It’s picture time so that means I finally have a use for the new Adobe Photoshop CS5.   Let’s see if it crashes for me like CS4 would.

Well, my girlfriend and I just bought each other engagement rings.. so, I think this means we’re now engaged officially?   We’ve been together over four years now and have known each other for ten.  The rings are nothing special, white gold bands and I doubt we’ll get a diamond wedding ring after seeing the film Blood Diamond.  That and the fact that we’re pretty poor.  That should make this next part even funnier, the fact that my new sneakers cost almost as much as one of the rings.  I have picky and expensive taste in sneakers but I’m the type of person that buys just one pair and wears them for five years.

Hey, I’m supporting American labor here with these New Balance though, which is more than I can say for some pro-American people who then turn around and buy sweatshop labor sneakers.

Remember how beat up my old mouse was?  Check out my New Balance 992s.

This is how they looked originally.

I loved these sneakers, so much I even considered buying them in the grey and black as well.  The guy at Foot Locker yesterday told me he had them in all three colors, so I wasn’t alone.  I shopped around like crazy until I found the sneakers I thought were me, and these were it.  For the first time in my life, I had a pair of sneakers I actually thought were a representation of myself.

Now here’s the New Balance I bought yesterday.  

Don’t do a spit-take, these are actually different sneakers, I swear.  See, they have baby blue laces.  I kid you not, I had 992s and I bought 993s yesterday.  Here’s how they look on the web since my blurry shot(see below) doesn’t do them justice, though compared to the 992 web shot neither does theirs.

They’re a lot more comfortable than the 992s, which is something I didn’t really like about my old pair after trying on a friends sneakers which practically felt like pillows on your feet.   The only problem (other than looking almost exactly the same as the 992s) is possibly the baby blue laces, I’m not sure how I feel about them so I may end up getting some white ones.

I almost went with a grey pair of New Balance 498 that were only (only!?) $80 but I liked the look and feel of the 993s better.  The 498s actually looked comfier but not the case when I tried them on compared to the 993s.  Other than comfort, when I looked down at the 498s I didn’t quite like the look of them in the front.. yes, I’m that picky (see above).  Here are the 498s.

I love the color and texture but the design in front just kind of killed it for me.

I am tempted to exchange my new ones for a grey pair.  When I got the 992s, I never had a pair of blue shoes before and now I kind of like the style of grey sneakers.  I also shopped around like crazy for the 992s whereas the 993s I pretty much settled on the first store I walked into.

It’s kind of crazy I bought something so similar to the previous model but just check out the past three digital cameras I’ve owned.

First I had an Olympus FE-280.

Then we thought we lost it, which we later found under the seat in my car.  We got an FE-220 for cheap on eBay and it even came with a larger, 2 GB XD card.

Then we actually did lose it.. when somebody stole my girlfriend’s purse.  We even lost the bigger XD card.

Eventually we couldn’t deal with the FE-220 and got an FE-5020 from Buy.com.

Our latest upgrade to this was a nice 4 GB microSD card since the FE-5020 came with a microSD to XD adapter.  This works out for me since I have a microSD reader but the adapter doesn’t really fit in SD slots on most multicard readers so my girlfriend’s laptop and All-in-One PC are out of luck.  The only problem with the FE-5020 (other than the color, since that was the cheapest one) is that it’s a bit blurry for indoor shots.  Still, a nice upgrade from our FE-220 which mainly serves as a secondary battery now.