Listening to “Where is the Love?”. I haven’t posted in a long time. A really long time. Its really been longer than it should have been, and it feels good to be back.

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and took a little time off. Nature is taking time for itself during the wintertime, and everyone should do a bit of the same. I imagine that over the break, I have had a lot of time to think, and that I should have a lot of thoughts to share. Well, perhaps and perhaps not.

I was talking to Jesse a couple days ago and I have been intending on blogging this since, but managed to avoid it. We were talking about his social life, or maybe mine, I can’t remember which, and it came up that I thought his life was really complex. That is, I can manage my social life perfectly well, but I couldn’t possibly imagine myself keeping track of all of the people he hangs out with. It is intriguing to me that people often say (or maybe its just me) things like “I’d really like to be in that person’s shoes” or “what I’d give to live a day in their life.” But I wonder if, the reason we live the lives we do is completely decided by our own choices that are driven by our personality. That is, one does not live someone else’s life because its impossible, unless they are identical. Each person’s choices are driven by what they prefer, and those decisions ultimately result in wildly different experiences for every person. I don’t know, it’s complicated, it’s just a thought.

Onto a lighter subject. I told Jesse my post might be long, and he told me that if I was going to do that, it had to be funny or depressing but not neutral. So, in a vain attempt at humor, I will talk about my digital camera experience. That is, if it can be called an experience, considering I haven’t bought one yet. You see, I have a tendency to be a little…obsessive about things, and when making a large purchase, that tendency is magnified…a bit. So my dad and I talked a little bit, and now that we know I am going to Brown, we were thinking that maybe I should get a digital camera so I can email pictures of the campus and such to them, just to keep in touch. I was thinking I might like to take snapshots of things just for my own sake, and it would save a lot of effort if I could have the images on my computer instead of in a box. (Digital archiving is far superior to the box of pictures method, or taking all that time to make a photo album)

Now, at this juncture, I’ve decided to get a digital camera. So I decided to do some careful comparing to ensure that I get a really great camera. I started out by looking at Consumer Reports and then at websites like Steve’s Digicams, CNET, and Digital Photography Review to get more information about the models I had read good things about. Over the course of about 4 days, I narrowed the list down to about four models and then went to a camera store to try them out. Well, then I picked one and found out exactly how much it was going to cost. I talked to my dad and he said he hadn’t intended on spending more than $200 on something that could just take the most basic snapshots. So I decided to look again…which I did twice, in the hopes of finding something cheap and amazing. What follows are all my attempts at finding a digital camera, in no particular order:

Sony Cybershot DSC-P32, P52, P72, P92, P8; Nikon Coolpix 2100, 3100, 3700, 4300; Panasonic Lumix DMC-LC33, DMC-F1, DMC-LC40K, DMC-LC43, DMC-LC5K; Canon Powershot G2, G3, SD100, S230, S400, A70, A80, S30; Fujifilm FinePix A210, A303, A310, 3800, F601 Zoom, F410; Minolta Dimage XI, E323, Z1, S414; Olympus Camedia C4000 Zoom, C740 Ultra Zoom, C3020 Zoom, D40 Zoom; HP Photosmart 935, 735; Kodak DX4330, CX6330, DX6440, LS433; Pentax Optio S, 330, 330RS, 33L, 430RS. I think that’s about it. By my count, about 45ish cameras to choose from, and I narrowed it down to two. Now, each time I narrowed it down, I came back to the same two, so I’m not completely sure what good it did to spend all that time trying to find more cameras, but I feel better having done it. I think. To be completely honest, I have no idea what all that work did for me, but now I am stuck between two cameras and nothing seems capable of breaking the even heat between the two of them. Perhaps it would be best to use the dartboard method of selecting. That always seems to be effective for me. I will make a post when I select a camera, and I highly suggest making a betting pool to guess which day I will finally buy one. Someone could win big, and it could be you. Make money the easy way, just follow the previous steps and figure out how long it will take me to choose.

On an even lighter note.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 30th, 2003 at 12:37 am and is filed under recent happenings, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.