How hard could it be to make a
text-only meme, I said to myself when Michael handed me a sticky not
with some writing on it. Just make a post with a colored background
– people I absolutely know aren’t as smart as I am are doing
them, I said to myself. And that, dear friends, is pride.
It
goes before a fall every time.
Some
five hours later as I finally give up in complete and utter disgust
and have to once again call on my tech-savy friend, Charli, for
rescue, I am close to homicidal. It takes her less than 5 minutes to
come up with exactly what I’m needing. She sends it to me and I
send it on to Michael. Given the choice of being grateful or
complaining that he doesn’t like the colors, he opts for the
latter. Charli sends me a scathing text about beggars being choosers
and I regretfully tell her she’s absolutely right. The man is a
text book case of expecting to be catered to. I send him a second
meme and he likes it. I am still bitter and angry about my own lack
of tech-saviness and although it’s against my better judgment, I go
back to the fool paint program Charli has sent me to and try again.
She has also reminded me that I am not a graphic artist and advised
me against beating myself up about it. It’s kind of her but it
doesn’t do much good.
After
another nearly two hours of teeth gnashing and turning the air around
me blue with cursing, I manage to actually come up with something. I
save the image as instructed and look in downloads as instructed but
while the file is there, the image isn’t. I start over another
dozen times and finally realize that it’s a bad file format –
I’ve been saving to PNG when I should’ve been saving to JPEG. I
have no idea what this actually means but I do recognize it as the
problem. Astonishingly, I try one final time and lo and behold, it
works. I am dumbstruck, exhausted, and three quarters blind. And
yet, there is a feeling of triumph that I can’t quite get past.
Take
that you son-of-a-bitchin’ technology.
