Day 608

Do you ever feel that you're spending too much time re-learning things you already know? I do. I wanted to make a few high quality Giclée prints on my new printer this afternoon and discovered that even though the Epson 4880 looked exactly like my old Epson 4000 printer, it was a different beast entirely. The ink was different. The ICC profiles were different. Even the paper path seemed slightly different. Consequently, I wasted some expensive watercolor paper trying to duplicate something I used to be able to do in my sleep. Like it or not, I'm going to have to go back to square one and recalibrate everything. I had the same problem when I switched from Photoshop 7.0 to CS5. Even though CS5 was a big improvement, it was also a big irritation, since a lot of the techniques I had perfected over the years simply didn't work anymore. Sometimes I wish people would simply stop improving things. It's going to take me the rest of my life to master all the features of stuff I already have.

As irritating as new things can be, I still can't resist something new. Today I joined Instagram. I have no idea who actually follows you on Instagram or why, but I do like the little square images the app produces. I took a few Instagram pictures today with my iPhone and was instantly transported back to the days when I shot a lot of stuff using Hasselblad and Bronica cameras. I've always liked the 2 1/4” x 2 1/4” square image format. Somehow I find it easier to compose things inside a square frame. This is probably just one more indication of how rigid and inflexible I've become. Just to prove that I'm really an easy going, flexible guy, I cropped one of my first Instagram pictures back into a rectangle for the blog.

It's time to give Dash another antigen shot. His skin is starting to look really good again, but maybe I ought to start giving the injections myself. These injections are supposed to be given subcutaneously, but the past several times the techs have given the injection in muscle and caused a nasty welt. I wish staying healthy wasn't so complicated. Dash appears to be getting better, but I seem to be getting worse. I'm increasingly convinced that I've got a pretty bad case of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. The last time I went to the doctor, I had them X-Ray my hands, since I thought that I might have sprained or broken my wrist. The X-Rays looked fine though and the only other thing I can think of that would cause this kind of pain is Carpal Tunnel. I really don't want the surgery if I can avoid it. I had a friend who had the surgery and his hands are worse now than they were before. I saw some special far infrared therapy gloves on the Internet that are supposed to help. Maybe I'll buy a pair. Gloves certainly sound easier than surgery.

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