Following up from yesterday’s sad tale, Canon US have told me by email that if I buy a 400D from Amazon here, I’d need to return it to the US for warranty service, via a US address. This makes me considerably more nervous about purchasing a camera here. Unsurprisingly, Canon’s UK website provides much worse service - I can’t even find an email address to check with them whether they’d fix a camera under a US warranty.

OK, so I’m an idiot. I broke my camera (again). And I can’t (practically) get it repaired before I get back to the UK. Somehow, breaking valuable stuff seems to be happening a lot recently. Is it possible to train oneself to be less careless? Or is it just an unchangeable characteristic? I’m not in a good mood, anyway. Fortunately, my trip out today wasn’t really that photogenic in practice - there’s been a lot of rain here recently, and even though I drove 140 miles today (all the way up the East side of The Bay to Oakland, across the Bay Bridge, and through San Francisco), it was pretty misty and wet, and I wouldn’t have got any good pictures anyway (although I got a good view of downtown, with the Transamerica Pyramid and many of the other landmarks I remember from my last trip).

Observations on Chicago: Cold, cold, cold. It was -19 degrees centigrade yesterday evening. Fortunately the only time I had to step ‘outside’ was on the jetway. Today, the police are recommending that people in the area don’t leave their houses. It’s nice and sunny in California. Observations on Hertz #1 Club Gold: So cool. Just turn up (2 hours late but it didn’t seem to matter), get in the car, show your license, and drive off.

I’m heading off to San José this weekend to take part in an IBM Redbook Residency. I’ve never contributed to a Redbook before, and by all accounts it’s an intense experience. I’m hoping to take some time out to see the Bay Area, but I probably won’t be writing here very frequently - I’ll be using this mainly to chronicle tales of the California sunshine. I hope to get back to writing for real when I return in mid-March.

The political arguments around government and business are well understood. At one extreme are people who despise profit-making businesses, considering them a necessary evil at best, and who’d prefer to see governments take more action to protect their and society’s interests. At the other are those who’d prefer to see governments scaled down significantly and businesses given more freedom. People with my political opinions often make arguments for the latter based on either practical or moral arguments.

Today is Milton Friedman day. Friedman is a personal hero of mine, an economist who worked hard to publicise the concepts of freedom and liberty, and who sadly passed away last November. His clarity and forthrightness in explaining his beliefs to the layman won him praise, and deservedly so: The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit. Milton’s son David is also an economist, and continues to promote his ideas on this blog.

I managed to drop my IBM-owned Thinkpad fairly violently last weekend and the hard disk crashed. Thinkpads are worth the money, folks, they really are the most reliable laptops going (honest - IBM has sold the brand to Lenovo now, anyway). Unfortunately even it couldn’t withstand my abuse. I’m currently in the process of getting it fixed, but it was impressive how little disruption it has so far caused. I was both concerned and embarrassed when it first happened: partly because I really need a laptop to take away with me to San José, and partly because, well, it’s embarrassing to break other people’s stuff (even if that person is a virtual entity employing a few hundred thousand people).

Two recent visits to Wagamama (outstanding noodle bars - give them a try if you haven’t already) have uncovered a strange habit: when asking for the bill, it’s brought immediately to your table, with a slip asking for the tip and a signature. Once this is filled in, your credit card is taken away briefly - presumably to be swiped. But no further signature is required, and even more surprisingly no PIN number is requested.

**Lisa**: Promise me you'll never die. ** Gary**: You know I can't promise that. ** Lisa**: If you did that, I would make love to you right now. ** Gary**: I promise I'll never die! Team America is just wicked fun. Sure, it’s political, and that appeals. The satire is well aimed, and the targets well-deserving. But like Parker and Stone’s previous film, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, it also works well as a film in its own right.

After annoying myself by breaking my Thinkpad yesterday evening, and finding myself with nothing to do today, I decided to take a random break to Basingstoke and try to make a photographic record of this strange town. The results aren’t exactly astonishing photographically, but I have tried to capture some of the divided character of the place. I grew up in Farnborough, so I’ve been familiar with the area for quite some time, and when I was younger, we used to jokingly refer to it as ‘Boringstoke’.