By The Stubbing of My Toe, Something Stupid This Way Comes

Enter MacBeth.

OH WAIT! That is not how the play begins! I must have stolen that line from Mystery Science Theater 3000 or something.

Anyhow, I am in a rare good mood. Actually it is not so rare. It just is. I went and brought my ex-office Eclipse 6 home Friday. There were still two fish alive, and the thing was only low by about a half to three quarters of a gallon or so. Of course, the System 6 holds 6 gallons totally empty and filled to the rim - so figure the actual capacity is really 5 gallons once you add all the gravel and heater and whatnot to the thing. Also you never fill a tank up to the rim - there is always an air space under the hood. Unless you LIKE the thing to spill over that is. So anyway - it needed more water. I drained it, put the fish in a plastic water jug, bagged the plants, and removed it. Good thing I saved the box huh?

In its glory days, it had a lot more than 2 fish. I had a school of 7 or so neon tetras, three glow zebra fish, and some catfish. Probably too many for such a little tank but the water quality was always good. I may get more neons today. They look cool. The low light plants I have were just going wild. You should see it. I may take a picture of it and post it here. I have NEVER had a tank with plants that have done so well. It is like a forest in there. Soon the plants will grow to the point there will be no room for fish.

In other news - I want to blow some smoke up Sony's ass. See in 2003 I bought a fancy Sony digital camera.

This is the CyberShot F717. It is cool as hell. It has a Carl Ziess lens (quality optics), night shot, night framing (so you can use the night vision to frame your shot, but when you hit the shutter button the camera switches to daytime mode and pops off the flash), several pre-set light conditions PLUS an auto white balance mode, movie mode, it will take bracketed shots, it will take multiple shots (three in rapid fire mode) it has several ISO (light sensitivity) modes, two LCD displays (one large one and one little itty bitty one where the viewfinder on a SLR would be - so on bright days if you can not see the large LCD screen you switch to viewfinder mode), and so on. It is 5 mega pixels. Today you can get more mega pixles but in 2003 5 mega pixles was the shit. If you wanted more, you had to go super high end and pay twice as much for just a camera body with no lens.

Anyway, I got it from Best Buy. I had a 10% off any digital camera priced $299 or more, and a bonus offer of no interest for 12 or 24 months (I forgot) if I bought the thing with the Best Buy credit card. So I applied for instant store credit and went looking at cameras.

Now knowing that I was going to get a bunch of free financing IF the camera was $299 or more - as well as 10% off AND a bunch of Reward Zone points (double for using the card) I was set to buy something good. And by good I mean not the cheapest thing there.

It came down to a Nikon Cool Pix and the Sony. The Nikon was actually a tiny bit cheaper. But it did not have the large lens the Sony had, nor did the Nikon have a night vision photo mode. The Nikon would also not accept standard photographic filters. The Sony is threaded for 55mm filters (or something like that).

So I buy the Sony. For a little more than $700. It was expensive as hell. The most expensive digital camera in the store. But I did not have to pay the entire $700 at once. I had 2 years to pony up before a single finance charge was added.

I paid it off over 6 or 7 months. No big deal. The financing was free. Who said department store credit cards are always the worst?

Anyway - a few weeks ago the Sony died. It just quit working. I was charging it up for the a Shark Valley ride. When I turned it on to see how much battery life it had all I got was a black screen. The camera I used was borrowed from my dad. He paid like $200 for it, it is a whole lot smaller (and therefore easier to lug around), and is 7 mega pixels.

Now where was I? OH YEA! The Sony had died. I was thinking that I would just need another camera, because as much as I paid for the F717 was it worth fixing? Yea it is nice and has a ton of features and stuff - but what if the repair bill was going to be just as much as a new camera with more mega pixels?

So I do a Google search for the camera model and the word "repair". I quickly find that Sony announced that SOME of their digital still and video cameras had a CCD chip defect. They said that effected models would just have a black screen when the camera was turned on, and that they would fix the problem for free!

Free is for me. So I email Sony with the camera model number and serial number. The next day I get an email with a link to print out a UPS shipping label. I print out the label, box the camera up, and send it off.

I got the thing back Friday. All fixed! The camera has a brand new CCD chip and works great. At least I think it does. I will not know till later today when I try to photograph the Eclipse 6.

I have a few Sony products. The company is excellent at supporting the crap they sell. When the PS2 came out, the company continued to produce NEW games for the PS1 for at least a year, and continued to print game titles for even longer. Now that the PS3 is out have they abandoned all the PS2 owners? Nope! You can still but NEW PS2 games and even the PS2 units.

And they fixed the camera. Free. No problems at all. None of this "since your crap is old, here is a voucher so you can buy another one". I did not really WANT to buy another one. I wanted the camera I have to be fixed for free. Cause free is always better than shelling out more money.