Lemony Snicket - A Series of Unfortunate Events
It all started with an email from Microsoft saying they would no longer support my Microsoft Surface Pro 4 tablet computer. That means the door is wide open for the bad guys to do what they do to unprotected computers. It was 14 years old which was past retirement age for a computer anyway. It ran on Windows 10 and could not be upgraded to Windows 11. I ordered a new Surface Pro from Costco (to get the extra warranty) and it shipped direct from Microsoft. I ordered the top of the line model with a super fast processor called Snapdragon. Microsoft took their sweet time “building” it but it finally arrived a week or so later with Windows 11 pre-installed.
I have thousands of pictures of the 3000 bowls I’ve made in the last 15 years (that’s 90,000 pictures and 3000 videos) so the first thing I needed to do was back up all of the pictures to a back-up drive. I’ve been using Windows Live Photo Gallery to organize and edit my pictures since I started my business. In their inimitable way, Microsoft discontinued Windows Live in Windows 11. None of the photo editors I tried would keep the organization in folders like Windows Live does. After searching the internet for several days, I found a way to install Windows Live on Windows 11. Happy dance, my problems were over…..not!
While I’m doing all of the stuff to change over to a new computer, I got an order. I connected my Dymo label printer to my new computer and nothing. I spent several hours troubleshooting the label printer, finally resorting to calling Dymo customer support. After a 45 minute hold, a lovely young Asian woman told me that Dymo does not have drivers for the Snapdragon processor so the label printer won’t work with the Surface Pro 11 with a Snapdragon processor. That starts the search for a new label printer. Rollo makes a bluetooth label printer that will work. Since it prints over the internet, it doesn’t need print drivers. Amazon sells that Rollo label printer for $299. Rollo sells it direct for $279 with 500 free 4”x6” labels thrown in. Rollo it is, can’t pass up a $40 savings. It takes Rollo 3 days to process the order and ship the new printer. They do offer free shipping but I didn’t realize that they use pony express. Rollo now estimates that it will be here tomorrow, a mere 10 days after I ordered it. In the meantime, I’ve had to put my old Surface Pro back up so I could print labels until the new printer arrives.
It’s not the end of the world, it’s not as bad as being sick or injured, it’s not as bad as being hungry or homeless and I know all that but as a one man business, all of the time I’ve spent troubleshooting and switching over to a new computer and printer was time I wasn’t in the shop making bowls.
