meet big mama

Well folks, this here is Big Mama. She is the latest addition to
my camera collection and also my first proper digital SLR, the
Canon 40D! Very exciting.

I have a feeling her and I will be embarking on lots of grand
adventures together.
:)

reading the instructions is sometimes helpful

I have one of those inflatable mattresses, which come in really
handy when one has guests over and you run out of beds.
Naturally, if one has an inflatable mattress, so one should also
have the little electrical pump to go with it.

This pump can be plugged into your wall socket at home or when
you go campingit can be plugged into the car's lighter outlet.

The first couple of times I had plugged the pump into the wall
socket and I inflated the queen-size mattress with the pump, it
worked just fine. But then when I hauled it out again, it suddenly
started running out of air. Having only my limited knowledge of
electronic devices to fall back on, I assumed that just like a
hairdryer, the motor had burnt out.

I decided that I would simply go and buy another pump and
then take the older one back in it's place to get a refund, because
at this point in time, I had long since thrown away the receipt.
Sometimes one just needs to be a little resourceful. Or so
I thought.

Only thing was that when I tried to use the new pump, it inflated
the mattress halfway and then started to make the suspiciously
familiar noise which I by now equated with the motor burning out.
How was this possible? I was fuming and my friend had to sleep on
the couch for the weekend, because I sure as hell wasn't going to
buy a third pump.

Taking stock, I now had two useless pumps, one receipt and in
between buying the two, their packaging had also changed which
would probably make it harder to explain to the store that they were
both actually virtually brand-new.

Nonetheless, I put both in the boot of my car, with the solid intention
of going back to the store and lecturing them on keeping a better brand
of inflatable mattress pump.

Looking back, that was a year ago. In the meantime, the pumps
had ended up back in my room, in the back of my closet and lay
there forgotten.

This past weekend, I was clearing out some of my closets, getting rid
of things, when none other than the two pumps surface again.

A little voice in the back of my head said that I should really give
them one more try, before relegating them to the recycling bin.
I plugged each one in and turned them on. The first one, nothing.
The second one, gave a sigh like a tired old car that was on its last wheels.

In a fit of frustration, I pulled out the little multi-lingual instruction
manual. And there in plain Oxford English at the very top of the
list under the heading of INSTRUCTIONS it states: 'Pump must be
charged before use and is not designed for inflation directly from
household AC power sources.'

Right. Well that would pretty much explain everything. I left those
little suckers to charge for 10 hours and sure enough, when I
unplugged them and flipped the switch, the high whining noise
emanating from those black pumps would have put any respectable
vacuum cleaner to shame.

Needless to say I am now the very proud owner of two inflatable
mattress pumps in perfect working order. Any takers?