greasy grimy gopher guts

Heading to Austin tomorrow for the Society of Environmental Journalists conference - should be a truly great event and I'm very much looking forward to it. Here is the draft agenda for those who are interested.

I bought myself a Canon Rebel Digital camera today. I had purchased one online that was a few hundred cheaper than the standard sales price but it never came in the mail so I called and their email to me had not gotten through (EV1.net is bouncing a lot these days), and upon questioning the gentleman I discovered they were selling me a JAPANESE language camera. Nice. Nice that nowhere on the site did it actually say the camera was all in Japanese symbols and the instruction booklet in Japanese. Oh, but he insisted it was in the fine print somewhere. It didn't matter to him that the photo showed an English language camera. Isn't this kind of thing illegal? Umm, ever heard of false advertising?

If I had the time I'd follow up with something but the best I can do is to say don't order from Royal Camera! (www.royalcamera.com). The guy tried to sell me the American version, and had the gall to tell me I was wasting my money to look elsewhere because they had the best price and when I informed him that I would not do business with a company that blatantly falsely advertises he actually yelled at me in his East coast accent "Thanks for wasting your time!" Or his time or somesuch nonsense. Sheesh what is the world coming to. Or did it never crawl out of the muck of rudeness and disrespect and greasy grimy gopher guts in the first place. For crying out loud.

So I went to my local camera store and although the price was higher than I could find it online I wanted the darn thing now (there's that little impatience problem that occasionally manifests). I wanted it to take to Austin. Never mind that I have to figure out how to operate the mysterious machine since its different and more electronically inclined than my trusty print-film Canon Rebel. And I don't have time to read the instructions. But I have time to write this so maybe I need to get back to work and stop rambling. So I won't be blogging for a few days but will be back Sunday night. Carry on!