I’m in need of a camera. I need a decent one with which I can take more than just a few pictures before it dies on me. It probably is the battery, but the camera being such an old one, it’s not even worth getting the battery for it. I have been pondering about it quite some time now, and since my finance will not allow me to get any excess in life such as a camera –yes, I have my priorities straight on this point– I got to a point of throwing my hands up and saying maybe in a couple of years.
Then just yesterday, I received an email from Thankyou Network, which I had forgotten about. I knew I had a reason why I switched to using my bank debit card instead of cash every chance I get, but I had forgotten what the reason was.
I eagerly went to their website to see if I could get a decent point-and-shoot camera with it. I knew I don’t spend enough money to accrue points to be eligible to get a fancy pants DSLR, but I should be able to get something that has more than 5X optical zoom, lets me decide when to use the flash or not, and has an image stablizer since my hands are on the unsteady side to put it mildly. I was a little disappointed at my total points and the eligible cameras in my points range, but it’s much better than the sorry excuse of a camera I have now, not to mention IT’S FREE!
I narrowed it down to, or more precisely, picked the top two cameras which satisfy all of the above conditions:
- Sony Cybershot DSC-H10 – 8.1MP, 10X Optical Zoom, Super Steady Shot

- Canon Powershot SX110IS – 9MP, 10X Optical Zoom, Image Stablizer

According to the reviews, Sony DSC-H10 looks to be the better of the two, but I prefer SD memory cards to Sony memory sticks. But then again, I’m not too thrilled about the fact that Canon SX110IS uses alkaline batteries, which more or less would run out every 100 or so shots. Decisions… Decisions…
Before I forget, since this one is not a recurring one. I also dreamed that Canon and Nikon merged. There were all these people cheering because they announced that the future Canon and Nikon lens mounts would be uniform, and there would be adapters for Canon lens on Nikon camera, and vice versa. Yeah, I know, that’s why it’s called a dream.
I’ve known that my bank, Citibank, started this “Thank You Network” thing a few years back, but I have never bothered to look into this thing until today. In the beginning, the reason for me not investigating further into this thing was the fact that they gave out this looooong sequence of numbers as my “account” number for it, and isn’t that the most ridiculous thing? Why oh why can’t these people just make it easy for people? So I’ve been ignoring it until today when I inadvertently clicked on the link for the Thank You Network while doing some online banking.
They changed the settings so that I had to just create a user ID and password with that cumbersomely long numerical sequence already plugged in for me- which, by the way, is still kinda ridiculous if you ask me since they could have just made people use the same user IDs and passwords as their online banking accounts. Anyways, I went through the registration process and finally was able to see what was in my account. I had 17,266 points, which of course didn’t mean shit for me then, but after a few clicks to find out what my points would get me, I found out I could get $100 cash for 16,000 points!!! Uber cool, don’t you think?
I also learned that using the bankcard instead of cash will get me more points. If I had known that when they first started this, I would have more than 100,000 points by now, which could get me a DSLR camera, either Canon 400D or Nikon D80. So from now on, all my groceries and gas and everything will be paid by my bankcard if it’s humanly possible at all. Yippee!!!!!
Oh, btw, if I collect some ridiculous 2 million something points, I’d be eligible for a Yamaha grand piano, which is extremely tempting, but I’m one of those impatient sort. I could never get that many points.

