April 24, 2005

April 24, 2005 Sunday Jerry from Thrift Mall called early this morning. He won’t say on the phone, but he reports ‘something came in that is interesting’. I’ll shoot over there, although that Maria lady who asked about the computer apparently got one free from her brother, who seems to have had an extra. I spent an hour trying to figure out how to get a small booklet to print on the video computer. This was not fun. First of all, Microsoft still has not learned to place a large and prominent “CANCEL PRINT” button on screen. I managed to print 16 pages before figuring out they have hidden it in the start menu under settings. Even turning the computer off and back on does not clear the print buffer otherwise, so remind me I now have to pick up a new ink cartridge. I also learned that the word processor is far too finicky to use for booklets, although that may change. Instead I used the spreadsheet and although it is simple, it is not a process to be rushed. I’m gone to Jerry’s. Later. Jerry knows good stuff when he sees it, unfortunately he sometimes gets ten years out of date. He had a box full of serial modems in fairly new condition. I helped him throw them out. I bought a paper slicer that looked repairable. It might interest you to know those things sell for close to $200 these days. I looked for a long throw stapler without success, including the supply catalogue where it is listed in the index but not on the page. Then I dropped the computer off at ABC. Several people seemed interested, but that is why I left – people are so stupid when it comes to computers. I explained to one lady while I was there that speed and memory cost a lot of money. Oh, she says she does a lot of graphics, like therefore I was going to lower the price for her? There is some chance she didn’t even know that graphics were memory hungry but that is even worse than stupid. I realize the best reason to listen to stupid people is to get their money. I just didn’t feel like it today. Later. I managed to print a small booklet. This is always a test of a new operating system for me. Too often the manufacturer goes ahead and makes ‘improvements’ that fly in the face of common sense, and the changes in Windows XP do exactly that. I already know there is a complicated setup procedure to produce a master document in Word, but what I test is the ability of the print statement to produce a properly collated stack of output. Windows XP failed miserably. I use the spreadsheet software to make the documents, thus one has to learn how to think backwards (from the inside out) to properly produce a sixteen page booklet from two ordinary pages of paper. No, you cannot use the manual duplex setting. Nor can you adjust the page size or number of columns. It won’t work (either it wastes the unprinted page area or each insertion throws off the remainder work). Follow? The trick is to print four panels per page, then flip the printout over and print the reverse side so that the whole lot can just be cut in half the short way and folded over one time for stapling. Got it? Good, now what happens if you have 16-1/2 pages? The Windows people changed several things. If you print multiple pages, they print from back to front, so they are lying in order off the printer (for lazy people, I guess). There is a property switch to turn that off, but what a hassle. It demands some fairly deep thought to pull this off. At least I think so. I produced a fairly respectable product on the fourth try, but wasted 24 sheets of paper getting there. Don’t get me wrong, I understand both sides of the computer coin. I agree that computers should make life easier, but I don’t agree that they should take the place of fundamental learning. That only encourages people who don’t know how things work to attempt things they are not qualified for – like printing booklets. The effort put into such things could have been far better applied creating software that let you print an ordinarily word-processed document in any format you’d like. Proof that just because Microsoft sells logic, they don’t have to use it themselves. Later. It is a fine little booklet, actually looking professional. Except for some nagging points that will take an hour to fix, all I’m lacking is a long-throw stapler to become published. Sigh, one cannot copyright compilations of lists but I would still be in ink, if under a pseudonym. Windows has no command to duplicate the top and bottom halves of a page and no on-screen marker to indicate where the middle of the page exists. They also suffer from inability to understand that when I set the left margin to zero, I want things to print from the edge of the page or very near to it. Furthermore, it is damn tricky to duplicated the ‘header’ a second time on the bottom half of the page, yet this is a very common requirement in real life publishing. (So that when the page is cut in half, the bottom appears with the same amount of border before the printing begins.)