Thursday June 17, 2004 2:45PM
My roommate took care of the cable stuff, so net access is back to normal.
I spent about 4 hours over at my Aunt’s house last night fixing Shawn’s computer (a P3-450 that I gave him a few months ago). He somehow got a virus on it. I’m 90% certain he got it via email since he was using Outlook Express as his email reader (after i made pains to delete it when i gave it to him)… and it seems to have been a pif virus (natal!.pif). About one hour was spent trying to find/install drivers for the DSL modem (which was already working without my realizing it) via Bellsouth’s horrible flash-driven install program (which crashed and hung every time i used it). The computer was still acting wierd, so I might have to do a fresh install on it sometime soon in the future.
After I got home last night, I looked up some camera reviews on the net for the S410 I ordered. THEN I decided to try and find some reviews on the company/reseller that I ordered my camera from (fotoconnection.com). I was not ready for what I found.
Those are absolutely *the* most horrible reviews I’ve ever read about anything on the net before. Those are just a few of the reviews, and there were many many more, the vast majority of them scathing. There was a whole other site filled with reviews that were just as bad.
Needless to say, I did not have a good feeling about my purchase, and was worried about when and what condition my camera would arrive in. I decided to call in the morning when I woke up to inquire as to: 1.Why I hadn’t received an email following my purchase 2.Whether the camera had shipped. I had my doubts and planned to cancel the order if it hadn’t shipped yet. (I even had a nightmare that night about having to negotiate with customer service to cancel the order and get my money back).
The next morning (this morning) at about 10AM, I called and asked about my order. The sales-person told me that not only had my order already shipped, but it was due for arrival later today! He gave me a tracking number and sure enough, that was indeed the case. At around 1:05PM the DHL guy handed me the package with camera … a whole 4-5 days ahead of the promised arrival date. Nice! Also, with all the proper accessories in the box that it is supposed to come with.
I just got done taking my first picture with it, but I have to leave for work at the gym soon. I will post it with this entry after I get back tonight.
Friday 1:52AM
Not too bad a day at the gym, I ended up taking some video with the camera as well. It records in uncompressed AVI format, so I am going to recompile the 22 second clip with a more compressed format. Here are the picture and video:
 First photo: My PPG poster 1704×2272 (888KB) |
 First Video: Rewind Stunt 320×240 1.78MB |
Not too shabby, eh? It was a pain in the but finding a converter for the avi file. I won an auction for two spare batteries on ebay for my camera, but the seller is trying to tack on a $4 insurance charge. That doesn’t seem like much, but besides the fact that they DID NOT say anything about this surcharge via email (when i inquired about shipping costs), and the fact it wasn’t listed or referred to in any way in the auction, and taking into accound that the the grand total (shipping included) is only $13.48… I don’t feel like I should pay it. I guess we’ll see what happens. I’ve already gotten 1 non-payer bidding warning, this might make 2 🙂 (3 and you’re out).
My next task is to find a small case for it that will fit in my pocket and hold a spare battery or two.
-kevin