Relief

Many things going on.

Chia slideshow from a few posts back has one more picture at the end; he's fully-grown now.

More exciting: our kitchen base cabinets are installed, countertop and all! Last thing to do is vacuum and clean them out, install handles on doors and drawers, and fill them up! Paul also put the door on the front of one of the two cabinets hung on the dining room wall, but the other he put together upside down, so he has to un-hang it and flip it around before the door will fit on (whoops). It's also added to the slideshow, but here is a picture of the finished cabinets:



And finally, the biggest news of all: I have my wedding photos.

If you haven't heard the story, it's pretty long, so give me a call sometime. Suffice to say, our apparently chronically depressed photographer hadn't been returning our calls or e-mails, but today my dad went and found him at his studio, and the photographer gave him a DVD with all the full-sized raw files and a written release of his rights to the photos. So we still have no album, but now we at least have the "negatives," so we'll be able to make ourselves anything we want. The contract we signed says he will maintain rights to the photos, so this is important. We've paid him in full and hasn't delivered the albums etc. we bought from him, but at least now we have the files. Next task is to have them looked at by a professional photographer who will be able to balance things - it was a sunny day, so a lot of the outdoor photos look overexposed, but it's OK because we have the raw image files, which is like having the negative if it wasn't digital, so all the info is there.

I'm still trying to think of a humane way to get the word out that this is not someone you want to hire as a photographer without being really mean to this guy. On one hand I'm totally pissed that he gave us the one-over and didn't deliver on our contract, but on the other hand I don't want to ruin the guy's livelihood, I just want to teach him a lesson. You can read all about his pathetic life on his myspace page, so you gotta feel a little bit sorry for him, but on the other hand he signed a contract with us, knowing that he had these problems, and thus sucking us into his problems. I want to teach him a lesson, but on the other hand I want to show some pity to a guy with these personal problems, but on the OTHER hand Paul pointed out that it's because everyone he's screwed over in the past has felt too sorry for him to do anything about it that lets him keep doing it to more and more people. But what if we speak out, and it makes him commit suicide or something? There's just no way to win. I'm open to suggestions. Seriously, the guy is a nut job. I deleted my myspace account a while back, but I might get a new one just so I can comment on his and tell him how underhandedly misleading, selfish, and inconsiderate I think he is to his clients.

There's multiple complaints against him with the Better Business Bureau, so I want to go at least one step beyond that and put a complaint in a more public area that I feel is more likely to be seen by prospective customers of his - we sure didn't check out his history at the BBB before we signed the contract, or I'm sure we wouldn't have hired him!!

So that's my story for tonight, and if you want any specific pictures from the wedding, I can now send you the full-sized file for yourself and it's perfectly legal. I'm going to scan the release letter tomorrow at work, so I can send that to anyone too.

Just because I can and it's legal now, here's one of my favorite pictures: