap.  Plus the distortion caused by the lens is horrendous when at the extremes of the zoom range.  Also the chromatic aberration is also horrendous with this CHEAP crappy lens.  For those who don’t know what that is, when I take a picture of two high contrast objects, white on black or visa versa, you can see the colors of the rainbow where the two contrasting zones come together.  Luckily I have Photoshop to get rid of that but a nice new pro lens would solve most of that.

BridgeYou can see that the converging lines bend towards the edges of the pictures, this is called barrel distortion and is the problem that I am facing with this crappy lens.  It makes getting photos expedited a pain in the butt because it is one more step that I have to do before I can send it out.

I went biking with Scott for about 1.5 hours yesterday, it was nice to get out and ride again.  I can’t wait for it to be warmer outside for more riding.

Later

Posted in Photography, Rant | No Comments »

Military roundabouts shot and random rants

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

I don’t know why people are so against roundabouts.  They are not bad to drive and they are cheap to install and maintain when compared to the lights that they are going to put in.  I have come to the conclusion that people don’t want to change for the better, they just want to stick with what happened in the past and not move forward.

military avePersonally, I think that they could have put in the roundabouts with no problems what-so-ever, but the people complain enough and they don’t move forward with them.

I was listening to WPR yesterday and they were talking about the airlines, more specifically airplanes.  They were saying that the pilot is losing their roots in actually how to fly the plane and rely more on the electronics in the plane.  That got me to thinking about the vehicles these days, there are more electronic devices that control more and more aspects of the car these days.  I know some of them help cars progress but who needs to shift a car with a paddle behind the steering wheel when more and more people don’t know how to drive a manual transmission anymore.  If you want to shift a car manually skip the paddle shifter and buy yourself a car with a manual transmission, if you can find one anymore.

Another example is ABS, I know that it helps reduce the distance to stop the vehicle but what happens when the electronics for the ABS fail and you actually have to pump the brake on the car to be able to steer when you are trying to stop, that has actually happened to me the wheel speed sensor in the front wheel went out and the ABS didn’t work.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not “anti-electronics” but everything is to automated these days and no one knows how to do things manually anymore.  While taking photography classes, I find out people who want to be a photographer don’t know how to operate their camera.  they just put the camera in auto mode and go from there.  You lose creative control when you let the camera control the F-Stop, shutter speed, ISO, white balance and focus.  Most of the time the camera makes the choice that you want to have everything in focus so it runs a slow shutter speed and a small aperture.  What happens if you want the subject in focus and everything else out of focus?  If you don’t know you are screwed.

Have fun with the rant.  Later!

tunnel

Posted in Rant | No Comments »