For Fuck's Sake - WHY!?!?!? (annoyed)

[auto-da-fey]

(BTW: no need to inform me on the matter, I could Wiki it but choose not to; that'll be my fallback option if I'm not feeling better in a couple days)

edit: nicely placed, this particular break

[Good Intentions]

Well, better look up a diagnostic manual and make your peace with it: haemerrhoids are almost a certainty for members of Western society.

They're not that bad.

[auto-da-fey]

while I'm grumbling, my adventures in therapeutic consumerism hit a local nadir today when, upon opening my mail, I discovered a Something Weird "Golden Girl double feature" DVD with The Rotten Apple and Hollywood After Dark, both featuring Rue McClanahan. I don't even recall ordering this, but I must have been deeply submerged in the slough of despond to have bothered.

and goddammit GI, la la la I'm not listening.

[diesel_powered]

Yeah, so two fucked CDs later, I upload all my images for the magazine up to my website and send the organizers a link to download them and I get another email back saying nothing works. Basically, it turns out that the person I'm sending them to is viewing them in Windows (and this is why I say FUCK WINDOWS IN ITS STUPID ASS) and Windows a) will not open TIFF files of any kind within any browser and b) will not open grayscale images (that's an image that contains no color data, not a color image that's been desaturated) under any circumstances. So despite the fact that I sent them beautiful high-resolution, press-quality images that could literally be taken from my disc and placed directly in the publication layout with no adjustment at all (as per their specs), the people making decisions have no idea how to handle them. So once again, despite following the goddamn specs to the fucking letter, I still get fucked. Should I have included screen-quality JPEGs? Probably, but I figured that since I was submitting to a photographic magazine, they'd know how to deal with this shit. Furthermore, I figured that when given two choices (between lovely press-quality TIFFs and universal screen-quality JPEGs), chances are they'll pick and print the wrong choice. Fuck me.

[mixed cats]

that's fucked up! who can't view TIFF?! Do they specifically say another format? Most of the prospectus things I get specify hi-res jpg.

(re my domain: it is squishythings.com;
the guy actually whined at me "YOU'RE NOT DOING ANYTHING WITH ITTTTT" which seems true on the outside but I use it for all sorts of boring things like email and image/file hosting;
I can't believe he hasn't just ponied up the FIVE DOLLARS it would cost him to register squishythings.net;
that domain value calculator would probably value mine pretty low [I don't run ads and get like 10 visitors a day]
his app like, makes bubbles that you can pop by touching the screen. yeah. all the reviewers either hate it or say their two year old loves it! yay!)

[hannah]

The worst fucking headache.

[Good Intentions]

Windows a) will not open TIFF files of any kind within any browser and b) will not open grayscale images (that's an image that contains no color data, not a color image that's been desaturated) under any circumstances.

Yeah... this isn't true. It's not a Windows error, it's PEBKAC.

[diesel_powered]

Windows a) will not open TIFF files of any kind within any browser and b) will not open grayscale images (that's an image that contains no color data, not a color image that's been desaturated) under any circumstances.

Yeah... this isn't true. It's not a Windows error, it's PEBKAC.

This is true. Turns out I had set Lightroom to use ZIP compression instead of the usual to overcome a user problem with a completely different project months ago. Still opens perfectly fine in everything on the Apple side, XP throws up. Not that it gets anybody off the hook because anybody even remotely involved with imaging should know how to deal with a TIFF and, well, it works with OSX goddammit. And for that matter, as far as the other project goes, what kind of press can't deal with full-quality TIFFs? Buy another fucking hard drive for your server!

[clare]

I am banging my head on my desk in sympathy with you d_p....that's so totally fucked up! though the thought is "do you want to have anything to do with these clueless idiots?"

[diesel_powered]

Thanks. Apparently the systems I have in place to deal with idiots are in conflict at the moment. Too bad they both have the potential to generate income.

[diesel_powered]

Also, its situations like these that only further the idea that I should be supreme dictator of everything for life.

[diesel_powered]

And also, all this bullshit has pretty much eaten up most of my time and all of my motivation this evening. Last post in this thread, heading for the booze thread.

[clare]

If I weren't the responsible adult for two minors I'd be following you right there...it's hot Gs&T sound very good right now, unfortunately I've scuppered my opportunities for getting good and hammered for another while....

[diesel_powered]

Bah, I say! Kids gotta learn how to take care of themselves somehow.

[elpollodiablo]

Ugh. Woke up at 4.30 this morning with a stomach ache, and read until 6.30 trying to get back to sleep. Said fuck it, caught a train to the Bronx, hoping for an early in/early out day.

[jess]

My crappy student health insurance won't pay for anymore prescriptions for the remainder of the year (until next Sept). One refill of all of my meds costs just shy of $800 (insulin/blood sugar testing supplies cost over $650 for a month's supply alone, because they is no such thing as generic insulin). I am quite possibly going to stab the next person who tells me they are against health care reform. Or just rip out their pancreas and see how they like it. Ugh.

[elpollodiablo]

Fuck, man. That's awful.

[clare]

Fuck health insurance. That's so wrong. Until September?!?!? What the fuck do they think you're going to do in that time? It's not botox or cosmetic surgery you're asking for, merely the chance to stay alive.

[jm]

insulin/blood sugar testing supplies cost over $650 for a month's supply alone, because they is no such thing as generic insulin

This was the thing that maybe incensed me the most about working the pharmacy.

[jess]

Pay out of pocket apparently, which is what I did today. There are some cheaper insulins, but they suck compared to the more expensive ones (more high/low blood sugars, and I'd need to eat on a super rigid schedule and in exact amounts, like I did as a kid), and they still aren't cheap, and my quality of life and my health would take a serious dive if I switched. Even with insurance coverage, I paid probably close to $200 a month in co-pays, but this is ridiculous.

I can afford it (well, I can't on my stipend, but my parents will help me), which I am hugely thankful for, but apparently other students end up switching, taking out loans or trying to get assistance from the pharm companies (which I may do, although it sounds like a very time intensive process because they don't like just handing out insulin, and all the more of a pain in the ass given that two different companies make the two insulins I use).

[clare]

That just makes me angry. Like really really really go and hit something angry. I cannot believe that something so wrong can be allowed to happen. How is it justified? I mean, I was raised by socialists, but I just don't understand how anyone could think that it was OK. I just.don't.get it. Again, I say fuck health insurance.

[Andrew_TSKS]

If we can't afford to compete in the brave new free market for health, then perhaps we should die, and decrease the surplus population. That is seriously how a great many middle/upper-class Americans see the plight of the poor and less-than-completely-healthy.

[EDIT: For the record, the second half of the first sentence is from a Charles Dickens story. I think it's an Ebenezer Scrooge quote, in fact.]

[clare]

I kind of thought that was what was behind it, but I still don't understand how people can think like that. Especially these days, especially in a country that tried so hard to abandon the class system (though I guess it's justified in the heads of the well-off that the poor just aren't trying hard enough). Off to vomit now.

[jess]

I don't actually think that's what's typically behind it, and mind you, that's my class background and that of most of the people I grew up with. Pretty much no one I know thinks like that (although granted, a lot of the people I know actually do support health care reform). But even those who don't, they don't have the attitude that Andrew describes generally. They more just have no real clue about the actual plight of the poor and not so healthy, and they sort of choose to keep themselves ignorant so as not to feel guilt about their privilege and then have to change their political views to support giving up more of their money to support federal programs and such. Or if they know that people do struggle, they write it off as a sad but unfixable situation and shrug their shoulders because they claim they can't do anything to help anyway (so why should their taxes go up then). Not that either of those attitudes aren't extremely problematic—they are. They are self-centered, willfully ignorant, narrow-minded and harmful. They aren't usually nearly as cruel and unfeeling though as Andrew suggested.

[Ignatius]

I was roommates with a kid who, upon introduction to Social Darwinism in a history class, was offended that the professor had such a negative bias against it. He also insisted I shave my head when he got lice because he assumed my middle class scalp was the likeliest source of such an infestation.