Hindsight

For most of our married life, whenever Kev and I have had to make a large purchase, such as a refrigerator or a microwave, we've always declined on purchasing the extended warranty. You see, extended warranties were not all that common when we first married over 24 years ago. I believe it started with purchasing a new car, then it spread. Suddenly, when you bought an appliance at Sears, they tried a hard-sell on Sears' extended warranty, over and above the manufacturer's warranty. I can't prove it, but it also seems like the manufacturers' warranties were better and longer back then. Anyway, back in those early days of extended warranties it was generally felt, in the circle of our family and friends, and likely the majority of Americans, that purchasing an extended warranty was a scam, a rip-off.

It's taken me a while to get clued in, but now I buy 'em. Whenever I purchase anything at Best Buy that has an extended warranty option, I now buy it. This is a new thing for me for 2007... I wish I had started in 2006...

I was so happy back in May of 2006 when I got my new Sony. I have taken thousands and thousands of photos with it. Love it. But then at my niece's wedding, it broke... the shutter button stem broke, so the button flew off along with the little spring. I lost the spring.

I tried a few things to jury-rig the camera into working, including a semi-straightened out large paperclip, which worked pretty well, but it kept falling off. I tried a push pin, but I needed a spring to really make it work. I could find no spring of the right size, despite disassembling several old ink pens. Then one day I was taking a label off from something, and it had that gummy glue on it... you know, the kind that makes you think of snot. And the proverbial lightbulb went off in my head. So I finally devised this plan...



The gummy stuff cushions the push pin and keeps the pin from constantly hitting the shutter trigger, and a little tape keeps the cushioned pin in place. Voilà! That got me through a few weeks, including Sammy's birthday. But now I'm using Joycie's little Sony...



Which is a nice, little camera, but oh, man! I miss my Sony. I dearly wish I had bought the extended warranty. *sigh* I have dropped my Sony off at a local camera shop, where they have a repair guy come in once a week to pick up cameras to be fixed and drop off those he's fixed. The good news is that my camera isn't shipped away for repair, so hopefully I will have it back in a couple of weeks. In time for Thanksgiving and Joycie's birthday... I hope.