buying spree

To prepare for the summer's research and end of semester office cleanout, I bought a globalSat BT GPS unit (bluetooth-enabled, Sirf III, long lasting battery, pretty cheap), and a 120GB Western Digital Hard Drive.

I'm looking at getting a new digital camers too -- the weatherproof, dunkable Pentax Optio 43WR. Sure, I don't really need it because my current 1.5 year old 4 megapixel Casio QVR40, but besides being dunkable, the Pentax has audio recording and -- well, it's freakin' dunkable!! How many rainy day pictures have you missed because you were afraid of ruining your digital camera? I've missed a few -- not to mention some nice rapids shots (although it's generally a bad idea to stop paddling in rapids in order to get the camera out; it tends to set one up for nice crash shots). One of the things that last summer's Allagash river trip taught me (and the whole Flying Moose experience, and really the whole Picture-a-Day experience) is that digital cameras aren't as tough as I'd like them to be. My Casio is pretty sturdy (having survived the year), but is currently being lent to a friend who's spending a month in Tanzania (U.S. soldiers say the Pentax works well in the dust of Iraq, btw). We'll see what shape the camera comes back in. I hope she doesn't miss good shots in order to take care of it.

This brings me to a philosophy of use: a basic quality digital camera these days is $200-300 (unless your idea of basic quality is way higher than mine), and picture/memories of a trip to Tanzania (for example) are worth way more than that, as a once-a-life sort of trip (again, my perspective -- some go every month, others live there). So, I'm all about spending the money on the equipment.