Fuming in the Negative

The business model of wedding photographers has been one of the most disagreeable surprises of wedding planning. (Other than that, I’ve found it relatively pain-free, though H may hold a different opinion.)

They’re professionals who are being paid to produce works-for-hire, and they charge accordingly. The catch is that they keep the copyright to the pictures that you have hired them to take of you. This means that you cannot legally reproduce these photos. So any time in the future, should you want extra copies, you go back to the photographer to pay horrifically inflated prices for prints.

Coders don’t work this way. When we get an assignment and are paid to produce it, we don’t get to hold back on a per-copy basis. (Intellectual-property disputes for programmers tend to run the opposite way, with employers attempting to claim rights to all code written while under contract, even if that code is not written toward the purpose of the contract.) Artists: same thing. If it’s painted for pay to hang in (say) a corporate office, they don’t get to charge every time the company prints a publicity booklet with their work hanging to one side of the CEO’s office photo. Musical composers may come close with commissioned works, but it’s generally understood that while those works are initially written with one customer in mind, the eventual goal is for the product to be published in the general market. Plus, music is far more personal to the composer than wedding photographs are to a photographer who does them at least 35-40 weekends of the year.

So let’s recap. Pay him an exorbitant cost for professional services to produce works that are personal to you, pay him a hyper-inflated cost for initial set of prints, and then he still owns your pictures?

I suppose it would be a lucrative business to get into, if only I could turn off my pesky conscience.

Mid-July Roundup

At this point, I think we can conclusively say that getting engaged and buying regular tickets for a major league baseball team is bad news for a blog. Tough luck, but the blog’s just going to have to deal — or, as I said in a comment on this site a few months ago, “Priorities, m’boy, priorities.”

But let’s do a quick tour, just to see what interesting stuff has gone on while I laid down on the job.

• Several of my co-workers are native Chinese speakers, and their cube-to-cube chatter exhibits a fascinating linguistic phenomenon called code switching. A conversation that starts in Chinese might shift into English for a sentence or two, then (apparently) seamlessly back and forth again several times in the span of 90 seconds.
  I could tell more if I understood Chinese, but even with my complete lack of knowledge in that arena, it seems to me that work-related segments — and not just technical terms, but talk about work hours, time off etc. — come out in English, while parts that I would expect to be personal (just by contextual positioning, tone of voice etc.) are usually in Chinese. It’s quite interesting to listen to as an amateur linguist.
• Bret is on a roll these days (though it’s said so for a while on the hot dog cart). He’s blogging up a storm during his last summer of freedom before he joins the Metro-riding masses. Pay him a visit, read the comments, and check out his Flickr photostream as well.
• Amy has also been in high gear recently, despite (or perhaps because of) her pregnancy and move from Paris to Arizona by way of the East Coast. I’m still weighing my bets for the baby birth stats pool.
• A few weeks ago, Eric at Off Wing and Ryan at Distinguished Senators took note of the Nats’ high no-show rate — people buy tickets and then fail to show up for the game. I’ve contributed to this problem several times myself, and I suspect the size and inflexibility of the Nats’ ticket packages are the main causes. Almost all MLB teams offer fixed packages down to as few as 7 or 8 games, while this season the Nats only offered one set of 41 games or two different sets of 20 games. In addition, several other teams offer “make-your-own” packages — essentially bulk tickets, where you could buy ten at a particular price level and use them any way you like, whether it be ten seats at one game or a single seat for ten games. The Nats offered nothing of the sort. Hopefully, this can be attributed to the rushed nature of the move from Montreal, rather than a deliberate attempt to force buy-up; if so, next year should offer more options (and I’ll be more likely to purchase a package again). My fondest wish? Trade-in, where if I knew in advance that I’d miss a game, I could trade my tickets in for equal value on a game I could attend. With lower-deck patrons taking advantage as well as upper-deck customers like me, the Nats would then have the opportunity to resell expensive seats to walk-up fans, who right now must buy seats at my level or cheaper due to the full-season lower-deck sellout. Win-win, right?
• While I still don’t drink coffee or any of its derivatives, I’ll second Monday’s D103.com endorsement of the Starbucks Mint Mocha Chip Frappucino by adding a BTN endorsement of its coffeeless counterpart, the Mint Chocolate Chip creme-based Frappucino. Like Daryl, I have trouble with Starbucks’ pretentious sizing scheme. But now that I rattle off a fourteen-syllable drink order (at 29 cents per syllable!) without blinking, it seems that emphasizing “medium” over “grande” crosses the line between principled and passive-aggressive.
• Karl Rove / Valerie Plame / Joe Wilson: yawn. Lileks is right on this one — even I can’t make myself care, and I both follow politics and work inside the Beltway.

I’d promise more content soon, but you wouldn’t believe it if I did. So you’ll have to be satisfied that photos from Lake J and Baltimore are coming… sometime. Hopefully “sometime” will be before next month, when Cleveland/Cedar Point, Roanoke and western Maryland will join the photo queue in successive weekends.

A Big Announcement

Linnaeus and newmarket are pleased to announce…

…the engagement of their respective keyboardists, Heidi and Josh!

The two computers joined us here at BTN for a short Q&A session following the announcement.

So, Linnaeus, what are you most looking forward to about this new arrangement?

Does this mean I get wireless Internet at home?

Well, yes, it does.

WOOHOO! So, can you get married tomorrow?

Not so fast there, buddy. I know you’re excited about getting off the dial-up, but there are other priorities. Sometime next summer, probably.

But I want it now!

Yeah, well, life’s tough. newmarket, any thoughts from your side?

Heidi’s been talking about pruning me, since she says I’m an Apple. Yeah, but I’m not that kind of apple! Stop her! She’s scaring me!

OK, settle down. She’s just joking. She’s really not that bad — matter of fact, I kind of like her.

(sniffs) OK. But no pruning, and as long as Linnaeus doesn’t try to eat me again. Can we play more piggyback instead?

Linnaeus? How about it?

Maybe. You are promising the wireless, right?

Yep. You’ll be a full partner on the network. Actually, you already are when you come to visit.

Can I come to visit more, then?

Well, you’ll have to ask Heidi about that, but I don’t think she’ll object.

In all seriousness, we’re very excited. :) Thanks to everyone who’s commented, e-mailed, and/or passed along kind words since the news started to trickle out. And yes, if you’ve got books, we’ll take ‘em.

I Promise I'm Not Dead

Settling into the new digs and new job, that’s all. It’s taking a bit of time, but that’s expected. I’m definitely liking Reston, and being able to shop at Best Buy without guilt is… well… a little weird.

Quick takes:

• VT-UVa: I like us by about 7 — it’ll be hard-fought, but I think the crowd is worth about 3 points, and our team is geared up for a tough game. Conversely, UVa’s performances against Miami and FSU do not speak well of their chances under pressure, especially on the road.
• Bowl tripping: sure, the chances that we go there are very slim, but if we do lose the next two and fall all the way to the MPC Computers Bowl, I’m planning to go. After all, what other good reason will I ever have to go to Boise, Idaho? The only bowl I won’t go to is the Tangerine (the more likely possibility if we lose the next two) — bowl games before Christmas are a total joke. Sugar or Peach, of course, would be entirely acceptable.
• I’m already learning how to drive up here. First key point: turn signals are a sign of weakness, inviting other drivers to thwart your plans. Second key point: those dashed white lines in rows on the roadway? They’re painted there for two NoVA-native motorsport events: the Straddle and the Slalom.
• The Nationals: they’re gonna suck, but they’re my team now in the NL. I’m halfway considering getting a mini-season ticket package. And if the DC Council screws it up and forces them to Dulles in 3 years… so much the better.

More fun soon, including BTN Selling Out.

Now It Can Be Told

Some of you have noticed content getting a little sparse around here. While it’s been exaggerated recently by my Atlanta/Miami adventures and failure to crosspost all my Fanblogs stuff, it’s been an off-and-on problem since February, when some massive changes took place at the office and sent most of my group scurrying toward Monster.com. We’ve lost roughly one programmer per month since then.

And now it’s my turn to depart. After eight months of looking, including phone interviews with five organizations and on-sites with three, I’ve accepted a Senior Programmer position with a contracting firm in Tysons Corner, working on the client’s site in Bailey’s Crossroads. In two weeks, I’ll be leaving Short Pump and Richmond behind, heading in the direction I’ve wanted to go since I graduated from Tech.

So what does this mean for BTN? Well, the little block at top-left will have a new “Current time in” location, once I narrow it down past “somewhere in 703-land.” I should have a bit more time to write now, depending on how much of my newly-acquired free time is eaten up by traffic (early guess: a lot). Expect the odd complaint about cost-of-living, some early road-geekery as I get my commute figured out, some political observations (well, of course — I am moving even closer to DC), and no commentary on work whatsoever.

I’ll miss the office here in Richmond and the co-workers I’ve worked with since I was a freshman in college (and, oh yeah, the associate discount). But it’s time for me to head somewhere north.

So, anyone up for an Expos Senators Grays ticket package?