Why Technology is Like Men

I'm in the graphics lab at school working on my final project for publication design class. And I've decided that I can't imagine why I ever considered minoring in this stuff. I'm about ready to throw myself through a window because of it.

It wasn't long into the school year that I figured out that working on projects in the Mac lab really sucks. The printers really make matters especially crappy, but just being here really doesn't float my boat, if you know what I mean. I've become an Apple Believer this year, but it's definately no thanks to this place.

I'm so tired of being here that I did the majority of this project on Ben's cute little iBook (or is it a PowerBook, Ben?) laptop at the boys' house earlier in the week. That alone wasn't the easiest of feats, as it didn't care to save as a PDF for us. But those troubles were nothing compared to the perils I've faced here in the lab. I tried to get the whole thing sorted out on Thursday, but the computer totally freaked on me. I believe it actually forgot it was a computer. I decided to leave it alone for a few days and began today on a different machine.

Now I'm trying again. I spent about 8 minutes tweaking my actual design. Now I've been here for over an hour, and the whole problem has been with printers. The first print came out pink. The second came out pink with white lines through it.

Being humble enough to admit when I'm in trouble, I asked the lab worker for help. "Hmmm," said he. "Perhaps I should check the ink levels."

He did a few things and played with the printer a bit and then suggested I print again. Then he turned to his friend and said, "In 10 minutes this won't be my problem anymore." This, of course, made me fall in love with him.

Sure enough. This time, it printed out almost entirely green. After the first page came out, the lab worker said, "Huh, I think it looks pretty good that way. Well, I'm off. Bye." Oh, yeah, and he suggested that Kinkos could do it for a couple of bucks. Ugh.

So I called Ben for help. He had some suggestions, one of which was to ask a student there. This student did help me a bit. He tweaked with the print settings a little. My only complaint is that now the picture is blurry and that it's taking FOREVER to print. The whole time I've been writing this post, the printer has been printing one page. It's been at least 15 minutes. And it still doesn't look right.

And so I've decided that technology is a curse. I'm done with it. Except my iPod is still in my ears, and even though when I turned it on tonight, it showed an error message I'd never seen before, I can't imagine life without it.

Technology. It's like that thing they say about men--Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.

It printed. It's not good enough for the grade I want. But I'm going to share this story with my teacher and beg for mercy.