Kimopolis

My new desk chair arrived today. YEE HAW!

I busted that bad boy open and put it together lickety split. The problem arose when I attempted to photograph the process. I knew my digital camera was a goner about a week ago when I tried to take a photo and the screen was all wonky. A big yellow line waved itself across the little screen and everything was blurry. GREAT. I put it back in the photo closet, hoping that the photo fairies would come around and sprinkle some of their magic camera repair fairy dust over my poor old Elph. Sadly, they didn’t come. I took it down form the top shelf and pressed the “on” button….still the same crappy LSD psychedelic view. I snapped a pic just to test it, and recorded what can only be described as wavy red lines in a space. Avant garde? Yes.  Accurate depiction of reality? No. LAME-O-RAMA.

So, I move to my second in command, my camcorder. Because the Japanese are geniuses (Or they’re just  a culture of CRAZY people who must document everything on film…your choice), they made my video camera capable of shooting stills. Well, that was all fine and dandy, until I tried to import those video stills to my computer.

First, let me assure you, I have every known cable connector created by man at my immediate disposal. I literally have an arsenal of technological crap that would make it possible to transfer anything, to any format, to anywhere.  I’m no idiot when it comes to computers, either. As some of you may know (and if you don’t, you should go visit Kimopolis IMMEDIATELY), I run my own website, so obviously I am no novice at this whole technology thing.

I have the tools. I have the knowledge. I have the skill set. I have the tech geek seal of approval (pretty awesome accomplishment for a girl, if I do say so myself). Yet, I cannot, for the life of me, import the images from my video camera to my computer…and, do you want to know why? Because I am running Vista.  Jesus H. Christ on a cracker. Can I ever catch a break?

Now, you Macs out there are thinking, “Silly girl, Trix are for kids.” No, not really (well, maybe). You’re thinking, “That’s why I have a Mac.” Good for you. Two roads diverged in a wood and I chose the one less traveled by, and here it is biting me on the ass many millions of years later. Look, I know PC. I took my first computer class in high school where I had to build my own program in MS-DOS. Green screen. C:/ and all that jazz.  Then, I took another class in college, and still another in graduate school. I just liked the way a PC worked. It made sense to me. I know where my icons are at. I know how to open a file. I am all good with the right-click.

The first time I had to work on a Mac, it was as if I’d never used a computer before.  Everything was backwards or located in the most un-obvious of places, and where the hell did my right-click button go? Mother Effers. You don’t realize how frustrating it is to try to cut and paste, a simple process I’d done a BAJILLION times, when you only have one big button. As you can imagine, I ran home crying with my PC tail tucked between my legs.

PC and I were happy, but no relationship is ever perfect. There were some rough patches. Like the time I effectively shut down the whole office when I opened an email from my aunt and infected everyone’s computer with a nasty virus. Oops. But the tech guys came to the rescue and all was right with the world.

So, today I was forced to hop on to my mom’s PC which is old and slow, BUT it has Windows XP. I needed a computer with that OS to run the program that came with my video camera, and there it was. I hooked up my VC to the old PC and went to work. I figured if I could just get my photos onto that computer somehow, I could easily email them to my computer and then be able to share my chair building triumph with all of you. That process began at approximately 4:30 yesterday afternoon. Here it is, almost 1:30 the next day, and I am no closer to posting those pictures than I was after I took them.

I won’t bore you with the virtual cornucopia of programs and files and patches I’ve downloaded and installed. It’s ridiculous. It’s not supposed to be this difficult. How are stupid people all over the world uploading videos of themselves left and right, and I can’t? I am NOT a stupid person! Wait. OMFG. I did it. FINALLY! Thank you, baby Jesus. And now, what you’ve all been waiting for…may I present, in its first public appearance…my new chair, Fahrvergnügen.

AFTER

BEFORE

Time it takes to order ergonomic chair online: 2 minutes.

Time it takes to assemble chair once it arrives: 20 minutes.

Time it takes to photograph assembly process: 30 seconds.

Time it takes to upload “before” and “after” photos of the entire event: 22 hours and 36 minutes.

Timeless lessons learned: Immeasurable.

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