Disappointment

It is disgusting to see how much computer hardware and software is designed to work with Windows first, anything else second. I bought a Hewlett-Packard Photosmart C5550 All-in-One printer scanner copier in the hopes that it would print labels on DVDs of the slide presentation we used at Adeline’s memorial. I had hoped that I could design a nice label and put it on the disks, rather than scrawling something with a Sharpie pen. Or using stick-on paper labels, which usually mess up your DVD player.

Alas, the usual putrid vile odious repugnant nauseating disgusting awful ugliness of Windows intervened. After loading what seemed to be way too much software into my Mac, I tried to find the part I could use to design the label. After scrolling through a very long list with names like HP Photosmart Create, HP Photosmart Share, HP Photosmart Stitch (!?!), HP Photosmart Studio, I finally found a little symbol that looked like a blank CD/DVD disk. I clicked on it and discovered that it had a rectangle top and bottom, and two squares left and right where I could put words. Pictures? No clue. Doing a design that covered the entire disk? No clue. I vainly typed a few words in the available spaces, but they didn’t show up on the label. Unless I pressed and held a symbol that seemed to show what the label might look like. Whatever—I was looking for anything by this time.

I put a disk in the special holder and inserted it into the printer as instructed and clicked Print. The machine spat out the holder, then drew it back in and moved it all the way to the inside of the printer, then spat it out, then groaned and grunted and clicked and made a fart noise then spat it out then messed around and finally spelled out on the video screen that there was a paper jam. There was no paper in the machine. And no jam in the machine. I started to feel like jelly.

Another disaster when trying to make anything designed for Windows work.

Bill Gates will probably increase the incidence of malaria, AIDS, and anything else his stinking apologies-to-the-world-for-being-such-a-destructive-influence Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation tries to cure.