Current frustration

OK, not that current. I was frustrated yesterday. And the frustration wore me out to the extent that I was too tired to blog about it yesterday.

And the task that caused me so much frustration was not really even my task to do.

It's all Jim's fault.

First of all, he went on a church mission to Argentina when he was 19 (ok, that part is not frustrating. I'm glad he went and I'm glad I didn't know him then so that the pain of waiting for him to come back was no pain at all. Besides, I was only in 8th grade. I was ogling geeky high school freshmen and TV hunks like Magnum PI. 19-year-old Californians weren't on my radar) Secondly, this was back in the very early 80s when digital camera technology hadn't yet swept picture-taking film into the dusty corner of antiquity. Thirdly, he took pictures with that film. Fourthly, he had the film developed into SLIDES. Slides!

Fast forward many years later to a couple of Saturdays ago when we cleaned out the garage. We threw a lot of stuff out, but one box remained un-throw-out-able. Jim's mission slides. He said, "I need to take these into some photo place and get these things converted to digital pictures." I agreed, secretly thinking, "Sigh. He'll do that about the same time that we get a new deck door--never."

Then my dad posted this on his blog. I got all excited. If you care to look, you will see that I posted a comment (and I note with irony that I said, "I love technology!") asking about this gizmo someone had and loaned to Dad that scanned slides and converted them to digital picture files.

So Dad asked the owner if we could borrow it and the guy said yes. I picked it up from Dad (along with a delicious pile of honey scones--them was good eats!) and brought it home for Jim to load his mission slides onto the computer.

And then the trouble started. Our computer would not talk to the machinery. We tried to reload the software to clear up the miscommunications, but to no avail. Three days later, we gave up after much head-scratching, googling, searching, attempting, and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

I asked Dad if perhaps I could come over and use his computer, which had no problems talking to the slide-scanning thing (see how the job of digitizing has now become not Jim's job but mine? Not that I'm complaining...oh, wait. Yes I am). Dad said that was fine and I went over yesterday to do it.

Dad got it all set up (thanks, Dad!) and the second hurdle presented itself. It took a while for me to familiarize myself with the process of scanning slides. The software interface program was difficult for me to wrap my brain around. I eventually got it, but not after several turns unplugging the converter, exiting out of the program, and venting smoke out of my ears. But I finally got it.

And I scanned a whole tray of slides--about 80 total. I had four more trays to load. But I thought I would try to save the ones I had scanned to my flash drive. So I clicked on various links and squares and sat back to watch the scanned pictures load. Only nine made it. Out of 80. A. R. G. H.

I had to rescan the tray. This time, I saved in batches of four to eight pictures at a time. It was a very time consuming process (much like reading this post?). Every so often, some picture would goof up the process, and I would have to rescan a couple slides here and there.

Then my flash drive announced that it was full and could hold no more pictures. I had done only 2 1/2 trays of slides. FORTUNATELY, I brought a second drive.

That drive filled up a tray later. I still had a tray and a half to go. I had been there over three hours. I commenced banging my head on Dad's desk. Thankfully, Sharon had pestered me to eat something a little while earlier, and I finally gave in to an apple*. That apple probably prevented me from having a full-blown meltdown involving little model Swissair planes being used to puncture 440 mission slides from Argentina (and a few slides of a night-time Giants baseball game) individually and with extreme displeasure. I left a tray and a half of slides (and my sunglasses) at Dad's and went home, stopping only at Great Harvest Bread Co. to grab a free sample of spinach/feta bread heavily slathered with butter because I NEEDED BREAD to dull the sharp pain of a slide-induced headache.

Then when I got home, I loaded the pictures onto my computer--which took FOR. EVER.--and they turn out to be .tiff files, NOT .JPEGS! BLEAGH!

All that trouble so I could show you a couple of these (keep in mind that in order to post these here, I had to resize, and convert from .tiff to .jpeg. You're welcome):
(Yes that's his room that he shared with several other missionaries. Yes, those are bare cement walls and yes, that is a bare Christmas-type bulb hanging near his head. And yes, he is smiling.

Jim was considered one of the tall ones in Argentina.

He is standing in a street. Little muddy, don't you think? That is what they had to walk/drive on. And Jim said that they had to walk down that street at night too. Aren't his boots stylin'?Jim, you owe me big time. I get an hour long deep tissue massage in the neck and shoulder region. Unless you think that posting these pictures on my blog without your permission is payment enough. And in that case, I'm going to bed on MY bed. You get the couch.

And thank you Dad for scanning the rest of the slides to a cd for me. Thankyouthankyouthankyou! You saved me from another brow-furrowing exercise in frustration.

*That was a GOOD apple, both taste and in curative powers.