Matt’s Semi-Annual Complain About Everything Day

I did a very uncharacteristic thing today. I stayed home from work. I needed sleep and felt mildly ill, so I called in. I felt like I deserved it, having gone nearly 9 months without a day off. It was also not entirely a fabrication that I felt under the weather. Apparently things fell apart in my absence. According to my boss, who tends to exaggerate a little, it became so hectic around the office that Paul was called from his day off. I felt kind of bad about that but got over it rather quickly. The main “emergency” work wise is that every girl we’ve taken a picture of over the past two months has decided that today was the day to call in their final selections to be retouched. This, of course, has nothing to do with the fact that their deadline for photo submissions to the Miss Texas USA office happens to be Friday. Of course not.

On top of that, I get a panicked phone call around 3:30 today letting me know that I have a shoot tomorrow with representatives from both the Jiffy Lube corporation and the Houston Texans organization. Joy! Some how these two evil forces have come together and formed a sort of super-evil, where in art directors decapitate photographers for the slightest hint of insubordination. Actually, it’s probably not that bad. Around 11am tomorrow I have to be downtown at Reliant Stadium for a press-conference of sorts, only minus the press. It’s more of a photo-opp for both organizations. It was scheduled to be photographed by the Texans in-house photographer who backed out on them today. Paul, being the Texans official (non-in-house) photographer was first on the “people to call in an emergency” list. The problem is that Paul has scheduled more head-shots for all day tomorrow. This where plan B comes in. I am plan B.

Not that I mind being plan B. Some day I plan on being plan A. But I’m seriously the least responsive person to someone else’s crisis. That’s not saying I wouldn’t go out of my way to help a friend, on the contrary, I would die for my friends, but to be shoved into an obviously tense situation to help out two organizations I could really care less about isn’t exactly my idea of a fun afternoon. Helping a friend is one thing, helping uncaring corporate strangers is another. If I were more involved I would have said “fuck’em, let them call the whole thing off”. But, it’s not my call. It’s not even like we’re trying to take over the job that this would normally fall under, we already have it. We have both accounts fairly locked and shoot regularly for them. They’ve canceled things do to rain before, I say let them cancel one on account of poor planning.

Nope, not gonna happen. Plan B to the rescue.

You’d think after doing something like this I’d get a little appreciation thrown my way. I’m sure I’ll get critiqued on the photos and a nice pat on the back instead. Just once I’d like to hear someone say “thanks Matt, you really saved our ass back there.”

That too will probably never happen. At the very least I’ll have a little more ammo for the “I think I deserve a raise” speech after I’ve been there more than a year.

So, after sitting on the couch sipping Earl Gray all day, I get to jump feet first back into the land’o’stress tomorrow.

Let’s see, what else can I complain about…

I was toying with the idea of sitting down to write about all the things I’m against and why, but that might take a while, and I doubt any of you would stick around to read it. My opinions are so all over the place that it would probably take a small paperback to get through them all.

I actually had about 6 pages written right here, but I’ve just deleted it. I can’t really explain why. Maybe I’ll get around to writing about how I really feel about the war, the economy, gay marriage and whatnot a little bit later. Probably when I’m good and ready. Hell, you could probably guess half my opinions on hot topics and the reasons you make up would probably be more interesting than the truth. So, how about we do that. You make up some reason why I’m against something like gay marriage and we’ll just run with it.

Anyway, I apologize. This post was a lot more organized 4 hours ago. I’ve had dinner and watched a movie since I began writing it so there you have it. I need to get ready for tomorrow and see if I can’t find my suit pants in the back of my closet.

Also, I’d like to send a shout out to both Jason and Nagle, who will be graduating very shortly. I’m really proud of ALL my friends and I wish you guys the best of luck in everything. If you ever, and I mean ever, need anything, I’ll do anything short of whackin’ someone and stuffing them into my trunk.

Matt out.

Quickie

Have to run to work, but found this while I was checking my email this morning and just had to pass it along.

RIAA, deceit in sales figures

It’s nothing we didn’t know before, but now it’s just a bit more obvious. The RIAA is fudging figured about how many CDs are sold. And technically they’re selling even more than before, a 10% increase since last year even. What a surprise!

Funny Phone Call Friday

Actual phone calls or voice mail messages we’ve gotten at work this week. Names have been changed to protect the absolutely stupid:

Voicemail Msg: “Hello, this is Janet, I’m looking for a wedding photographer for my daughters wedding, could you please call me back at… *leaves OUR phone number*”

—-

Elderly Gentleman: “Do you sell photos?”
Me: “Yes, yes we do”
EG: “Wonderful, I’d like to order some pictures from my daughters wedding”
Me: “Alrighty sir, what is your daughters name?”
EG:”Jackson”
*shuffles papers trying to find that particular wedding*
Me: “Sir, when did we shoot this wedding?”
EG: “You didn’t, but the photographer that did has gone out of business”
*ugh*

—-

Voicemail Msg: “Hello, this is Marsha, we had our pictures taken yesterday, are they ready yet? Please call me back at…”

—-

Young Woman: “Yes, I’m having problems accessing your website, I’m using AOL and it keeps saying “unable to connect”, could you help me?”
Me: “Certainly, have you tried the website on a different computer or different web browser”
YW: “Not yet, I haven’t even connected to AOL yet, I just wanted to make sure it was working before I did”
*Matt slams head into desk*

—-

You know, I didn’t believe those tech-support horror stories until I was actually involved with one or two. Oh well, it’s not like pageant contestants are the smartest people on the planet anyway.

That’s all for today kids. Later.

E3 goodness and a photo shoot too!

Word has come down from the mountain. Doom 3 and HL2 WILL go head to head for FPS supremacy this summer. Not this winter, not next year, THIS summer. Also, as if actually getting our hands on HL2 isn’t cool enough, Counter-Strike 2 will ship with it. Yeah. It’s a good day. There will apparently be a CS2 game-play video up on FileShack this evening, so look for that.

I’ve also got to go get changed for a photo shoot in a few minutes. I’m shooting the Houston Police Officers Union “Office of the Year” awards. I’m a bit excited to be finally getting my own shoots.

Matt’s doing a little happy dance today.

Couldn’t sleep

Hey guys, sorry about the lack of updates, it’s been crazy around here. There’s work, more work, other work, etc, and I’ve been trying to spend my free time with Lauren as much as I can. I’m actually getting ready to go to work right now but I couldn’t sleep so I got up a little early and I have a little extra time.

We’ve been working hard to get things done and printed from the Miss Houston pageant last month at the same trying to get things ready for the bigger Miss Texas pageant next month. It’s a long and often aggravating process of looking through all 2000+ pictures from the event to find one single girl in one single outfit, THEN going back and doing that three times for each girl and there were about 100 girls who ordered packages. After I find them I have to open each one in Photoshop, crop it to the ordered size and then send it to our RIP Que. That’s RIP as in Raster Image Processing, not Rest in Peace. Although “Death Que” has a nice ring to it.

Backward from today, on Thursday we took the Houston Texans official NFL photos. The ones you see on TV when they do things like “…and this is the starting defensive line” and they show half a dozen really angry looking guys. Yeah. We did those. The photos also go in program books, in NFL ads and publicity stuff, etc. So that was pretty cool.

Lastly, next week I get to shoot the annual Police Officers Union “Police Officer of the Year” Awards. One of those city MVP kind of things. The mayor will be there, the police chief, folks like that. Should be interesting.

Oh, and I almost forgot, today after the photos we’re scheduled to take we’re building Paul a new computer. Nice rig too. Antec case, Athlon 64 3200+, 1G of Cosair, Ati Radeon 9800 Pro, WD SATA 40G hard drive. Should be fun to play a little DC with.

Gotta run. Work calls.