The Writers Coin» photography http://www.thewriterscoin.com Personal Finance, Investing, and Making More Money Sun, 22 Jan 2012 20:51:07 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Living the Creative Life http://www.thewriterscoin.com/living-the-creative-life/ http://www.thewriterscoin.com/living-the-creative-life/#comments Thu, 05 Mar 2009 13:00:05 +0000 Carlos http://www.thewriterscoin.com/?p=1650 ale-oeg

The other day I was at work looking for a bit of information online when an old name from my past popped into my head. I used to play baseball with him when we were young and he was probably the most talented guy I’ve ever played ball with.

He even had tryouts with the Atlanta Braves and the Cleveland Indians. He ended up playing ball at TCU. So I looked him up, as I often do with people from my past, and found this site.

Looks like he’s a photographer now. It surprised me because all I knew about him was that he was a great baseball player and that sometimes he was a little spacey, but always a good guy. He used to live near my house and we used to hang out, but that was a long time ago.

Anyway, looking at his pictures and what he’s up to made me really, really jealous. He seems to be living a very creative life—a life I have always wanted. He’s doing it with photography and I always planned to do it with my writing.

But it feels like I’m just trolling along. Talking about it, imagining it, and writing about it. But I’m not living it.

Instead, I’m sitting here blogging. I’m thinking about traffic and pageviews and feedburners and linkbacks instead of characters and words and meaning.

Looking at his pictures reminded me of all of this. And it’s really depressing. The creative life is out there and I want to be a part of it.

Now I just have to go do something about it.

Photo by JJ Estrada Toledo

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]]> http://www.thewriterscoin.com/living-the-creative-life/feed/ 3 Frugal Fixing: Digital Camera Edition http://www.thewriterscoin.com/frugal-fixing-digital-camera-edition/ http://www.thewriterscoin.com/frugal-fixing-digital-camera-edition/#comments Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:33:09 +0000 Carlos http://www.thewriterscoin.com/?p=887

M and I love to take pictures, and that’s why I bought her a Canon SD600 camera a few years back. It’s compact and takes great pictures (she helps too, of course). She’s always getting compliments about her photos and I can tell how much she enjoys taking pictures. Plus she uses it for work too. In all, it’s been one of the best gifts I’ve ever given her, or anyone for that matter.

The problem is we like going to the beach too, and we like to take our cameras (I know, not the best combo). Both of them had started making this grinding noise when the lens came out or retracted. The culprit? Sand in the telescopic lens. But no worries, the camera still worked just fine.

Until this weekend. M’s camera would no longer open and an error message showed up when you tried to start it up. This was terrible news. I called Canon and they told me it would cost $90 to fix since the warranty was out.

So, being the cheap guy that I am, I decided to try and save us some money and fix the camera myself. If I could. Here’s what I did:

  • TONS of research: If you’re having a problem, odds are a bunch of other people have too and they know how to fix it.
  • More research
  • I talked to M about me possible opening up her baby and trying to fix it (and got the green light)
  • I bought one of those eyeglass kits with the tiny screwdrivers
  • I took a deep breath
  • I opened it up

I was nervous because I didn’t know what I would find underneath the casing, but I had a pretty good pictorial guide of what I would find and what I needed to do, so I just followed that. After 20 minutes or so, the camera sprung back to life! Success!

It still makes that grinding noise but it’s back to working the way it did before. We saved $90 and all is well.

The lesson? You can probably fix almost anything you own if you put some time into it. Researching ahead of time is the key and then having some patience and trusting yourself.

PS If you’re going to do this, make sure you have a container or something under you—those tiny screws get lost REAL easy in plush carpets…

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]]> http://www.thewriterscoin.com/frugal-fixing-digital-camera-edition/feed/ 0 Happy Labor Day Weekend http://www.thewriterscoin.com/happy-labor-day-weekend/ http://www.thewriterscoin.com/happy-labor-day-weekend/#comments Fri, 29 Aug 2008 12:05:57 +0000 Carlos http://www.thewriterscoin.com/?p=555

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]]> http://www.thewriterscoin.com/happy-labor-day-weekend/feed/ 0 A Picture of My Cat http://www.thewriterscoin.com/a-picture-of-my-cat/ http://www.thewriterscoin.com/a-picture-of-my-cat/#comments Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:09:06 +0000 Carlos http://www.thewriterscoin.com/?p=547

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