It’s So DARK in Here
In the, “gosh, I hope Steve’s sitting down” category, I’ve actually lifted my new, big printer up off the floor and put it on a desk in my office at home. (Steve once said, “I have this vision of you sitting there a year from now with that printer on the floor churning out big pretty pictures.”)
The other day, while shopping in Fry’s for, it goes without saying, items we really didn’t need and couldn’t find anyway, Steve accused me of becoming a Mac User. “You have to get everything WHITE,” he tells me as we headed towards the aisle with the WHITE USB cables, “because Mac Users, well, that’s what they do.”
(Meanwhile, I was busy formulating the theory that, the “good” folks at Fry’s like to move everything around to confuse us all so that we intentionally can’t find what we came in for but end up walking around aimlessly saying things like, “wow! I can’t find…but, hey, look, this is cool!” only to end up spending way more than we wanted to and having to return again to Fry’s at a later date, only to find scrambled items in different-yet still random-aisles, in what has now become a vicious cycle.)
I’ve no problem with WHITE computers. My new Mac is, in fact, WHITE. It doesn’t bother me. I’d be just as happy with a cool, screaming, new BLACK Mac. (Ah, not so, say the Mac Users, everything must be color coordinated. Guess I’m not really one of them. YET.)
So, I bought the Epson 2200 printer, to use to produce my fine art prints. It’s a nice printer, or so I’ve been told, since it’s a “wide body” and allows me to print my own 11×14 prints. No more running to the lab, no more paying ten million (well, ok, 40) dollars for prints that are muddy or under-exposed or just not right. No, now you can take matters into your own hands, roll up your sleeves, and do it all yourself.
Trouble is, it’s heavy as a boat anchor and it’s friggin’ 26 inches wide! It’s actually physically larger than my first TV set. It’s so amazingly, honkingly, big, I think you could print out the state of Rhode Island in actual size and scale. (Well, maybe if you cropped off the Atlantic Ocean in Photoshop first.) It’s mega printer and it’s BLACK. Didn’t somebody tell the good folks at Epson that, if they want to attract the Mac clientele, they need to make some honkingly large, heavy Rhode Island-printing machines in WHITE not BLACK? Crap, they could even charge an extra $50 or so and the Mac Users (whoever they are) would probably pay for it because, well, they just have to have everything WHITE. Not SILVER, not BLACK, GREY is right out of the question. WHITE WHITE WHITE WHITE WHITE. (To paraphrase Yogi Berra, “you can get your computer gear in any color you want, so long as it’s WHITE.”)
So now, I’ve setup this beautiful office, with all white computers, USB wires, hubs, and the like, and polluted it with this HONKING big BLACK printer that doesn’t fit anywhere, isn’t easy to use, and weighs only slightly less than a boat anchor, not to mention it’s spitting friggin’ pictures of Rhode Island out the back of it. (Maybe Steve’s right and I should have left it on the floor?)
I miss the photo labs already.
Until next time…
