Bonnie bought this camera in 2005, and it saw a lot of action when our kids were little. By the time we got iPhones in the early teens, however, she didn’t see much point in lugging this monster around when her phone had a higher pixel count.

When my dad gave me his old camera, which is only older than this one by a year, it renewed her interest in photography, so she dug her old camera out of the closet, only to discover a vague error message on the LCD screen.

All indicators pointed to a bad clock battery, so I did a search to find out where the clock battery was located. Google’s AI said it was soldered to the circuit board, so I asked again. “It’s not a user-serviceable part,” Google admonished.

“I understand, but where is it?”

“IT CAN ONLY BE REPLACED BY A QUALIFIED PROFESSIONAL!”

“BUT WHERE THE FUCK IS IT!!!”

This theme of people (and machines, I suppose) refusing to answer the question they’ve been asked keeps recurring lately. Bonnie was searching Facebook for a particular elliptical, and she found one here in town at the right price, so she messaged the seller to ask for the machine’s dimensions to determine if we could fit it in the back of our car or if we needed to rent a trailer. The conversation went something like this:

“Can you tell me how wide the elliptical is, so I can figure out if it will fit in my car or if I’ll need to rent a trailer?”
“It will fit in the back of a pickup.”
“I don’t have a pickup; I have a Tesla Y. That’s why I need to know its dimensions to determine if it will fit in the back or if I will have to rent a trailer.”
“I WON’T FIT IN A TESLA!”

Why is it so hard to simply answer the question you’re being asked? I understand in the case of the seller on Facebook, she just didn’t want to be bothered measuring the elliptical, but for fuck’s sake, why not try to cooperate with a potential buyer?

So, on Thursday, at about 4:40 p.m., I decided to take Bonnie’s camera apart to find the battery, see what kind it is, and order a replacement. Then, ten minutes later, the internet guys showed up, unannounced, and I had to drop what I was doing to deal with them. Today, I picked up where I left off, and even after only a couple of hours, after removing screws, I couldn’t remember where they all went, so there’s no hope for the ones I removed two days ago.

It might be a moot point anyway because apparently the Canon D80 has no internal clock battery, at least, I couldn’t find one anywhere. There are other models that have one, but it would seem this isn’t one of them. If you ask Google, however, it will confidently tell you that it has one, and you can’t replace it yourself.

The camera might be fucked.