David Fisher : What is Noise Blog

In January 2007 my father purchased me a Nikon D200. I don’t think he had ever purchased me a gift of such magnitude and I am very grateful for it. Let’s say it didn’t go over well with my mother.

Anyway, the D200 is my only digital camera among several film cameras (Holga, 2 Minolta 35mm bodies, and a Polaroid that I inherited which I have yet to use). I currently have the 18-200mm VR lens, and a 50mm 1.8 (both Nikkor). I also have the SB-600 Speedlight. It all carries easily in my Crumpler Customary Barge bag with my Macbook Pro. On my shortlist of additional purchase are the 30mm 1.4 sigma lens (although I’d rather have the 28mm Nikkor 1.4).

I absolutely love the D200 body. I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone as a killer body for almost any level of photographer. The quality isn’t that much below the D2xs (ok the new D3 stomps it, but it’s a $5,000 body alone) and you can find them for some great deals. It’s a super reliable camera and I have yet to have problems with a dirty sensor or any shutter issues. I’m well aware of the D300, but honestly the D200 does everything a camera is supposed to do imho and stuff like liveview is just fluff and promotes yet more poor composition. Some of the lesser cameras like the D40 seem to lack too many features and controls. They are great for someone just wanting a step above a point and shoot, but aren’t great as SLRs imho. Another great feature being that it’s a weather sealed body. I wouldn’t take it in a hurricane, but I’ve taken it skiing and in the rain/snow a bit with zero problems. The heavy duty metal body is also incredibly key. It takes a beating and for my hands feels great. The D200 unlike many of the other lower down bodies can use just about any lens that Nikon has ever made, which I seriously love.

Overall I couldn’t be happier. My qualms on the camera being that you can’t assign both function buttons to literally anything you want, Nikon wants too much money for the wifi adaptor (I’m getting an Eye-Fi instead), and the fact that at ISO3200 it gets insanely noisy.

I want to get a D3 at some point, but that is serious cash. It would be the ultimate night camera since it can shoot up to ISO25600 and not get any noisier than the D200 at ISO3200. That makes stupidly expensive and fast lenses completely unneeded. A versitile but slow lens like the 18-200 (3.5-5.6) would be amazing on the camera (well if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s a crop lens, which still works on the D3 but the image is cropped).

You can see my photos at http://flickr.com/photos/davefishernc

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UPDATE: AT&T’s Fraud Department has at least one sane person at it. I was frankly shocked. I got on and off the phone in less than 7 minutes. No menus, only minimal waiting. She actually pulled up and used prior conversation knowledge from my account. I didn’t have to reexplain everything. Apparently AT&T Reps normally require you starting from Genesis every time, as they generally lack the reading skills to read the account notes. This girl was good. Problem fixed. Like 100% fixed. I’m impressed

UPDATE 2:  Jim B from AT&T contacted me via comment on my blog. You can see the comment below.  It’s good to see that AT&T is monitoring these things. Overall, I am actually impressed with the experience to find that if you do have real problems that they can be fixed if you just find the right people at AT&T.

Original blog post:

I got an iPhone in November. Asides from a few minor gripes, I really like it. Well, that was until yesterday when I paid attention to my iPhone bill.

I’m going to be honest and say that I probably don’t go over my bills with enough detail. Rather, I just pay them generally. My only bills are rent (auto deducted), credit cards (auto deducted), and student loans (auto deducted from bank acct). Oh, and the iPhone bill. I actually work about 40 feet from an AT&T store so I just walk in there whenever I have time and pay my bill with my debit card. I don’t go over on my minutes (sometimes on texting due to Twitter), and I get the simplified bill. Nothing much to look at. I just pay it.

One thing I couldn’t figure out was why I was getting so many bills from AT&T. It seemed that I was getting two a month, but I just glanced at them, shredded them, and payed them in person. Maybe I just kept having deja-vu. I didn’t have to show the bill to pay, just gave them my information in the store. Then in January I got a really weird bill saying that my service had been shut off on Jan 5th for not paying my bill. I was like, umm, WTF?

So I went into an AT&T store and they said that it was fine. I wasn’t over on my bill and it must have just been things getting crossed in the mail. I was fine. Whatever, I did have a small balance on there, so I fully paid up and went on my way.

Then last night, I checked my mail and I had a bill of slightly more forceful nature. It made me say WTF loud enough that I read it all, several times. It said that I owed $250.44 to AT&T and that if it was not paid that it would be sent to collections and have a negative on my credit. Not cool. Not cool.

The screwed up thing about it that I noticed was that the number referenced was not my number!!! It was a 617 (Boston number) certainly, but the rest of the number wasn’t even close to mine. I couldn’t find another AT&T bill laying around to compare against, but I knew my number and that my service was fully paid and not at all disconnected. All of the rest of the information on the bill was the same.

They were closed at night when I tried to call them, so I waited until today and went straight to an AT&T store. The one that I always pay my bills at. They verified that it looked like there were two accounts with the same information on them. One was in “cancelled” status and the other was good to go. They said that sadly I had to talk to billing, and that they were unable to help there. This upsets me because I have to explain yet again to another person, and jump through another hoop. Why not empower your employees to fix things? Not that I know anything about management (except for that BS in Business Management, running a guitar pedal company, managing at a consulting firm, a recording studio and a theatre).

So I went to the betahouse to call AT&T. I called the number I had tried before. Guess what? They don’t work Sunday either! I poked around their phone system and found some “emergency after hours” number to call. It’s 866-801-3600 in case you need it yourself. I called it.

After waiting a minute or so on hold I get someone on the line. At first she’s pretty nice. I give her the “problematic” account number and information. She’s working on pulling it up and asks me what’s wrong. I tell her that I never signed up for the account that I just gave her the information for. She asked if it was a fraudulently created account. I said no, just that I think someone punched in something twice when signing me up for my phone. I give her my “actual” account information then and she pulls that up too. She’s sympathetic until right about… now.

She’s asked accusitively, “Why didn’t you call us sooner?” I told her that I had inquired about the problem at the AT&T store prior, and that I had given them my phone number and they said everything was fine. She didn’t like that and pushed me on it more. I told her that it’s as if you got two identical cable bills. You’d not notice that the account number was different. I don’t even know my iPhone’s number. I use Grand Central when I give out my number to 90% of people! She said that I should have noticed and seemed to indicate that this was my problem. WTF?

She said that this is the problem of the fraud department and that they will have to investigate it. However, they of course don’t work Sundays either. Thank you America for helping keep that Sabbath holy (it’s the wrong anyway you jackasses, as the Sabbath is SATURDAY!). Her name was Linnet Kalwaski or something like that. I got the number for the AT&T fraud department. It’s 877-844-5584. I was told to call tomorrow. I asked if there was a case number or call number to reference. She said no, but that she was putting notes in the account for me. She did say that they would, “See if they could get any of those charges or fees reversed“. That isn’t very comforting. I want to hear that the problem will be fixed. All of them should be reversed, and honestly, I’d like compensation on their part for creating this screwup and nearly reporting me to credit agencies!

So tomorrow I get to continue to waste my time in getting a problem fixed that isn’t mine. This is their fuckup, and their problem imho. I’ll followup tomorrow with the results. I’m going to record the rest of the phone calls for “quality assurance purposes” (hey it goes two ways!), and let them know of it on the phone that it could be used for such.

What should have happened: As a service to AT&T I will give them my educated opinion on what should have happened.

•  A system should have checked to see if there was a double billing problem. This isn’t a case of “two lines” on an account, but two separate accounts under one name/address/ssn. They should have flagged this.
• Before mailing customers letters that threaten poor marks to credit/collections they should have a very quick double checking of the accounts for accuracy and flags that the first thing would have thrown up.
• Lacking those two, when I go into a store, a representative should be more than happy to assist me. They would let me know that they would stay with me and help me resolve any issue prior to leaving the store and could escalate it to any management as needed, no matter how high. He saw the problem in the store, and should have been able to resolve it right there. That being said, he was a nice guy.
• Lacking those three, when I place a call to customer service I should be able to get through at all times. Always. I shouldn’t have to call an after hours number. If there’s such a number it should forward to that automatically.
• The person I speak to on the phone should fix the problem they observe as well, or escalate it immediately to a person that could. Don’t defer to another department.
• Don’t all but accuse the customer of this being their fault. This is clearly AT&T screwing up. They didn’t catch the problem until I let them know of it! Why should it be expected that I see the problem. They have people working in A/P for a reason!

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WhhhhaaaA?

Yes. I said it. And I normally (ok, never) talk about “celebrities” on here. I think that, while I honestly do wish the best for her, that Britney Spears will be making headlines around the globe by 2010 that she has died. Cause of death likely to be either a drunk driving accident, or an “accidental overdose” on some sorts of drug/alcohol combination.

Where the hell do I get off making such a statement? Well let’s be frank, her situation is spinning down quickly. She’s been been in rehab more times than Kurt Cobain was, and seems to keep just getting worse and doing more stupid things.

Her parents even think it! A quote from CNN

 Pop star Britney Spears is an “adult child in the throes of a mental health crisis” whose “life is presently at risk,” her parents said Wednesday night after the singer was released from a hospital.

When it happens, there will be odd press stories about the “pressures of young stardom”. Some news people will question if her parents, “pushed her too hard as a teen” and other horrid accusations. She’s been identified as potentially bipolar (manic depressive).

I’m all up for people having a good time, partying, and generally making fools of themselves so that we can all laugh at the silly things that they do on the evening news. However, at this rate she will end up dead. There’s no question in my mind of it. She needs to have some massive transformation in her life, or she won’t have one. It’s a sad thing, but likely true.

Let’s face it. Many young people have died from depression, too much excess, and poor lifestyles. We even have the “27 club” since many of the great artists died at 27. Ms. Spears is coming up on 27 if I’m not mistaken. Will she be the next member of the “27 club”? Some weeks however I have to wonder if  Lindsay Lohan is competing for who will overdose first.  I’d love to be completely wrong however and both of them to find some balance in their lives.

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My friend Julia Roy showed me iStockPhoto.com a few months ago and I simply love it. I think I had came across it once before, but not actually used it until I needed to search out ideas for a photo for my yet-released guitar pedal.

iStockPhoto allows you to browse a simply massive library of royalty free images and videos for you to use and then pay for them depending on the size/quality that you need. While I am not a shabby photographer myself imho and have some great equipment, when it’s 2am and you need a photo for your blog… this is the great and ethical option for getting a photo that you’re fully licensed to use. Sure you could always pull up flickr or Google Images, but honestly those aren’t your photos to reuse for commercial gain.

Simply put, if you ever need images online for a reasonable price, then iStockPhoto is the way to go. The prices are super reasonable (normally like a dollar or something for a mid-sized photo) and there’s amazing photos to choose from. The photo of the cocktail glass a few posts ago is from iStockPhoto too. Not shabby and well worth the dollar.

iStockPhoto.com is a pretty neat place to sell your photos if you do stock photography as well. Yea, it’s kinda kicking stock photography in the teeth and probably underpriced, but this is the information age and that’s what it’s coming to. You can no longer sell a “single” for 5.99, and you can’t sell an 8×10 stock photo of a cat for $50 anymore. Sorry. If you’re damn good, or fill niches you can make a bit of money on there.

Not to be overlooked as a killer photography site is Smugmug.  Smugmug is a digital photo gallery site that on it’s surface is pretty similar to Flickr. You can even get photos printed (then again so can you from Flickr). What sets it apart is that it allows their “pro” users to have their own gallery for sales. For the most part, you put up the photos, and they handle the rest. There’s a killer workflow for proofing which is very smart and saves you doing color corrections on 1,000 photos and then only finding that 2 of them are bought. It’s unlimited space (they use Amazon’s S3 servers for storage) for your photos. They handle most things including:

• Super high quality printing of just about any size
• Shipping (super fast)
• Credit card payments
• Social networking features
• And even allow customers to have things like t-shirts printed at fairly reasonable prices.
• Digital license management (allows different pricing for commercial and personal uses)

You get to set your own prices (and thus profit). Not shabby. I love using it. Check out my photos at tibbon.smugmug.com. I really need to redirect that to a real domain and update the photos, but I haven’t been trying to sell many in a while.

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Global warming is here. I have proof.

Anyone who has lived in Boston for more than one year knows that the worst month is often February.  It is typified by loads of snow, Nor-Easter after Nor-Easter, painful winds, and a feeling that you will never be warm again in your life.

You can often play fun games like, “Is that a car, or fire-hydrant?” because the snow is so deep. Parking lots often have 25 feet tall piles of snow that they have pushed up from plowing the parking lots; of which remnants often hang around until the end of May.

Cold for most people who lives many miles South of Boston is normally a feeling of temporary discomfort. Let’s face it, here it is often best described by nothing short of pain.

I’ll admit that Boston has been warmer as the records go, but January was just absurd! People were wearing t-shirts and shorts. This isn’t supposed to happen. Surely there have been record setting hot and cold days, but as the averages go this is just a warm winter. It was 66F as the high on January 8th!

On that day a funny thing happened (and no I’m not serious about it, but it was funny.) Some kid representing GreenPeace or some other similar foundation approached me on Newbury Street as I was wearing a t-shirt.

GreenPeace Kid: Want to help stop global warming?
Me: Well the inconvenient truth is that it’s pretty nice out today.
GPK: Uhh, well what about the rising sea levels?
Me (as I walk away): Ever been to Venice? Gondolas are sexy!

Ok. Maybe I’m going to planetary awareness hell for that, but these kids harassing people on the streets bothers me and it was fun. However it does highlight that it’s just too warm. In prior years, I’d never have thought up such retorts in winter months.

When I lived in Somerville in 2005-2006 I didn’t move my car for weeks due to the snow. There were trenches where the sidewalks where supposed to be. I felt like I was in Normandy in WW2 and digging through trenches in the snow. It was great for snowball fights.

Now however I sit here and it’s in the mid 30’s outside, raining hard, and I hear thunder from the storm. Thunder isn’t supposed to happen like this in the winter. There’s not a single bit of snow, nor ice on the ground. It’s simply not right.

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