New art, plus technology rant.
Jan. 30th, 2004 05:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwangoYesterday morning I was working on Exalted stuff to prepare for the evening's game session. Struck by a total lack onf inspiration, I switched over to illustrating something for it instead, which I sometimes do to clear my head and fire up the idea machine again. So I put something together for the Fair Folk noble that the group was likely to encounter that evening.
http://alum.wpi.edu/~wes/images/lady_ravel.jpg
I was reasonably happy with it, and all set to conjure up new stuff, until I tried to print it out. My printer crapped out on me. It skipped a lot and printed at much lower resolution that I expected, even though the ink level was supposedly at at least half. I tried again and it printed not even one dot of ink on the page. So I fed it a new cartridge. It tried to do its calibration thing and print a test page, but most fo that didn't print. Eventually, it let me print again, and it looked just as bad as the first one. Fooey. Why are printers such junk these days? My last printer did something like this to me, too.
Alas, this turned out to be only the first frustration for the day, which also included us trying to get a new, functional DVD/VCR combo unit that won't devour videotape.
You see, our old VCR started eating tape, so we bought a new one, and in doing so upgraded to the magical world of DVD. It worked for just over 20 days before it began to eat tapes. We swapped it for a new one, which lasted for nearly 90 days before it began to eat tapes. By this point, we had misplaced the receipt, so getting it exchanged seemed unlikely, even if they would take it after 30 days. So we called Magnavox, and they eventually agreed to let us mail it to Tennessee and they would repair it. Joy. While waiting for paperwork from them that needed to be mailed with the unit, we found the receipt. So yesterday we took it back to Target and they agreed to take it back and let us try another model. The new model is a Sony, a company that previously earned my eternal hatred when they broke my Walkman. We had little choice, though, since it was the only other DVD/VCR in the store.
Wait, let me tangent for a moment. The Walkman Tale: Once, long ago, I owned a Sony Walkman with a recording feature. It was Cool. One day, it broke in such a way that it would not shut off. Saddened by the prospect of needing to remove the batteries in order to shut it off, I decided to get it fixed. As instructed, we mailed it to Sony. They sent it back with a letter saying that we had dropped it and broken it, that it wasn't their problem, and that it wasn't economical to repair. They sent us a bill. They also broke it completely so that it did not function at all. So they charged us money to completely destroy my property. I was furious, and swore I would never buy any of their products ever again.
To return to the original tale, mom was buying the DVD/VCR thing, so my rule still stands. Now, I'd disappointed in Magnavox because of the problems we had with two of their machines in such a short span of time, but at least the Magnavox one hooked up and worked with no stupid problems. The Sony required all kinds of bizarre rituals in order to get it to recognize the antenna, and requires us to set our stereo to AUX or it won't let the TV make noise. Even if the stereo is not on, it must be turned to AUX. All of this, and it requires us to type numbers and then press ENTER to change the channel. I hate it already, and it hasn't even had a chance to devour any tape.
http://alum.wpi.edu/~wes/images/lady_ravel.jpg
I was reasonably happy with it, and all set to conjure up new stuff, until I tried to print it out. My printer crapped out on me. It skipped a lot and printed at much lower resolution that I expected, even though the ink level was supposedly at at least half. I tried again and it printed not even one dot of ink on the page. So I fed it a new cartridge. It tried to do its calibration thing and print a test page, but most fo that didn't print. Eventually, it let me print again, and it looked just as bad as the first one. Fooey. Why are printers such junk these days? My last printer did something like this to me, too.
Alas, this turned out to be only the first frustration for the day, which also included us trying to get a new, functional DVD/VCR combo unit that won't devour videotape.
You see, our old VCR started eating tape, so we bought a new one, and in doing so upgraded to the magical world of DVD. It worked for just over 20 days before it began to eat tapes. We swapped it for a new one, which lasted for nearly 90 days before it began to eat tapes. By this point, we had misplaced the receipt, so getting it exchanged seemed unlikely, even if they would take it after 30 days. So we called Magnavox, and they eventually agreed to let us mail it to Tennessee and they would repair it. Joy. While waiting for paperwork from them that needed to be mailed with the unit, we found the receipt. So yesterday we took it back to Target and they agreed to take it back and let us try another model. The new model is a Sony, a company that previously earned my eternal hatred when they broke my Walkman. We had little choice, though, since it was the only other DVD/VCR in the store.
Wait, let me tangent for a moment. The Walkman Tale: Once, long ago, I owned a Sony Walkman with a recording feature. It was Cool. One day, it broke in such a way that it would not shut off. Saddened by the prospect of needing to remove the batteries in order to shut it off, I decided to get it fixed. As instructed, we mailed it to Sony. They sent it back with a letter saying that we had dropped it and broken it, that it wasn't their problem, and that it wasn't economical to repair. They sent us a bill. They also broke it completely so that it did not function at all. So they charged us money to completely destroy my property. I was furious, and swore I would never buy any of their products ever again.
To return to the original tale, mom was buying the DVD/VCR thing, so my rule still stands. Now, I'd disappointed in Magnavox because of the problems we had with two of their machines in such a short span of time, but at least the Magnavox one hooked up and worked with no stupid problems. The Sony required all kinds of bizarre rituals in order to get it to recognize the antenna, and requires us to set our stereo to AUX or it won't let the TV make noise. Even if the stereo is not on, it must be turned to AUX. All of this, and it requires us to type numbers and then press ENTER to change the channel. I hate it already, and it hasn't even had a chance to devour any tape.
