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Archive for April, 2010

I guess if you’re used to Vista then the way you import photos in Windows 7 is nothing new, but coming from XP I have to say the way 7 downloads photos from a camera is pure crap.

I hated the feature from the moment I used it a few months back. You get this minimalist dialog box that wants you to enter a tag but doesn’t give any other information about what’s going on (is this metadata or the filename?). You can’t tell anything about where the files will end up. Then if you click Advanced, you can make changes, but then have to start the import process over again for them to take effect.

The major problem I have with this is that there is no way to selectively import photos; it’s an all or nothing proposition. For example if you take pictures at one location, then take another batch somewhere else, when you download them you can’t separate them out into individual folders. What the hell kind of thinking is that? And what really goads me is that this functionality was available and worked perfectly fine in XP!

I mean seriously, you take something that worked pretty well in the previous version, then strip everything down, remove most of the features and functions then package it up as a new and improved edition? What are you thinking? The only thing the XP photo import needed was a way to remove the trailing space before it appended the number to the end of the file. Other than that it was just fine.

But this photo downloader sucks. I hate it. I can barely tell how it’s going to work, I can’t move my photos around, it STILL puts a space then appends the number (which I then have to use another program to remove that damnable space), and I can’t tell it not to import a picture. The feature is useless to me. I guess I’ll either use Lightroom or Paint Shop Pro to import the photos now. The way Windows 7 does it is just too annoying. I guess I just need to shoot RAW all the time and just bypass this feature altogether, but I don’t believe most photos need to be shot in RAW so even that is a little overkill. Once again, Windows 7 just adds another layer of frustration.

And as a final thought, since this feature is identical to the one in Vista it still makes me wonder why everything feels Windows 7 is so much better than Vista. Microsoft recycled the same code all over the place; they’re basically the same OS. I think people are fooling themselves into liking Windows 7.

Just for the record, I don’t like Vista or Windows 7.

Yeah, we’re several months in to the year, but this is the first time I’ve been able to make it out for a group ride. It’s either been too cold (for my personal preference anyway), the rain has come unexpectedly, or other issues have come up at the last minute. But today, I finally made it out there. And what a great morning too; great temperatures and lots of sun.

I was really anxious to see how the bike would handle and I was curious to see how I would do with other riders after all this time. The bike handled great. It was smooth and the shifting was excellent. I held my own as well, at least for the first half.

When we got to the point where the group breaks off into three packs, 30, 40 and 60 mile rides, I was feeling pretty good and quite cocky so I followed a group of about 20 guys for the 40 mile ride. Everything was fine at the beginning. The bike smoothed out the horrible roads and I was putting down some good speed. But apparently what I think is good speed and what those guys call it aren’t the same thing. Once we hit some of the longer stretches those guys just took off! I was clocking along at 20+ mph and they were just leaving me behind. I was drafting, switching gears, standing up, you name it. No matter what I did I just couldn’t gain any ground. Me and two other guys did our best to keep up, but thank goodness they took a break and waited for us to catch up.

It was a pretty rough workout then I really struggled as we were making our way back to the bike shop. There is a very long, gradual hill you have to climb. It’s about 3 miles long and these guys attacked the hell out of it. I was doing my best to climb at 15mph and these guys must have been belting out 20. And they didn’t slow down for anything. They climbed right to the top like it was nothing. I was nothing but envy.

At the top they took a break and waited for us. We were only a minute or two behind but it seemed like forever.

I have to say my confidence in my abilities was a little shaken. Oh well, I just have to try harder next time. I won’t get better or faster unless I push myself and I guess keeping up with these guys is the best way to do it.

At least they waited for us.

As an aside, after talking to Steve about my misadventures he believes I’m not working the gear properly. I’m using "the big ring" too much and should drop down to the smaller gear so I can keep my speed without pedaling so hard. Clearly I need to learn how to ride a bike…

I just realized I’ve ridden nearly 2,200 miles so far.

In November of 2009 (the 10th to be exact) I crossed over 1,000 miles. In just 5 months I’ve travelled another 1,200 miles. For me, that’s a lot of miles in a pretty short amount of time. It looks like I’m riding a little over 200 miles a month. However, that’s been through the winter months so hopefully I can really increase that now that the weather has changed. I still ride about 10 miles a day, but I should be adding another 60 or so miles a weekend. Might not happen like that every weekend, but I should be increasing my riding distance here pretty shortly. I know lots of people ride a ton more miles, some ride 200 miles a weekend, but I’m just looking at what I’ve done and I’m pretty excited about that distance.

I never thought I would one day ride 30 miles in a single sitting, let alone have an odometer on a bike that reads in the thousands. For a guy who just likes to ride a bike, that’s pretty cool.