Last night I undertook the seemingly simple task of downloading images from my camera (an older Canon Elph model) to my laptop. 90 minutes later I had a handful of pictures loaded and had thrown the camera in the wastebasket. Here are the steps that occurred:
1. Connect camera to laptop using new cable (I seem to have mislaid the previous two).
2. Turn on camera in correct mode to allow downloading (this is an adventure in itself since the function to do this is non-intuitive and relatively obscure).
3. Laptop appears to recognize camera, declaring that a Powershot S100 (the correct model number) camera has been connected to the computer.
4. Start up program that allows downloading of images, which had been obtained from Canon's website.
5. Laptop lied, it does not really recognize the camera. Starts up install wizard (if these things are wizards, then why do they need so damn much help?) and asks for installation CD that came with camera. This, like the cables, has entered a time warp and is, at this moment, appearing somewhere in 1958.
6. Download program cannot find camera either.
7. Go to Canon website and re-download and install all relevant software for this type of camera.
8. Still no luck - laptop and camera, like many family members at tomorrow's holiday dinner, refuse to speak to each other.
9. Fire up ancient desktop machine that barely functions, but does allow downloading of pictures. Am immediately assaulted by images of Eminem which younger daughter has installed as the background on the computer.
10. Ignore Eminem's sneer and download pictures.
11. Attempt to email all pictures to self so that I can load them on laptop, but images are too large.
12. Select only a few photos and send those instead.
13. Attempt to retrieve images on laptop, but receiving email account is out of space (Microsoft will happily sell me more for some riduculous fee).
14. Go back to desktop, avert face from Eminem once more, and send to different email account.
15. Retrieve pictures on laptop.
16. Hurl camera into wastebin. Hurl invectives at Canon and Microsoft for incompatible software and lies about "plug and play" hardware.

Today, a day off from work, was only slightly less stressful. It included a trip to a town called Manayunk to look for a new sofa, purchase of a new bird feeder and seed in time to create an addiction to sunflower seeds and thistle in another generation of birds, use of the pneumatic (such a funny word that has such divergent meanings) tube at the bank's drive in window, going to the movies (see below), retrieving Rebecca from a friend's, and making two trips to Wawa (a more civilized version of 7-Eleven, for those not from the middle Atlantic states).

Movies: Timeline. I thought I had read the book by Michael Crichton, but realized about two minutes into the movie that the book had bored me to tears and I had not finished it. The movie was not quite as good as the book. Violent, implausible beyond the standard "suspend your disbelief when you're sitting in a movie theater", poorly acted, poorly written, not even worth the two stars the Philadelphia paper gave it. It was pretty amusing, however, that the French were the good guys in the movie and the English were the despicable bastards for a change.