It's a small world
Has anyone seen my extra digital camera battery? I'm that
desperate.
I am not adapting well to this world where valuable electronics
are growing smaller every year. Everything about my camera is
precarious.
Instead of a closet full of bulky photo albums which are
difficult to lose (or in my case, stacks of photos stuffed in
shoe boxes), the visual montage of my life over the last five
years is sitting on a perfectly fallible hard disk on my laptop.
None of the backup options work for me.
I was thinking about backing up all my photos on CDs, but with
CDs strewn randomly around the house and in the car, I'm worried
that my irreplaceable pictures from Penang and Santo Domingo
will be discarded along with pile of AOL trial disks or
misplaced in some Los Lobos CD case forever.
Those memory sticks are trouble too. Anything smaller than a
pack of gum is bound to end up lost beneath the sofa cushions.
And, I'm constantly looking for that sleek little cord I need to
transfer photos from the camera. I need a camera cord that's
30-feet long and Day-Glo orange so I can hang it from a hook in
the garage.
I usually find the cord in a little zippered pouch where I also
keep a spare memory card that's about the size of a Cheez-It.
But, I feel the need to put the pouch into a larger pouch so I
don't lose it. So, what's the point of being compact, if I have
to store these gizmos in something large to keep track of them?
I'm not used to having tiny, valuable things. If I lose a
Tic-Tac package, I can cope, but my new MP3 player of the same
size is worth a hundred bucks. People with expensive jewelry are
used to keeping track of small things, so maybe I need a jewelry
case to keep all my electronics.
Anything that is small enough for my pants pocket is living on
borrowed time. I learned that several years ago when a $90 pair
of sunglasses went through the washer's spin
cycle--unsuccessfully. Since then, I consider sunglasses a
disposable product and never spend more than $12 a pair.
That's why I've been clinging to my clunky old mobile phone, a
five-year-old Nokia, the size of a kosher dill. I've been
rebuffing Cingular's offers for a "free" upgrade phone until
they offer one that can survive a few washings.
I even misplace my laptop sometimes. This was not a problem 40
years ago. I hearken back to a time when computers, though slow
and feeble, couldn't be misplaced without the aid of a forklift.
So seriously, if you see a Canon camera battery lying around,
it's mine.