February 23, 2008
Worked on a campfire sequence for Mickey Free all day today. Had good reference, but didn't quite get it.

An Obsolete Man Rants
I bought a camera at Office Max several weeks ago for less than $100. It's supposed to do video and stills, but when I tried to shoot video at the Exits Exit practice it shut off after about 15 seconds and the message in the viewfinder said the internal memory was full. So, when I mentioned this to my kids they told me I needed to buy a memory card. Gee, I wish the young Poo Poo head who sold it to me would have told me. I just want a camera I can turn on and shoot photos and call it a day. So last week I went back down to Office Max and told another young Poo Poo Head (someone younger than my kids) my problem. He asked me how much memory I wanted to buy and I said as much as I can afford. So he sold me a $29.95 memory card with mucho gigs of whatever and I made the checkout Kid take it out of the superbonded plastic it's imbedded in, and asked him to insert it in the proper receptacle. He did. I left feeling pretty good about myself.

This weekend I pulled out the camera to take a photo and it wouldn't let me. Said I had to format the disc, but when I hit format, it warned me by formatting the disc I would erase everything on the disc. I hit continue, but it told me it couldn't format the disc and I got caught in a vicious circle of "install it" then "can't read disc, reinstall it."

I gave the camera to my wife and she couldn't get it to format.

So Kathy and I made another trip to Office Max ths morning. The third Poo Poo Head told me there is a problem with the "HC" and sometimes the camera won't accept the HC memory card disc. He suggested another memory card. This time I made the checkout girl, Katelyn, install it. She didn't like doing this (and called for a backup cashier), because those plastic super-bonded packages are hell to get into. She went through two pairs of scissors before getting the first layer open. I gleefully watched this because I always assumed it was just old people, like me, who had such a hard time opening these damn things.

She finally got into the third layer, pulled out the memory card, and installed it. I turned it on and took a photo of her. It worked. Her image on Monday.

"It's not the technology that's the problem, it's the people who buy it who are stupid, that's the problem."
—Poo Poo Head logic