Eat those feet.

Charlotte is eating her feet, looking at me, squealing and humming.  She also responds to her name all the time, at only 4 months.

Also, Amazon took my camera back, after the complete failure of Canon’s repair service to right my camera or their snarky customer service to right the situation.  Amazon even footed the bill for shipping.  I’m totally typing up the complete story for people who Google “Canon customer service” to find. To top if it, the last message I got from them wasn’t even polite, after I never verged from good manners myself.

I have refrained from telling the story in detail, in the hopes that they might fix the situation.  Fuck that.  Remind me to never buy a Canon ever again.

Third trip to the repair shop.

So.  Got my camera back yesterday.  I think  for$400 a point-and-shoot that’s not waterproof ought not to have to be repaired after two months.  Certainly not again a few weeks later.  And definitely that they should actually fix it this time.  And then, after the third trip in, one’s camera really, oh, really should not come back with a cluster of dead pixels, a vertical  line in the images and moisture in the lens!  No, indeed.

I demanded my money back, and I hope I get it.  I’m buying something else.

Where are all the pictures?

Well.  Long story.  But it involves my camera being en route to/from Canon.  Again.  Yes, again.  They typed “glass” where I typed “lens,” and the person doing the fixing thought it meant “LCD.”  Boo.  At least they didn’t make me pony up for shipping again.  Bums.

Dropping out?

I wonder if it might be good for me to drop out of all this internet/cyber crap.  Digital cameras, Facebook, blogs, Flickr.  I spend a lot of time putting [carefully selected parts of] my life on display and checking out other people’s.  I don’t think this is healthy for me as a father struggling to live in the proverbial moment.

Then again, this could be brought on by my frustration over having to send my relatively expensive camera to Canon again, after they got crap under my lens last time they repaired it.  And the sudden jolt when I realized that I won’t have my camera Friday when my old friend comes to town — as if it didn’t happen if I don’t record it all as a JPG.

I sent paper cards to a few folks recently, folks to whom I used to write regularly.  And it felt great.  I miss spending time reading books and writing, rather than reading about pens and authors’ silly personal secrets on the web.  I used to write more than I read about pens and Moleskines, and this is no longer anywhere near the case.

I was going to start a serious, full-time dad blog latter this summer.  Now, I don’t know.

It feels like the whole world is online, though, and you miss everything if you’re not.  But then again, what are we really missing?

I’m spending too much time consuming and not enough time creating.

Ish Crissmus an awl, hon.


I don’t have any recent photos of Christmas because my camera pooped out.  This is my Grandmama-in-law [who is one of the sweetest people I know] back in 2004.

I don’t get/have to travel for the holidays these days, which takes away some stress/excitement. I still eat too much and feel guilty about it though.

Not that I don’t do that a whole lot during normal times.

I did too much research and picked my new camera, which I’ll order later.  Hopefully this one will come sans imaging processor errors.

Christmas feels weird these days. It’s been suggested that I need to have some kids to get back into it. Kids? I wonder how long it will take before we have a kid or two, as if I don’t get a say in the matter. Any children we have will probably show my green eyes and F’s big hair.

So cute that they might destroy the world. Or save it. Maybe even make a real, really, totally-for-real Santa Claus.

Holy shit.

I am pooped. And I haven’t wrapped my presents yet.

Why do Canons crap on me?

I’ve only owned Canons once I got into digital cameras.  My first was a brick, but I loved it.  And I swear subsequent cameras have not taken photos that were quite as nice.  It did die, but after I had a replacement.  My next had a dead pixel that showed up as a white dot in every shot.  It’s replacement did.  And it’s replacement did.  So when I was, apparently, stupid enough to get another one (but with a totally different imaging chip), it did it again!  This time, it’s red. That makes dead pixels in four of five Canons I’ve owned, with the fifth dying itself totally.

This time, it actually happened when I was taking photos in a church Wednesday on a walking tour.  I can pinpoint the shot where it showed up, and it’s staying.

So I was, of course, up all night looking for replacements.  All the ones I like are getting replaced themselves this spring, which makes me want to wait.  But waiting months to get a camera when my old cameras all have dead pixels is just a painful thought.

I also lost my cell phone last night and didn’t know until a nice cyclist called me and told me several hours later.  It’s nice and awesome that someone is nice and awesome enough to do that.  But still.

Technology was not my friend yesterday; that’s for sure.