So, my wife, Rebekah, wanted to take our son, Connor, to the thrift stores to see what she could find in the way of clothes. I decided to tag along to make it a family trip and see if I could find anything good. I needed a pair of headphones because my pair recently broke.

So, we loaded up in the car and drove to Goodwill. We got there, got a cart and started looking around. I quickly became bored and decided to split off and look at the stuff along the walls. I walked around the store not seeing much of anything that we needed or wanted. I got the the counter where they have the “good stuff” behind glass. I saw a plastic bag that looked like it held a camera or something like it.

I asked if it was a camera and was told it was and decided to look at it. And I found inside a wonderful little gem. A Pentax Super Program, sold as the “Super-A” outside of North America.

I remembered my dad’s Pentax K1000 growing up and how this, albeit a very different camera, was similar and of the same time period. When Rebekah and Connor were done shopping for clothes, we were getting ready to pay and head back home. I asked her if she wanted to look at it and she decided we should. She was just as excited about it as I. We talked it over and decided that for $15, it was a steal. It had a wrongly loaded roll of film in it, and dead batteries. Along with the well used, but also well cared for, body and original prime lens it also came with a cover and a generic zoom lens. We figured at the worst it’s a $15, nearly unbreakable, “toy” camera for our son; at best it needed a set of batteries and some film. Luckily it was the latter.

So, now we have a fun little 35mm film camera to shoot B&W with; if we can find some B&W film. We may have to order on-line which isn’t a problem, but it would be nice to get some decent non-color film in the mean time.

It requires batteries to function, but it has a fully manual mode and a Program AE mode. It has a decent range of selectable shutter speeds, self timer, through-the-lens metering, and exposure compensation.

As a bonus, my mom said we are welcome to use the lenses and other accessories in my dad’s camera bag. I’m sure she would let us use the K1000 any time we wanted, but it’s nice to have a nice film camera to call our own.

No headphones though…

Oh, here’s a couple of quick shots of our happy find.

CyberSuicide | No Comments »

Hope you like it. Links to a larger version, if you prefer.

CyberSuicide | No Comments »

So, I’m messing around with the store right now. Hopefully it will look/function a little better than before. Ordering won’t actually do anything right now. So, please hold off until I get it all squared away.

There will also be some new designs up in a while. You can visit the shop/store and check out the new CyberSuicide.com Spreadshop though. Get a sneak peek at the new designs.

Stay tuned.

CyberSuicide | No Comments »

The Set-up

On the way back from a day at the in-laws’ house we stopped at Savemart (our local grocery chain for those not in the area). Rebekah ran in for just a couple of things and I stayed in the car with Connor, our son, and Nike (pronounced neekay like it should be), our dog.

So, as can be expected, I was people watching to pass the time. What else are you going to do at 10:45 on a Sunday night in a grocery store parking lot while your kid is sleeping and your dog is vegging out?

This guy walks out of the store with his bags of stuff and two 1 Gallon jugs of Crystal Geyser Drinking Water. I read the sale paper every week to shop strategically, so I know these are on sale for a buck a piece.

WTF!?

After loading his groceries into the car, he proceeds to carry his new Crystal Geyser water over to the “Refreshing Aqua Fill.” It’s one of those water dispensing machines. Now, I don’t know if this water is actually “purified” or just comes out of the tap from the store or what. It looks like a pretty small machine to house a full Reverse Osmosis system capable of keeping up with demand.

Anyway, back to the “WTF!?” moment. After walking over to the machine, he cracks open the first water jug. HE POURS IT OUT! Drops in his change and gets a gallon of water from the machine. Then he proceeds to DO THE WHOLE THING AGAIN with the other gallon.

Seriously. I just sat there mouth agape. I just can’t fathom why he did that.

So, I ask, does anyone know why on earth someone would do this? If you know the reason why, please let me know.

CyberSuicide | 1 Comment »

So, I’ve been vomiting for the last couple days now. It pretty much sucks. Although, at this moment I’m feeling a little “up.” It might have something to do with keeping foodlike materials down for more than 15 minutes. It feels like they are going to work their way up here in a little bit, but hopefully it’ll stay down. Saltines and vegetable broth, with a slowly sipped water chaser.

I was looking across the intarwebnets for “sick food;” stuff that’s least likely to come back up or stuff that doesn’t hurt your throat if it does. (FYI, grilled chicken and squash is painful going the wrong way.)

Anyway, all that did was make me feel my hunger more. Sure, there are the sites that I was looking for, but Bulgur Cranberry salad, Coffee Jello with a coconut sauce, and Carnitas all sound so much more interesting than some special tasteless broth or carbonated beverages.

So, I can only keep down teaspoons while my hunger is ready for a big platter of Gyros and rice, or Carnitas. I also have a hankering for barley.

Many of the sites that I’ve been to over the last couple of days have had feed back or comment sections like most of the intarwebnets do these days. And this is the source of my non-sick-related rant… $15 bucks. Seriously. How can anyone let that pass? Dollarbucks. It just makes my skin crawl. I thought for a while that maybe it’s like some people saying “6am in the morning” for redundant emphasis or just to grate on the nerves of sticklers. But I’ve seen it too often and where the redundancy thing is mostly un-needed or would just be wrong. So, I think it’s people that are just trying to sound cool by adding bucks after they enumerate an amount of money. And therefore it’s just stupid. Pick one people. Dollars via the “$” or bucks. Please spare me from the evil that is the dollarbucks.

CyberSuicide | No Comments »