A Few Little Purchases

Eagles may soar in the clouds, but weasels never get sucked into jet engines.

Today there are two things on my “to do” list.  One of them is to write Justin a letter.  We have his address finally so that’s the most important thing of the day.  The next thing I need to do is get my camera ready to send back to the factory to see if they can fix it.

It seems that being in a wet and humid environment may have caused moisture to get inside the lens.  I’m not really sure.  What I do know is that taking a picture with a lens that’s fogged up from the inside doesn’t make for a very good picture.  Keeping receipts is hard.  It’s amazing that just about 2 weeks ago, I threw the box and the receipt away.  Hmmm.  We’re going to be better and make a point of scanning any receipt with a purchase over $100.  It’s like buying new tires for a car.  Once you buy the tires, you trade it off. We should have known we’d need the receipt.

The good thing about buying something from Fry’s Electronics is that they have your purchase record on their computers for at least a year.  The camera was covered under warranty by the factory for one year.  I just held my breath that I was under that deadline and they had the receipt.  They did.  If I get the camera in the mail in the next few days off to the factory, I’ll squeak under the deadline. That's my plan.

Have you ever been to Fry’s Electronics?  That’s one of my absolute favorite stores --- along with Winco, of course.  Neither of these stores are everywhere.  It is difficult to  make a trip to Fry’s without a few “little” purchases.  I really wish they allowed overnight RV parking.  It would give us an opportunity to browse all their gadgets without having to rush.  Hmmmm.  Maybe they do allow it.  I’m going to have to check.

We walked out with a Patriot HD Multimedia Box and a 2TB external drive.  Our son insisted these were two “must haves” for us.  The good thing about the Patriot is that whatever you load on a hard drive, a computer, a camera, a network or even a flash drive, it can play on your HD TV by automatically converting the format whether it’s music, movies or photos.  Then, with purchasing the Patriot wifi, the box can connect with your own network.  It definitely sounded like something I would be interested in.  It's a brand new toy.  I love new toys.

One other purchase made was another small camera.  Last year I sold my Canon SLR body and equipment.  I figured it was time to get rid of it if I didn’t take it with me whenever I went places.  Changing lenses was cumbersome and I hated to take different lenses with me.  I preferred the all-in-one.  Besides with today’s technology the little zoom cameras offer more than they used to.  Even my 28-300 zoom lens only gave me about an approximate 460 range and was way behind other cameras.   I replaced it with a Sony HX1 having  an equivalent lens with a longer range than the lens I sold.   However, I still always seemed to grab my little pocket camera even more than that one.  Perhaps,  it was probably time to upgrade the small purse-sized one since it seemed to get more use.  Have you checked out the compacts lately?  

I wanted one with a wide-angle lens, a decent zoom, bracketing for HDR and in-camera sweeping panorama.  In other words, I knew exactly what I wanted.   I’ve had the Canon and the Nikon but still prefer the Sony.  This time a big draw was the sweeping panorama which I had already come to love in my HX1.  The problem is I didn’t want it in BLACK.  However, that’s the only color I could find without ordering it online.  So, I eventually walked out with a black Sony DSC-HX9V.  It’s a perfect little one for me and it will fit in my purse or my pocket (if I actually happen to have a pocket) and offer just about everything I need.

We’re still sitting close to the lake.  We’re still feeding the deer.  Our internet still sucks and we still don’t know what we’re going to do about it. 

Tammi has an interview this Thursday.  She's still on the payroll for another month or so but she's looking for another job in the meantime before the current one goes away.  It's always better to find a job when you have a job.  Isn't it?   It’s better that others get good jobs and have great incomes.   That’s right.  It’s much better for us.  It’s like an insurance policy for old age … and, that’s creeping up mighty, mighty fast.

There are a few little techie issues I'm having with my internet browsers.  First of all, why is it that Firefox isn't loading many of the graphics on my computer when online..  It loads some but not embedded photos or even my background on Blogger.  Yes, I have the latest version and have updated many of the plug-ins.  Safari works fine and Chrome works.  Why is it though that Safari isn't remembering my sign-in passwords anymore?    These things aren't fun.  I hope someone has an answer.  I'm tired of looking for it and trying to figure it out.  I just switch from one browser to another until I get to the one that works for whatever I'm doing..

- August 26