Live from Brussels

This could very well have been "camera update", since it occurred to me that you may have noticed that there has been a distinct shortage of photos lately. Since my camera never did arise from the dead on Easter, so I shipped it off to Nikon of Canada on Monday. Took me a little back and forth before I could determine whether or not they would actually send it back to me, but I got an honest to goodness reply from someone named Norman, (think that's his real name?) saying they could do international shipping, but there was no way I could get it fixed here in the Netherlands. I do sort of understand the whole "separate legal entity" thing (my words, not Nikon's)
I still think that's a pretty dumb way to handle a warranty issue. Then these dough heads had the nerve to send me a survey asking if I'd recommend them to any of my friends? Huh?
See, I don't really have that many friends, so I'd just as soon not piss off the ones I have, so no...that's not going to happen.
The somewhat tricky bit was that I needed to provide proof of purchase, and there was no way such a critter was about to jump out at us. I had Kathryn hunting high and low back in the homeland, since I was pretty sure I had only brought the "warranty card" with me in my luggage back in October.
My first thought was to try and sort through credit card statements on line, but Mastercard somehow thought I was going to call collect to try and get a password to be able to do that. I don't even think you can call collect from Yurp, so I'm not sure what they were thinking. Of course, 800 numbers are out of the question.
Anyway, some nice fellow at Henry's managed to come up with a copy of my receipt, and I was able to print it off and shove it in the box.
We now wait....and hope.

I'll see what I can do with the less than stellar HP tomorrow, but I'm certainly not promising anything.

We're currently in Brussels (oh wait, I said that) at this place and just about ready to
pack it in.