Thank ya, Gates!

“Your assignment is.......”
Print off three professional-looking envelopes.
Nothing to it — I’ve done it before.
Engage wondrous technology.
Fire up AppleWorks® word-processor on computer; that will flag spelling errors due to mistypes.
Fire up Microsoft Word®; fire up Word envelope function.
Copy/paste AppleWorks address into Word envelope window.
Select #10 envelopes (one was a #6), select “charcoal” font, select bold, increase font-size to 14 points; print.
HOLD IT, Bubba!
This is the new century, where everything takes 10 times as long as the previous century.
And that is called progress — the siren-song of wondrous technology.
And don’t kill that AppleWorks document. Ya might need it.
Okay, print envelopes.
Envelopes have to be inserted just so; otherwise they print upside-down.
Usually I get this right; but not this time. #6 is correct, but both #10s are upside-down.
A distraction was at play. Both #10s were warped at one end due to being bent by a rubber-band. My printer won’t feed a warped envelope.
Upside-down was feeding the unwarped end.
Take out two more blank #10 envelopes, both also warped at the end that feeds.
Copy/paste an address again into the Word envelope address window — I knew I’d need it.
Set up all again and print.
Woops! Envelope won’t feed — red light blinks on printer.
Command-O; view printing jobs.
I know from experience if a job didn’t print, it remains in the printer-queue, and prints first although that may not be what ya intended.
“Delete” or “stop” or “restart?” —“Delete job.”
Set up all again; print.
Zoop; envelope spits out and nothing prints.
Command-O; nothing in queue.
Set up all again. Straighten envelope so it will feed.
Got it this time. —Four tries; about 45 minutes.
If I’d hand-lettered ‘em, it mighta consumed 45 seconds.
Progress.
Thank ya, Gates.

• “Gates” is Bill Gates, head-honcho of Microsoft.
• “AppleWorks®” is Apple Computer’s word-processing, spreadsheet, and paint software. Not as glitzy as Word and Excel, but not as punishing to a stroke-survivor. (I had a stroke in October of 1993.) Word has magic-key functions, which trip you onto the ozone, if ya hit ‘em by mistake. AppleWorks doesn’t. (I use an Apple Macintosh.)