Flattened

Yesterday morning (Wednesday, April 8, 2009) I noticed I had misspelled “weather” in a photo word-blurb.
I had misspelled it as “wheather,” a fix to an earlier spelling of “whether,” which was the wrong word.
The word was no longer editable, since it was part of a “flattened” Photoshop jpeg.
Flattened, the text-file is no longer a text-file. The image-layer the text was on was merged (“flattened”) into the original image-layer.
I.e. it’s become part of the original image; I can’t just edit it.
Okay, fix it. I have two options:
—1) Start over. I already have a “GrannyUzi” file, but I treated it some; mainly lightening shadows.
Start over is maybe 10-15 minutes.
—2) Obliterate the words in my completed word-blurb, and spell it right.
Maybe 5-10 minutes.
Okay, option two: engage ellipse tool, circle text with marching ants, and delete.
Took maybe four ellipses, but I’m left with a blank word-blurb, which is white, the background color the word-blurb originally was.
Okay, create text (new text-layer), with “weather” spelled right.
Resize, center in word-blurb, and then flatten, so I can save it into a jpeg.
But guess what! I can’t flatten it because all the written toolbar items are gone, a trick OS-X likes to do occasionally.
This means a reboot. A 5-10 minute process is turning into 10-15 minutes, and I know how things are. That 10-15 minutes will stretch into 30-35 minutes.
“How much time do I wanna waste?” I say.
It’s already 10 a.m.
Driving to the YMCA and parking takes about 25 minutes.
Get there at 11:15 instead of 10:45, and I can’t do all the machines.
I often can’t do all the machines with 10:45, although I have.
Doing so means departure at 2 p.m. instead of by 1:45.
At about this time the all-knowing Bluster-Boy will weigh noisily in, loudly suggesting I toss my so-called “silly MAC” into Canandaigua Lake; tower, keyboard, mouse, printer, monitor, speakers; the whole stinkin’ kabosh.
And that’s despite my printer/monitor/speakers not being Apple®; being PC equipment.
I should get a Gates PC, just like him, with Windoze© XP. (Not Vista, the OS-X imitator; heaven-forbid.) —After all, Jesus used a PC.
“Yeah, the same arrangement as my rig,” Linda says; “that does similar things requiring reboot.
Plus, as I recall, he’s been off-line for weeks at a time.”
“Although that was a virus,” I say.
“Virus once,” Linda says. “But there have been other times; usually big secrets.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Kinda like his 454 not running. Lynn-Ellen spilled that.”
“It’s just gonna have to fly misspelled for a while,” I add. “I don’t have time to fix it.
Whereupon I get a snide put-down from Steno-Queen, or worse yet, the chronic misspeller from West Bridgewater.”
The picture was fixed after I got back from the YMCA (and Weggers). —A slam-dunk; I had saved the layered file as a Photoshop document; a psd.

“Photoshop” is a computer software application for processing images. (What I actually have is “Photoshop Elements,” not the full “Photoshop.” —PE is enough for what I do.)

“Jpeg” is a compressed photo file; what is usually seen in ordinary average-user photo practice.

My “GrannyUzi” file is the picture in the blog below, of Sylvester Stallone bearing a machine gun with the face of “Granny” pasted on it. The file saved has an empty word-blurb I can create text on.

The so-called “marching ants” are the result of an area selection, like as done with the Photoshop ellipse tool. The area inside the “marching ants” can be deleted to the background color, which in this case was white; same as the word-blurb.

“OS-X” is the Apple operating-system my computer uses.

I work out in the Canandaigua YMCA exercise-gym. They have a circuit of Cybex strength-training machines, about 14; “the machines.”

“The all-knowing Bluster-Boy” is my blowhard brother-from-Boston, the macho ad-hominem king, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say. He lives in “West Bridgewater,” MA, south of Boston, and has a classic 1971 454 cubic-inch SS Chevelle musclecar, that apparently went not running. His wife’s name is “Lynn-Ellen.”—He often misspells — rarely uses a spellcheck — noisily insists correct spelling “doesn’t matter.”

“Linda” is my wife of 41+ years.

RE: “Silly MAC......” —All my siblings use Windows PCs, but I use an Apple MacIntosh, so am therefore reprehensible and stupid.

“Gates” is Bill Gates, head-honcho of Microsoft. A “Gates PC” is the usual personal computer (“PC”) architecture Microsoft wrote for.

“Windoze” is of course Microsoft Windows. Apple MacIntosh users call it that as a put-down, since it can be slow. XP is the fairly recent iteration of the Windows operating-system; although “Vista” is more recent, but not compatible with most business software. (It was made rather glitzy; similar to Apple’s OS-X.)

RE: “Jesus used a PC.....” —All my siblings are tub-thumping born-again Christians.

“Steno-Queen” is my brother-in-Delaware’s wife. She once was a stenographer, and likes to correct my spelling mistakes and grammar, as a put-down.

“Weggers” is Wegmans, a large supermarket-chain based in Rochester we often buy groceries at. They have a store in Canandaigua.