It has been a while since I’ve had blog fodder from my mother. Until now, that is.
See, my mother has a really nice camera. It’s an Olympus Stylus, and she has a 1 gig card in it for storage. I have borrowed said camera because I’m going to a concert tonight.
Not just any concert, a Little River Band concert. We all know that I’m almost rabid for a dose of LRB in person. So I’m going. I leave in a few hours.
So anyway, I borrowed my mom’s camera. It looks like the picture on the left. I didn’t want to take *my* camera.
Oh no. Not my own. I have a Sony Mavica…like you see in the image below. Damn thing takes som unfuckingreal pictures. Damn thing also runs on…get this…FLOPPY DISKS. Remember those? Little thingies that go bad with no warning? Hold like 5 pictures before they’re full? Yeah, those things.
Well, I really don’t want to deal with the fun and games of messing with fucking floppy disks that are tempramental at best, so I borrowed my mom’s camera. And charger. And data cable.
What did I find when I went to explore the folder on the camera?
Five HUNDRED sixty four pictures.
Yes. 564.
I got to looking through them, and it seems as if it has been at least 3 years since my mother removed *any* pictures from this camera.
So I called her. Offered to put them on a disk. She wants to take them to a camera shop, pay them $45 to get the pictures onto a disk so she can edit and crop them.
Ma. Don’t do that. Let me write the disk for free, and then get you set up with Picasa or GIMP or something else free and you can play with them to your hearts content.
As I’m on the phone with her, I’m in the process of copying the pictures to my hard drive, but she still doesn’t want me to delete them from the camera.
Why? Because she’s afraid to lose them. In her mind, it doesn’t really exist on the computer unless its on a disk. Well, Einstein, the hard drive IS a disk.
After calming her down, I assured her they were safe on my hard drive and I was writing them to a set of disks for her. Once I have verified they are on the disks, I’ll be removing them from her camera and saving her $45.
One would think she would thank me for this effort…but no. She’s worried she will lose the pictures.
*sigh*
I think its going to take me about 3 disks to get all the pictures saved for her, but she’s still having a fit. She just called and asked if I was sure it was going to work…she’s in panic mode. 
I know what that feels like, but you would think after all I’ve done for her and her computer issues (and car issues, and oven issues, and common sense issues) that she would learn to trust me.
[Post Script]
For the record, I love my Sony Mavica. It takes great pictures of what I need…but it is unweildy for concerts. Maybe someday I’ll get a better camera that I won’t hesitate to take to events and that does everything I need it to do. 
Well, I really don’t want to deal with the fun and games of
