Posts by Berck

I’m back to work; or rather, sitting around in a crew room hoping to work.

I checked my voicemail as the plane landed at O’Hare. Sure enough, there was a message waiting for me. I made a phone call. The voice on the other end told me he’d meet me between the Christmas trees next to the airplane inside the connector between Terminals 1 and 2.

Despite having no idea what the other looked like, we were able to identify each other easily. I handed a total stranger $350 cash in an airport terminal, and he gave me an envelope which I stuck in my pocket. It looked like an amateur drug deal, or at any rate something out of a Coen brothers’ film.

(Hat Tip to Rachel.)

I’m on ready reserve until 3am, which means I should be released by midnight. If I’m not, I shouldn’t have to do anything tomorrow, and I’ll probably go home, and come back on Friday. They’ll probably release me at midnight, though, at which point we’ll see if the keys in the envelope in my pocket are worth the $350 I paid for them. ($100 of that is a deposit I should get back.)

It’s far from the best deal on a crash pad, and it’s not as close as I’d like, but it’s the only one I was able to find on short notice. $50/night for hotels adds up quickly. I figure it’s just for a month– after that I should either have a line or be in training for the Dash.

Starts with this week, then continues. Green means I’m on reserve. Black is ready reserve. VAC is vacation, RSV is regular reserve. OFF, is well, off.

For the world in general. It’s a Nikon FM10. It’s a camera. That takes film. High quality, works with the zillion Nikkor lenses already out there, and does nothing automatically. It’s even more manual than my trusty F3. The fact that there is a market for a brand new, no-frills high quality film SLR makes me happy.

For years, Nikon has only made very, very expensive professional film cameras, and lower quality less expensive consumer cameras. All of them have tons of features, auto-focus, auto-exposure, etc. They haven’t made a camera like this in a long time. You’ll need to pick your shutter speed, your f-stop, and learn to use the center-weighted spot meter.

And, apparently, people are still buying it. I’ve got this worry that I’m not going to be able to afford paper or chemicals whenever I get around to building a darkroom again, and things like this give me hope.

I’ve also got hope that there are kids today who are apparently interested in learning something about photography and doing, well, real photography. Yes, strange things warm my heart.

(Admittedly, it’s been around since 1995, and I just now noticed it, but hey…)

Still think the bailout was a good idea?

I’d like a Bose Quiet Comfort 2 with the UFlyMike microphone, TSO’d standard 2-plug version (with earbuds).

That said, what I’d like that you might be able to actually afford are some good books. I’m not going to read pop fiction nonsense, and it’s hard to find genuinely good books. I have a lot of time to read these days, so I’m often looking for something.

Also, I could use a nice magnifying glass, the sort that you can just set on a book and don’t have to hold up would be great.