Sony no longer sucks, and New York doesn't, either

Well, maybe Sony doesn't suck after all. Remember that I had a tiny little Sony camera which died inexplicably a couple of months ago? I reached into the closet, pulled out the second one just like it, which I'd bought on Buy.com about the same time I figured out how much I liked the original two years earlier, and resumed shooting.

This afternoon at Suzanne's, the second one failed. In exactly the same way. It worked a week ago, and now it doesn't.

This time, however, I found this article on the Wall Street Journal site about a common chip -- made by Sony -- which is used in a lot of digital cameras and camcorders (not just those made by Sony) and which is prone to sudden failure.

Sure enough, the U30, which I have, is the actual camera in the picture there.

The amazing -- and non-Sonylike -- thing is, Sony and other camera manufacturers are offering to fix cameras that fail because of this crappy chip free of charge for the next year or so. Go have a look at the article and the list of cameras, and if you have one that's gone wacky on you and it's on the list, you can get it fixed for free. I already signed up the most-recently-dead DSC-U30 for repair, and as soon as I get home tomorrow night, I'll dig out the other dead one and send it in, too! They will almost certainly not just fix mine, they'll probably reach into a box and send me a refurbed unit, so basically I'll get two brand-new fixed cameras for free.

Between this and getting my MacBook Pro battery replaced for free by Apple last week (one of the "exploding" laptop batteries manufactured by Sony as well), Sony is almost making up for all those times they refused to even attempt to fix their gear that broke.

Almost.

Suzanne and I had an amazing day in New York yesterday. We drove into the city, saw Avenue Q on Broadway, had a nice dinner at a place on 46th Street, just missed visiting the Hershey Store in Times Square, and then wandered through the immense dunes of trash left after a Brazilian street festival on 6th Avenue above 42nd Street back to the Volkswagen. All this, and no need to feed meters or pay for parking or taxis! True, it was a hassle and a half getting into Manhattan through the Holland Tunnel, a process wherein it took as long to get the last three miles into downtown as it had taken to drive from Suzanne's house 50 miles away, but overall it was just fine.

Today and tonight's adventure is our trip back into New York to have dinner somewhere casual and to see and hear the legendary Les Paul at Iridium at 51st and Broadway. He's 91 years old, and longtime readers here will remember that I was supposed to see him over three years ago with Heather, the weekend of the Presidents Day Blizzard, but she backed out and the show was ultimately canceled because of the snow. He's not gonna last forever, and I'm glad we'll get to see him. The show is at eight, and then we'll probably go up to the Apple Store at 59th and Fifth Avenue afterward, mostly to say we did it.

Then again, maybe I could find some cool Apple toy. Like I need any more. I am already quite thoroughly overloaded with technology.

And sex. But we won't talk much about that. Just put it this way: when Suzanne gets all dolled up to go out, she gets very friendly when we get home. Her bills for dry cleaning and new nylons must be pretty extreme.

But we won't talk much about that.