Camera ramblings

I've thought for a while that my pictures just weren't coming out crisp. I've seen what Dad gets, and I thought it was just my lens being out of alignment because I abuse it. Turns out we did a test with the camera today. We took a picture with my dad's Canon EOS 10D and with my own 10D. Same flash, same lens. They were close, ish, but we thought the one with my camera looked a little less clear. So we did a rough focus test. Held up a piece of paper with lots of evenly spaced marks on it (in this case, a spreadsheet of finances), and focused my 10D on a circled mark. The focus point on the paper is very clearly *not* centered on the circle mark. (Edit: see this rather large image.) What this means is that my camera is a little defective and I need to take it to get recalibrated. I also need to get my laptop fixed since the power cable is still finicky and the keyboard has still been exhibiting the character-eating phenomenon. So it looks like I'll be starting the semester by sending off my favorite electronic toys back to the manufacturer for repair, funfun. At least the laptop is still under AppleCare. I can hope that Canon will spot me the repair for the camera since it's a really common problem apparently, but I won't hold my breath.