Login

Or, I don't think my day can get any worse.

Sorry, no links to people pulling planes with their puds.

I volunteered to take pictures at the TCECQ. I thought it would be fun. And the actual tournament was quite entertaining and humiliating. I know I couldn't do flying kick sommersault when I was twelve. Everything around the event blew.

I gave myself two hours to get to Anaheim from my house which is only thirty-five miles away. I wanted to get their earlier, do a little recon, and introduce myself to DM's boss, Gigi.

First thing, the car won't start. My lovely car occasionally gets secret coded messages from GM to drain the battery. This was one of those times. Fortunately, The Queen has bought me one of those chargers that allows you to start the car. After a few giggles, it started as well as firing off the headlamp wipers washer fluid. I needed to be cleaner and that really helped. I was also out of gas so I knew I would have to stop before the battery was charged up again. I prayed and it restarted after the fill up. Then it was off to the Freeway and down to Anaheim.

Did I mention it was Friday? Did I mention it was a little passed 5pm? Yeah. Draw your own picture. I crawled to Anaheim in bumper to bumper traffic. I tried to dodge on alternate freeways, but it was the festival of breaklights everywhere. It's a good thing my eyes were failing,too, so I couldn't all my neighbors. Basically my eyes had become so bad, the only way I could see was to tilt my head way back and look out through the lower part of the lens. My neck only stiffened a little.

It took me two hours to get to the Convention center. I was only about fifteen minutes late, but the first was just starting as I got there.

The whole event took about six hours. I shot like a madman. About halfway through, I realized i wasn't going to have enough memory in my card to finish the night. I'd shot about 350 pics and I only had room for about a hundred more. I was only going to come up about 250 short. Grr. so I fiddled with the settings and I got room for more pics. I was also afeared for the life of the batteries in my flash, so I plugged the quick charger with 4 batteries into a wall outlet.

Ten minutes later my card stopped working. The camera couldn't recognize it. It just kept telling me to insert card despite the fact there was a card in the camera. I did have a backup but it was small and could only hold about a hundred pics. I did what I could. I went to get the batteries for the flash and somebody had decided they wanted the charger more than I did.

I left the facility after midnight hoping I could recover the pictures from the damaged card. I spent an hour after I got home downloading emergency software which didn't work. I called 24/7 hard drive repair places. No one was there. I eventually took it to our local pro camera shop. They couldn't fix it, but there was a place in Novato that would take the drive apart and get the pictures off the drive. They only wanted $1500 to do that job. Gigi was going to have to be happy with what I had, I hope.

And because of my eyes, I could barely focus through the camera. I was also hopind what I did shot would be in focus. That's not a big problem is it?

You can see the night's shots here: Tiger Claw Elite

Drunk Monk · 02-25-2008, 06:16 PM

I've do about half a dozen tournaments a year now. I only do one TCEC. It's always something. Thanks for doing that, Greg.

Drunk Monk · 03-03-2008, 01:38 PM

just wanted to ttt this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFsnaPMEO...re=related

Drunk Monk · 03-04-2008, 12:37 PM

in china, no less
http://youtube.com/watch?v=w61TMFIBolU

El Dingo · 03-04-2008, 04:31 PM

Awesome. A song condemning oppression and human-rights abuses being used in a Chinese commercial!

Showing the guy standing in front of the tank in Tianenman Square would be more appropo. Oh well we use Iggy Pop's 'Lust for Life' which tells about the glory of heroin for car commercials.

Login
Username:
Password:	Lost Password?
	Remember me