Fake Bicycle

I got my new lens in the middle of the week and only really got to play with it for about an hour the day I got it.  The Saturday after I got it was a nice day, so I geared up and went to do some exploring north of the River Market where I live.  There is this nice bicycle and walking trail along the Missouri River that I’ve been on a few times before, but never with my camera.  I spent a few hours down there, mostly in solitude, taking photographs of some interesting things I saw, and trying out a few new techniques with my new lens.

As I was walking around a bend in the trail, I heard a shout of pain, and then witnessed a goofy guy with his kids, playing on this statue of a bicycle.  The man had climbed on the fake bike and sat down with unsurprisingly painful results.  He quickly got off the bike, and though his kids were thoroughly entertained by his antics, he was visibly shaken by the experience.  I chuckled to myself, and made a mental note to come back and investigate this bike more thoroughly.  A few hours and many pictures later, I made my way back to this bicycle.  This time there was nobody playing on it, and I was able to get a couple pictures of it.  I found it interesting that they placed this very inviting plaything right next to some dangerous steps that led down to the river.  As you can see, these steps are so dangerous someone was compelled to install a sign warning of their hazardous nature!  Enough about these crazy steps; I think this is a pretty cool little statue to have on a bike path.

American Chopper

No, not that American Chopper; Paul Sr. and his size 12's have no place in this post.

I’ve been a little preoccupied and without a fully functioning computer the past few weeks, so my artism has taken a backseat to whatever else I’ve been doing with my time.  The following paragraph is my harrowing story of fixing my computer, despite HP’s best efforts to give me no advice, bad advice, and really just try to rip me off.  I offer this as a warning to anyone thinking about purchasing an HP branded computer.  Details on the photo (you know, since this is a photo website) are below.

I finally got my computer fixed this past weekend; well, I finally fixed it, to be exact.  I learned that HP is not a very friendly or helpful company when your computer is out of warranty, or if you purchase replacement parts from a company other than HP.  One of my hard drives began to fail a couple weeks ago so I called HP to see if my computer was still in warranty.  Unfortunately for me, but suspiciously fortunate for them, my warranty had expired less than a week before the drive began to fail.  I don’t actually believe that this was anything other than an unfortunate coincidence, but how convenient for HP that my computer falls apart right after the warranty ended.  The tech support guy I talked to at that time made sure that the software that detected the failure wasn’t providing a false diagnosis, and told me how much a replacement hard drive from HP would cost.  Amazingly, purchasing the Samsung replacement hard drive directly from HP would have cost me 3-5 times more than buying it somewhere else.  I expressed that concern to the tech guy and he said “exactly, it would be cheaper to buy it somewhere else.”  Now this is the type of honest help I would expect from someone.  I proceeded to buy a new hard drive from another retailer; two times the size and around 1/3 the cost of buying the smaller one from HP (not to mention got better reviews and is supposedly less prone to failure).  Eventually I got around to replacing the hard drive and ran into some errors when I was trying to use the HP recovery disks I had created.  I called up HP support once again, this time to find out why my recovery disk wasn’t working, and upon mentioning that I bought my new hard drive from another retailer, the tech guy (who was an American, as opposed to the friendly Indian people with bad fake American accents I’ve talked to in the past) became very abrasive and refused to help me at all.  I tried to reason with him, explaining it didn’t matter where I got my hard drive, and offering a hypothetical situation wherein I had purchased the drive from HP, but he refused to help.  He said that not only does he not have to help me with a hard drive purchased somewhere else (the hard drive wasn’t the issue here, it could have come from anywhere) because my computer was out of warranty he didn’t have to help me at all; then he tried to sell me another year of telephone support!  This guy is a good example of someone caring when they shouldn’t have.  I gave him a good piece of my mind, hung up, and called back and didn’t mention where I got the hard drive from.  This tech guy offered his help even though my computer was out of warranty; but gave me the worst bit of technical support I’ve heard in a long time.  He said that because the hard drive is not the one that came with the computer, the recovery disk won’t work and I’d need to get a new recovery disk from HP for the price of shipping.  I told him his information was wrong, and that I’d just make it work without any help from HP and bid him good day.  I had been pretty satisfied with HP’s support up until this problem arose; apparently though, I’m dead to them out of warranty.  I got on the internet and learned that HP (and apparently all major computer “manufacturers”) “tattoo” their motherboards to reduce piracy of the operating systems sold with the computer.  This annoyed me because I like the option to upgrade all components of my computer, but proved that my recovery disk should still work because I was using the original motherboard.  Eventually I realized that I was making a simple mistake when trying to install the new hard drive and got it all working, proving that I am smarter than HP.

None of this has really hindered my ability to post new photographs here, because I actually have a decent queue of photos to put up; I just haven’t been motivated to write anything, and I like to have some text to accompany my pictures.  As you can clearly see by the dissertation I wrote above, I have gotten some motivation to write.  I’ll continue by explaining that I took this photograph last month at the annual downtown Kansas City Airport air show (here’s one of my all time favorite photographs, which was taken at last year’s show).  I went with some friends, and actually went inside this year, rather than watching from the highway like I did last year, and I was pretty glad I did.  For one, I could hear some commentary on the show via the loudspeaker (even though most of it was terrible and cheesy), and I could get up close and personal with a bunch of planes and helicopters that were sitting around on display (photographic evidence of said display to come).  This CH-47 Chinook helicopter was pretty cool, and could maneuver surprisingly swiftly for its size.  As I learned from the loudspeaker, this was the first time a Chinook, paired with the American flag below it, has ever done this type of demonstration at an air show.  They also said it was so popular in Kansas City that they’re making it a permanent part of shows nationwide from now on, so that’s pretty cool if you’re into that sort of thing.

Anyway, technically, this is a pretty simple photograph.  I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to compose a picture like this, but I like it.  I like the negative space and the simplicity of it; I also like the perfectly clear blue sky behind it; I’d also like to think that somehow in my minor post-processing I’ve made it unique to me.  OK, enough of that, here’s the picture.

Another Nice Mess

While I was in Georgia we passed through a small town called Harlem.  For some reason that name sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn't figure out why until I saw the sign that explained that it was the birthplace of Oliver Hardy.  At this point I got very excited and began to explain to the woman I was traveling with that there was a Laurel and Hardy museum somewhere in town, and that if we passed it we would have no choice but to stop.  As we passed downtown and began to enter a primarily residential neighborhood my hope that we would see the museum began to fade.

Just past the main downtown area I finally saw a sign for the museum.  I quickly pulled into the parking lot, grabbed my camera, and ran around to the front of the building for some pictures.  I didn't get to go in because it was already closed for the day, but I'm glad I got to see it.

I remember the first time I ever saw a Laurel and Hardy movie.  It was at my Grandparents on my Mom's side's house and I was pretty young.  It was the classic Flying Deuces.  I don't think I knew exactly what it was at the time, but I knew it was funny.  I still remember the scene from my first viewing, where Laurel and Hardy are preparing to jump into a river which, unbeknownst to them, is the new home from an escaped shark.  Being very young, and
not knowing anything about how TV and scheduling worked, I kept wanting to watch it every time I went to their house for quite a while after that.

I watched this movie again a couple weekends ago, along with another classic of theirs, and I can say with the utmost confidence that Laurel and Hardy stand the test of time.  Their movies are as funny today as they were when they were made.  It’s a shame that most people these days have no idea who Laurel and Hardy are.  I’ll spare you all my rant about kids these days and how they don’t know about the classics like Lauren and Hardy, but suffice it to say, my future kids will watch a Laurel and Hardy movie or two, whether they want to or not.