Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines. Ya gotta love 'em.

Well, no, actually, you don't. I certainly don't. The only good thing I can say about this one is that at least it's a Wednesday and not a Friday that's getting screwed up.

It took all day yesterday - and a little bit past my usual quitting time - to finish one document. Today I've got two (though they're a little bit smaller). And they're due out, with all changes... Today!

Ah, well. UPS picks up from their drop box at 6:00. Which means we won't be here any later than that.

Instead of gaming, we went down to K.T. and Kevin's last night to celebrate K.T.'s birthday. A couple of days early, but Kevin's working on her birthday, so it seemed reasonable. She seemed pretty happy with her presents, and we went to Cheddar's for dinner. It was a pretty nice evening, depite K.T. and I both fighting various brain-clogging colds and sinus infections.

Once back at their place, though, we all kind of drooped. Kevin's sleep schedule is all screwed up. K.T. and I haven't been sleeping well because of our colds. Matt had some energy left, but he couldn't keep up the whole conversation on his own. So it wasn't too long before we headed home.

I did get to take a look at digital cameras while we were at Best Buy, though. I've been thinking about getting a new camera for a while. Mine is large and bulky and takes kind of small pictures, and its autofocus doesn't work as well as I'd always like, especially if I'm trying for close-up shots.

So while K.T. and Kevin went to pick out her birthday movies, I wandered over to the digital camera kiosk.

When I got there, I discovered a perplexing thing. The specs listed for all the cameras told me megapixel resolution, but not image size. Every tag said something like, Max image size: 8"x10". Inches are ultimately meaningless. Is that 8"x10" at 72dpi (screen resolution, which is extremely crappy for printouts) or at 300dpi (low-quality printouts) or at 600dpi (good quality for home printers), or what? Because the image is actually stored in pixels, and the number of inches you get when you display it - either on screen or printed out - depends on your hardware.

Well, no matter. There was a guy at the counter. I'd ask. I waited until he finished with the previous customer, examining a couple of interesting prospects.

"Can I help you?"

"Yes, please. Can you tell me how to translate these inch scales into pixels?"

"Ma'am?"

"Right here, where it says 8"x10"? How many pixels is that?"

"That's a four megapixel camera, ma'am."

"Yes, I see that. But what's the pixel resolution of the picture? How big are the pictures?" (A camera's megapixel rating does heavily influence the size of the pictures it will produce. But there's not a one-to-one translation between megapixel rating and maximum image resolution.)

"I don't understand."

"Is it 640x480? 1600x1200? Inches are a meaningless measurement for computer images."

"Well, if you're just taking everyday shots, you probably don't need more than three or so megapixels."

I gave him a long, long look. "Never mind. You don't know the answer to my question. I'll look it up later." I walked off.

It's not like I expect every Joe on the street to know these things. I really don't. It's an arcane dialect, full of weird words and strange translations. But if a store's going to put a guy behind the digital camera counter, then you'd think they'd put a guy back there who had half a clue what he was talking about. He could even have said, "I'm not sure; let me get out the camera manual and look it up," and I would have been perfectly satisfied.

Ah, well. I'm still waffling on the camera, anyway.

Onward to documentation...

--Liz