You make a grown man cry

[austin_dern]

I put together the pictures I think most key to my presentation for next week, assembled them into a huge PDF, and put them on my nifty USB memory key to take to Kinko's to print out onto color transparencies. I thought to call ahead and make sure they could do this. They assured me they could. Thus you know they could not. The fellow I had talked to on the phone put the USB key in the master control computer, fiddled around with it, got a Setup Wizard, fiddled around with it, and announced he would have to install something to print out my document, and he wasn't able to do that.

The device driver not being part of the usual Windows installation at a Kinko's I would find understandable if my memory stick were manufactured by Trustworthy Teo's Rochor Road Palace of Firewire Pleasures, but mine was an Iomega thing. Apparently I'm the first person in Kinko's history to come to them with an Iomega USB memory stick to print out a document. So, thank you, Microsoft and Kinko's, and I suppose Iomega too, for taking a simple chore and turning it into a public admission of despondent hopelessness. We can't do it here.

To console myself I planned to go to the Seaview Square Mall to get to a particular store there. At the end of this (fairly good-sized) detour I discovered ... there is no Seaview Square Mall. Not anymore, anyway. They replaced it with a bunch of giant concrete box stores. Do you suppose architects are paid anew each time they put up, say, a Target? Do they make changes so this one is four inches longer than that one, so they can claim each store is a new creation? I don't know and I was bothered and ended up buying a $6.99 public domain Popeye cartoons DVD to feel like I accomplished something today.

Trivia: Domenikos Theotokopoulos was known as El Greco -- ``The Greek'' -- both in Italy (hence the name) and in Spain, where ``El Greigo'' might have been expected. Source: El Greco, David Davies and John H. Elliot.

Currently Reading: Ascending, James Alan Gardner.

Comments

[moonfires.livejournal.com]

This phenomenon is called "Demallification" Sort of a circle. First the malls enclosed themselves, now some malls are turning into strips of separate stores again. It's mostly the smaller ones that have been victims of larger malls and have had many vacancies and have lost anchor tenants. The Fashion Center Mall in Paramus is one mall that is in the process. They already put in a Best Buy that cut off the former Altman's store from the rest of the mall (It's now a Bed, Bath & Beyond and TJ Maxx), and the Lord & Taylor at the other end just sealed off its former mall entrance in preparation for other big-box stores to fill in between.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I don't particularly mind the process, though it is funny in that ironic way. But I would like store web sites not to direct me to malls that haven't existed for at least a year ... we should be more organized at this point in the Internet's life, really.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Yes, the tend toward the mega-strip malls (aka Big-boxes or Mall extensions) has been fairly prominent the past 5 years. Break a small mall up and surround a parking lot with a big strip mall, with big-box stores like Best Buy, Borders, Bed Bath&Beyond, Linens-N-things, and a Olive Garden/Ruby Tuesday's/Outback.

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I know that trend mostly from the mall where I had my first job -- clerk at a Waldenbooks, almost perfect for my personality type -- getting mostly torn down and rebuilt as a Value City and miscellaneous other things.

[natasha-nelson.livejournal.com]

buying a $6.99 public domain Popeye cartoons DVD

Congratulations sir. Have you played "Spot the Video/Audio Mangling so the Repackager can Assert COPYWRITTEN!!!1!!!1! Ownership" yet?

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Haven't had the chance to watch them yet. When I know, I'll tell.

The most annoying Copyright Trap I've encountered was a Video CD of the Fleischer two-reelers. The maker -- Brahma Video, I think -- put up a big ugly box logo in the upper left corner at the start of the screen ... and held it there ... and then, after about a half minute, started sliding it across the top of the screen. When it got to the right side of the screen, it snapped back to the left ... and repeated. I hesitate to report this, for fear it'll be adopted by television networks for their ``bugs''.