Sydney and Me

Here's me holding 12 hour old Sydney, wearing a Lord Nrshimadev t-shirt.

Haven't had pictures from the camera Marken gave me because of assumption. The first batteries died as I was trying to upload pictures to my computer. Opening the battery compartment, I didn't attention to position of the batteries and simply dumped them out. When I put in the new ones, there was a little sticker on the side of the compartment that had a black line drawing of the positive end of a battery and a "+" sign, so naturally I put the positive end of the battery up there and the negative end up on the other side.

Went to hook it up to the computer. I could get it to signal "connected to computer", then it would go blank. Thinking the new batteries were dead, even from an unopened package, I bought a new set and tried them. Still nothing. I uninstalled and reinstalled the driver from the CD that came with the camera. Nada. Thinking the CD may have been flawed, I downloaded the driver off the company website and reinstalled it again. Zilch.

Manjari said she had had a camera that didn't work with alkaline batteries but did work with lithium ones. I went to the manual and saw it recommended Ni MH ones, so Sunday Gopish drove me to the flea market in Glendale and afterwards we went to a store and bought the Ni MHs and a charger. My wife, Tulasi,Vraja, and Gracie are all at the Mountain State Arts and Craft Show July 1-4 so I am home alone. Exhilarating being able to care for myself - by reheating kitcherie my wife made, sandwiches, and chowing down at Laxmi's wedding, I am getting by. I am not supposed to drive for 6 weeks, though, hence the need for Gopish to take me into town. Physically, I could drive in an emergency, but know that with the fatigue issues I am grappling with, occasionally I can't keep the 100% focus needed to drive safely.

Got the batteries in the charger Monday, and now, Tuesday morning, I went to put them in the camera. Disappointingly, still no results. Thinking Zen mind, make no assumptions, I went to the manual and read how to install batteries. The picture there showed them opposite to how I had them. I opened the battery compartment and sure enough, stamped into the opened cover on the metal of the contacts was a “+” and a “-“ opposite to how I had them. Yet right next to the batteries themselves was the line drawing of the battery end with the “+” sign, where the negative end was supposed to be. Apparently, some moron engineer put the line drawing in so we would know it was the battery compartment. Either that or the slave laborer in China who assembled it put the sticker on the wrong side. Couple that with my lack of observation and inability to look at the contacts and know by seeing what was correct, a long comedy of errors.

At last, though, the material world has granted me a reprieve and I now have original pictures to upload.