–Took a shower.
Month: October 2021 (Page 3 of 4)
–Rode the Innerlight in a winding path to the entrance of the Folsom South Canal at Sunrise.
–Grrr…played with photo editors some more, found that ON1 and Affinity both showed vignetting on (I believe an older) RW2 file. ACDSee was fine with it, and (as I already knew) has much smoother sliders than ON1. I upgraded to ACDSee 7 for Mac. Still can’t save jpeg’s at 100% by default, and it seems to lack a ton of stuff ON1 has, but smoothness and “opens anything” count for a lot to me.
–Looked online for a Panasonic Lumix TZ200 (same as Leica C-Lux, except it’s RW2 raw files can be opened by most photo editors). They’re $850 (and sold out most places), but Mike’s Camera in Sac had one for $650. I went and bought it, only to discover it had no battery. I’ll take it back Monday when they’ll have another in from a different store. Meanwhile, I put the C-Lux battery in and indeed all my editors would open RW2 files. I’m pretty much settled on ON1.
–Mysteries at eBay. A scenario that fits the observations (though unlikely): Joe Blow hacks my account, buys a $4,000 Squale from excessxpress and refuses to pay–So excessxpress blocks my account. When I try to make an offer on a different excessxpress Squale, I hit the block. And tonight, looking again at eBay Squale Batmen, I see a $3,000 excessxpress watch with an eBay message at the top saying “You bought this item.” Uh, no. I did buy a used Batman a day or two ago from a completely different (private) seller. So: my hacked account bought and reneged on a Batman, so (1) excessxpress blocked me and (2) eBay thinks I bought a Batman from excessxpress. Or something like that.
–Went to the post office to pick up the Bergeon bezel tool. Sellers had put insufficient postage on the package, so I paid it and recouped it from them. Tool is fine, but it still won’t touch a Squale bezel. I spent a while working on a Blu-Ray with the four-bladed tool and finally got it off–with a broken aluminum bezel insert. Terrible, terrible design. I did pull the (Mercedes) hands off for potential use on another Squale.
–Got the brakes adjusted on the InnerLight. Silent, but without a huge amount of “pedal.” And, as someone said on a bike forum, these rotors don’t seem to stop nearly as fast as (say) Avid rotors. Hoping for improvement with pad sanding, rotor break-in, etc.
–Squale Dark Knight came in. Nice, but it needs sun to really shine. Strangely enough, there’s only one other reference to this on the web: A guy in Singapore sold the “one and only” one of these in July 2019, close to the date on mine. Mysteries abound.
–Took Grace shopping to Safeway on Folsom.
–Mowed the lawn.
–Camera lug protectors came in, three weeks late.
–Played some more with photo editors (for maybe the fifth time). They either (a) don’t open RWL files (Leica C-Lux), (b) don’t have a very customizable interface, or (c) run slow and choppy. RAW Power is the only viable Lightroom alternative. It opens everything and is highly customizable–it’s just a little wonky in separating out RAW processing from standard processing.
–Took a shower and shave. Gave up on Lisa’s lavender and the vintage shave sticks: Bigelow rules.
–Rode 18 miles on the ARP with Tom Elken. Exhilarating but tiring.
–Updated the razor database a bit.
–Air quality has been really bad lately–high 120s. Supposed to get better (along with cooler) tomorrow.
–The new disc rotors came in for the InnerLight. Spent hours trying to get them working. Turns out these two-piece rotors have rivets that interfere with protrusions on the brake pads; I found that out after a whole lot of useless tinkering trying to adjust the height of the caliper. I ground down the protrusion, and it works, but (a) the rivets have some nasty scuffs on them and (b) one brake pad has a protrusion ground down. Could get new one-piece discs, new pads, etc. Crap.
–Tried to remove bezel fromSquale Batman. Destroyed bezel and case. Looking for a better bezel remover. (The three-jaw Bergeon just popped loose when pressure was applied. The four-jawed screw-type started to pull off the bezel, but wouldn’t finish and marred the case.)
–Squale GMT Ceramica Pepsi came in. Fine, but nothing special.
–Went to Sunrise farmers market for Crazy Gringo meat pies, peaches, jam.
–Polder gram scale came in. Seems cheaply built, but it should be fine for coffee beans.