Saturday, June 17, 2006

Grrrrr....

OK. Last week I had to replace my Norelco shaver. Not a big deal, that, but it was still thirty bucks I didn't care to spend at that moment. (Or rather, something on which I didn't want to spend that thirty bucks.)

And recently, the computer's been acting highly flakey, locking up at random intervals with no warning, necessitating a cold boot by turning the power off via the surge protector and then back on again. However, last time this happened, the subsequent reboot actually brought up a message screen reading "The system has recovered from a serious error", and when I clicked through for details, the resulting screen informed me that the culprit was something in the AOL software that was conflicting with...something else. So I followed a few more links to a downloadable AOL fix, which I then applied. Much knocking of wood, of course, but that was three days ago and I haven't locked up since. We'll see. Maybe I can keep the computer functioning until wintertime, and then upgrade for a new one.

But then, yesterday, something went awry with the digital camera. Damn it all to hell! It turned on nice and normal, but then the zoom caused something to go haywire inside, and now the viewfinder is stuck out of focus and the lens casing no longer moves in and out of the camera casing upon turning it on or off. Arrgghhhh! I've e-mailed the Olympus people about a repair estimate, but I'd really rather not have to buy a whole new camera. Yes, we still have our old 35mm film camera which works fine, but we've become spoiled by the digital one. So, depending on the price of the repair, I may just get a new digital camera. Looking at prices, I note that for not a whole lot more money than I paid for this one two years ago, I can get twice the resolution, which would be nice. My one real sticking point is that I insist on having optical zoom, because digital zoom just isn't the same. But anywhere, there would go another $150.00 or so -- and when I bought the first camera, it was a planned expenditure and I saved up for it.

So maybe we'll just revert to film for a while until I can set aside enough to make the new digital camera worth it. But it's still annoying.

My point? Hell, I don't know. I'm just ramblin'. A guy's gotta ramble once in a while, you know.

1 comment:

Aaron said...

My digital doesn't have optical zoom, but that is ok, because I bought it for its compact size to have a point and shoot that would fit in my pocket.

If you want zoom, it absolutely MUST be optical. Never, ever, ever, evereverever use the digital zoom. Not even just once. Don't do it! Seriously. Most imaging software will do a much better job of enlarging the portion that you want to zoom in on.