It's been a while and I admit to a bad
case of the donwannas. There has just been too much to do and the
days have been too bright and the nights too warm and there is no way
that even a dedicated night crawler like the Ole Trawler could stay
inside. Besides you know I have a new (to me) camera to play with and
all sorts of wonderful bells and whistles and then there;s the
ability to change lenses and that just throws gasoline on the fire
and so I have been outside playing in the dirt when I should have
been inside pecking away at the blog.
Then there have been those pesky little
life things which have gotten under foot and in the way, the car went
into the shop, the dog went into the shop and the printer, my beloved
Epson Photo Printer went to the big PC in the sky.
Now as a kid of the fifties being
without a car is just about the WORST thing which can happen. I mean,
maim me, beat, me, disfigure me but leave my keys alone. The first
thing any red, white and blue bloodied boy of the fifties wanted was
his driver's license.
And you know why. That's right, living
at home, under the watchful eye of the parents there was never going
to be an nookie getting.
Don't start that with me, you know in
your heart of hearts that ya'll wimmen wanted that nookie getting
just as much as the guys. Okay, maybe not just as much but pretty
much and if the guy didn't have a car there was no place for you to
defend your honor until you were ready to give it up and let him have
his way with you, so long as he was thoughtful, clean, generous and
practiced safe sex.
Back then there was no
clinic so you had to make sure you didn't need the morning after pill
and there was no pill, morning after or not and practicing safe sex
involved a lot of prayer and sacrifice and blood, sweat and tears,
lots of tears, but without that diver's license it was all a bunch of
day dreams anyway so the first step was getting your hands on the
car.
All that was before car
payments, gas bills, (gas was 29 cents a gallon), insurance and city,
state and fed tax and then probably license and inspection fees so
all we thought about was the steamed up windows at the drive in. You
fibber! You do know about steaming up windows at the drive in. Maybe
it was the submarine races or the nightbird hunts or the
constellation counts but you did it and you know you did.
So losing the car was a
fate worse than walking. Sure you're married and don't have to hunt
up a backwoods road or a dark park even though that can be fun if you
don't mind the off chance of making it on to YouTube. So there I was
putting the car in the shop and sweating bullets until I decided to
rent a car.
If Congress had to pass as
much inspection when they voted a Bill into law we'd have a lot fewer
laws. You have to have a credit card, insurance which will completely
cover any deductible and then you have to agree to fill the tank with
gas, mind all the scratches and keep all of the original equipment in
its right and proper place all while not eating, drinking or doing
any other legal or illegal act which might cause alteration or damage
to the vehicle. Sort of takes all the fun right out of it?
Assuming you get the car then
you actually have to drive it. Do you know how hard it is to drive a
car you have never driven before after years of getting into ole Blue
and just sticking the keys in and letting the car do the rest? And
then it rained..
Can't speak for you, but
driving a rented car in the rain is just what I need to make my
system squench.
So I had a rented car and
headed back to the ranch where I try to work on my novel which I have been
putting off since I fell into the hand of the Croakers and my printer
goes belly up. Okay it was an old printer. I don't even remember when
I bought it. It was an Epson photo printer and that makes it wonderful
for a photographer and there is just no way any other printer can do
as well and I have just bought five new ink cartridges and they cost
as much as the rented car in the drive and now they were useless and
I'd have to get used to buying new cartridges and that was another
story anyway, but there I was needing to print out three hundred pages
and I had no printer.
So I got on the Net, I could
still do Internet searches without a printer, but that was about all,
and went to work. I narrowed it down to about half a dozen printers
some of which I could afford and some of which I wanted and tried to
find one in the middle.
You see for me a printer has
to be good at both printing text, (Not verbage, yuck what a horrible
wordette!) and photos. I do a lot of both and if the printer can't
handle the two jobs I'm in a lot of trouble.
Now that wonderful shiny
Epson WorkForce 7010 would be just what the doctor ordered but the
$200 dollar price tag was a bit out of my reach so what else could I
find? Oh my that WorkForce all-in-one XP-950 makes my mouth water but
I'd never get the Long Sufferin to stand still for $300. No, better
set my sights a little lower, now that WorkForce 2540 has most of
what I want, but it uses a three tank color system and I don't know
that that will be good enough.
Bought it anyway and at $89
it sailed through Long Sufferin approval and went straight to my
computer.
Of course then there's the
process of setting it up before you can print with and see if you've
done it right or have a bright, pretty boat anchor.
The damn thing set up so
quickly I was left with nothing but the manual and a silly smile. In
fact I set it up with the wireless connection and connected my
computer, the Long Sufferin's computer, the Long Sufferin's laptop
and after a bit of blood, toil, tears and sweat, along with a liberal
selection of violent swearing I connected it to my Ubuntu laptop and
still had time to run a test print and see if the thing would
actually print.
Turns out it does that too,
so I am after a bit of gut-wrenching anxiety back in the printer
business and all I have to do now is learn all of the bells and
whistles of this modern technowonder.
And finally I could actually
sit down and write for this blog with the understanding that the
words would come out as I planned.
Which brings me to the
present. Now that I am able to write and have all of the tools to
write with and the inclination to write, what do I write about? Good
question but fortunately I have an answer. I am going to tell you how
to make the postcards you need for the Art by the Sea postcard show
and do it all on your trusty computer and do it with just one piece
of software and the help of the nice folks at Xerox which is a
trademarked name and not a description of what the folks do and when
you say that you are going to take your painting down to Staples and
Xerox it on one of their color copiers you are in violation of the
U.S. Trademark statutes and while it is possible to do art from
prison you will miss out on all of those openings where the public
comes to oh and ah over your work and tell you all of those wonderful
things about how brilliant you are and so the next time you make a
copy on a machine made by Xerox remember it is a photocopy and not a
Xerox.
Now let's get the ball
rolling, you want to go to Photoscape.org and go to the download page
and download Photoscape.
And if you have the time and
some extra cash you can go to Amazon and buy a package of Xerox
3R11458 Semi-gloss 80 lb paper. Yes, Staples can probably order it for
you or even the Office Supply downtown.
Do that and install
Photoscape and we'll do the rest tomorrow,
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