OK.

I posted yesterday that I was unable to figure out the workings of a digital camera. Namely - not being able to download pictures from the stupid thing to the stupid computer.

Lisa gamely tried to help me by telling me to stick a USB thingamabob into my computer and hopefully it would take off. Or something like that. Do you see how technical issues just fly over my head with the speed of an X-15? Yeah. I can't no comprehende computer stuff.

Which is why I married a techie. He KNOWS. He KNOWS everything there is to know about .... computers. He built three of our computers from scratch - then he networked them all together. In fact... I think he's got them networked to some satellite in space somewhere spewing out imagery for shadowy government agencies... I think. I dunno. He might be so good at covering his tracks that the Fibbies haven't found him yet. Or not. Any feds reading this should know right now that I'm just "supposing" here. I don't know this for sure so please don't conduct some raid on my house. Thanks.

Anyway. My point is this. If just hooking up the camera to a USB was all that downloading these pictures entailed, I'd buckle down and actually LEARN how to attempt it (notice I said "attempt" not actually "achieve" the process).

But NOOOOoooOOOOoooOOOOOOoooooooo. I married a computer nerd. Downloading pictures from the camera therefore, is NOT the simple task it should be.

It goes something like this:

1. Take pictures. -- Check. I actually have this process figured out.

2. Attach camera to platform. -- Check. I know my shapes. I can figure out how to fit it in there.

3. Push button on platform -- Check. I can do this too!!! It's a button, therefore I can PUSH it! Concept... Learned!

4. 4..4......... Well. Now see, 4 is where everything goes kapooey. My husband WROTE a program that pops up.

This little program pops up and directs me to find an archive. Generally this would not be an issue, but my husband has done something called "partitioning"??? I don't know. But there are like 2 different computers in one. And he's got 2 different operating systems on the computer. One is Linux, and the other is Windows. I have to elect which system to use, then map to an archive, THEN re-download the photos, then direct them to NORAD and some other spy satellite somewhere near Venus. Then the photos bounce off the moon-surface, ricochet off Mercury, and shoot back to Earth (the bounce method throws off Al-Qaeda, because we don't want them to see pictures of my kids waving to us from the potty).

After that indirect route, I'm supposed to catch them as they rematerialize in my back room, sorta like Mike TV in the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Then a magnetic superopticalrefractorbeam COMES OUT OF THE COMPUTER and sucks all the particles up that I've caught with my ionicstaticsurpressor mitt (that catches the bounced photo particles) and then...THEN it downloads into the computer.

This whole entire process takes place in like....3 micronanoseconds when my husband performs it. Me -- when I do it, I think the photos get stuck on Venus. Or maybe they miss Mercury and go into the Sun (which my husband says is bad, because he hasn't yet figured out how to refract the sun's intensity yet).

So you see. It's not just a simple process of hooking up a USB cable.

Really.

p.s. Have you read my new friend Coffeypot yet? You should. He's nuts. I like it.