I agree completely. OP says they have a cellphone camera, and want something better, but not hobby or pro. "Family, friends, projects, that actually look good." This screams point and shoot. One could make an argument for the "interchangeable lens cameras" or whatever they call the range between the p&s cameras and DSLRs this month, but I'd go with the point & shoot. Based on my research (do your own, visit your library and check Consumer Reports and some photography magazines) Canon and Nikon do cost more, but you're paying for quality. To me it's worth it; YMMV.

There's a lot of good, accurate information posted here about DSLRs, but they aren't what the OP wants. If the OP already understands setting IOS or using auto-ISO, then sure, go for DSLR. If not, get a point and shoot.

I bought a Canon Powershot A590 a couple of years ago, and it was great (and still is) until I started shooting roller derby, a sport that is high speed and often played under low light in facilities that were not meant to be sports arenas, so it wasn't up to the task, so I bought a DSLR. I've racked up 26,000 photos this year on my Canon 60D, but this is not the camera for Soulskill.

What the OP wants is a point and shoot with some amount of zoom and some advanced shooting modes (Program, Time/Shutter, Aperture, Manual) so they can learn about them if the standard modes don't meet their needs. Get one that's small enough that you'll actually carry it (mine fits in my jacket pocket), and one that's comfortable in your hand (yes, go to stores and handle them). Get maybe 10-12 megapixels; don't pay for higher (unless that's all that's on the current market). Pay some attention to the memory system -- does it use SD/SX cards, flash cards, or Sony power sticks? You won't be happy with some weird proprietary memory media. I'd suggest starting to look at the Canon A590 (or whatever the current equivalent is) and adjust based on desires and constraints.

Also, download the photos off of your camera. If it takes too long with the supplied cable, you can get a card reader (mine was $12) to convert it into a USB drive and download ~10 times faster. But get the photos off your camera so you don't lose them, and you can actually look at them, learn from them, enjoy them, and take more. If you want to improve your photos, take lots of them, and get a book such as Digital Photography for Dummies (or reasonable facsimile thereof).

The original poster doesn't want to shoot RAW; he just wants to take easy photos of family and stuff. He doesn't even want to get to the hobbyist level. I agree that SLRs are better, I've extremely happy with mine, but they aren't what Soulskill wants.

Slacker. I bought my DSLR at the end of January 2011, and have over 25,000 shots on it. If you've got the equipment, how can you not use it? For counting prints do I include all the roller derby posters, programs, blogs, and newspaper articles that have used my shots?

Sand particles are sized between .0625 mm and 2 mm.

I take it you missed the Heinlein stories as well?

How many people can this body of extremely salty water be supporting?

Why are you building Alien Alloys? If you catch the base-building fleet on the ground, you'll have more of the stuff than you can store. If you do that a couple of times, you'll be thinking about selling the stuff. You'll also have plenty of Elerium-115, unless you blow the battleship engine rooms the wrong way.

Egads, my work is slow enough already because I have to store my work halfway across the state. I don't need to spend three weeks fighting to get my computer back to working so it can be even slower accessing files halfway across the country.

I seem to recall that NASA is required to make technological developments available to industry already, unless they're restricted for national security reasons.

I had great success by purchasing a copy of Fluxx for said break room. We play at lunch. Sometimes lunch runs long, but the boss hasn't complained because the improvement in morale and team building has been so significant.

What, they've got Largo's Ph34rBot on display?

The original producers of V actually brought in some real science fiction writers to try to save the show. I think it was Niven and Pournelle. I story I read was that the Visitors had left the Earth (or a very similar planet) a long, long time ago and had come home and found the humans infesting the place. They wanted to be here because it was home to them -- the air smelled right, the sun was the right color, the day was the proper length.

Of course, that wasn't enough to save the show, I don't think it was even used.

The politician attends meetings and makes decisions; the junior staffer types up the meeting notes and the proposed plans. Junior staff is doing the computer work, and has the misconfigured P2P software.

I beg to differ on the current. If you look at the buildup of the water on the door and window supports, it looks like there's at least half a foot of pileup due to water velocity. There are some pulsating waves so you know it's not just head difference between inside and outside. That water appears to be moving a couple of feet per second, especially after the breakthroughs. It's not a seeping flood, they're getting real velocity.

I don't think I've ever heard of flood water velocity as a measure of distance from channel before, though.

How about if we just all lived on the Prime Meridian?