Another day, another tale of tedium and failure.

I loaded a new card into my work camera (a pink monstrosity found in the back of a cupboard by the boss). It had no card when he brought it in, and I used one of mine until I could order another. The camera wouldn’t accept it. The screen displayed a message giving me four options. I switched the camera off and on again. Then I took the card out and reinserted it. Still no progress. My third option was to format the card.

This is where the problem occurs. I cannot access the controls and screen to format the card because of the fault message. There seems to be no way round this, despite checking the manual online. and searching for help on You Tube.

At that point I tried to format it on the computer. I expect the word “tried” has already alerted you to the fact I failed. We did find a solution though. Strange as it seems, the new card works in the other shop camera, and the card from that camera works in the “new” camera. I don’t have a logical explanation for this and am forced to conclude that the pink camera hates me. This is, of course, illogical, but so is the situation with the cards. The fault, of course, lies with me for buying a cheap card from an unknown manufacturer. Because of this I wasted over an hour.

An hour and a half of my time is worth more than the money I “saved” on buying a cheap card.

This takes us to the Ruskin quote I have used before.

There is hardly anything in the world that someone cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price alone are that person’s lawful prey. It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money — that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. 

The header picture is, as you can see, a commemorative medallion for the Queen’d 90th Birthday. Expect a few more over the coming days.

Reverse of the Medallion