I got my new camera yesterday. You would think that setting up a digital camera would be a simple affair, but you would have been misled by the advertising if you believed that. Olympus tries to simplify the set-up process by giving you big charts with numbered instructions (Follow Me First! Don't Do Anything Until You've Read And Memorized The Entire Reference Manual! Performing Installation In Anything Other Than Recommended Sequence Can Lead To Exposure To Dangerous Chemicals!). Unfortunately, two steps into the process there is a major mistake in the instructions which delayed using the camera, unnecessarily, by about 12 hours. I was ready to call the friendly customer service people, who are undoubtedly located in Delhi, when I realized that A) they are only available weekdays for about 45 minutes in the middle of the afternoon, and B) if I played around with the settings on the camera I could get it to work.

Once the camera was working and the requisite first picture was taken (of Hercules, not a very willing subject, he is scowling in the picture because I told him to stay still or there would be no more fish by-product treats for him), I had to try to get the software loaded onto the laptop so that I could download the pictures. Sequence of events:

1. Realize that with all the songs I've been adding to iTunes, there is very little space left on the laptop for anything else, like pictures (or work, but that's another story).

2. Delete many old files, including a couple .bmp images that had somehow strayed into the System folder. I think I was careful about not dragging some unsuspecting actual System component into the trash can. I think. Maybe I should have paid more attention the alerts and warnings as I was doing the deletions.

3. Decide to defragment the hard disk now that all those old files have been deleted.

4. Cannot find the defrag program. Damn Windows.

5. Decide to use the "performance" option in some official-looking program I discovered somewhere. This promises to compress old files, among other things. Partway through I get an ominous message that some Windows files have been replaced by unstable versions and I need to insert to get the real ones back. I assume it was trying to tell me to insert my Windows CD (which I do not have, since Windows was installed by our IT department and they don't trust me with my own copy, probably wisely so), but it really was a blank in the message.

6. Quickly quit the performance program before more damage is done. Decide to back up hard disk onto external drive (not done since the end of December, so it's overdue anyway).

7. Backup C drive with no problems. Cannot figure out how to get backup utility to copy the D drive onto external disk. Give up and do a manual copy of the files, which takes forever, consumes a large quantity of space on the external drive and is probably just a series of shortcuts and not the real files anyway, which I will not find out until I need one of them in a lost data emergency.

8. Install camera software. Can find no way to install the reference manual from the CD to my laptop so I can, uh, actually use it as a reference without having the CD loaded (which I will certainly lose within the next month). Give up and manually copy the reference manual.

9. Connect the camera to the laptop. Get the "new hardware detected" message. Wait and wait and wait some more (American Splendor, see below, concludes during this phase). New hardware wizard shows up (late and a little bit drunk, it would seem, since he can't find certain USB files, as is always the case when I try to connect anything to the USB port). Scrape around on the hard drive until I locate the missing file. Point the wizard to it, twice (definitely more than a little drunk). Get camera connected. Get single picture of overweight cat downloaded.

10. Total time invested: enough to have driven to the camera store, bought a new non-digital camera, shot several rolls of film, taken them to CVS to have developed, and mounted the photos in a scrapbook. New technology: Costs more and takes longer.

Books: Blow Fly by Patricia Cornwell. (My library, which had abolished the practice of renting books sometime last year, has reinstated the policy, apparently because of the steep state funding cuts they're experiencing. At $1.10/week, it's still a good deal.) Patricia Cornwell's books have devolved into ever darker character studies and I had vowed after the last one not to read any more. So far, this one contains a large portion of gore and some small insight into Kay Scarpetta's flight from her home in Richmond.

Movies: My House in Umbria. Maggie Smith was superb as an aging author who hosts several survivors from a terrorist train bombing in her villa in Italy. Her life and those of her guests entwine as they attempt to recover from the losses each suffered in the bombing. She drinks too much, humiliates herself with a man who would take away someone who has become precious to her, and wears her stunning, flowing clothing and innumerable hats with aplomb. Another shining example of quality films from HBO.

Movies: American Splendor. In sharp contrast to the prior movie, this one is set in the depressing world of Harvey Pekar, file clerk and writer of comic book stories. As I've mentioned before, I've never quite gotten the whole comic book subculture, because comics have never appealed to me. This movie only kept my interest because of the clever way in which the real Harvey Pekar was interspersed with one played by an actor. Even his appearances on David Letterman were the actual footage. Despite the good reviews this movie received (on many top ten of 2003 lists), I barely managed to watch to the end (and then only because I had the distraction of trying to get the software loaded onto my laptop to import pictures from my camera).