Peeve Farm

g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.

On My Blog Menu:

InstaPundit
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As the Apple Turns
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Cold Fury
Capitalist Lion
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Eric S. Raymond
Tal G in Jerusalem
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Aziz Poonawalla
Corsair the Rational Pirate
.clue

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12/17/2001 - 12/23/2001

Thursday, August 8, 2002
11:47 - Yay-- I have my camera back!	(top)
I guess bitching really pays off. In mid-May, my Nikon CoolPix 885 abruptly broke. I say "broke" because even though it appeared to be an unrecoverable software error of some sort (when I unplugged it from my computer one day, it said "SYSTEM ERROR" and refused to come back to life or retract its lens), when I shipped it to the repair facility they told me it required "major parts replacement" and would cost me $181. Since I didn't have the receipt and couldn't prove I was still in the warranty period, I didn't have much of a choice. Over two months later, having spent the intervening time glumly watching their Service page report my case as being stuck in PARTS HOLD mode and repeately trying to call them for information (being told every time that the approximate wait time was ten minutes, only to spend the subsequent hour waiting and listening to the same unchanging theme-song jingle, and never reaching a human), I finally managed to reach someone in late July. I explained that I needed this camera for a trip in August, and that although I was perhaps overly optimistic in thinking that sending it in for repair in May would give them ample time to do such a repair-- particularly considering that I was paying over a third of the camera's retail price for this service, which should have been under warranty anyway-- I'd surely waited long enough that I should have some basis for complaint by now. Of course, none of the databases at Nikon can communicate with any of the other databases at Nikon, so the only thing the service rep could tell me that it was in PARTS HOLD. Oh, great. The only information they have in the service department is the same information we have available over the Web. (I hope she isn't just using the same website to look up the camera status as I was.) But she said she would make a call and find out. (When I told her I needed it in mid-August, she seemed to brighten-- "Give me an exact date, and I'll put it on here. That'll really bump up the priority.") She called back the next day to tell me that they'd been expecting a new shipment of parts from Japan, but it hadn't arrived the previous month, and it hadn't arrived this month either. So they were starting to ship out replacement units to customers who had cameras with pending parts service. She called back again the following Monday (that would be this week) to tell me that she didn't have any new information, but that they would ship out a new camera to me as soon as possible. I guess having that specific date on the work order really does expedite things. Because today there was a box sitting on my chair. A brand-new Coolpix 885. Huzzah! It seems to be a little bit cooler than it was before, too. I think this model is nearing the end of its lifespan, and they're sweetening the deal a bit so they can clear out stock. For instance, the box now includes a rechargeable battery and charger-- something that would have cost me about $120 extra if I'd bought it with the old camera. And there seem to be a few new features in the camera's OS-- like the ability to order prints directly from the CompactFlash card (you do all the print-ordering stuff right in the camera, it stores those settings on the card, and then you take the card to the photo-finisher where he plugs it into a machine and out come prints). Plus I now have a redundant USB cable (ferrite beads and all) and power cable, so I can use it at work. I think I ended up getting a pretty sweet deal out of all this. Oh, and one final note: The slip on the left is a release note regarding Mac OS X. The one on the right is a release note regarding Windows XP. The OS X one says that the bundled "Nikon View 5" software "may not function as expected" on a dual-processor Power Mac G4. It says to run it in OS 9 instead. (Shyeah, right-- I'll just use iPhoto.) The Windows XP one says that you'd better not use the operating system's built-in Rotate functions, in the Thumbnail View mode, because doing so will blank out all the EXIF image meta-data-- shutter speed, aperture size, exposure time, and so on. So will choosing "Simple" from the Summary tab of the Properties dialog box for any of the files-- it will rewrite the file and erase all the associated meta-data. Yeah, great implementation there, guys. You're also not supposed to format the CompactFlash card under Windows XP, or it will no longer be compatible with the camera-- you'll have to reformat it using the camera's OS. ...Tell me again which platform is supposed to be more hassle-free?