Today: What a waste.
Today was a pretty big waste.
Earlier this week, someone on a Flickr group about my camera model said that he'd made a print of one of his photos, taken on best quality, at 18"x12", and it looked fantastic, which was a surprise to him. He'd found that he could make prints that big at Costco for $3, so he figured hey, why not.
I figured, hey, I should try that out, because being able to make prints that big would be awesome. I got together some photos on a memory card that I wanted to print... 18 that I wanted at small size, and then this one BIG one. I waffled between two photos for a while trying to decide which one I'd get jumbo sized, and finally decided on a leaf in the water pic. I kept the other one I'd been debating on the memcard for small-size printing, and headed to the photo place.
Got there, used their machine, did my thing, chose my pictures and sizes, went up to pay. They accepted the 18 small ones but told me that I'd gone about it wrong to print the giant one. In the past, whenever I've wanted to print a non-standard sized image, I'd just order it seperately, in whatever size, and then ask them to amend the size on the order when I took it to the counter. That's the way, but not for giant Digital Crystal Prints, apparently. They sent me back to the other computer I had to order from, and did my thing. I looked at the image sizes, which of course were in metric. I did a quick conversion in my head, and decided that the biggest size was closest to 18x12. Chose the option to have a lab tech look at my pic and fiddle with it to make it print nicer (it doesn't cost any more, so why not), and went up to order.
So, the big print will take a week to be prepared (probably longer than normal because I chose the lab tech option, but even if I had chosen to print as-is, it still would have been 4-5 days to be prepared), and cost me $30. I decided that I wouldn't be doing it again unless it was as gifts, or some sap wanted to buy a picture I'd taken, which is unlikely. At this point, there's still about 20 minutes before my small prints will be ready, so I bugger off for a bit.
I had to pick up drinks, so I stopped at the newly opened Lawson Station in town (that's a convenience store) to do so. I wanted to check the place out, see if I knew anyone who worked there, see if they had a better selection of instant soup, and so on. Bought my drinks, and a soup, and checked out. The woman then railroaded me into filling out a form (which she re-filled out because my handwriting is atrocious lately) to get a Lawson Point Card. I figured that was fine. Then, as my free gift for signing up, I received chicken karaage. :/ Way to help me out on the diet, lady. I figure it's alright though, since it's only one day. Took this picture of a congratulatory bouquet that was outside the store just as I left.
My other thing I wanted to do while I was out today was pick up a new pen and a small moleskine-like book that I could carry in my pocket. I find myself having ideas lately for stuff to write about, stuff to do, etc etc., but forgetting before I can write it down. I looked when I was at the convenience store, and they had some bright green ones, plastic cover, elastic band to keep it shut, a place for a pen, but only like, 20 pages. I figured I'd leave it, and try to find one elsewhere. If I could find something SO CLOSE to what I want at a convenience store, surely I could find exactly what I wanted at a stationery store, or the stationery section at a department store. No prob!
Prob! I went to the stationery store I often go to for school related stuff, and uhhh nothing. They had stuff that was retardedly small and in the form of a notepad instead of a booklet (and also looked like it had been sitting on the shelf since 1968), but nothing with a band to keep it shut, etc. I stopped at Apita and looked, and they had BIG books with bands, but the pages were all like... half filled with fields to fill in about your school trip. -_- They had books that were the perfect size, but lacked a band. I asked if they had wide elastic bands in the department, because that wouldn't be bad, if the band was seperate. No, they didn't have any elastic bands at all, let alone wide ones. Thanks. So I didn't get anything like that today...
I stopped back at the photo place to pick up my small photos. I noticed two things: (1) they were brighter than I expected, but not so bad -- just let me know that I hadn't calibrated my video right after updating drivers last week and (2) the picture of leaves that I had planned to get printed big size was here, in my clutch of small pics... which meant that somewhere between home and the store, I'd gotten confused and had the wrong photo (the one at left) printed large... it's not a PROBLEM, because either of them work for the purpose, I guess... While I was in there, I copied down the sizes of the large prints they did so I could do some proper conversions at home for when I inevitably wrote about it...
The biggest size, that I'd figured was close to 12x18 was 457mmx560mm. Google tells me that's closer to 18x22inches, which is HELLA BIGGER than I'd wanted. -_- The next size down was 356x432, which Google says is about 14x17, which would have been closer. So not only did I get the wrong picture printed big, I got it printed at the wrong size. On the upside, if it turns out looking good, then I'll know that the highest quality prints I can get from my camera are printable at any size up to 18x22, which is good to know. If it doesn't look good, it just means I'll have to do another test some day with the smaller size.
And... that's it. Still can't check to see if I got tickets to the V6 concerts I wanted to go to... umm... no plans for the weekend at all... umm... (shrug) I guess that's it.
Ohh no wait, I have entertaining merchandise to show you!
I also found this: Jack Bauer's manpurse from season 5 of 24. You know you want it. I laughed and laughed for no good reason.
Comments
IF it turns out, that is!