But I sure as hell have more common sense than one.
I was at Home Depot the other day and I was going to get a key duplicated, (this was a mistake since they clearly don’t know how the hell to make a copy of a key) and I walked by a guy (we will call him Eric) who was asking the Employee questions about flashlights.
Now the Home Depot employee didn’t seem to know the answers to the Eric’s questions, since Eric was asking as to which flashlight would be able to retain power the best over 6 months. I myself as a “flashlight enthusiast” was more than happy to try to help this guy out, I mean I’ve been enthralled by flashlights since I was 10. I jumped in to give the guy some advice, I recommended the Maglight AA LED. I’ve used Maglights for years, and know just how reliable they are, so I felt safe in recommending it. Eric stated that he was a snowbird and needed an emergency flashlight in case of a power outage during a hurricane. He didn’t want to worry about power problems over 6 months of no usage. Now I’ve left batteries in Maglights for years and they still have power as needed, especially with the LED’s. I of course restated this giving more information.
Now this is where I was baffled. Eric then proclaimed that he was an “Electrical Engineer” and knew more about flashlights than anyone (then why the hell did you ask an employee of a store any questions?) and that I could provide no useful input to the conversation. To me the most amusing thing of the whole situation is that I walked off to get my key copied and I saw Eric pick out a plug in flashlight. One of the ones that is designed to stay plugged in until there is a power outage then when you unplug it, it will turn on.
To me, his choice of said flashlight is amusing, as an Electrical Engineer, he should have some understanding of the way a battery works (no I am not an expert, but I do know some basics of rechargeable batteries.) When you leave a rechargeable battery plugged in 24/7/365 you do severe damage to the battery. There have been advancements in battery technology to prevent memory problems which means you don’t really have to worry about the battery “forgetting” what full charge is, BUT you do have to worry about overcharging.
Newer battery technology typically has trickle charges. From empty the batteries will charge to around 80% in a “fast charge” then from 80-100% they trickle charge to increase battery life. But once they are at 100% they can’t stay at that because the battery will over time lose capacity. Instead they will (at least in laptops) drain down the percentage slightly and then trickle charge it back up to maintain proper health.
In computers I deal with customers who have laptops that have dreadful battery life, typically 30 minutes to 1 hour out of a computer that should give them at least 3 hours. They never can figure it out, but when asked if they ever use their laptop on their lap…they ask “Why would I do that?” Batteries are never meant to be kept at 100% all of the time, because batteries just like people, need exercise or they waste away much faster. Leave a battery at 100% most of the time and within 6 months you can see up to a 25% drop in charge cycles, when I worked at Apple I saw a 6 month old battery that was never unplugged and had 3 charge cycles (from the software’s attempt to maintain proper health) that had a 50% drop in capacity.
So basically an electrical engineer shouldn’t be that much of a moron to not know the basics of a damn rechargeable battery. Rather keep the batteries out of the flashlight for 6 months then pop them back in when you come to town.
So I just received an email from someone who I have never had contact with. I typically don’t have too many issue with this since I tend to ignore these emails altogether. This email showed up on my Blackberry with the subject “The Ant and the Grasshopper – old and new versions:” Now, I always liked Aesop’s fables as a child so I figured I would read it and check it out. Boy oh boy was that a mistake.
The email is as follows.
The Ant and the Grasshopper – old and new versions:
OLD VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away..
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!
NEW VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.
CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green.’
Acorn stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, ‘We shall overcome.’ Rev. Jeremiah Wright then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper’s sake.
President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper’s plight.
Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn’t maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and once peaceful, neighborhood.
The entire Insect Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free insect world with it.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2012.
Now, my issues with this email are numerous, just looking at it, I despise the fact that the font is huge, really? Am I blind? Second off, the vibe that I get from this email is that the Ant is the good guy, the Grasshopper is the bad guy. If that is the case, why make the good guy’s colour red? When I think of red, I think of anger, aggression, and overall bad. When I think of blue, I tend to think of relaxed and overall good.
Now when you look at this email it seems like anyone who doesn’t have an education and works for minimum wage is clearly the bad guy and is problematic. As someone who is currently unemployed and trying to start up a business I do take offense to this. I’m not formally educated, school was never a proper fit for me especially in the fields that I like. I’m a computer person tried and true. But I hate learning on the schedules that schools insist on, due to that I’d rather teach myself what I know. I do agree we have a society where there are lazy people who are desiring of leeching off others, but that is not “most” of society.
I could be reading into this but, when I look at this email, it seems to be that the “Ant” is “White People” whereas the “Grasshopper” and the “Green Insects” are “Black People.” I’m not sure what the “Spiders” are, but when I look at this it could be any of the “Undesirables” who are always brought up in any racist propaganda. I really like the fact that the “Grasshopper” dies in a drug related incident. Because anyone who “leeches” off the system and hides behind it is immediately a drug user.
I can keep going on and on about this, but in reality I am curious, what do you think?
|
I am often asked what kind of photography I like to shoot, and for that, I usually answer, nature photography. When I am asked why I prefer nature photography, I always answer with “because nature doesn’t pose.” Now this answer isn’t fully true, because nature does pose, but when I talk about posing in pictures, I really am talking about the true nature of the photo. When you take a picture of nature, what you take is exactly what you see. When you take a picture of people socializing, the people will typically pose for the picture, stripping the true emotion and essence out of the photo. The smiles tend to be forced, and you can sometimes see the awkward positioning that comes with each posed photo. Some people genuinely don’t wish to be next to the person they are next to and it will just create a tension in the photo. In some situations, that can be a good thing, when you are trying to capture an awkward moment, but those tend to be few and far between.
If I take a picture I want to see the joy that goes on between people as if I am not actually there. I don’t want to stand out with the camera, because then you always get just the façade, never the truth. This is why I loved shooting doing the photoshoot with my friends the other day. Their personality and relationship is one where it just flows. It is clear to see this from the photos in each one they are truly enjoying themselves. Throughout the whole shoot I just talked with them, joked with them, and took pictures when I thought it was appropriate.
Without further adieu I present a selection of my favourite photo’s from that photoshoot.
It’s is amazing to me what a camera can do for me. It also is a shame that I lost all that I used to do in terms of photography. Back when I was really into photography I took pictures left and right, you would never see me without a camera. For the past 5 years now though, I was often seen without a camera, I just didn’t seem to care.
From 2000 to 2004, I would estimate that I took somewhere around 7000 photos. That may not be that much for some photographers, but I was never in the professional level, for me it was always a hobby. Alas from 2004 to 2009, I only took around 2000 photos. This is quite a change for me, because I always felt at home behind a camera lens. For me photography is a way to see the world as it should be seen, the true emotions captured on film, and I am the conductor, I have control over that. When life itself has spiraled out of control, I at least know I can still control what I see and how others view it.
For a backstory on my photography, it really all started with a really old Nikon Point and Shoot 35 mm camera, a Nikon L44. This camera was given to me by my grandmother when I was visiting florida back in 6th grade. It was then when I started taking a photography course (the only one I ever took) in middle school. In 7th grade, I took a picture, and this was the picture that started everything. This picture, won 1st place in all of Baltimore County, and 2nd place in all of Maryland for Black and White Life Studies. The picture was a total fluke accident, I was taking a picture of my dog after she had just ate a bird, and I snapped this, sheer fluke. It was at that point, I realised just how amazing photography can be.
My next camera was a Nikon 4004 my parents old SLR (Single Lens Reflex) that they had since they had been married, I was the one who inherited it, and I put it through it’s paces. It was with that camera that I learned how to roll my own black and white film, and learned more about composing the proper shot. I used this camera for a good 2 or so years before the Nikon N80 was about to be released. I was quite excited about this camera for all the features that it did have to offer (in hidesight, when I look at the features that Digital SLR’s have nowadays it seems so trivial.) I was so excited I called up Coopers Camera shop every single day hoping to find out if they had the camera in stock. One day I stopped in with my mother to get some more film, and the Nikon Representative was at the store with a couple N80′s that he was able to sell. I begged and pleaded with my mother to let me buy the camera and she let me. I was one of the first people on the east coast to ever own an N80. I probably took a good 2000 pictures with that camera, including shooting a Bat Mitzvah and a Birthday Party.
Alas as time went on, I realised just how expensive film processing was, and my film based photography started to die off. It just wasn’t cost effective. I kept telling myself that I wanted to get into Digital Photography, but it was never cost effective. I simply did not have enough liquid cash to purchase a new camera for myself. It was around 2004 when this realisation happened, right when I moved to Florida. It was at this point that my photography started to teeter off. Sure I had point and shoot digital camera’s but they never accomplished what I really wanted, a large sturdy camera to be able to take photos, near and far with fully manual abilities, and fine tuning over every little aspect of the photo. They did accomplish tasks of making it easier to carry a camera with me and documenting the small acts in life, but it was like trying to use a pea to cork a wine bottle, it just never would work. There was a giant hole in my life that was missing and over time, I forgot what filled that hole.
Lately I came to the conclusion that I needed to find what will fill that hole, and make me more complete, and it was with much thought process that I realised what was missing. I decided by my birthday of 2010 I would have myself a new DSLR to utilise. I was on a phone call with a customer while teaching him about Aperture and Raw file formats when I brought up my desire to buy a DSLR by my birthday. It was mentioned in passing and nothing else was brought up about it. Later in the lesson, he commented on how he had multiple DSLR’s. I asked just how many he had, and as he was counting them he mentioned that he was going to mail me one for the holidays, just as a gift, no questions asked. Clearly I was floored, I didn’t know what to say, or how to show my appreciation, here is a customer who has no obligation to provide me with anything at all, who is just going to give me a Camera for the holiday’s. Now I have my chance to fully get back into my photography and I couldn’t be more thankful for such.
So here I am sitting at the beach just….thinking. Lately I have gone to the beach every single night. I guess in a sense to try to sort out all that has happened lately. My life is finally starting to take off in the direction I have been hoping for. It has taken long enough for me to find my groove and now I have. Work is going amazingly and I couldn’t he happier. I am on 3 important teams and making myself invaluble to the company. Next step is a visit to Philly since that is wayyyyy overdue. And the third step is to get into a successful HEALTHY relationship.
Most importantly I am starting to study my programming languages again so I could even start up some web development. And yes this is all leading somewhere. I intend to one day own it own company. And it will be crucial that I outsource as little as possible at first to keep overhead down.
Occasionally I like to reminisce about the times past, and how my childhood was. Today I decided to look through all my pictures of my time at Camp Harlam. I only went there for about 4 years, but I gotta say, I quite enjoyed it…which is quite strange, because I always felt like the outcast there. Back then I was happy with having 1-2 friends, and just sitting around, doing nothing, being part of nature. Or watching others play sports while I sat around taking pictures.
When I tried to rekindle some connections, the way they remembered me was by me saying “You know….I was the guy with the camera.” That was what I was known by. Kinda weird to realize that, none of my traits actually stood out enough to be remembered, just being known as “the camera guy.” I guess in a sense that’s partially my fault because I didn’t try to make myself stand out, but at the same time, I guess I felt alienated. I have always been a bit self conscious, and worried about what others think about me, so in turn I guess, I just let it be that way.
In a sense, now I sort of revel in the way I don’t linger in people’s minds. I can go out alone, meet new people each time, and then part ways never having to talk to them again, never worrying about any future awkwardness, because generally, they won’t remember me. I guess it’s good, I’d rather not be remembered than be remembered as “that weird dude.”
Lately though, I have been trying to change things, and actually meet people to meet people. Get to actually know them and make more friends, go out and be more social. It’s a refreshing change, but I sort of will miss the whole “no one remembers me” phase, though I think to some extent, it will always be with me, unless I make myself stand out.
