Is it just me or does this happen to everyone who has tremendous disorganizational skills and a habit of misplaced confidence, self or otherwise?
Here’s the situation. I decided, toward the end of my last weekend, that I would use this weekend to find all my drawings, scan them to my laptop, fix up whatever might need it and upload the lot of it to deviantArt. Well, this weekend is here and, of course, I waited until almost one o’clock to get started. Piece o’cake, I’m thinking.
Now, I’ve known me all my life which should be plenty of time to learn that any time I’m sure something will work, it won’t. Not easily, anyway.
Into the longroom* I go. That's where our desk top PC and printer/scanner resides. First and foremost, it’s absolutely freezing in there. We have electric heat and no money so unnecessary** rooms go without both. Second, the mouse is neither hooked up to the computer, nor is it in the same room for that matter. It’s a good thing I’m a whizz with keyboard shortcuts. Then it occurs to me that I really don’t want to sit in an icy room, keyboarding my way through various programs and why don’t I just hook up the all-in-one to my laptop? After all, I downloaded the printer drivers last month! Off goes the PC, which takes 10 minutes as it’s a dinosaur, and in comes my laptop for scanner hook up.
Back to drivers. Yes, printer drivers. My laptop recognizes the Lexmark printer (and fax, for some odd reason) but not the scanner. Not in my program menu, not anywhere. After spending 20 minutes looking for the correct download, online, my toes are numb and my hands hurt.
I go get the mouse.
It is now 3:05 pm and I’m praying. I‘m praying that the CD-RW in our PC will work for me just one more time. I have to be able to get the pictures off the ancient beast and onto my laptop. I’m praying that the disk with the pictures will be readable by my laptop.
Here’s the situation. I decided, toward the end of my last weekend, that I would use this weekend to find all my drawings, scan them to my laptop, fix up whatever might need it and upload the lot of it to deviantArt. Well, this weekend is here and, of course, I waited until almost one o’clock to get started. Piece o’cake, I’m thinking.
Now, I’ve known me all my life which should be plenty of time to learn that any time I’m sure something will work, it won’t. Not easily, anyway.
Into the longroom* I go. That's where our desk top PC and printer/scanner resides. First and foremost, it’s absolutely freezing in there. We have electric heat and no money so unnecessary** rooms go without both. Second, the mouse is neither hooked up to the computer, nor is it in the same room for that matter. It’s a good thing I’m a whizz with keyboard shortcuts. Then it occurs to me that I really don’t want to sit in an icy room, keyboarding my way through various programs and why don’t I just hook up the all-in-one to my laptop? After all, I downloaded the printer drivers last month! Off goes the PC, which takes 10 minutes as it’s a dinosaur, and in comes my laptop for scanner hook up.
Back to drivers. Yes, printer drivers. My laptop recognizes the Lexmark printer (and fax, for some odd reason) but not the scanner. Not in my program menu, not anywhere. After spending 20 minutes looking for the correct download, online, my toes are numb and my hands hurt.
I go get the mouse.
It is now 3:05 pm and I’m praying. I‘m praying that the CD-RW in our PC will work for me just one more time. I have to be able to get the pictures off the ancient beast and onto my laptop. I’m praying that the disk with the pictures will be readable by my laptop.
* * * * * * * * *
Flash forward. After scanning all of my drawings, I attempted to burn the jpegs to disk. The disk went in and was read by the by the writer. The file folder containing the images dragged-and-dropped beautifully, but do you think the writer would write? No, it wouldn't. Well, it just so happens I have two MSN messenger (ooh, I must be old if I'm still calling it by that name) profiles. I signed in on each computer using the two aliases and sent all the pictures to myself. All 40 of them. One at a time.
The whole thing took just under an hour, by which time my hands were stiff, my toes were numb and my nose had a nasty case of winter-drip. I shut down the dinosaur with the same satisfaction one might feel when ridding the house of a destructive rat .
Then it happened. I realized that I had missed one drawing(my best piece, in my opinion) and became somewhat demonstrative in my frustration. Hearing my uproar, Wolf entered the room with concern and caution his in every movement. After I explained the situation, he smiled with relief and said, "Here, leave it with me. I'll hook up my lapto... Oh baby. I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry."
"What...?" It came out of my mouth, less as a question than a threat.
"Open your search - here..." at which point he showed me - on my laptop which was perched on one arm while I held in my other hand the file folder filled with my drawings. It would appear that typing 'scanners' into the search field (Vista) while connected to the scanner would have opened the magic and invisible door that divides the two pieces of hardware.
Hmm.
Imagine that.
Thankfully I was way too cold to be really miffed. I said 'thank you' and 'I know it for next time' and 'no, it's perfectly okay.'
So, I still don't have that last piece scanned but I did manage to get a few things uploaded, categorized and tagged, over at deviantArt. Nothing is 'sale-worthy' in my opinion, until I can correct the 'black=blue' language of my sensorily challenged scanner. Feel free to have a look anyway. That is what it's there for (as my stomach flips nervously).
Have I mentioned that I rarely show my art to my family, let alone the good people of the limitless interweb? Be gentle but please, please be honest. If I'm to make a go of this, I need honest reviews.
The whole thing took just under an hour, by which time my hands were stiff, my toes were numb and my nose had a nasty case of winter-drip. I shut down the dinosaur with the same satisfaction one might feel when ridding the house of a destructive rat .
Then it happened. I realized that I had missed one drawing(my best piece, in my opinion) and became somewhat demonstrative in my frustration. Hearing my uproar, Wolf entered the room with concern and caution his in every movement. After I explained the situation, he smiled with relief and said, "Here, leave it with me. I'll hook up my lapto... Oh baby. I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry."
"What...?" It came out of my mouth, less as a question than a threat.
"Open your search - here..." at which point he showed me - on my laptop which was perched on one arm while I held in my other hand the file folder filled with my drawings. It would appear that typing 'scanners' into the search field (Vista) while connected to the scanner would have opened the magic and invisible door that divides the two pieces of hardware.
Hmm.
Imagine that.
Thankfully I was way too cold to be really miffed. I said 'thank you' and 'I know it for next time' and 'no, it's perfectly okay.'
So, I still don't have that last piece scanned but I did manage to get a few things uploaded, categorized and tagged, over at deviantArt. Nothing is 'sale-worthy' in my opinion, until I can correct the 'black=blue' language of my sensorily challenged scanner. Feel free to have a look anyway. That is what it's there for (as my stomach flips nervously).
Have I mentioned that I rarely show my art to my family, let alone the good people of the limitless interweb? Be gentle but please, please be honest. If I'm to make a go of this, I need honest reviews.
*Longroom: the 15X25’ room on the end of our house. It was supposed to be the studio/craft/sewing room but has become cold storage.
**The room had been made somewhat obsolete with the arrival of our laptops, last year.
2 comments:
Thank you so much for sharing your work with us...that's a brave move
My cottage has no central heat and electric space heaters were running my bill up way too high...so I hit on the solution of turning on the gas oven, opening the oven door asnd using that to heat the house...Not sure how safe it is, but it's cut my bill by 25%
Wishing you a warm & peaceful Thanksgiving
Thank you for the 'warm' wishes. I hope your Thanksgiving was love and good food filled!
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