Beat Up and Sipping a Glass of the Red and Reviving
A long, long, long day. Who knew it would be like this? You never know. Today I got beat up by a computer program, wrestled to the ground and kicked. They can be like that. I would have punched back but I didn’t know how! Ack. It was truly frustrating in the way only computer things can be. (They are smarter than us, I believe.) I used new design software to design the program for the big event at Harvard this week about art in the city which I’m so excited about. The printer called this morning to say he needed me to add 1/8 of an inch all around. No problem. In any other program I know it is no problem but not this one. And then when I found the way after a few stabs everything was fine EXCEPT for four or five lines of type which were just screwed up. And there was no-one to say why because computers don’t actually speak and techie message boards are a real nightmare if you actually want to hear your issue addressed and not 5 million other people’s issues.
Can I tell you how many things I tried to fix this problem? No, I won’t do that to you. I’m no good at technical things, it’s true. I have BASIC knowledge only and I started to think that BASIC knowledge just doesn’t get us anywhere. At one point I felt like crying but then I thought—what’s the point? Who’s going to care even? What good would it do, tears on the keyboard? It might even ruin it and then there goes a couple of hundred dollars! So I sucked them in.
And what would I cry about? A computer glitch. There are people in the world with real problems and I’m going to cry over the fact that I have tried to do something 437 times and in 362 different ways and it still didn’t work! We can’t have that. Those were my thoughts but I was lucky they were finding head space because the old head began to feel like it was squeezed in a vice. I even thought that this day might AGE me or give me high blood pressure or something. Finally, finally I found most of the way forward. I must leave the last bit to the printer and give him my solemn promise that I will never, ever use this program again.
Now I sit with a glass of the red and reviving and I know why the grape exists. It is for moments like this at the end of a long, long day. At noon I had lunch with a new friend and babbled incoherently about software. Me! I’d lost my senses and will have to make profuse apologies. I even started to think, perish the thought, that I’m no good at ANYTHING. A computer program can do that to a girl like me.
But now, the house is quiet. Dear A was fortunate to have already planned a dinner with a friend tonight so I am here and the pressure in my head begins to lessen. I am glad for Dear A. It would have been a dull evening to hear all about this over the dinner table and I’m sorry to say that he would have done so. But no, now I take another sip and tell you. I’m sorry but thanks for listening. Bottoms up!
April 15th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Cheers, Cathy. Sometimes going back to the drawing board (literally) sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it? I hope this day is a good one.
April 15th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Well, cheers! That ghastly stuff is now behind me and already the printer has called to say all is well. I truly lost my head yesterday!! Soooooo silly! And curiously, curiously, after just one wee glass of the red I very calmly took a look at the original program again and….figured it out! I must confess—it was not the program but ME! Though it could have been clearer. Ah, well. But here we are, all patched together again and the printer is happy. On to new things today.