I put together the pictures I think most key to my presentation for next week, assembled them into a huge PDF, and put them on my nifty USB memory key to take to Kinko's to print out onto color transparencies. I thought to call ahead and make sure they could do this. They assured me they could. Thus you know they could not. The fellow I had talked to on the phone put the USB key in the master control computer, fiddled around with it, got a Setup Wizard, fiddled around with it, and announced he would have to install something to print out my document, and he wasn't able to do that.
The device driver not being part of the usual Windows installation at a Kinko's I would find understandable if my memory stick were manufactured by Trustworthy Teo's Rochor Road Palace of Firewire Pleasures, but mine was an Iomega thing. Apparently I'm the first person in Kinko's history to come to them with an Iomega USB memory stick to print out a document. So, thank you, Microsoft and Kinko's, and I suppose Iomega too, for taking a simple chore and turning it into a public admission of despondent hopelessness. We can't do it here.
To console myself I planned to go to the Seaview Square Mall to get to a particular store there. At the end of this (fairly good-sized) detour I discovered ... there is no Seaview Square Mall. Not anymore, anyway. They replaced it with a bunch of giant concrete box stores. Do you suppose architects are paid anew each time they put up, say, a Target? Do they make changes so this one is four inches longer than that one, so they can claim each store is a new creation? I don't know and I was bothered and ended up buying a $6.99 public domain Popeye cartoons DVD to feel like I accomplished something today.
Trivia: Domenikos Theotokopoulos was known as El Greco -- ``The Greek'' -- both in Italy (hence the name) and in Spain, where ``El Greigo'' might have been expected. Source: El Greco, David Davies and John H. Elliot.
Currently Reading: Ascending, James Alan Gardner.
