I've Included the Fringe

Last night I put myself through the wringer of learning a 'new' computer program and drew (drawed?) up a chart for the fringe on the little peyote amulet necklace pattern I posted on my pattern blog yesterday. I asked folks in one of the Yahoo beading groups I'm in if there was a program for doing this. It was suggested that Microsoft Powerpoint could be used for this purpose.

Me: "Hey Doug, what is Powerpoint?"

Doug: "It's a program for making slide shows for presentations."

????????

Hmmm...oh, look, I have it! It came with the MS Office Home I bought a couple weeks ago. Open program......... "It's for making slide shows?" (How in the heck will this help me?)

Doug: "Yes."

I prowled around the program, clicking on menus and tools and whatnot. Yes, it can be used to create slide shows for presentations. But it works very similarly to the way MS Word works (which is what I bought MS Office for in the first place). I 'know' Word. I'll do this there instead.

HA!

You see, I'd upgraded my MS Word 2000 to the current version two weeks ago. Now tell me, why is it that programmers have to change and/or move every. stinking. thing. when they upgrade a program? It took me HOURS to figure out how to draw that chart. Not because I didn't know what actions to take to do it, but because I had to figure out where all the tools for those actions were. Most of them were hidden! And who's idea was it to put the 'Help' online??? Geez, I wouldn't want to be on vacation somewhere where there is no wifi or I'd be up .... well, you get the idea.

I miss the days when manuals were books, written on real paper, that I could hold in my hand.

So, I hope y'all who use that pattern appreciate the torture and pain I went through in order to provide it for you, free of charge. (Unless you want to count reading this rant as payment.)

Have a nice day.