Over packaging

Recently our camera started to exhibit a phenomenon known as the "white screen of death." The first known occurrence happened at my brother's final dance concert and I was quite mortified to discover this new trait our camera was exhibiting. Since that first discovery, the camera has been displaying the "white screen of death" at more and more frequent intervals and has been becoming more and more difficult to fix each time.

We are unsure what caused this. Was it from hiking Wadi Mujib? Was it from getting banged around in our backpack? Was it just because the camera was old?

Whatever caused the "white screen of death," we decided that it was time to look for a new camera.

We decided that now would be a good time to do so since we probably wouldn't feel like spending $150 on a camera after the baby is born...

So, we Froogled it first (you can't make a verb out of "Google Product Search") and then we checked out Amazon.com. We found a great deal on Amazon.com...a "Fujifilm FinePix V10 5.1 mega pixels" camera for 50% off the original price, brand new. It has optical zoom, macros, etc., etc., etc. Truthfully, it's probably a pretty cheap camera but it is way supped up compared to our old camera.

Andrew purchased our old camera on his mission for €199 and got a 152 MB memory card for €90! Our camera was around $130, and we got a 1 GB memory card for $20! That is way awesome.

The camera got here in like 3 days, so we've been playing with it (and the 16 MB card that comes with the camera) for a few days now. Finally, our 1 GB card came today...

...in a box 14,144 times its size!

Yes, 14,144 of those little memory cards could have fit in the box they shipped it in. The memory card is only as big as the tip of my thumb...the box, well, it's just much, much bigger. Oh, and I really like how they were sure and stuffed the package under the box flaps so that it wouldn't move around in the box too much. Essentially they shipped an empty box. One of those cardboard envelopes probably would have done the trick just fine.

In short, we're really quite happy to have a new camera. That way, we can give Andrew the new camera to take pictures with because his pictures always turn out nice...and I can continue to take pictures on our old camera, because my pictures usually turn out not-so-nice. I always end up shaking the camera and then the pictures come out all blurry. Andrew has a much steadier hand.

And while I'm into happy mail news, we also got CS3 in the mail today--for free! We bought CS2 at the student price simply because you could upgrade to CS3 for free... That's an $1800 deal. Of course, we got the student priced one, so it cost us around $200, so we really only saved $400 because the CS3 student priced version is $599. Either way you look at it, it was a good deal.

Now we're done buying anything until well after the baby is born, I'm sure.