SOME DAY MY PRINTS WILL COME

Photo hard copies, it is a hard thing to make.  Some years ago I got some coupon from Target, I think, that I splurged on an hp photo printer.  It was painful then, it was still painful when I tried to use it a few weeks ago.  Nothing particular about the hp printer itself, just the process itself that was painful.  Personally I rarely need a hard copy of a photo, but I know some elderly people who still like to have photographs in hand.  So I dug out my hp photo printer but alas the photo papers that would go into it had warped somewhat.  The printer took seemingly forever to recognize the paper, then when it finally started to suck the paper and painfully laid the ink on it, suddenly it stopped.  Paper jam!  If it is not one thing, it is another!

I gave up with the idea of printing the photos myself.  There is a Rite Aid store just a block away, maybe I'll use it.  Then I recalled how painful it was the last time I tried to print at this Rite Aid.  My feeble memory didn't tell me exactly what was wrong with the experience, just that it was not fun.  I did recall I ended up printing at another Rite Aid a little further away.

Maybe I would try online printing with Rite Aid.  Why, they even had a sale, some discount for printing 30 or more photos.  So I dutifully upload the photos and added them to my cart, checked out, then... boom!  Just some cryptic error that didn't tell what was wrong.  It just didn't work.  It was already late at night, I gave up.

A few weeks later, I gave photo printing another shot.  A new Walgreen just opened across the street from my beloved {sarcasm} Rite Aid, I'll give that a try.  Uh, except it wanted 35¢ per print for immediate printing, or 32¢ for one-hour printing.  It was already 4ish, the store would close at 6 PM, I hate the idea of perhaps having to wait the next day.  Knowing the Rite Aid online offer was 19¢ per print convinced me that Walgreen, instant gratification be damned, is not for me.  So I headed back to Rite Aid, insert the USB stick, and wham, "No photos found!"  Maybe Walgreen's machine somehow wiped the photos off my USB stick?  I gave up.  I found out just now that the photos are there on the USB drive, something just went wrong at Rite Aid.

Enough of this nonsense, in the end I went with Snapfish.com.  It'll take a few days for it to arrive in the mail, but it was relatively painless.  I did have to ask to have my password reset, since it had been a while since I last printed with Snapfish.  No email ever arrived, maybe I put in the wrong email address, luckily I was able to correctly guessed my old password.  Oh well, help keep the United States Postal Services useful by printing photos with Snapfish and such.  I pity the average technophobe having to deal with all this headache.

NEW YEAR RESOLTIONS, FAR-FETCHED AND OTHERWISE

Happy New Year, Cyberspace!  I've meant to get back into blogging, today, New Year's Day, is the perfect time.  Of course, it has to do with New Year Resolutions.  As an honest blogger, I already clearly pointed out, in the title, that some of these goals are far-fetched.  The far-fetched ones will be denoted with FF.  Here we go!

• Back to blogging!  Hopefully this blog post is the start of a long streak.
• Lose twenty pounds.  Work, bad eating habits, etc got me back at 200 pounds. I need to lose the extra weight for the Long Island Marathon in May anyway.
• Borrowing a page from Jonathan Coulton, I want to try his Thing A Week.  No, I cannot write songs or play instrument, but once a week I'll do something artistic.  In my book, that would include comics, caricature, animation, origami, GPS art, haiku, limerick, Cubeecraft, etc.  FF
• Among the Thing A Week project will be a Where's Waldo large drawing featuring any Facebook friends who agree to be drawn.  FF
• Scan a few complete yearbooks for my high school.  FF
• Get more uncluttered.  FF
• Find a more permanent job.  This current one will end, supposedly, end of the month March.
• Be more connected with people in real life or outside of Facebook.
• Learn to play the harmonica, via YouTube videos.  FF
• Learn Spanish AND get better with the Mandarin Chinese, via podcasts, movies, and newspapers.  FF

That's it!  Let's see if any of these goals will be completed by Jan 1, 2016.