My Sony digital camera went on the blink today. I had a Kodak that did the same thing a number of years ago. I sighed and resigned myself to the fact it was time for a new digital camera. I have a fair number of accessories for this camera, so it had me pretty bummed out.

This camera has been a real workhorse for me. I've taken well over 5000 pictures with it. It has great optics. It has been a pretty steady friend.

The battery life on my office laptop, a 15 inch MacBook Pro, has been getting shorter and shorter. Recently the computer would conk out at, what looked to be, half a charge. As you can imagine, if you are travelling and working on a document and suddenly your computer dies it can be somewhat distressing. Last night when I powered the machine up to do a little work, the computer indicated that there was no battery available at all. I flipped the computer over and verified that the battery was installed correctly. This battery has completely ceased to charge.

I had been thinking about taking it to the genius bar at our local Mac Store--Metro Denver has three--when I googled "Macbook Pro Battery Charge Failure" and was suprised to find this exchange page which indicates that they are doing a battery swap. Normally Apple sends a notice to all those who could be affected by a recall. In fact, my wife recieved two such notices on her iBook.