Rant #58 - ESPN is still playing @#$%^&*( Jesus Music!

I'm trying to watch the bowl games, which all are on ESPN this week, and am watching mostly with the sound turned off. Usually I hit the mute button because the commentators are not allowed to stop talking for more than a nanosecond during the course of the game, and it just gets annoying. But this time it's not only the annoying booth cretins, it's the music. ESPN has chosen to use Christmas music for its segues, promos and highlights sections. I'm not talking winter holiday music here, I'm talking Jesus carols. The 12 Days of, We Wish You a Merry, the infamous Bell Carol (xx is here, meryymerrymeryymerryxx), etc.

Watching Monday Night Football this week, when the schmaltz factor pegged my BS flag, I wanted to be able to hit a button on the remote and mute just the announcers. Now I want a button to mute everything except the crowd noise. One of the reasons I paid umpity hundred bucks for Infinity surround sound speakers and a high-end Sony receiver is I love the 3D crowd noise which accompanies the football broadcasts.

It used to be the announcers only came across on the center speaker, so I actually could just unplug that one and have the crowd noise sans the idiot babble. But now they have all 5 microphones (maybe all 9 - my apartment is too small for more than 5) in the announcer's booth. But that wouldn't help me escape from rampaging Jesus, 3 days after we have supposedly buried the festival stolen from the Teutonic pagans which bears the name of some Latin baseball player.

The trouble with instant gratification...

...is it takes too long.

On December 14 I ordered a macro lens from a camera store in NYC. I ordered it because it featured an f/45 aperture setting, which in plain English means it can get more of a close-up in focus than any other lens on the market.

UPS tracking shows it arrived in Sunnyvale early morning on the 24th, which should have meant it would be delivered along with the rest of the pre-Santa rush, but instead they held onto it until the 27th. At 7 am on the 27th, the tracker shows, it was on a truck en route to me. But no UPS truck showed up (I was working from home, and stayed home till 9 pm just in case). Today at about 4 pm they delivered it.

I had some work to do ( a couple of fires to fight) and a couple of phone calls to answer, so I didn't get around to actually opening the package till about 5:30. The info on the box looks like the right lens, so I slap it onto my camera, and it won't stop down past f/32. I look at the lens, it clearly says on the aperture ring that it only goes to f/32.

I was hoping to use it to re-shoot my sapphire collection while I had time - working from home would be perfect - but it is not to be.

I'm sure the store will accept the lens for an exchange, but it will take at least a week.

Harumph.