If the title describes you, read on. To some, a lot of these tips will feel very obvious and repetitive from any photography material you may have read. Most of this geared towards shooting people and the main audience I’m looking to here is actually the point-and-shoot-I-don’t-know-anything crowd. With one small exception, shutter speed, I’m not going to cover anything technical. Everything I write will be stated as fact. A person might read these said facts and say “That’s not true Ben, I’ve shot XYZ this way before and it was perfect, you’re wrong.” For this reason I want to clarify that I will be stating things as true that may not be but they’re about as factual as me saying “You will never win the lottery.” Finally, when I say a photo is “good” I mean in the sense of nice lighting, not blurry, quality shot. Do not think I mean the kind of good that implies it’s an unforgettable moment captured and cherished forever.
Shoot in Full Auto – No Flash
The flash on your Point and shoot camera is garbage. It looks like ass and any picture you take with it will always look like you took it with a flash. Does that mean I’m telling you to never try and take a good picture with your flash indoors? Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly it. Anyone can absolutely still take flash pictures but don’t expect anything, you’ll just be capturing a moment.
Did you buy a camera with a variety of modes that you don’t know what they do? Don’t use them even if you think you have an inkling for what they do. Sure, some shots might look different when you take them in that mode but if you don’t understand the benefits you’ll likely use it at the wrong times. When it comes to the technical part all the camera manufactures have spent countless dollars making their auto feature better and better. The camera’s auto setting is a much better photographer than you in terms of picking the right settings for a shot. Just trust in it.
It’s No Where Near as Bright as You Think
Since I’m telling you to never use a flash you need to be conscious of the light you’re using. When shooting indoors a lot of people think just because they can see relatively well that the light is fine and it’s not. More often than not it’s too dark and too yellow. If your flash is turned off your camera’s auto mode will likely start sacrificing its shutter speed (how fast it takes the picture) to work. The shutter speed is the number you see on the camera and it reads things like 1/200, 1/120, 1/80, 1″, etc. If you’re starting to see anything less than 1/80 (one 80th of a second) reading from your camera your pictures will likely come out blurry. Either find some more light (natural light works best) or give up, turn on the flash and just take pictures. The shutter speed is usually on any details section on a photo you took and vary’s from camera to camera. Don’t worry about any of the other numbers, they’re too confusing.
There’s nothing wrong with not taking good pictures, you do this all the time already. It’s simply not possible to always be taking amazing shots without tons of equipment. This is why you hire a photographer with a lot of gear and not some kid that has an SLR and one lens to do important events. Or maybe you do, but you shouldn’t.
The Right Light
The best time to take photos is outside early in the morning, when everyone is asleep (so maybe it’s not the best time) or in the late afternoon when the sun is not directly overhead. Cloudy days are also excellent though any sky captured in your photo might look depressing. Here’s some general tips for getting good light.
- If it’s the middle of the day find shade for your subject(s) to be in. Try to only photograph the shaded area and avoid letting the bright light bleed into your picture.
- Do not have your subject’s face in the sun. No one likes sun in their eyes and they will squint. It will always be way too bright on their face and look washed out and terrible anyway.
- Avoid having the brightest light right behind your subject. Your camera will put its settings to match the background light and your subject will come out dark. Typically this is a situation where a photographer would run a flash on the subjects to adjust for the light difference but since your flash is a giant pile of crap so we won’t be doing that.
Having the proper light will improve your pictures instantly. The lack of proper light is usually the number one reason your pictures suck so much.
Some Things Will Always Look Like What They Are
Taking a photo in a bar, will look like you took a photo in the bar. Ready for another self portrait in the mirror? Good for you. These photos will never be good, there is nothing you can do to fix this. Either stop doing it or never expect anything from it. Nearing three million times I’ve been asked to take a picture for a group of drunk girls at a bar and thanks to digital they instantly want to know “IS IT GOOD? HOW DID IT TURN OUT?” I know that secretly means “I’m a little fat, can you tell?” and as far as picture quality goes, there isn’t any. If all your pictures are of this variety then I’ve just solved the mystery for you of why my pictures look so much better than yours.
What’s In Your Portrait Picture?
Generally you want to be as zoomed onto your subject as you can be. If you’re taking a picture of two friends together leave just a little space on either side and above them. Fully body shots are often unappealing so avoid that. Regardless of your zoom though be mindful of their rest of the scene. The people in the background, is anyone wearing bright colors? Can you see them in the shot? They’re distracting and people will notice. What about trash cans? A guy picking his nose? Something more interesting than the people you’re shooting? Any time you have a subject you want to make sure there is nothing that will take away from them. It sounds a lot easier than it is and many people are oblivious to anything other than the people standing directly in front of them. To make this as simple as possible here’s some easy things to just flat out avoid in your backgrounds
- Other people or pets
- Vehicles
- Man made objects (trash cans, neon signs, parking meters)
Some man made objects are actually good backdrops though and it’s usually the bigger then better. Objects that are generally good backgrounds are:
- Walls, full wall. Not the entire house.
- Train Cars
- Fences
Ultimately the best background is just the sky. If you can take a picture that looks off into a rather blank horizon (e.g. a beach, a field) that is your best bet.
It’s Not All About the Gear
It’s true, your point and shoot will likely never take better pictures than my nice DSLR camera. I have thousands of dollars of equipment that let me do all sorts of tricks you can’t. I can shoot indoors and it looks nice, I own flashes that cost more than your entire camera and lenses that would make for a nice down payment for a new car. That doesn’t mean your camera is a load of junk though. In the right lighting almost any standard digital camera of today will take sharp, vivid, respectable pictures. Typically in a shoot I take the easy route, if I can do one or all of the things mentioned above I will. So If all goes well, your shots won’t look a hell of a lot different from mine to the untrained eye.
One Final Note
Megapixel count mean very little; don’t be put off just because yours is smaller than everyone else’s. For once it doesn’t matter and it’s really how you use it.
On a lot of occasions I’ve heard someone say “Yeah I really need to read more.” My response to this has never been much more than “ah okay” but that has now changed to “No you don’t.”
Regardless of the hundreds of scientific studies that most likely will say “WHAT?!” to this, reading a book does not make you smarter. Reading, as does many other things, stimulates the mind. If a person reads a lot well then they likely get better at reading. I guess by this argument you could say, “Well hah, reading does make you smarter shut up already”, but I’d say that doing anything over a prolonged period of time causes you to generally get better at that activity. Extensively playing a video game will make you better at that video game. Coupled with an increased chance of obesity it will probably also help you adapt faster to newer video games because you are subconsciously mastering the art of using the controller. Why should learning how to play video games better be looked upon in any lesser light than say… learning how to consume text faster so you can read the latest Harry Potter book quicker?
Just like anything it’s how we apply it. If you’re reading a plethora of fun fiction books to increase your reading ability to some day delve into the world of nonfiction in the hopes of learning great things, you could be on to something. But it seems as though many people feel that if they read three or four books a year they’re really contributing to their brain in some dramatic “I need to do this more often” way. If the feeling alone that you’re getting smarter because you’re reading is adequate enough then maybe you should just do it. I know a lot of people who think they’re brilliant though and it’s just not true.
Most people are probably wasting their time with books. Watch the movie version because you’re probably a slow reader anyway. Take the time you saved and go do something that will engage you differently. Everyone learns in a variety of ways and for many that self improvement does not come from reading a book. I’ll blame that one on the school system for having such a shitty way of immersing us in the world of books in the first place.
I love to read now. I like fiction, nonfiction, news articles which are really a toss up for what category they fall under… Just about anything other than dumb blog posts on the internet are worth my time to read. I consider myself lucky though that I was able to get to the point where I enjoy books. The problem I faced through school was it was their primary job that I learned to read, second job, understand that books are boring.
Growing up we were always assigned these mostly dry incredibly dull books. Okay, maybe they were just dull for me. The Teachers would tout them as incredible or great, something we really should experience. Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, whatever. Give me a break. I’m a young teen, I don’t want some deep thought provoking book I need stimulation. If this is what a great book is then I don’t want part of it. You want kids to grasp that books can relate to them or be more exciting? Have them read Twilight for required reading. The overreaching goal here should not be to have kids learn classics and understand quality literature but to have them learn that books can be good. As kids we are some what impressionable and being told “This is a good book” and then not liking it, to me meant “Well it probably is a good book, but I just don’t like to read because books are boring.”
Once a taste for reading is developed you can move on to less interesting, more thought provoking, literature without inducing extreme hatred for the activity.
Folks that have been sticking their faces in books since breast feeding and have never stopped since often to me have this elitist attitude that the stuff we read in those days was good, you just didn’t understand them. Not true, those people are just boring and can appreciate a dry book more than others. Anyone that believes that most teenagers should appreciate classic literature, or classic anything for that matter is a ignorant and probably quite a douche. Yes this is brilliant, take a culture that is trying to figure out its own identity and force them to do things their parents like. What a super idea it’s strange more people don’t like reading.
Enough digression into why we don’t read; none of that matters though because, again, reading does not make you smarter. Or how about this, the act of reading does not make you smarter than some other activity if that’s not how your mind has been conditioned to learn. If you’re not already an avid reader and your desire to become one revolves around the idea that you will some how become more worldly just forget it. Take a college class, watch the history channel, find some other outlet to enhance your skills. We learn a lot more from doing than we do from anything we’ll read anyway.
If I were the U.S. Government (or a lot of other governments for that matter) I can’t think of one company I’d rather have fall into financial downturn and be deemed “too big” to fail more than Google. Sure due to their infrastructure would cost billions in tax payer dollars to maintain but man, wouldn’t the data retrieved be worth it if you really wanted to spy on someone? There is no person alive and probably will never be that knows or has stored more information about me than Goooooooooogle >
I was tallying up the list of Google Services utilized by me and it’s scary:
Android, Blogger, Book Search, Browser Sync, Calendar, Checkout, Chrome, Code, Contacts, Docs, Froogle, Goggles, Groups, Images, Latitude, Listen, Mail, Maps, News, Notebook, Picasa, Profile, Reader, Talk, Voice, Web Search, Wave, YouTube… and I’ll probably start using Buzz once it works correctly. Can’t wait to make a Buzz about some annoying girl at the bar only to have her see it on Google maps when she checks her phone.
Google knows my bank account number and two of the credit cards I use. They know where I live and thanks to latitude they have a good idea of where I spend a majority of my time. They know where I work and what I do, they know who leaves me voice mails and what they’re saying to me. I don’t get calls through Google Voice so at least that’s one aspect of my life they’re not completely in the know on.
But those are obvious things, what about the little things Google knows? They probably know I can’t spell restaurant. The amount of times I’ve incorrectly typed it in there just to find the real spelling is staggering (205 times to be exact, thanks Google Search History). I spell the word so bad not even a built in spell check from any program knows what I’m talking about, but Google does. Yes! Thank you, I did mean “Restaurant” <3. Likely they’re aware I’m an egomaniac by the amount of times I’ve searched my own name both in web search and images followed by the obscene amount of times I’ve actually clicked the link for pages about me. I wonder if they know I get pissed because I’m not the first result for “Ben Eubank“. Thanks to Google’s new Navigation they also know I’m a chronic speeder on the road and should probably start marketing me Radar detectors in my search results.
Oh wait, hypothetical product #1230912 Google Profiler. This is where a government agency enters in all the information they have related to a crime and Google spits back a list of suspects based on everything it knows on them and why they’re relevant. Let’s say I’m a really dumb criminal. I have an Android phone with Google Latitude installed. I break into a random person’s house and brutally murder their whole family. Later I decide to search Google for “Good ways to dispose of dead tissue and bones.” Two days later when the bodies are discovered Detective Lennie Briscoe types in the address of the crime and a few other details and finds out Ben Eubank was prowlin’ that area and wants to learn how to dispose of people.
Actually that’s a really sweet idea maybe they’ll invent it some day. Unlike most people I am not paranoid about the government, or some other mega-entity, knowing just about everything there is to know about me; I’m also not a criminal. Not that only criminals like a private life, I’m sure millions of law abiding citizens do too, but Google understands me and makes my web experience much more pleasurable. There’s no way it could do this without me telling it all my secrets.
At first my thinking was “I Like to Write” but that’s not entirely true. More than anything I just like typing fast. It has a rhythmic relaxing sensation. If you can’t type fast you wouldn’t understand. The best is when the sentences and words flow from left to right down the keyboard, that’s my favorite. Writing by hand is horrible. For starters my handwriting is atrocious. I have absolutely no consistency for when I use capital letters or not. a LOt of MY SENtencES wIll lOOK liKe THIS, except harder to read. On top of it being bad, I’m slow. In the time I takes me to write two sentences most people have finished a paragraph.
Once I thought it would be important to up my game in the penmanship field but as technology progresses I’ve decided to hone my skills elsewhere. At this point it almost feels like my hobby of drinking beer really fast has about as much use as nice handwriting. Pretty soon we’ll all be typing on the poorly named iPad for everything anyway right?
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Last night I was roaming around the internet looking for a new book to read. I’ve been busting through a few lately and wanted something that might take me a bit longer. So I found Infinite Jest and downloaded from the Sony eReader store, or whatever they’re calling it these days, only to find it was corrupted.
Downloading a messed up book is likely the best thing that has ever happened to me in the digital book world. Determined to read the damn thing I scoured the internet for a solution to my problem. I came across someone else who also bought my book in ePub format from Sony back in December and said something along the lines of “They said they would email me back when it was fixed but they never did so I just converted it and now it works.”
The process to convert a book sounded confusing because it was late at night and I just wanted to read. I tried about 300 (5) different ways to get the file on my reader without success and avoiding this conversion process. Then I contacted Sony via 24/7 Live Chat where I was connected to “Timothi” who was very wise and said “I recommend you try downloading the book again.”
Annoyed I decided to break down and do this conversion thing… download python… save these scripts, run file, insert keys… what… thefuck am I doing? I claim to be a developer by day but even this is a bit confusing yet some how some book geek on a message board and three hundred thank you comments lead me to believe it must be easy. It actually is too, as long as I don’t try to figure out anything myself and do exactly as the instructions say I’m golden and the book has been converted.
What does converted mean? It means I was able to strip off the Adobe DRM and convert the book to any eReader format I want. Now my books 33 purchased digital books can be used on any device. Hurray for freedom. Unfortunately I still think Sony makes the best readers at this point in time even if their store is crap, their support is outsourced and their software was developed by high school students for an intro to programming project.
Pretty sure I’ve never heard someone say “Let me give you a little bit of free advice” followed by something that didn’t irritate me. A lot of folks like free things. I saw the “NO WE WILL NOT PAY $3.99 A MONTH TO USE FACEBOOK” group (which by the way was just a rumor) with over one million people in it, so there’s gotta be at least one million that like Facebook to be free. It could be argued that certain free sites, a majority of them, are not free, they’re ad supported. I suppose this is true, if I clicked on those ads.
When advertising becomes overlooked noise or just blocked and ignored forever it generates sites no money. Whoa, did I just blow your mind? I didn’t think so. Why is it expected that everything on the internet be free? What happens if Facebook did start charging because they needed money… you wouldn’t pay? You wouldn’t pay for a service that kept you in touch with your friends, stored photos, videos, helped you network and sell things? Would you go to MySpace? How come you didn’t have an account there previously? oh yeah because it’s horrible. Sorry for a bunch of questions I don’t expect anyone to answer but I really see no reason outside of ad revenue why such a site should be free. If something is enjoyed you should be excited they start charging a very nominal fee so they can improve it and you can enjoy it more.
Where it kills me the most is news. Free news sucks. It’s horrible and the internet is just a giant grounds for plagiarism of crappy article after crappy article. Recently with my Owl City fiasco (still waiting on my check Universal Republic what’s taking so long?) I was emailed by one site who decided to make a post about Owl City using my work because they “are not fans.” After that there was a few days I spent showing people the article about myself on the internet because I like attention. Having never saved the link I would simply type “Ben Eubank Owl City” into google and BAM first result. Then after two or three days I started to notice there was more than one result, there was more than one article. It would all be rather exciting if the entire internet was getting up in arms and going to my defense but they weren’t. They were simply ripping off the original author either completely or mostly and adding a little of their own twist to the text. So desperate to find anything to post to their site and too lazy to actually write it themselves.
I want big media to stick around. I’m positive I don’t want to read poorly written articles/blogs by someone who lived by a major event or analysis of what some unintelligent know-it-all thought about the president’s latest stance on an issue. Of course the main news providers have flaws, namely producing extreme biased reporting at times, but at least they’re usually well written and fact checked. What I mean is you don’t go to CNN and pick out four spelling mistakes and a ton of poor grammar. You’re not questioning whether the Fox News Reporter actually interviewed the person they’ve claimed to. While it might seem a little biased it doesn’t read like a fourteen year old high school student writing a paper trying to prove his/her point. I hope CNN stops giving away news for free and the other big guys follow suit. Sure, some douche bag will ultimately retell everything they’ve read there but like all most other free news it will either suck or be illegally plagiarized from the original author.
Free information gets pretty nasty in the way of product reviews. I don’t really have an answer to how to solve this problem, or any other issue I seem to mostly rant about, but this one gets me the worst. Free reviews on products have so many bad things going for them. They get used by other people as their own review, they’re usually heavily biased towards the product in one way or another, often have never used the product they’re comparing it to or the product itself, full of bad information, and my favorite is bad reviews that get their information from other shitty misinformed rumors/reviews. It kills me when I’m out trying to find information for a piece of software or a new book only to realize half way through some lengthy review that the person probably has never used the product. Maybe a disclaimer on all reviews will help “I have never used this product but I still feel the need to review it for you with no more knowledge than you have.” Amazon must have found this annoying too as they attempt to make things better putting a “Amazon Verified Purchase” next to names of reviewers who they can say bought the product they’re reviewing. Of course that only solves the “I’m reviewing something I’ve never used” problem and not the plethora of others. It would be awesome if “Well just don’t read the reviews if they suck” was a good alternative. Unfortunately in order to know something sucks you generally have to read it to find out.
The US cell phone industry reminds me a lot of free information. Cell providers in America give away free phones, or considerable discounts on them. Due to this subsidy on phones they require people to have contracts, have higher rates than other parts of the world and annoy people. People expect the discounted phone, if you don’t give it to them… they’ll get it somewhere else. If one cell company said “No contract required but you provide the phone” then you go looking for unlocked phone prices only to find they’re $300-$600 you would say “f-u cell company X I’ll just use Y because they have a free phone! BOOYAH BITCHES” then you’d probably complain in about a year and a half how you’re in contract and can’t “upgrade” yet etc, etc, etc. It’s possible you’re not seeing the parallel here I see with free stuff on the net. But it’s like this… if CNN starts charging, you’ll like go read another news site, and another, and another because for whatever reason you don’t feel it’s justified for a site to charge for news. Facebook charges? go to myspace. Everything could be better but we’ve found ourselves in a situation where unless every company worthwhile over night decided to change it would be an incredibly ballsy (and highly unprofitable) thing for anyone to start charging. If AT&T started saying the only way you could get an iPhone was to pay $500 but you wouldn’t need a contract there would be a lot less iPhones and probably a lot less subscribers as they went over to Verizon who saw that as a great opportunity to save money up front.
Not everyone should charge, small media that is worthless should continue to be free or ad driven (by the way I think news and print media sites should charge and have ads). When they are big enough boys to have real journalism/good products and people deem it worthy then charge. What’s the point when you start charging? I don’t know, I guess when you can.
In my perfect world where the internet stops being completely free and good sites begin to charge to support their profit rather than blowing up in some Web 2.0 Adword Bubble later on I can see a few different ways to charge. Monthly subscriptions are an easy win for some sites and are already done today. $3.99 for all you can Facebook or $1.99 and you can’t upload more than 50 pictures a month of you at some bar drinking with your friends. Maybe articles on CNN are $.10 a piece. My life is chaotic at times and I might not want to pay $9.99 a month to a news site that I might visit heavily at one point and never for a month. 10 articles for $1 seems fair, as long as the journalism is there… and I think that’s what I’m paying for. Maybe pay4news will slowly kill the nothing news. When no one is paying to read about Paris Hilton’s Dog’s haircut maybe you won’t post an article to your site about it.
It seems like I should spend more time going over what I’ve written and grammar check or remove all the times I’ve repeated and over used words after having written this. But I’m not making money from my site so I don’t have time nor do I care.
I feel like a genius, great ideas keep coming to me too fast to even write a single one down. I have three right now.
Green Corn
As I was laying around hating myself for deciding to get my money’s worth at all you can drink 10-2 saturday night the topic of corn came up. I view myself as a humanitarian, always looking to better the world for the sake of all of the world. Corn as you probably know is a food. Arguably it’s not a very healthy food, which is good, because that’s why this invention works. Humans have a hard time digesting this golden food product so when you eat it… it comes back. Regardless of health related issues people will still eat it. I’ve decided we should make the best of it by recycling the corn.
Using my patent pending hypothetical technology known as Kernel Recognition Technology (KRT) my invention will sift through human waste searching for corn. The CornCleaner will attach to any drain line of a house and collect good corn for reuse. The corn will be stored in a special Rubber Maid container that will email you when your corn is 80% full and ready to be harvested. I think as technology progresses SMS reminders and additions to your google calendar telling you to change the corn holder may also be available. Through special grants and government funding I’d hope to make this invention free for anyone.
Increased Donation Dollars by Eliminating Awareness
Last week my cellphone bill was ready so I popped onto the Verizon Wireless site to pay it. On the first page was something I just can’t get away from seeing. “Text [somenumber] to send $10 to Haiti.” Then that’s when the light bulbs started going off. My thought is that the point of fund raising is not to annoy people, but to raise money. The problem here is even if I give all the money I can to support the cause I’m still subjected to daily reminders that I need to be donating money. It’s not really fair and I think there’s a better way.
Each charity should have a Do Not Solicit limit and maybe levels leading up to it. For example, you decide you’ll donate $30 to Haiti. Next Ads for Haiti do not appear on your phone’s web site or on channels you only sometimes watch. $100 might get you most sites, your cable channels and maybe stop you from having to run a 5K, $200 and you never have to hear about Haiti donations again. This girl at work argued with me that my idea might lower donation dollars but I don’t think so. I think the people who are going to donate big bucks will already do that anyway and the people like me who don’t really donate will donate to save our sanity.
Some charity organizations should have time limits though. For example if you pay $200 to an AIDS or Cancer organization your tribute only lasts for X amount of time. Haiti will be rebuilt but Diabetes isn’t cured yet. Charity will need to be categorized. There’s no way I can donate to every cause, and there might even be some I don’t believe in. A few weeks ago during Holmes on Homes Sarah McLachlan hosted a commercial about saving poor hungry, cats. Yes I know some of you are like “YES CATS ARE MISTREATED EVERY DAY” but honestly there are so many other things I’d want to give my money to before cats. For this reason a final donation category should be created called “OPT OUT”.
After you’ve paid X dollars to four different classifications of charity you pay an additional larger sum to OPT OUT to remove the remainder of ads for your life for one calendar year. OO will take its money and redistribute it amongst all the remaining legitimate charities by % of donations they usually receive. So if it shows American Red Cross receives 50% of all American dollar donations per year they get 50% of OO money. This will stop people for starting random charities and gaining money through the program.
New Facebook Filters
There’s a serial flaw in the way Facebook does privacy. Either someone can see a certain feature or they can’t. I can block you from seeing all my wall posts or you can see them. I think a better approach would be able to block people based on words that appear in the posts. Someone decides to say all sorts of naughty words all over my wall, well now I can set that as a filter and none of my coworkers can see that. I don’t want to block them from seeing my entire wall; that doesn’t seem fair.
I just don’t want want to end up like my coworker Earl who constantly has his status updates say crude and unusual things. I think this would also be great for all of you like me who have family on their FaceBook. Hi Mom look at my awesome wallpost about my friends talking about me getting wasted and pissing off the roof of their condo!
T minus I don’t know how many days because I don’t want to count but… It has been decided that January 29th, 2009 will be random trip #2 for James and I.
It’s been a learning experience and we’re making some changes to the new trip:
- More people are allowed, sorta, I’ll need to speak more to that.
- Challenges will be made by our friends and hosted online. You will be the judge of your own challenge.
- Tickets will be purchased the night before so that we can actually get a flight. There was a no-go scare the first time. We won’t tell anyone where we’re going till we get there.
- Possibly an addition to thrift store shopping. I think it’s time we had in an accessory with the clothes. New shoes? Some fancy shades? A killer hat? Who knows… we’ll figure that out later.
Other than that it’s the same idea as last time. The city is still random based on price. Ban list now includes Atlanta with Vegas and James had asked for Jersey to be banned as well. No states connected to Illinois and no Michigan. It’s basically connected.
So more people can come? Well… we thought it would be fun to take a team approach to this. Each team will somewhat have a different experience for the trip. We’ll fly to the same place, on the same plane, we might even stay in the same hotel but that’s about it. Each team is on their own to complete tasks between themselves and their teammate. We won’t discuss where we’re going to go to the other teams; though we could end up at the same place. We’re not here to hold your hand and make sure you have fun. If you’re doing the challenges that should be enough to keep you busy and having a good time.
Here’s the deal. The most fun part of this trip is meeting people. We thought having a group would make this difficult. That’s why we’ve decided to split teams apart if we go out. We may end up at the same place sometimes but it will never be planned. It’s also thought that knowing someone else is out there competing against you in challenges in an unknown location might make you try harder. It also might help the locals be more willing to help out.
If we end up with teams then we’ll create challenges between the teams. First thing to that comes to mind is “Best Dressed Team” or something to that effect.
Just to get an idea of price, we spent about $500 each last time we went out. I actually spent more like $450 but James spent a bit more buying horrible tequila shots. I’d say expect to spend $450-$600 round trip with lodging, drinks, transit, clothes, whatever. If you’re concerned about money but still want to do the trip open a credit card now and file bankruptcy when we return. That’s the best advice I can give you.
I should be writing about Day 2 in Atlanta right now but that’s very long, time consuming, and I just feel the need to rant about Facebook a little.
For the most part Facebook isn’t so bad. I get obliterated, people take pictures of me, it goes on my page for all my coworkers to see. It’s a pretty good system. It’s their “features” they keep tacking on that I just don’t get.
Who is Joe Kiernan?! I have no idea. I’ve clicked the x next to his name nearly 300 times to tell Facebook I have no interest in being his friend. I click on his name out of curiosity and it doesn’t even show how we would know each other. Stop suggesting this person, any person, be my friend. If I wanted to be friends with them I would have found them.
Oh and this new lovely idea to try and get me to talk to more people on my friend’s list. I don’t want to write on my step sister’s wall. When I do, let me do it on my own time. I’ve never felt like Facebook was better because someone wrote on my wall. Most of the things written on my wall suck. Not pictured here is when Facebook decides to let me know that three of my friends joined the “I like peanut butter” group and that maybe I should do that too. If all your friends are deciding to jump off that cliff, FB would like you to know that maybe you should too.
What is the point of the Live Feed vs. News Feed? The News Feed just looks like old shit I could get if I scrolled down the page some. It also turns itself on all the time. I hate when I’ve read some of the feed items only to discover this is friend garbage from yesterday at noon. I do appreciate you letting me block people from my feed though. Tracy’s daughter’s updates are pretty bad; blocking those has improved my life greatly. I can say this because she’ll never read this even though it will auto publish to my Facebook page. I’ve discovered that about notes, no one reads them.
Why oh why are people allowed to put up garbage spam/scam ads? “Camera Testers Wanted.” This is the worst of the worst from the internet in my opinion. This benefits nobody. The companies they collect ad revenue from because you completed 400 different offers are no better off. You had no intention of using their services; only signing up and quitting before the free trial is up. Perhaps if a detailed list wasn’t kept you might forget to cancel the free membership to Travel Weekly and they would score that way but if you’re the kind of person willing to sign up for all these offers you’re probably way too cheap to let a mistake like that happen. I’m just waiting for the Ad on the side that speaks to a prince needing help to transfer money around or a saucy single in Wheeling looking to have all sorts of dirty things done to her.
There’s the magic that is Facebook Chat. Instead of using existing chat protocols that are extensible and used widely by other people Facebook decides “fuck all you” and puts out Facebook Chat. This feature allows you to do a few things:
- Send your friend the same message 4-5 times even though you only pressed enter once
- Watch the “Sending…” text on your screen after your message has sent and the person is replying back to you
- Type a bunch of things then be told the person is no longer online
So here’s some suggestions for features Facebook. I’ve thought of a few features that you didn’t put in there that I want.
- Let me chose groups of people I don’t want to talk to for my Facebook Chat. Then I can always be online and they will never get the chance to say hi.
- When I click “X” on anything, anywhere, that means I don’t want to see it. That’s right, I don’t want to be friends with Joe. So remember that and stop asking.
- Design a USB Breathalyzer add-on. Don’t let me on the site after .15 BAC.
- Let me know who deletes me from their Facebook. For example if Tracy’s daughter ever reads this I don’t want to have to hunt around to figure out she deleted me. It should be in my Live News Feed “Ben and Alexis are no longer friends” Obviously people defriend me enough for this to be an issue.
- Give me the option for reminders on your events. I always forget.
- Don’t tell people when it’s my birthday. It’s not that I want to remove the birthday completely from the site; it’s fine if you read my page and know my birthday… but I don’t want to get a happy birthday from you just because facebook let you know it’s that special time of the year. Also this takes my years of storing people’s birthdays and ruins it. I know a lot of birthdays but now people just think it’s because I have you on my friend’s list.
- Instead of telling me that it’s been awhile since I wrote on my step sister’s wall why not give me a list of single females who have been looking through a lot of my pictures and maybe I should try and holler at? You can even suggest ones that I’m not friends with yet. That would be a good friend suggestion. I’d prefer if they were hot but I can wait for the v2.0 release.
- I don’t want to poke people. I do want to send automated shit talking to anyone I’m playing Fantasy Football with.
I’m not entirely sure I’ll finish this in one sitting. But let’s give it a shot. I’ll have to make grammatical edits later.
Friday October 6th, 2009 8:15 AM it begins…
Well only somewhat. I woke at 8:15 to start looking for the ticket with James on the adventure weekend we planned out the month prior at Dick’s River Road House. Checking my phone I find out ol’ Jimmy Z has been up since the crack of dawn and texted me at 6:36 to say he found tickets to Cleavland, OH with car rental and hotel for some ridiculous price, like $221 or so. He hasn’t bought them yet.
I’m not thrilled by the idea of Cleavland but I do start singing the Drew Carry Show theme in my head as I dial up James so we can get to work on buying our tickets to Ohio. And here’s our first lesson learned: BUY THURSDAY NIGHT. I suppose you could buy Friday but who the hell wants to get up at 6AM? Besides James. Cleavland was sold out, Dallas, New York, Minneapolis, Cincinnati… the list was growing of places we wouldn’t be visiting today.
8:50 rolls along and the list of sold out destinations is just growing and the frustration of bad travel sites is starting to show on both our ends. It seems like 90% of travel web sites all do the exact same thing and are developed by the exact same person. This could be why they all suck exactly the same. You might think that you’ve had great luck in the past with Expedia, Hotwire, Travelocity, Priceline, Kayak, Orbitz, etc but when is the last time you went to that site and tried to find a destination to anywhere, they’re not friendly with that. Going straight to the airline site and using their Last Minute Deals section would be the ticket – not so much.
Bing wins. Surprisingly Microsoft’s new search engine, which claims to leverage Orbitz, was the answer to our prayers. No it would not help us find that last minute destination, we just ended up trying all the cheapest places in order on Bing until we found a place that we could still get tickets to. I’m still a little baffled why Microsoft’s site had different results than Orbitz but I just don’t care anymore and hope to never go through this process again. By 9:30 James had purchased us two tickets on Delta for $226.20 each to leave at 7:14PM out of Chicago O’Hare. We’ve already broken one rule. The ticket is over our $200 limit. I guess it’s true that rules were made to be broken; because this wasn’t the last.
Fast forward through a day of work which I don’t really even remember because I just wanted to get out of town and it’s about 4:45 and James is over. We cracked open a few Cold Activated cans and searched for some things to do in Atlanta. I’ll just go ahead and admit now, I’m a little nervous about this flying by the seat of our pants thing. That’s why I’ll drink two more beers in the next few minutes before we catch our ride from Diane to O’Hare.
We hop in James’s car around 5:30 and head over to Diane’s. She’s already outside waiting when we pull up so maybe she’s more excited than us. 
O’Hare is only about a 20 minute drive from her apartment; of course this is Friday so it ends up being closer to an hour; not really a big deal when you have no luggage to speak of anyway. Side note: Diane really likes rap.
We go the self check-in route and the airport is pretty much dead. While going through security though I realize I forgot my pocket knife on my key chain so that’s thrown away and lost forever. Or TSA kept it – If 
I was TSA I’d be keeping all the free knickknacks that came my way.
Once when crossing the Canadian border the patrol officer took our Bananas but no other fruits. I’ve always believed it was because he was hungry and like me, loves bananas.
I pick up a cup of black coffee and a cheese Danish from the Starbucks on the way to the terminal. I gotta say this was probably the worst idea I made that night. Or maybe it was when I hadn’t even drank my coffee and was already buying a cheese burger and Pepsi outside our terminal at Gold Coast Dogs. Interestingly James ordered a double cheese burger and had no drink with it. Who the hell eats a meal without anything to drink? That’s stupid and I’m embarrassed to know him sometimes.
It’s final boarding call so we go in the Gate just so we can stand in a line outside the plane. It’s hot waiting there, James compares it to the tropical temperatures that blasted through Diane’s car.
I think this is hotter; but that’s not really what’s on my mind. Beer, Pepsi and Coffee, Danish and a side of cheese burger begin to create a tornado of pure Hell inside my stomach. Queue the bitching and moaning about my stomach for the next three hours starting…. now.
Posting an update to the site from my phone
When we get inside the plane and get to our seats it’s great. A guy who was on the plane before us knew how great they were but moved when he saw us coming. I look threatening, what can I say. The exit row is basically how every plane row should be and isn’t. Though my seating ticket claims I’ll be sitting in the middle for this flight no one else comes and I don’t have to play the armrest game with anyone.
So we blast off into the night sky. James and I start the beginnings of our list. Essentially it’s a city wide scavenger hunt which proves to be more difficult than it looks. The drink cart passes by and I’ve already been whining about my stomach for at least 45 minutes. I figure some pretzels and ginger ale will ease my pain, oh and James and I will both have a Martini please. The Martini option seemed like the best alcohol percentage per dollar we could find, and we weren’t let down. Before we could even suck down the drinks the captain is on the radio telling the flight attendants to prepare for our final destination. I hoped slamming my drink would induce some sort of buzzed state where my stomach could be ignored, it doesn’t.
After we arrive we’re not really 100% sure where we’re going. I guess the baggage area is as good as any to start so we head over there. On the way there’s some strange African exhibit that I ponder the point of.
Atlanta also has people movers in their airport, but unlike O’Hare they lack the 80′s lighting over head. At the end of our brief tour through Africa I find a picture of elephants and shoot a shot of it over to Dana Too from my cellphone because she loves elephants. She doesn’t respond.
Originally our plan is to rent a car and go find a place to stay. James had found this hotel that would be $67+tax a night in downtown Atlanta. I throw the idea out that maybe we could find a hotel near the airport with a shuttle and have the shuttle driver take us to a bar to start our night. The new hotel might cost more but after car rental fees and what not it will be a wash. Plus drinking and driving is against the law so we’d end up having to probably cab everything anyway; there’s better ways to complete number 2: Shake a Police Officer’s Hand.
I haven’t totally convinced James that calling a Hilton is a good idea so we stop in at Hertz to see what kind of car we can get. We’re in luck! If we want to rent they have a sweet Minivan or Truck. It will be a cold day in Hell before I’m driving Atlanta in a family minivan and the truck is expensive. We’re also informed that our coupon for one free weekend day does not apply at the Airport Hertz. Of course not, just like there’s no dollar menu at the airport McDonald’s.
The women at the counter agree we should just stay near the airport for the night and get over there around ten the next day if we want to get our car. We never go back. This however is enough to convince James that we should go find a shuttle. Walking towards the door we stop at a phone area with hotel names and numbers everywhere and decide it’s too confusing to look at but aren’t able to walk away fast enough before some Asian guy asks us to help speak Spanish to a seemingly very frustrated Hispanic gentleman. ¡Lo Siento, No Comprende Español Mi Amigo!
Outside the door ol’ Jimbo takes my phone and calls up Hilton. $99 Bucks a night. That sounds good to us. Unfortunately after hearing the rate he stopped listening and we didn’t catch where to meet the shuttle. After a bit he calls back and it’s discovered that the shuttle will be somewhere around the area 4-9; which good for us we happen to be right there. It’s not coming though, other shuttles keep passing by but not the one we want. Getting bored waiting we start to wonder around the shuttle area and I notice a hand scanner sitting all by itself. The Klepto challenge is calling and I’m praying our shuttle will just pull up some I can steal that scanner and win without a doubt. James on the other hand finds the airport wheelchair to be more interesting and continues to talk about for at least five more minutes about how great it would be to steal a wheelchair over my hand scanner. Some guy eventually asked us what we were looking for and what do you know we’re in the wrong shuttle area.
Heading towards the correct shuttle area we find a Hilton shuttle trying to pull into the parking area. He’s stopped so I walk up to the door and ask if he goes to the Hilton we’re trying to get to. He does and we get inside. Upon entering we say “Hi” to the shuttle driver and some old man who I think was just hanging out. Everyone in the shuttle is checking out the girls outside waiting for other shuttles and we wait to get out of the airport. The old man gives us some tips on where to go out and grab a drink and the shuttle driver backs him up on the recommendation. Good news, it’s right down the street from our hotel too.
And So The Night Begins…
That’s right. All that up there was just to get you to tonight.
We cruise up to the hotel, thank the driver, and hop out and into the lobby. No reservations no problem. We score a room on the first floor for $89. The room is nice! Some how James has never seen a keyboard in a hotel room next to the TV before so I think he attributes this with being nice. The ceilings are high and James makes girl moaning sounds to hear the echo off the walls. My stomach still hurts by the way. Waaaaah why don’t I cry about it some more.
We grab our room keys, the list of tasks and write down the room number then head out. We’re fully prepared to get annihilated. Our first destination by recommendation of old man and shuttle D? It’s called Joe’s and Joe’s sucks. Really, fuck Joe’s. Walking over we pass a fountain and I say we should think about swimming in that later if we’re drunk enough. James isn’t interested in the fountain he just won’t shut up about the fact that it’s sorta warm in Atlanta and that means there could be snakes outside.
Joe's on Sullivan - 2144 Sullivan Rd, Atlanta, GA - (404) 844-5000
Again, Joe’s sucks; far more than this crappy picture James took. What you can’t see here is the complete lack of cars. It’s about 11PM and we were told this place would be hoppin’! What you can’t smell is the stench that encompasses the bar area. As we enter James yells “DIBS!” and proceeds to complete task number 3: Grab a Handful Of Mints. I deny him this task completion because I said we couldn’t do tasks without our clothes that we haven’t purchased yet. It also wasn’t photographed. Later we decide to break this rule but as it stands James never got credit for completing a task.
We sit at the mostly empty bar in the middle of the establishment. We go over the list some more and grab a few beers. I start whining about my stomach again and blaming it for my inability to properly drink a beer to completion. The beer here is horrible, their lines are junk. This night is going to be a huge bust. Night 1 in Atlanta; Fail. Never the less we order one more beer and I find a new Bar on my google maps.
While we are sitting there drinking we start to listen in on the other two business guys sitting to the left of us at the other side of the bar. One was from Colorado, the other from Texas. Protip: When in Atlanta and your bartender is a big black man do not proceed to tell him that “they all look the same.” While you’re busy taking notes you also might want to refrain from insinuating that the two girls who just walked up to the bar are hookers. Though they didn’t seem too insulted by this comment from Mr. Texas so maybe they were after all.
We leave Joe’s on foot again in search of the new bar that is just right up the street from the hotel. James again starts talking about snakes. Sante Fe Bar and Grill does not exist. All is not lost though… while standing around trying to figure out what to do now that our bar is gone we decide to make our first video.I’m going to jump over a bush because it looks hard and I think maybe the beers are kicking in a bit.
But of course I’m too big of a pussy to Jump the Bush. Also to make things more clear, there was a guy watching me from the parking lot and that’s who I was telling “I’m just going to jump this bush real quick” to which I think he replied “I don’t care.”
We’re not really sure where we’re going now but we decide to walk back to our hotel. “I don’t care” guy is standing outside, looks like he’s the porter for the valet service. We talk to him for a few, he doesn’t know where Santa Fe Bar and Grill is either so obviously this is a place of fiction and fairy dust. I can’t remember where he told us to go or do but we didn’t listen because we ended up back at our hotel looking to see how the bar there was. There’s nothing there, nobody. It’s a ghost town. We walk back outside again and I make a comment about swimming in the fountain once more. It’s still too early for that. No change of clothes and I don’t want to get kicked out of the Hilton just yet. James suggests we check out the Marriott across the street.
There’s a lot of cars in the parking lot, and I sort of have to pee for about the 100th time of the night. Apparently it’s in the rules that I’m not allowed to pee in public places so I’m told to hold it until we get inside. We walk into the lobby and I pretend like I have to go to the ATM so that we can scope the place out without the front desk being too suspicious about random dudes wondering their hotel at 12:30 AM. No luck we head back towards the door but spot a sign on the way out. AHA! There is a bar in this hotel! We go around the corner and walk in. There’s people we sit down and I order two beers to double fist James orders one. This place is a little better than Joe’s and a conversation between ourselves starts up about the old name of the United Center but I don’t know why we even bother to have this conversation since neither of us know the real answer. Well James thinks he does but he’s wrong.
We’ve been at this bar for about 30 minutes or so and last call came and went. While we’re sitting there James says we should steal the cook’s hat. This is where I’m a little fuzzy on the details. Here’s an outline of what I remember:
- Cook offers us hats for free, we don’t have to steal.
- We explain why we were going to steal hats, show list of tasks and talk about trip.
- James goes pee and I take a shot with the people across the bar.
- Bartender gives us some advice on the next day. Tells us not to bother with renting a car.
I'm feeling sufficiently drunk here.
The remaining people in the bar seem pretty stoked about our plans and this gets us excited for tomorrow. Bar guy claims that the area we’re planning on visiting, Underground Atlanta is open till 6AM. This means we can really do some serious damage on the list.
We walk out and I have to pee, again. I already peed once while we were in that bar but liquid is shooting through me. As I exit there’s music playing.
This seems fun I grab a 
picture too though my melodies aren’t nearly as nice. Okay fun is over we walk outside thinking we have to find our next place. We’ve kind of decided we’ll show up to Joe’s again. Maybe we’ll see the guy from Texas get knocked out by a huge black man. Outside of the hotel two of the people who I took shots with earlier are having a smoke. We stop by to chat for a few minutes and I invite them to come along with us to Joe’s. I assure them it will be fun and they’ll be back in plenty of time. I figure Joe’s will definitely be more fun when we have more people. It’s 1:45 at this point. Joe’s closes at 2:00 so we don’t have a lot of time left. There’s a shuttle just sitting around outside so we hop in and I ask the driver if he can step on it and get us to the bar. He agrees but reminds us that it closes soon and also says he’s not supposed to do this so please don’t call him to come get us. We tip five bucks for the ride and run out to door of Joe’s…. AND IT’S LOCKED UP AND CLOSED. Seriously this place gets worse by the second. Hughbert our shuttle driver hasn’t left yet so we plead with him to find us something open longer. He hesitates for about 30 seconds then says to come on he’ll drive us somewhere else. This place is too far to walk and he tells us we’ll be needing a cab to get home.
Spondivits - 1219 Virginia Ave, East Point, GA - (404) 767-1569
This place is sweet! It’s filled with people and open till 4AM. As we enter James sees a cop and decides we’re allowed to tasks tonight so he complete number 2: Shake A Police Officer’s Hand. Well at this point it’s on. I mean I didn’t think we were going to do tasks tonight but if that’s the case I’m gonna get a few things done. The first order of business is acknowledging the fact that I’ve just completed a task too. Number 14: Convince a Girl to Relocate. 
As we sit at the bar I get the first round of drinks from the bar. I also just realized I don’t remember paying for the drinks but I’m sure I did. We sit and start going over the task list. Now that the flood gates have opened I want to do anything and everything on the list. We sit and talk for awhile about the possible solutions and our new friends order up two shots four ways, at least that’s how I think it went. I guess there’s something about South Carolina and their old mini bottle laws that makes people order drinks in strange ways. No I think they ordered it even more different than that. Somewhere in my mind 3/4ths and other fractions of numbers are appearing. Really it doesn’t matter, shots are shots and down they went. Someone I’m with decides I should do task number 4: Get a Girl In a Red Top to Write on You. They point to this cute girl, who we come to find later is a monster bitch along with her stupid bitch friend, and tell me to go ask her. Fine I say, I’ll ask the cute girl even though I’m certain she’s not wearing red at all. She’s wearing pink. James grabs the camera and heads over with me. I ask “Excuse me this sounds really stupid but what color is your shirt? “Pink why?” I say “thanks for your time” and walk two tables down where I notice a black woman in a red shirt.
"Come Suck Me"
I convince her to write on me instead and have now completed another task. James complains I need to shave my chest. I don’t know why he cares but it makes me reconsider sharing a hotel room with him.
The chest incident has drawn some attention to us in the bar, not that the hats were keeping us under the radar. People want to know the point of getting my chest drawn on and why I needed a girl in red… so we whip out the list and begin to explain that. Since I’m many beers in right now and a few shots I’m not entirely sure how it all came about but I’ve agreed to get slapped to fulfill another item.
Task #10: Get Slapped By a Girl (18+)
Task Number 1: Get a Girl's Phone Number
This girl is 24 so it counts. Immediately after my slapping James scores her phone number. Damn! I wish I would have thought of that first but oh well. I sit down at the Bar with the Marriott crew and James decides he’s going to go talk to the girl in the pink who originally said she was wearing red. He’s over there showing them the list or something and I’m hanging back agreeing that we’ll leave around 3:30 because now my face hurts and everyone is a little bit tired. James isn’t coming back and I’m intrigued so I go over to say hi to the people he’s talking to. The guy is nice, he’s at school in Butte Montana and surprisingly I might be the only person who knows where that is besides him and the two girls he’s with. After a little bit of talking girl next to me informs me that she might be an undercover cop. Good for her, if she’s seriously trying to brag to me right now that she’s an undercover cop she’s stupid. The girl across from her says out loud “These guys are boring me” and James knows what that means and says goodnight to them and leaves. I stick around for I don’t know why just to talk to them a little more and make sure I indeed do hate these two chicks.
We get another round of drinks and put it away real fast then James pays the tab for that round. As we step outside there’s a cab right there waiting to pick people up. He’s trying to pick up the girl who slapped me at the bar and she’s not really having it. I already like him so we hop in. Everyone piles in the back and I get in the front.
Call For Other Good Deal
I don’t know why but I don’t feel like buckling my seat belt. Stupid things flow naturally to me when I’m drunk so I ask Mr. Andrew the Cab Driver about the seat belt laws in Atlanta and he reassures me by telling me not to worry about it. I value my life so this will be the last time I ever do that. Andrew and I talk about the girl at the bar for a little bit and before you know it we’re back at the Marriott. WAIT STOP THE CAB LOOK AT THAT BUSH. This bush is twice the size of the bush James jumped. I inform the cab that I wish to jump over the bush and Mr. Andrew agrees to stop the meter and let me get out to jump the thing.
I’m not very successful, but at least it was funny.
Mr. Andrew the Cab Driver drops us off and gives us his business card telling us to call him tomorrow for a ride to the train station. He says he just started work early today so if we call him in the morning he’ll still be around if we need a ride. We walk our new friends back to the front of their hotel room, but as we’re walking there we remember something… right before they left with us they hid their pizza from the hotel bar behind a bush to get later.
After saying good night we are going to head back to our hotel. But not before I get another chance to jump over that bush from earlier. We walk around the back of the Marriott towards the original bush location and I break the public urination rule because I can’t stop peeing. 
I remind James to watch out for Snakes and we arrive at the bush again. This time I will do it for real. My judgment is starting to hit rock bottom.
Back to the Hilton we go. We decide that we’ve had a good night after all. It was looking bad but everything really worked out. My stomach didn’t hurt anymore either.
There’s just one thing. I want James to prove he got Miya’s phone number and not some random grouping of digits that leads nowhere so I made him call her and recorded it. Unfortunately I can’t put up the video at this time because aside from basically saying her entire phone number out loud he held it up to the camera for the world to see while he called. So yeah, it’s her number and her glasses aren’t real they’re just for show.
Walking up to the hotel I eye the fountain outside one more time for that midnight swim but can’t figure out how I’m going to get passed the front desk if I do it. Plus, I have no other clothes. We go inside into the room of echos and lay in bed. I write an update to the blog while James falls asleep.
We got a big day ahead of us.
We didn’t have many to be honest and some of them might seem obvious now but here’s the short list:
- Make good use of cheap public transport.
- buy Thursday night; the tickets are gone by Friday morning
- always observe the maps otherwise you’ll end up drinking at joes
- bums have no Damn clue how to get anywhere. Don’t listen to their directions.