Loose Ends
More technology woes
Susan Nienow

An update on the state of our personal technology: the digital camera is definitely dead. No click. No flash. No last words. It is five years old, according to the carefully saved warranty that I wouldn't have been able to find in a year, but was instantly produced by my other half. A call to the manufacturer's phone number listed on the warranty that was only good for a year gave us the bad news. They don't fix it. It's too old.

Too old! We have only had it for five years. I still have our Instamatic, and it works. I never did figure out how to get our old camera and my computer to share their toys. I view this as an opportunity to get a camera that likes my computer. And me. It has to like me.

My other half had the nerve to ask me what kind of camera I want. That's easy. I want one that works - that I can work without taking a class. One that I can work without reading the instructions.

That's not enough information for him. He wants me to go to the electronics stores to look at cameras. Thanks, but I'd rather dig post holes. But since we are not putting up a fence, I need to make it clear to him that, at least in our family, camera buying falls clearly in his "to do" column.

I don't care how many bytes are in there - mega or otherwise. I want to be able to back up and take a picture of a monument or get close-ups of flowers and have them be crystal clear. I want the camera to do the focusing. When I plug it into the computer, I want clear instructions on how to move the pictures from the camera to the computer, find them and send them off in e-mails to our friends and relatives.

That's the key - finding them. If I can do that, I will consider his buying trip a success.

I probably should have gone with him to buy new phones, but there was that electronics thing. I just couldn't get past it. So he brought home a package of four identical phones that are supposed to be related to each other - like siblings. And just like siblings, they aren't talking to each other.

The phone on my desk has our voicemail number programmed into the phone. But, it isn't sharing that information with the other three. What is the point of buying four identical phones if they each have to programmed? And I refuse to have them programmed differently with my other half's important numbers - the tractor store or the pro-shop to make a tee time - in just his phone.

If the phones get mixed up, I might get stuck with the autodial for the tractor store. What if I had a hair emergency and couldn't find my phone with autodial for the hair salon?