Technical Glitches

Sometimes, life makes me scratch my head a little bit. Lately, I have experienced a series of rather odd technical glitches. None has been catastrophic, and all are in hand, but some have been rather perplexing, and, taken as a series, it seems rather puzzling.

The train wreck commenced last Wednesday at the Grand Canyon. We entered the park from the less-used, eastern entrance, and spent quite some time at the Watchtower (photo above). After taking a plethora of photos and then enjoying a picnic lunch at the rim (photo below), we set off for the second overlook where a million little bugs (non-biting, thank goodness) swarmed us and set us scurrying to the next stop. Where my camera stopped working.

Oh yes, remember the new camera bag and the new 2 gig memory card? I was all set to take a lot of photos and and had already enjoyed a fine start. Then it stopped working. Right at the grand Canyon. Could the timing have been any worse? A little fiddling soon revealed that it wasn't the camera but the lens. My telephoto lens still worked, but the normal lens wouldn't focus. Effectively, my picture-taking was kaput, for telephoto lenses, while very useful in the right place, are not usually what one requires for scenery, especially when one is cheek-by-jowl with the grand Grand Canyon.

Needless to say, this put quite a damper on my spirits. Oh, I tried not to let it get me down, but it did. I couldn't help it. To shorten this part of the account, let me jump to the next day. I took it into a camera store in Sedona where they were quite interested in tracking the problem. Eventually, they stuck my lens into a new camera, and it worked. They put it back into my camera, and it worked. It still works. No one can explain this, but I was so pleased to have my camera back that I didn't care.

Glitch 2 was quite explicable. It was my fault — a brain cramp. After filling a memory card and then deleting some pictures, Cuppa asked me to check how much space was available. I did — not much. I hit OK ... and deleted 150 pictures. I had thought that I was saying, "OK, I'm Done," but I was really saying, "OK, go ahead and erase." Sick feeling ensues. Fortunately, I had enough presence of mind to put the card away until we got home. I would take it into a camera store and beg for assistance or find a program to restore erased files. I did the latter, and was able to retrieve all but about ten of the photos. Phew! Catastrophe averted.

Glitch 3: you may also remember me saying that I could store photos on my iPod if necessary. Because Cuppa was filling up flash memory cards at a rapid rate, as Cuppa and only Cuppa can, and I was fearful of her running out of cards, I dumped one of her cards onto the iPod. Fortunately, I forgot to clear it. In this case, my memory lapse worked for the best because my iPod stopped functioning on the very next day. That's right, folks. It wouldn't turn on, wouldn't recharge. Nothing. At least I had left the memory card intact, and the pictures weren't gone. The next day, however, I decided to try the iPod again, and it worked. Go figure.

Glitch 4 was not really a holiday glitch, but seems totally connected to this weird, all-within-a-week, sequence. The first thing my computer did when I got home and turned it on was to update my Browser: Firefox. I have gone through this updating process, without hitch, many times. But not this time. No, this time, all my Bookmarks (Favorites) were wiped out. Every last one. All of the feeds to your blogs too. It's not entirely convenient but not catastrophic either. I have your addresses in my blogroll or can find the newer ones form comments, so the feeds can be rebuilt. Favorites can be re-found as the need arises.

I am rather stunned that so many technical glitches occurred in such a short time span. The blame for two — the erased memory card and the lost Bookmarks — can be laid solely on my own sorrowfully sagging shoulders, but I have no explanation for either the camera or the iPod. How and why would devices stop working and then then start again?

Odd indeed!