A Bad Week in Electronics

So I didn’t tell you the funnest part of our Saturday hiking adventure. Our camera died (well not really but read on). We were pretty much at the turn-around point of the hike and I noticed the low battery notification. Usually you have a bit more juice and so I kept snapping away. All of a sudden the camera was dead. Normally you at least see the indicator lights and some read-outs on the console but I had NOTHING. So I figured the battery just really died. We got back to the condo and I pop the card in the reader and also got NOTHING. Tried my mom’s camera. NOTHING. Then I put a new battery in the camera and tried Mom’s card in my camera and NOTHING. I was getting pretty panicky at this point, thinking the camera AND the card died.

Matt did figure out later that the battery I used wasn’t charged enough and the camera itself is fine. But the card seems to have died … and took all the lovely hiking photos with it. Happily, Kelly got a few on her point-and-shoot, but I took tons more of the kids that I want. We’re getting another card-reader just in case, but if that doesn’t work, these fine folks in FL will be attempting to recover my photos. OY.

Happy Ending Update: The new card-reader arrived early (wasn’t supposed to arrive until late Weds after this was posted) and happily, the card was readable and we got all but the last photo (it seems to have died mid-write).

So. In addition to needing a new card, card reader and/or data recovery services for our camera, my long-lived MP3 player, an awesome Creative Zen Vision: M that they do NOT make anymore is gasping its last breaths. Sucker has lasted me for years and I have not been kind to it. I use it daily, frequently for hours at a time. I have dropped it more times than you can imagine. In other words, it owes me nothing! And yet it has been trucking along. Even still it’s not dead. It is having weird power surges and doesn’t turn off/on predictably. And then it sometimes decided to re-build its library randomly, a 3-5 minute process. Irritating.

A bit part of me says I should just go ahead and drink the kool-aid and buy an ipod. They hook up to the gym’s treadmills. They have TONS of accessories. They are what all the cool kids have. But I can’t quite bite. I’ve really loved my Zen and I do not want to deal with iTunes for data transfer. I just want to load folders of music and books without having to load Apple’s bloatware. So now I’m debating between sticking with Creative and getting a Zen Style or a Zen Mozaic or going with a Sansa Fuze (Sansa makes the awesome Clip players I use for running). Decisions decisions.