Dec 4, 2010

Never buy another electronic product

This morning I woke up at 6am, with the most intense itching. I suspect I'm suffering from PUPPP, an irritating skin condition that some pregnant women get and is more likely if you are having a boy. In my case, it translates as a bunch of little red bumps all over my arms and legs, and also parts of my belly and breasts. 


For the moment, I'm treating it with a small dose of antihistamine (doesn't help much), and some topical lotion that I bought way back when I had a poison ivy outbreak. The web further suggests loose clothing and seeing your doctor (duh). I'm due to see my doc on Monday for a regular check up again anyhow, so I'll bring my PUPPP along (no that I have much choice in the matter). I'm just sincerely hoping it doesn't break out into the blisters that appeared when my hand was undergoing something similar a few weeks back. We'll see.


I can't do much about the PUPPP except deal with it. Which is very different from my Sony products that are bringing me an equal amount of irritation, if not worse. On Monday my laptop went poof, displaying a blue-screen-of-death. It's been a week now and the IT people have still not told me if they've contacted Sony. They did determine that the hard drive is corrupted. Yippie. 


Now, of course, I am smart enough to have everything backed up online via Sugarsync. But even so, it's a bit of a pain since the "home" folders were all on my Sony and I know have to "download" each file I want to work on and re-save it on my trusty MacBook Air. My personal laptop, I'll have you know, that I am using for work. I refuse to have yet another stupid piece of rubbish equipment in my office as a temporary replacement with someone else's fingerprints all over it. I'm tired of it. Tired of electronics.


It's been nothing but electronic issues all year. Not only did my Dell laptop give out on me with a similar blue-screen-of-death as my Sony, but my Blackberry wiped out on me several times so I'm on my third phone. Add to that the fact that our cable TV connection gave in recently, and now the surround-sound system has died. Oh, and the 2-hours of pictures I took yesterday of the department curling challenge didn't work because my Olympus digital camera, for some obscure reason, decided that using a flash in an indoor environment would make all my pictures incredibly dark.


And then this morning, to cap it all off, when I woke up at 6 am crazy with itching, my Sony E-reader claimed that it had no battery power. Which is a ridiculous statement because I only just loaded it a few days ago and it should last more than 7,000 page turns (I read fast, but not THAT fast).


So I couldn't even distract myself with a good book. I have a mind just to dump all my electronic products (minus one necessary computer for work) into the nearest recycling bin and go back to basics. Pencil and mini calendar for appointments, pen and paper for notes, and a regular old landline for a phone. 


I'm sick and tired of spending time and money on these things. And my grumpy and itchy mood is adding to the feeling. 


GGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. (insert your own tiger image here)

4 comments:

  1. My kitchen fan (the one above the stove, perhaps it's not called fan? The thing that extracts the smell and smoke from whatever you're cooking), washing machine and freezer have broken so far this year. The freezer in the middle of July, while we were gone for a couple of days. Imagine the smell and the puddle when we came back. We had to dump 28 kilos of rotten food.

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  2. Electronics should cost double what they do, it's the small margins that mean they're all poorly built. Sony are struggling right now, so they'll be scrimping on components in a way they didn't before. Macs are usually better because they cost double the price. Build your own PC with hand picked components, it'll be just as good - in fact probably a lot better.

    The curling photos will be a metering issue due to confusion about the ice. White subjects and highly reflective surfaces are both problematic, especially at a distance in a big hall where, in lay terms, the information the camera needs doesn't bounce back but bounces around. You want perfect metering on a camera? Spend 5k and you'll start to get close, but it still won't be perfect.

    Sorry, I forgot, women don't want explanations or solutions, they want sympathy ;p

    x

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  3. I've now seen your photos - I don't think it's a metering issue. You're generally at far too great a distance for the flash to be effective - a little cheap compact only has a guide number of maybe 5 or 7 and a max aperture of maybe f3.5 so at ISO 100 you'll only illuminate 7m/3.5 = 2m from the camera.

    But the camera knows the flash is firing, so will set a shutter speed of 1/60th (the basic sync speed) and a low ISO , as it thinks, "Great, flash, I have loads of light, I can use a low ISO". It doesn't know you actually want to photograph something 5 or 10m away, it assumes you're interested in the near foreground. You have to work within the flash's guide number. Which funnily enough is the subject of the photography class I'm teaching tomorrow...

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  4. If it makes you feel better - I blew up my harddrive as well last week. Of course I did NOT have anything backed up but a trusty friend and a few hours of intensive hard-drive disassembly later and luckily all files are back! Hang in there - its only a computer!


    Your brother.

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