To paraphrase Robert Oppenheimer, who was himself quoting the Bhagavad Ghiti: “I am become death, destroyer of consumer electronics.” An exaggeration perhaps, but not my much.
As Melanie points out, I am tough on my gadgets. In the time that she has known me, I have left in my wake one broken videocamera, two still cameras, two iPods, a TiVo, along with keyboards and mice and other lesser products that I haven’t bothered to enumerate. The latest casualty was the Canon point-and-shoot camera that my in-laws kindly gave us for Christmas 2006 after I broke the display on our previous point-and-shoot. New cameras of comparable quality are not expensive—about $150 on Amazon.com—but with an impending move and my recent purchase of an iPod touch (to replace the dying iPod mini I gave to Melanie for her birthday 3 years ago and co-opted for my commute when my iPod starting dying last summer) we couldn’t justify even that.
Incidentally, the videocamera died during our wedding ceremony, reception, and honeymoon, rendering the footage unwatchable. And the TiVo, which was admittedly six years old, started rebooting on its own, messing up the recording schedules.
So on Wednesday I was taking a cute video of Isabella playing with bubbles in the kitchen sink when I turned away and lost control of it, dropping it onto the kitchen floor and breaking it so the lens would no longer move in and out. And with Sophia’s baptism this weekend, the timing couldn’t be worse.
Fortunately, my friend George, a professional photographer with more than 25 years experience, lent me a spare camera for the weekend. It’s such a nice camera, a Canon digital SLR, and I was able to take some great shots of Melanie, Isabella and Sophia this afternoon. Oh I wish I had one of these. But through the generosity of a friend, I do for the weekend. I promise him I will be extra careful.
But eventually I will have to select my next victim, er, camera. I’m buying the service plan next time.
Glad to hear you got a loaner camera. When you twittered this the other day I hoped you would come up with a camera in time.
As for myself I am only semi-tough on electronics. My 5G iPod took a dunk in the toilet and while after taking it apart and drying it out I got it working again, I had a weird black streak on the middle of the screen. Though it gave me an excuse to get an iPod Touch and I now use the old one as a backup harddrive. My first iPod got replaced at the Apple store three times for various malfunctions. Though now that my wife has it there are no more problems.
I seem to be much harder on motherboards and power supplies though. I can hardly count the number of fried mothersboards and power supplies I have gone through. When my systems die, they die spetacularly. Just before my iMac turns one years old towards the end of the year I am certainly going to buy Apple Care since I know something will fry on it as the warranty ends otherwise.
When it comes to printers though I am a destoyer all things ink jet or dot matrix.
Oh right I forgot about the time I did a firmware update on my iPod and killed it. I blogged about that and the fact that they gave me a new one no questions asked. I would get Applecare on all Apple products, nor because they are more likely to break but because it’s such a great warranty.
I had it on my iMac g4 and used it just before I gave it to my mom to fix a lingering problem with the ram slot. free motherboard replacement!
Dom,
You sound like the Tim Taylor of electronics.
I am the same way with cell phones.
Thanks for sharing these adorable photos!