Steve Jobs can go pound sand. Oh, and another thing, I really hate you Apple for making a 2:40pm appointment and making me wait 15 minutes for one of your silly 'geniuses' to help me. When I make an appointment, I expect you to keep it. Sorry, your service sucks. It sucks worse than any other business I've visited in the last 3 months. Oops, no. Maybe that was Ann Taylor and their dumb price adjustment limit of only 14-days instead of 30. (Funny thing, I could have returned them in the 30-day window, and then turned around and bought them the next morning. Stupid stupid stupid)

She gave me a few things to try and then shrugged and told me I should go out and buy a new camera. The warranty was up, she advised, paying for a repair is stupid, cameras are less expensive now than 2 years ago so "go out and buy another one" was her final recommendation.

Buying another one right now was not an option I wanted to accept. I really wanted to take the camera and throw it out the window. But I refrained. Instead I looked at the camera and gave it a good thought. Perhaps there is a loose something or other that I can wiggle myself and make it right. I went to my computer and typed "How to repair a Canon digital camera" and I found out that my problem was quite a common one. Apparently, all of the SD100 models were on a worldwide recall thus making the warranty issue moot. My digital camera has a defective CCD imaging problem that Canon was well aware of. I followed the instructions I found on the web, contacted Canon by calling their #800 Customer Service line, spoke to a friendly gentlemen who told me Canon will do the repair free of charge and also provide a shipping label and free delivery to and from the factory. My creative, photographic talents have been retained!

It will take a few weeks to get this all sorted out but my out of pocket expenses have been spared. Before you spend any money, check out all the possible solutions there can be. Sometimes, a solution can be found sitting right there in front of you.

You see my wife is a math genius, except that she's not a budget buffer kinda gal, she's an accountant at heart and she wants all of the columns to add up and if forty-three cents were missing (or extra) then she would spend far too much time looking for the difference so as to balance her budget. Since then we've worked out a much more workable system that allows for a little tiny bit of innacuracy, just enough to not hunt for forty-three cents, but not enough to ignore forty three dollars.