Ten One Hundred

Today I came across a craigslist post with this title.  A copy and paste of what was written on craigslist is below.  And for the next couple days you can see the original here on craigslist I’m sure.

Hi,

Last night you stole two of my cameras outside Angelica’s Kitchen on 2nd Avenue and 12th street.

I figured you’d try to sell them here, unless thieves are photo enthusiasts. You might make an honest living taking photos of shit you stole, hell that might make a great Gallery Title, “The Shit I Stole: Reflections on Urban Living in The 21st Century”. You might even get into Francesca Woodman-style self-portraits that you could take with my stolen cameras, make them real artistic, with a shallow depth of field, that’s what you can afford (or I guess, can’t afford because you are a damn thief) when you have a 50mm prime lens attached to the Canon A-1 (that’s the black one that you stole) that opens up to a 1.4. Fuck yeah, I’m giving you photography lessons, so at least you can shoot right, I mean what the hell were you gonna do with two cameras that no one wants anyway– don’t try to sell it to some Midwestern tourists in Times Square, man, don’t sell it in Times Square in general. It’s a 35mm film camera, who the hell wants to pay fro processing now that you can take a picture with your cell phone? Why didn’t you steal my cell phone instead? The camera on it is a piece of shit, and you would be making much more money off that, and I hate my phone so you’d be doing me a favor.

In your grubby hands you have a Canon AE-1– that’s the silver one with a zoom lens on it. You can set it to automatic exposure so you wouldn’t have to figure out metering or f-stops. Also you can really impress some chicks with the blue-jeans denim strap that comes with it, because you will look like Peter Parker in the sense that you will resemble a nerdy high school photographer from the late 70s. You should really do yourself a favor and get some polyester pants. You will not impress anyone else, however, because it’s just about the most basic student camera Canon’s ever made.

And that A-1? It doesn’t belong to me, so double fuck you for stealing my camera and stealing my friend’s camera. He got that for $10 from his friend’s mom on Long Island, so don’t expect to sell it for any more, unless you’re selling it to other assholes like yourself. It’s got a squeaky shutter and might not take anything past 1/125 (that’s the shutter speed, you moron, it means the shutter is open for 1/125 of a second, to refresh your memory), unless you wanna get real artsy and overexpose everything.

Finally, there are some miscellaneous shit in there:

a Firewire 800 Cable – this will not be much of use to you

Camera Logs – like you’d even understand them

a half-read secondhand copy of Albert Camus’ The Plague – Listen, you dick. I was 110 pages into that and until I buy another secondhand copy of that book I’ll never find out what happened to Dr. Rieux and the rest of the people in Oran. Maybe you could skim through it and summarize what I missed in a book report. I dunno, man, maybe you’re in the middle of an existential crisis, that’s why you’re stealing shit, right? to assert your existence or whatever. well, you should read that book. you might get a kick out of it. just don’t use it for kindling for your garbage-can fire under the 59th street bridge.

Three rolls of shot film – This is what I’m pissed off about the most. I took some pictures over the weekend with those cameras and they’re still loaded with film. I hope you didn’t open them in daylight like an idiot, not knowing that the little cardboard square that said “Ektachrome 64″ under the viewfinder meant that it’s LOADED, you fuck. There are shot rolls of Portra 800, 50D, and 1600 in there (film speeds– the higher the number, the more sensitive the film, you jackass) that are pretty important to me, and would have absolutely no use to you. If you could do me a favor and drop those off at Forum Photo on Waverly and Washington Square East– ask for George (I will not ask him to punch you in the mouth), or just drop it off under the name “Jerk McAllister”. You can even shoot the rest of the rolls in those cameras and I will pay for matte prints with a white border for you, so you can show your thief buddies all your photographic skills. I can already picture the great canted angles and center-framing you’re cooking up while looking for someone to take those cameras off you so you can get your next heroin fix.

Keep the freakin’ cameras if you want. They were cheap. They’ll come and go and to be honest they were kind of on their last legs. I just want the freakin’ film. You can even keep the leather case, I’m not sure if it’s real leather anyway. You’re probably not up for this but I might as well ask, there might be some sort of Robin Hood-like pity in your burglar heart.

Of course, I’m perfectly aware that you might have just been a Good Samaritan and returned it to a police station or you’re looking for clues around the the case to determine who it might belong to. If this is the case, then you can disregard all that mean shit and I hope you email me about getting it back. I’ll even throw you a couple of bucks and buy you lunch. But I’m also perfectly aware that if this was the case it would be raining gumdrops from marshmallow clouds and we’d all be singing showtunes. So, more likely than not, you stole it, and now you’re trying to sell it on craigslist.

So fuck you.

After reading that post in its entirety something a strange feeling came over me it was one of those pay it forward moments. I’m not always portrayed as a people person, and hell most of the people i work with would say I’m a cross between an asshole a prick and a fucking dick at times. Maybe because my camera was stolen this summer, maybe it was because I had 2 of the exact same identical cameras just sitting on a box doing nothing, and maybe it was great Zeus’s beard aligning with the moon. whatever the reason I decided to mail the guy. It turns out his name is Dean and he seems to be a pretty decent fellow. I told dean that I would part with my cameras if he gave them a good home and actually used them. He said he would and I let him know I would be home around 7pm thirty minutes ago to be exact.

Dean stopped by and we talked about loosing stuff, about what he used his cameras for. What was on them. He asked about my new camera and I told him about it. It was a quick little human interaction. Dean was thankful and I was glad to see him walk away a little brighter in his day. So I guess the moral of the story is sometimes you get more value out of an item giving it away then you ever would if you sold it.

So over the years in back-room bar conversations and high end board room meetings this whole digital audio thing has been debated, discussed and flipped on its head. People are using mp3’s, real audio, hard encoded solutions, podcasts, mp4’s and various digital audio codecs from a vast source of manufacturers, and opensource tools to communicate, listen to and store music as well as record audio for posterity. My quest here is as much a personal one as it is a publicly debated one. Can we hear the difference between a standard mp3 a high quality mp3 and a lossless codec? If you think you can you are invited to participate in the following challenge. I propose that most people can’t hear the difference, I may be wrong but id like it proven to me, and rubbed in my face.

So our goal is to determine if normal everyday Joe’s can tell the difference between 3 different quality rips of the same track the tracks will be encoded as follows:

1. 160kbit/sec VBR
2. 320kbit/sec VBR
3. WAV or FLAC (a lossless rip TBD)

If you would like to participate the rules are simple. Head to our forum HERE Submit a song you would like to listen to. We will pick the 6 most popular songs. If we don’t get 6 I will just chose the ones I like the most so post some or your gonna be listening to show tunes from the 50’s.  I will then track down legit CD’s and make 3 rips. I will then burn them back on to a CD in no particular order. Once done you will then receive the CD and we will tall your votes to determine if most people can or cant tell the difference.

My iPhone has been acting a fool recently. For about the last 2 months I had been dropping calls, and the phone was locking up just acting like a total duchebag. I had placed a call to att who assured me much to my surprise that it was there fault. that 3g service in NYC was assy and that was causing all of my problems. They actually cut my phone bill to 30 dollars for like 2 months which was nice. Im actually suprised that it was that easy. Call complain they say turn 3G off and i say well i need it they say its free. I say ok. It was actually quite painless and after the horror stories i had heard about there customer service i was pleasantly surprised.

I took my phone to the apple store and they pretty much blamed it on att as well after running diagnostics they found nothing wrong with my phone and basically told me tough luck. SO for the last month i have been working with a shoddy ass connection on a phone i love, (when it works. I had stopped answering calls, i used text messages i basically would do anything to avoid answering the phone. Then my symptoms got worse. The phone started locking up all the time. I went back to the apple store and was actually helped in no time. I told the genius dude My phone was actin a fool he said well we can restore it but thats about it. i said whatever lets try it. We ran a restore and chatted about work. His job is great jeans and a t-shirt my job blows suit and tie. I basically agree.

After the restore I was dreading that the phone would magically work for him and the second i get out of the store it would be back to its old assy behavior. Well for once the moons aligned and great Zeus’s beard (or zombie jesus whoever you prefer) was shining on me. He tried to activate and the screen wouldn’t work. I walked out of there with a new phone. So to sum up the story here are the stats:

Phone calls to AT&T: 2
Visits to the Apple Store: 2

I just wanted to post this because well for once I dont actually have anything to complain about. Have a nice day, and see you all at the wing and beerfest!!!

I think that should have been the title of the last post. I drank so many margaritas while i was in mexico I’m sure you could suck a pina colada out of my left nut at least. This work week has been brought to you by fuck its lame here. So OJ’s Birthday is this Friday and I’m getting ready by chugging vodka and drinking my own urine. Urine is sterile you sick bastards, its not like im watching German shit porn like some of you. I cant wait to see you all… From the floor.

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