During our recent Chicago vacation, I managed to break my digital camera. While the camera was in my front jeans pocket, I sat down and somehow managed to press the power button — this then caused the lense to try and come out, which obviously it couldn’t. This seemingly minor mistake managed to completely strip the lense’s gears, causing the lense to stop protracting/retracting when you turned the camera on or off. I was able to manually coax the camera into working a couple days longer (enough time to snap some shots at my nephew Griffin’s first birthday), but now it’s dead dead. For the record this was a 5 megapixel Samsung digital camera. Susan and I bought matching ones for each other last year — hers lasted about a month, mine made it nine months.

As I’ve said before, broken electronics are always bittersweet. While it sucks when old electronics break, all it really means is I’m going to get NEW electronics — yay!

And so, off to Staples I went. I really want to take this opportunity to talk trash about the Staples in Yukon, Oklahoma. Every single time I go there, they don’t have what I want in stock. Every. Single. Time. The last three trips I’ve gone to Staples was for blank CDs (which were on sale), a flat screen monitor (which was on sale), and a new digital camera. On all three trips I left empty handed. When I went to Staples to pick up blank CDs, the clerk told me, “just to go Office Depot, they match our sales ads.” As a result of that bit of information, I bought the blank CDs, flat screen monitor, and yes, my new digital camera, all from Office Depot. They only mystery to this story is why I continue to go to Staples for anything. After this latest round, I doubt I will again in the future.

So, off to Office Depot we went. The camera I picked out was Canon’s A710 IS. It retails for $399, but has dropped to $299 and was on sale for $229. I bought the camera and came home to try it out. Unfortunately, I could not get the stinkin’ thing to turn on! I flipped the batteries one way, then the other. Nothing. Even though it came with new batteries, I dug some more out of the junk drawer and tried those. Still, nothing. Finally I gave the whole thing to Susan and had her double check everything. She couldn’t get it to turn on either! At that point we decided that something must be wrong with the camera, so we boxed everything back up and went back to Office Depot. OF COURSE they had no more in stock, so instead they gave us a refund. From there it was off to the next nearest Office Depot. Susan ran in while I stayed in the car with the kids; a few minutes later, she emerged with another Canon A710 IS!

Funny thing is, when I opened the second one, the camera was in a sealed plastic bag. The first one wasn’t. There was also a tag attached to the camera itself, a tag that was missing from the first one. I also noticed a plastic film that protects the LCD from scratches on the second camera that wasn’t on the first. The first one had obviously been opened by someone else and, most likely, returned because it didn’t work. I wonder how many people they plan on selling that same broken camera to?