Melon Soda & Mammatus Clouds
2:10 PM 6/6/2009Tuesday was the day I chose to sort out my camera problems. I don't have any other devices that can read an SD memory card, so I went to Penn Camera with the following agenda:
- See if the photos could be copied off the card,
- Reformat the card, since the camera was demanding it,
- Possibly buy a new card.
The photos would not copy, because no computer at the store could read it. The only other option was forensic-level data recovery at exorbitant cost. No thanks... I gave up on the handful of lost photos and reformatted the card instead.
Then the camera was happy. A part of me thought I should just go ahead and buy a new memory card, but another part of me was excited to be getting through this ordeal without laying out any money. I headed home.
It was a nice morning, and the walk downtown felt good, but in no time, the weather got hot. I took the opportunity to buy a strange snack from the Japanese market on U St. I got seaweed-wrapped rice crackers and a can of melon soda. As you can see here, the 'can' was shaped like a bottle anyway. And, sadly, there was no Japanese writing on the package, despite being so obviously a Japanese product. At least I found it refreshing.
But, would't you know it... I failed to test the card properly. Maybe I was too excited about not having to buy that new memory card. I updated my Facebook status with a mention of the Japanese snacks, and when I went to take a picture of the can of soda, the card crapped out after one picture. I knew instantly that I would have to go back.
As it turned out, buying a card wasn't so bad... I saw prices on the store's website, and I was prepared to pay that much, but they actually sold me a card with a slower transfer rate. I doubt that my camera can transfer data that fast anyway. And, I'm taking 5 Megapixel images, which means I can keep hundreds and hundreds of photos on a 1GB card. It's more than I really need. And, I wound up with a 2GB card anyway.
I also got some advice about how to handle the card: I was told not to delete images manually, from the camera directly or through the computer connection, but to occasionally reformat the card. I can only wonder why this is a superior method. Limited read/write cycles? Fragmentation? Are SD cards the same as flash memory or a little different?
After that, I had enough of walking. At one point I thought I was getting drops of water from a sprinkler system. It turned out to be sweat dripping off my head. I bought metro fare in the subway station (which wasn't very cool that day. Maybe there was no money in the budget for A/C...), and then I returned home on a phantom 42 bus - I ran to catch it, then thought it was out of service because the computerized signs were all blank. The driver told me it was a computer malfunction.
Later on at home, after cooling down for a while, I noticed that Jo had updated her Facebook status to say that she was riding her bike to Sticky Fingers. That's just up the way, so I gave her a call. But it was false advertising. She answered the call while riding through the tunnel on the Crescent Trail. Yes, we were cut off at one point. She decided to go to Baked/Wired in Georgetown instead. Not quite so close to my house. But I decided I would give it a shot. If the bus was cooperative, I could get there pretty fast. And, they are one of the few places that serves a decent espresso in this town.
Despite the heat, I managed to get to Georgetown quite quickly. An L2 bus showed up instantly. I had to run to cross the street and catch it in time. After that, speed was less important. I don't spend a lot of time downtown these days, and it felt odd that several people stopped me to ask directions. I love the easy questions, Q: "Am I walking in the right direction to get to Georgetown?" A: "Yes. It's not far.", but then there are the puzzles, Q: "Ritz? All I know is '3131'" A: "You know more about it than I do, but it has to be vaguely over there somewhere..."
At Baked/Wired, Jo and I sat out front. Bicycle parking on Jefferson is terrible. There are only a few street signs, (were there still normal parking meters?), and people were being creative with the metal bits surrounding the tree boxes. Not so easy to do with every style of bike lock.
One young woman locked her bike to the painted pink bicycle that serves as an advertisement for the coffee shop. (Maybe you're supposed to lock your bike to it...) Jo was perplexed by this girl's model. It was an oldish racing bike with a patchwork quality about it. Somebody had painted something in Hindi along the steering column. The rear wheel was a fixed gear, but there were clearly two different sprockets on the pedals. Soon enough she came out of the shop to ride away. So we asked.
It was built from miscellaneous parts. She works at Phoenix Bikes in Arlington. Or just volunteers, maybe. She didn't know what the Hindi stuff meant.
From there, we walked along the canal. Jo wanted to check out the floral department at Dean & Deluca. When I worked in Georgetown, I used to enjoy going there on my lunch breaks and looking at all the good stuff I couldn't afford to buy. She was unimpressed by the flowers.
Out on the canal it looked like a storm was brewing. It looked like a good time to split. In my opinion, there was little danger of getting rained on right away - we looked to be on the edge of a storm in the south. But, you never know... Rain could come soon. Storms don't always move strictly west to east around here. Those clouds made the light a little eerie, so a tried a few pictures along the canal. I spotted one of those cloud formations that often accompanies tornadoes. Only today did I see something to remind me of their name: mamatus clouds.