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Colstrip

Colstrip is a little town in the southeast corner of Montana. It’s a former boomtown and home to the 25000-acre Rosebud Coal Mine, 2100 megawatt Colstrip Power Station, and the Hofacker clan1.

These are pictures of the 2100 megawatt2 power station:

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  1. Whence the Lady Hofacker came ↩

  2. 1.73 x the power required to operate the flux capacitor in the DeLorean DMC-12 time machine ↩

Mike and Tiffany, an Engagement Photoshoot

Photography is my hobby, not my job, so I can afford to pick and choose what I want to shoot.

One of the reasons I took this job was that the prime location was to shoot from the top of the top of the Space Needle. Yes, the very top. Also, Mike and Tiffany are awesome! Seriously, this wedding is going to be the bomb.

These photos were from back in January, over my birthday weekend. Rachel made a surprise visit to Seattle, so I roped her in to helping me set up these shots and providing assistance as a voice activated light stand. Unfortunately it was overcast (not so much of a problem) and really windy (much more of a problem), so we didn’t get any superb shots.

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It was still a fun challenge and I’d do it again.

Fortunately, we had a backup plan. Retreating to terra firma, we headed over to Gas Works Park, which has some awesome locations that I was familiar with from a shoot a couple of years ago.

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See the rest of the excellent photos on Flickr: Mike and Tiffany

Trying to Fix Shipwrecks

Chauncey nails the realities of life again. I would like to think these ideas and realizations are unique to being in our mid-twenties—a continued coming–of–age type of thing. But I think his realization probably applies to people of all ages:

I’d like to think that as one learns more about oneself there are gems to be discovered. That there’s treasure under the surface of my tempestuous mind, heart, and soul waiting to be discovered by some underwater salvage team headed by myself and Jesus. It turns out that the further down there I get, the more I realize that there are shipwrecks down there.

I used to think…that the more I could find out about myself the more I could fix. Like one of those fixer-upper houses my aunt always seemed to be drawn to. I believed at some level that I could learn about the broken pipes and messed up wiring of myself and simply fix them. All would be well if I just knew.

If you don’t read Chauncey’s blog on a regular basis, you are missing out.

Convenience Fees, a Logical Fallacy

Rachel and I are going to Portland this weekend (after we were preempted by a family emergency)!

Rachel suggested we see Ovo, a Cirque du Soleil touring production, and I thought it was a great idea!1.

I went to go purchase tickets2 and was about ready to check out when I noticed there was $26 in fees3.

“Convenience fees” are nothing new, Ticketmaster has been making untold millions on them for years. And perhaps in the beginning it really was a convenience for people to not have to trudge down to the ticket office. However, these days I believe that offering tickets online is more of a convenience for the seller instead of the buyer. So why the fees?

I called Hadley Media, the marketing group that was responsible for the discount, and asked about it. Their response was something that I’ve grown all to accustomed to hearing: “That’s a fee typical of the industry.”

That, ladies and gentlemen, is an argumentum ad populum4 and is a logical fallacy.

Why not simply include the “fee” in the actual cost of the ticket? What would you do if a company listed hamburgers on their menu for $2.65 and then charged you $1 for actually consuming the food?

To me, that’s lying. They are not disclosing the true cost of the item in a place where such costs are purported to be. When a company uses such tactics, my trust of them lessens.

I should make clear that Hadley Media doesn’t actually sell the tickets or charge the fee, they’re fault in this matter was explaining the fees as: “everyone does it”. Shockingly, even Ticketmaster isn’t behind this. Interestingly enough, this fee appears to be the result of a joint venture between AEG, Outbox Technology, and Cirque du Soleil presumably designed to compete against Ticketmaster.

  1. We had wanted to see Cavalia when it was in Seattle, but didn’t jump on it fast enough. ↩

  2. Noticing that I have a 15% discount through work! ↩

  3. Technically, five of those dollars were for sending me my e-Ticket, however the only alternative was to pay $7 for will call ↩

  4. appeal to the people ↩