Harbor Freight (arrogance)

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AOL ;-)

Didn't know that. It sounds like a plan. I'm sure the Shaper Tape will get used.

But the feds have given them the power to enforce their laws, complete with penalties. Add to that, that *I* actually owe the tax. I'll pay it on my state income tax form as a "use tax". <wink> <wink>

Same here. The tax is owed to the retailer's location if it's a brick and mortar store or by the buyer's residence otherwise. Every tax jurisdiction has its own rate, whether it be a county, city, school district, whatever, and they all add. The tax rate charged is determined by street address.

That looks like, yeah throw the ball, throw the ball please, throw the ball.

Pretty much. LOL. A little closer to catch me if you can as I race past you.

One of my son and DIL's dogs.

Yes, the individual is suppose to pay the sales tax on untaxed goods. Something that we absolutely do. My wife was an enforcement officer for the state. She gets a pension from that career and we are not willing to save a few tax dollars to forfeit the pension.

Exactly!

I liked B&W photography. It took a lot of skill to do really good work. Color is easy. Contrast and texture are hard. I liked to use the Ilford 25ASA B&W for artsy stuff but also used a lot of Tri-X pushed to 1600ASA and infrared film for low light.

I had a chrome (cheaper) Canon FTb in college. I worked at the newspaper as a photographer. They had a decent selection of lenses that I could use.

Fifteen years ago ebay had a bunch of *really* expensive Canon breech-lock lenses for sale for a penny or two on the dollar. I got some really fast telephotos and a couple of black FTbs but never really used them. Film and developing had already gotten to be a PITA.

The Canon micro-prism TTL focus and meter linked to the F-Stop were great. Friends preferred Nikon's split focus but it didn't work for me for some reason. Stop-down metering was a drag too.

I switched to Olympus but it was short lived. I carry my phone everywhere. A camera is a PITA to lug around. If I could marry the FD series lenses to a DSLR, it would change things. I'd be lugging

Done.

I didn't think you lived in California.

"Pretty strong" is a very relative term.

Down from >65,000 employees in the 80's to ~4,500 today.

Removed from the S&P in 2010, delisted by the NYSE and moved to OTC in 2012.

Filed for bankruptcy and canceled health care benefits for 56,000 retirees in 2012. Or should I say "Filed for bankruptcy *in order to* cancel health care benefits for

Stock price >$94 in 1997, a penny stock by 2011. (EK, not KODK. Even KODK is <$5)

From a perennial Fortune 500 company to a penny stock. Ouch!

Today's Kodak (KODK) is not the Kodak (EK) of old. The old Kodak stuck with the idea that roll coating (film) would be a sustainable business for way too long. They basically invented digital photography and then put it on the shelf. By the time they gave up the film dream, the rest of the digital world had passed them by. They were losing money on every digital camera they sold. Between 1998 and 2000 they lost over $360M on the digital side of the business. So what was their next move? They lowered the price of their cameras in 2000 to try and garner more market share. Nice try...too late.

They eventually sold a portfolio of digital patents allegedly worth $2.5B (with a B) for $525M. That wasn't a very strong play. Granted, the $2.5B value is very suspect because of all the licensing agreements that were attached. Besides, they were hurting so bad at that point that they didn't come to the table with a lot of negotiating power.

What passes for "Kodak" today is a shadow of what the company once was.

...and you can just run down to Kinkos to get some prints made.

Then there is the tale of Xerox, could have had Ethernet, GUI and a number other wonderful thing now exploited by others.

Had uncles who were services reps for Xerox, they were not allowed to tell the end users that the quality of paper had a direct effect on the reliability the copiers. That was by Federal judges order.

snipped-for-privacy@notreal.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

My local model railroad shop took that concept to the extreme. He'd have a Father's Day Sale where pretty much the whole store was 40% off. That was his markup from the suppliers, so he was selling slow moving merchandise at cost to buy something that would sell.

The only reason they closed up shop was the owner's health. We miss him.

Puckdropper

My son and I took a ride to HF last evening to look at the rolling tool cabinets as they had a holiday sale underway that ended yesterday. Since the store was about a half hour away on the highway I called them earlier in the day to check their holiday hours. I mentioned where I was coming from and what I was looking for. The guy that answered the phone couldn't have been more helpful. He not only checked the stock on the computer but he put his hands on them in the store room to make sure they were there.

When we got to the store I was actually surprised by the rolling tool cabinets. The drawers worked smoothly, the case was solid, the overall fit and finish was quite good, the drawers all had non-slip liners, and with the sale the price was very competitive. We ended up driving out of there with two of them! One for my son and one for me... Would they hold up for decades under heavy use in a commercial automotive shop... probably not. In our shops they stand a good chance of lasting indefinitely and are light years ahead of the Craftsman rolling tool cabinets I looked at (that had terrible reviews on-line and clunky drawer slides). I think these will work out just fine.

My son had never been in a HF so he walked around. After working in my shop and with my tools he could tell a lot of the stuff was not up to snuff. He stopped at the screwdriver display and examined them. There was a set of 12 that sells for $8. He knew I just replaced all my screw drivers and had examined them. Some of the old ones were 40+ year old Craftsman and other brands that had disappeared from the market. Most were good tools but the years of use caught up with them. My new Klein screwdrivers cost $7-$20 each... the HF screwdrivers averaged to about 70¢ each. My son could tell they weren't in the same league as the Klein. I was glad to see he paid attention to what I'd been telling him over the years. ;~)

The pro tool boxes only need to be strong when being loaded into the back of a truck and moved to a new employer. I have seen plenty of Craftsman tool boxes hold up for decades in a mechanical shop.

I bought my wife one of the small roll around HF boxes for her quilting studio.

That said I will say that the quality of the ICON/Ikon brand tool boxes seem to be very Impressive.

Still pretty strong from a customers point of view that wants prints.

Well now that you looked all of that up, ...

Yes the B&W photography was an art in itself. I did not have the patience for that.

I remember the FTb, did it have a built in light meter? The TX had a build in light meter buy was strictly manual past that. Then with my all time favorite, the AE1 with the auto aperture exposure setting to match the shutter speed. And that one was all black on a brass? body.

I dabbled in processing slide film. I only liked to use slide film until my wife decided that I needed to shoot negative film and get prints.

Yes, my TX had the 2 circles a split bulls eye and the prism circle around that. You could not miss focusing with that. I have to say that I don't recall what the view finder focus looked like on the AE1 and A1.

LOL. Damn phones make every one look good with out knowing the mechanics. I don't miss the Domke back pack though.

I have to be on a mission to carry the DSLR.

Nope, TX

Actually I lived it. For 21 years. Got stock options at ~$50 that were worthless by the time they vested. Not enough time in for the pension to reach the steep slope, so all I got from them was what they matched in my 401k.

Well, that's not true. 2 weeks pay for each year of service, so 42 weeks to get me through looking for a new job at a time that Kodak and Xerox were both going through massive RIFs. There were a lot of people (thousands) pounding the pavement at the time.

The main thing I got from them was a free engineering degree. I was hired with an Associates Degree and shortly thereafter I convinced them that they were wasting my talents by having me fix computers. "Pay for my Bachelors degree so I can get promoted." They agreed, gave me time off of work to attend classes and covered the cost of 2 years at RIT. Money flowed easy when Kodak was in their heyday.

Then as divisions were sold off or mothballed and buildings began to be torn down, there were no more projects coming down the pike. They didn't IT project managers any more. Towards the end we used to drive through Kodak Park, look at all the red brick landscaping material being spread around the remaining buildings and make jokes like "That used to be Bldg. 320". Seriously, they were decorating the plant with the remnants of old buildings.

So yeah, I know a bit about Kodak's history. Times were good for the first 15 years or so and then the stress of "Who's next to go?" and saying goodbye to friends weighed on us for quite a while.

It's all good. I'm sure I'm better off now than I would have been if they kept me around. I set my own hours, I make enough for a stress free life and I'm set for retirement when I'm ready - or when SWMBO tells me I am.

I bought a couple of these when they first came out.

For $2000 or $3000, it's not too surprising that they're OK.

Yes, the FTb had the same open-lens TTL metering as the F1. There was a pin on the FD lenses that told the camera the maximum F-number of the lens. The previous generation, the TL, IIRC, used the FL lenses that didn't have the pin so was stop-down metering only. The FTb and F1 could also use the stop-down mode to see the depth of field.

The A1 and AE1 were a generation after the FTb and F1. The A1 and AE1 both shutter speed and aperture priority auto-exposure modes.

I believe all of Canon's SLRs had TTL metering.

Kodachrome couldn't be processed outside the lab but Ectachrome could be done at home but it was a bit tricky.

The inner circle was the split *mumble* focus and the ring around it was a microprism focus. The meter measured the light in the focusing circle so it could be used as a spot meter.

Everyone good or perhaps everyone equally bad. ;-) The camera in phones is better than can possibly be used.

I doubt my Olympus even works. I'm sure the batteries (NiCd) don't.