Day: June 24, 2008

1. a brand new computer straight out of the box is supposed to work, not necessitate calls to customer service. It is not fun to tell kids that the computer they’ve been waiting for will not play their CD games because it doesn’t believe it has a CD drive.

2. Whose idea was it to put the power button conspicuously on the front of the computer and make it glow blue? They might as well have put a big shiny sticker next to it saying “push this button now” because every child within 10 feet will punch that button as they go past, thus interrupting the downloading of files and software onto the new computer.

3. There is probably a way to create a resizable custom design frame for use in photoshop and InDesign so that the corner pieces of the frame are static, but the sides can be made longer or shorter by dragging the sides of the graphic box. I do not know how to do this, so I am left spending hours trying to carefully line up little graphics to make a frame around the footnotes for the Schlock book.

4. Lining up graphics to make text frames is very difficult in low resolution. When you export to a high resolution pdf, you will be able to see how badly you managed so that you can try to fix it, but you will have to fix it in low resolution, so you can’t know if you have done it right until you export to high resolution pdf again.

5. The program which exported to pdf just fine this morning, should not suddenly start complaining of corrupted JPEGs without telling you which JPEG is corrupt. This is particularly true when the document contains over 1400 images, thus rendering the individual checking of the images impossible. Addendum: A program should not complain of corrupt images when what it really means is “I don’t have enough memory to complete this job, please restart your computer to clear out the mess.”

6. The little girl who is always longing to have friends over, upon the unexpected arrival of friends, should not have to be coaxed/coerced into playing with those friends instead of watching videos.

7. I think I’m the media-permissive parent in the neighborhood. Several times now friends have come over here, but announce that their mother said no TV or video games while they are here. I’m in crunch mode right now. I’m all for throwing electronic entertainment at the kids. I’ll repent later and make them read. I know I need to make them turn the screens off more. I should be getting them out of the house and planning fun activities.

8. My kids showed the sweet neighbor girls an online animation which involved stick figures peeing into a pool and then swimming in the pool. The neighbor girls thought it was hilarious (which it was, I admit) and now they will probably go home and tell their mom all about this great video they saw at my house. I will probably be getting a phone call. Or maybe those girls will just not be allowed to come over any more. Sigh.

9. Grouchy mom = grouchy kids. There has been much yelling today.