Tom Simpson and the Raiders of the Lost Blog

Very low-res, from my hi-res originals. Some rain from today, a shot in front of the main post office on 34th street, and a weird design on the front of a church.

I did my taxes today and found out I was getting a much larger refund than I had planned on. Should I save it? Pay off lots more debt? Well, with part of it, but I need new toys! So I wanted to get a new EOS Digital Rebel camera.

I wanted to get it at Best Buy, since I have a rewards card that gives me $1 back for ever $22 or so I spend there. Trick with that is you have to buy it at a store, you can’t buy it online. Plus they were sold out online.

I checked my local Best Buy in Chelsea, but they were sold out. They checked the computer for me. The only store in the area with any was in Secaucus, NJ, who had 5 on hand. I called to make sure, and yep, they had 5. So, being all crazy like I am, I decided to take a train to Secaucus (it’s only 10 minutes from Penn Station) and find a cab to Best Buy.

Half the trip out was really easy. Just hopped on a local train from Penn, first stop is Secaucus. Once I got out though, I followed all the signs to get down to the taxi area. Except no taxis! I had to go all the way back in and chat with the NJ transit customer service guy to have him call a car service for me. Best Buy was 2 & 1/2 miles away, but it was $10! Yikes. Ride there was pleasant though, no problems other than the rain.

When I got to Best Buy, they said they had just sold 3 other digital rebels in the past hour! I got the second to the last one. He had five when I had called an hour before. So if I had tried the next day, or maybe even later that night I wouldn’t have gotten one!

I picked up the camera and called the car service again. They said they’d have a car in 10 minutes. 10 minutes go by. 20 minutes. I call back. “Um, 5 minutes and he’ll be there”. 30 minutes, call again. “Um, he’s one minute away.” This time it was true and the car pulled up after I had been waiting a half hour at Best Buy.

As we’re pulling out of the parking lot in the rain, the guy hits a pedestrian crossing the street! Just a bump, but man, this is crazy. The guy flips the car off and walks away, and he drives me to the station.

Back at the station I get a ticket to NYC and stop by to say hi to the guy at customer service (he was really interested in the camera I bought). From the big board it looked like the local to NYC had already gone by , but apparently it was still on the tracks! He radioed down to try and stop the train and I ran down there. Too late though, I met up with his friend, she said she tried to stop the train but the conductor hadn’t looked back in time. Ah well. What’s another 30 minutes in Secaucus?

So I finally made it home with my spiffy camera. Can’t wait to go play with it more.

This is the medium resolution setting on my spiffy new EOS digital rebel. On the RAW setting it also captures a medium resolution JPG at the same time. The RAW version’s even bigger! 3000 odd pixels wide or so.

Click for full-size image