THE TRUMAN SHOW: Revisiting An Amazing Movie 20 Years Later

   One of the fun things about living in Palm Springs, aside from the number of things to do just about every weekend, is hitting the consignment and donation stores. They are everywhere and with judicial shopping you can find some real deals. When I first moved here with little money, I searched for a chest of drawers. I didn't want some old cheap thing I would need to replace in a year so I watched a tall 5-drawer blonde piece that went from $350 to $225.00 over a few months. Its like eBay but in real time!!!

    The donation stores get some great things. The two biggest, with multiple locations, is Revivals, whose profits go to the Desert AIDS Project, possibly the premier AIDS and HIV center in the country, and Angelview, whose monies help pay for the healthcare of children in the valley. 

   During a 50% off of all donated items at Revivals recently I picked up a Blu-Ray copy of Peter Weir's THE TRUMAN SHOW. I had seen the film when it first came out in 1998 having decided I liked actor Jim Carey after seeing him in LIAR LIAR. He played a lawyer whose neglected son wished, as his birthday wish, that his father wouldn't lie anymore. He never showed up to any of his son's events despite his many promises. To see Carey, whose over the top acting annoyed me, in pantomime, and doing it well, made me realize he really was a good actor. 

   I liked Peter Weir, the director, and had been impressed with his earlier hits like WITNESS, DEAD POETS SOCIETY, YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY and the puzzling THE LAST WAVE. I saw it when it came out in 1998, 20 years ago I realized.

Truman ponders the meaning of life.

   While the movie did well at the Golden Globes and Weir, the scriptwriter and Carey garnered Oscar nominations. the film didn't win any Oscars. Carey, whose movies made lots of money, was not considered "serious" enough to the academy; the film was moderately successful.

   It sat on my DVD player for several weeks and finally, the other night I finally sat down to watch it. While I knew the plot I was not prepared for its message ... you see I watched it after watching the news and the wallowing saga of the Russian probe, the aftermath of the Parkview shootings and the battle to get some kind of order to gun control. In the aftermath of watching it again, 20 years later, I realized that like NETWORK, we were given a message and have chosen to ignore it.

   If you haven't seen it, it in many ways was a harbinger of the total reality show. Truman Burbank had lived his entire life on TV. He was born live and his entire life had been watched by a billion people all around the world. His community was a script and he was the "only" person who didn't know it. 

   He began to notice things, slips in the production. 5,000 cameras followed his every move that was broadcast live 24/7. Creepy feeling then and now, the entire town, the "perfect" community where nothing really happened was another version of a communal society, none I might add that never really worked. Yes, I can hear some say, "What about the Amish?" and today, even they are torn between the old ways and new as Weir showed in WITNESS 33 years ago. He longed to travel, visit Fiji the place he was told the woman of his dreams had gone too ... to see the world.

   As the film unfolds and Truman goes through his day it is, well, nauseatingly boring. Its just about like watching GROUNDHOG DAY where Bill Murray is condemned to repeat the same day until he gets it right. He dies a thousand deaths only to wake up again to "I got you Babe."

Advertising takes a whole new meaning in 

THE TRUMAN SHOW. Here his wife is shilling 

product placement. Sounds like today on any show.

   There is trouble in paradise though. Oddly, Truman buys women's fashion magazines and in a flashback we see a young woman he admired before the woman he marries is put in front of him. He secretly tears parts of cosmetic faces to recreate her picture. 

   After a harrowing series of scenes, one where his father is thought to have drowned when he ignored storm warnings and believed he killed his father, the nauseating placement ads where his wife sounds like a midnight informational advertising shill, the father suddenly appears from the dead, he gets up the courage to flee.  He manages like we all must, to conquer his fears to find out what really is out there ... and in this case, against all odds.

   His "creator," Cristo, played menacingly well by Ed Harris, tries everything in his power to drive him back even risking his death by drowning as the viewers watch wave after wave pound the little sailboat. Truman keeps on and does, in fact, nearly drown. A frantic sound crew finally appeals to Cristo.

World's end!

   Blue skies and calm winds return and Truman sails off into the sunset ... until ... his ship hits something. The boats bowsprit punctures a wall and in getting out to investigate, Truman realizes, what he had come to suspect, his life was manipulated. 

Cristo, the puppet master

   Cristo, sounding like God from the heavens talks to him pleading with him to return to where he, Cristo, producer of the Truman show, has created the perfect world. "Listen to me, I know you better than you know yourself!

"Good morning, and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night"

   In a speech that could have come from Caesar, popes, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and some might add Trump, that the real world was a dangerous place, bad things happen, don't go through that door, the door out of this elaborate soundstage, stay where you will be safe. Instead Truman bows, says his signature line, "Good morning, and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night," and walks out the door.

    In light of our daily world today, where cameras watch everything we do, as in China every 20 yards or so, airport security, the Russian probes where whether Facebook admits it or not we very easily could have been influenced in the 2016 elections and possible before that and now after, Weir caught the sense of who are we, who is influencing us and,  more importantly, what are we going to do about it. You will never look at an ad, or see the placement of a product, car, computer, watch again and not see Laura Linney's smiling face shilling whatever product the producer wants. UGH!
   In Cristo's case, we should remember that power corrupts, absolute power, such as he had, corrupts absolutely. We must all, like Truman, be brave enough to walk away, as he did, at any price.

   If you have never seen it, I urge you to watch THE TRUMAN SHOW. If you have but once, like me, ages ago, watch it again. 20 years later it is just as relevant today as it ever was then.  As Santana so eloquently said, "Those that forget history are condemned to relive it.  Unfortunately, as we are all seeing nightly on the news, life does recreate art!

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where the emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed! Be sure to check my re-opened ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. I will be adding many new and exciting products. Many of the items talked about here will be for sale there!

   

Creating a TOPSY-TURVY BIRDHOUSE

 

Being upside-down certainly gives you a
new perspective, that's for sure!

 Since I first started painting birdhouses, drawn first to Pennsylvania Dutch styling where the "Dutch" is an English corruption of Deutsch or German, and I am half Saxon, one of the Germanic tribes, I moved on to other styles being especially drawn to Norwegian Rosemaling with its flourishes and color, a style that reached its heyday in the 1700's and is seen only in a variety of museums in Norway today.

   Then, I started to experiment by combining styles, then trying out hand painted scenes such as the view from a bi-plane down or the view from the ground up, taking two-dimensional art and putting it on a 5 or 6 sided birdhouse. Yes, I tried abstract type creations. When a friend suggested that I try one upside down, I was intrigued and had never thought of that before!

   After creating a larger abstract birdhouse for a custom order, I found myself drawn back into the studio I had worked so hard to create! Moving and creating space twice in one year, then all the other events since I moved to Palm Springs a little over two years ago, I was tired and felt uncreative. However, after several sales and having to recreate again what I could not find, I was drawn back to my studio and having fun again.

   I must admit though, this project was quite a challenge and took some time for me to decide what I needed to do to make it work!

Topsy-Turvy started its life like this!

   The first step was finding the right birdhouse. With so many raw birdhouses in my stash I was tempted to start small. However, the round ones or 6 sided ones I wanted to use already had string to hang them by so, I rooted around until I found what I thought would be the perfect one, perfect that is, upside down. I felt that if was to be upside down, it should really be upside down. 

   The roof, now a bottom, would be a garden with leaves and flowers and I would sprinkle images of the seasons on its six sides. I still needed to consider a design of elements to tie it all together though and pulling out drawers and looking at my collection of add-on items finally found what I wanted.

I had to create it upside
down to make any sense
of what I was trying to do.

  First came the design noting where the elements would go with the first coats of paint.

Adding the bottom trellis finally made
the upside down effect fall into place.

 The heart, my signature element of course, was added to the bird hole entrance, and everything else flowed from there.

   I started with the red heart and then the diamond shapes that were added to the bottom, now the top, of the ridge below the feet now the top. 

   Next came the

elements for the sides. A mirror on one, a wooden Christmas tag on another, wooden star on one side, another added later to the top, a laser cut clock over a created fireplace mantle ... "&" for a spring like effect that completed the sides. The pieces were painted and allowed to dry, then work began on the bottom.

 A burnt umber trellis was created first, then leaves were added outlined with a gold pen. Dots of pink randomly placed with even lighter dots became flowers that filled the new bottom that might have been the roof. In fact, it was the roof that took the most time because of the layers of design and paint. Yet, once it was done I considered that you rarely see much of the top of a birdhouse and in the past few years I have been taking designs to the roof, not ignoring them as I had in the past. I was easy to include the roof and in fact made it appear to be more of a complete design.

The various elements glued into place.

   Once the "bottom" was done, it was time to start finishing the painted elements and adding the items that would be glued into place. That was the fun part. If I had any reservations, I realized, that time was long past. After so much work to create this it was too late to make any major changes. Well, I could but after hours of creating this there is a limit of your patience.

A silver star as a base for the golden

ball, then adding a red jewel was the 

perfect, finishing touch!

The last decisions were for the old flat bottom that became the top. Since it would have been the bottom with a wide flat open space, what should I do there? I tried to postpone that decision and did until the bottom and sides were all done, the parts glued in place and then ... what? I even had the hanging hooks screwed into place. 

   Back to the drawers and checking out all the wooden pieces collected over the years. First I grabbed a big wooden ball. Painting it gold I realized that even on the stylized roof it needed something else, something more. Grabbing a wooden many pointed star, I put it on the flat painted, tiled roof, then the newly painted golden ball and thought, this is the perfect "ending" if you will. As a contrast to the gold, I painted the star silver, glued it in place, then the golden ball and to close the opening in the wooden ball, I guess meant to be part of a necklace ( I can't imagine but .... ) found a red jewel and glued it on, a perfect finishing touch!

One-of-a-kind birdhouse complete

   For my birdhouse, at least, I have found that a coating of "antiquing," usually a darkish brown rubbed over the edges and various elements, then blended with clear water tones down the colors and blends all colors into a harmonious whole. It did here as well. I tend to choose bright, LOUD colors and the antiquing tones everything down. If this piece intrigues you, you will find it on my Etsy.com store for sale. Look up TOPSY-TURNY BIRDHOUSE.

   If nothing else, this experiment has taught me that it never hurts to experiment. I think we all get into ruts, creating the same thing over and over. I was ready for a challenge and am now working on a larger, even more abstract birdhouse. Let me know what you think!

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where the emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed! Be sure to check my re-opened ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. I will be adding many new and exciting products. Many of the items talked about here will be for sale there!

How The Mighty Do Fall

 

  Two days after returning my brand new Apple HomePod, after dealing with it's terrible software for three days, I just got a call (Wednesday, February 14, 2018) from Apple Tech support. It wasn't a Happy Valentine's Day call either. 

   They don't let the phone ring very long ... I made the mistake of leaving it in another room and after two rings, they hung up. I guess Millennials wear their phones around their necks.

   So, I called back. We chatted and they were ready to help ... two days after it was returned.

   In the process of trying to understand what was happening I came across an article of a speech Apple software chief, Craig Federighi made laying out the "new" 2018 chief strategy for software development. He was simply going to delay new developments until it was right, something Steve Jobs was fanatic about. Obviously this new strategy didn't apply to the iPhoneX or the new HomePod delayed at least three months from the original target date. I pointed out in an earlier column it should have been delayed a few months more ... or even longer.

   Talking to Apple today, I had a kind of epiphany regarding the world's biggest companies and reflected on them just in my lifetime. And we may forget that who is the biggest today is no guarantee of who will be big tomorrow. Let's take a walk down memory lane.

   The very first company I remember that was a monopoly at the age of 5 or 6, for all intents and purposes was AT&T. They dominated competitor GTE and all the regional small companies who depended on the use of their lines. However, when the government took them to court in the 80's breaking it into the seven "baby bells" it didn't take long for the whole mess to get back together again. But in the interim cell phones entered the picture and AT&T never became #1 again. However, Lily Tomlin's character Ernestine at "the telephone company" still gathered laughs at AT&T's hubris in the 70's when she said, "We don't (snort snort) have to, we're the phone company!

   Next was GM's Alfred Sloan who stated in the middle 50's, when GM had 56% of the American car market, "What's good for GM is good for the country." They didn't see nor understand first the VW and then the flood of cheap, small and reliable Japanese manufacturers who followed another American guru, Dr. Edward Deming. He laid out a strategy to create successful, long lasting manufacturing techniques. In 1960 while Ford was building a Lincoln Continental that weighed 7,000 lbs., the biggest sedan in the world, they also had to create a small car, the Falcon. GM had the Corvair a slavish copy of the VW bug as both cars were rear engined, and Chrysler the Valient, all three that were by todays standards the size of most mid-size models, and they were "ugly." In their minds though, these were compact cars! Few agreed.

   Next followed Esso Petroleum company that was the most valuable company in the world. After a merger or three they became Exxon of Exxon Valdez fame and that accident and stumble quickly took them off the top of the heap.

 

   When I started working for Kmart, itself a recreation of the old Kresge 5 & 10, Sears was the biggest retailer in the world. We studied their catalog in Journalism classes. Our director said that as an advertising man you only needed three books: The Bible, Shakespeare and the Sears catalog. Nearly a 1,000 pages with tens of thousands of articles for sale, it was a marvel in giving you all the information you needed to buy in a sentence or two. Kmart began, just like Sam Walton's Walmart in 1962. That single event began the slow death of Sears.

   The biggest retailer to the end of the 20th Century was Walmart. They employed over 700,000 employees becoming the biggest employer and company in the world. Starting in every underserved small town in America, they didn't show their face in places like Los Angeles, New York, or Chicago until much later. When they did, they had logistics down to a science and books were being written about how they were destroying small town America. When a new one was built in Rosemead, CA people picketed it for months ... before, during and after it was built.     

The computer age pretty much began in the mid to late 1980's. Apple's splashy 1984 ad at the Super Bowl was their gauntlet to IBM and the competition began. Apple wanted complete control of their products, hardware and software, as they tightly control it today but IBM chose Bill Gates Operating System (OS), MS-DOS, something he bought, not created. It was a clunky coding software that was replaced by copying the elegance of Apple's mouse based graphic interface. Apple at one point had a chance. Finally Microsoft created Windows, practically giving it away and it became the standard of the world. Microsoft was king of the world, and in operating systems still is. However, they were late in the game in hardware and their Surface tablets and fancier almost laptop form factors have never caught on. The Windows phone was billions of dollars of loss.

   Jobs, being forced from his own company, was asked by the Apple board to return in the late 90's. Apple was in it's death throes and obituaries were written about it in every financial publication and on the lips of all its fans. When he introduced the jelly colored iMac, where everything just worked, Apple came back. Sure there were stumbles but when the iPod came out it quickly replaced every other sort of music listening device in under 5 years. When the iPhone came out, late to the show but far more capable than anything else on the planet, Apple quickly grew and reached the top. It is at the moment the most valuable company on the planet. 

   Tim Cook is a finance guy. It never will be said he is a visionary. A close reading of Job's life makes it very clear he had a vision and was able, one way or another, to get others to bring that vision to life. Johny Ives may be a design guru but it was Jobs that made him great. That Federighi had to talk to every Apple employee, yes even the Genius at the Apple store Monday knew about it, tells you that something is wrong in the state of Cupertino, you just know there's trouble. I have a 2000 Titanium PowerBook that still works. Few Microsoft products can say as much. When I got rid of my PowerPS 6100 it worked but was so woefully underpowered that nothing new would ever run on it; I had to give it up. Can that be said today? With so many software issues bugging current products are we hearing "The King is dead! Long live the King?"           

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where the emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed! Be sure to check my re-opened ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. I will be adding many new and exciting products. Many of the items talked about here will be for sale there!                                                        

It Started With A Conversation On Etsy

The original Abstract Birdhouse

A week ago today, February 6, 2018, I did the daily check of my Etsy store and noticed that someone had sent a conversation. The person said they had found my store and loved one of the wild, abstract birdhouses I had done. Only, could I make it larger? 

   A few year back I had seen some modern art and was fascinated by the design and wondered, could you do the same thing on a three-dimensional birdhouse. I picked three small ones, no taller than 5" and tried different shapes, feet and coloring and while wild, I like them. I have sold several of them so it was worth a try.

   I was surprised at the request but said sure. I looked at my overwhelming cache and took photos of four birdhouses bigger than the small original she had seen and liked. One had been started and painted red as a base coat, the others were bare wood. Of course, she picked the red one, it had two heart shaped openings, the original only had one, and so I started. She didn't comment much only hoping that there would be less red but the final design could be mine.

   Since she had liked the original I decided that I would create a larger version taking many of the same elements but also adding a few new ones. However, in that process I discovered that it is not easy to recreate something from the past, something I had to do last year that left me perplexed. I did it once, why not again?

    Not, I discovered later, everyone

    loves red!

 The first thing I did was paint the red ... white. Most white acrylic paints are not great at covering colors beneath them but DecoArts Traditions paints are heavily pigmented and just one coat of their white did a fair job of doing just that! I wasn't too worried about a little red showing through because by the time I was done, it would be covered by designs, other colors, aging and the like. Sometimes a darker base covered over hides many flaws and adds a kind of depth you won't get over raw wood or white on bare wood. 

See how well the white covered? 

Here you can see colors being 

added.

   The next step was to pencil in the design over the now dry white body and add design to the roof.

   At first I tried to recreate the original design but I quickly found that it was so much bigger that it would almost be a cartoon of the original so I scaled down elements and added new ones. I felt that as long as I was true to the intent of the original it could only give me room for more complexity without sacrificing the original. It was fun, but as I said, in first recreating the design and then painting it, I often found myself wondering how I did it the first time. The answer, was that there were many layers and even more washes ... water, brushes and lots of finger rubs to get the deep saturated colors of the original.

   The problem I quickly discovered is that in your eagerness to go on, you forget that even here in the desert, paint still has to dry. After my hands looking like a Jackson Pollack painting, I decided that I would create yet another abstract birdhouse on one of the wooden birdhouses that had

  The birdhouse design is taking shape.

  I painted more color and added 

  outlines that would add detail and 

  complex texture.

not been chosen. It is a square, squat thing but it too has a big roof and as I played with the design of that borrowing from the one I was doing and trying out other ideas, it allowed me to almost do two at once. While was was drying, I could paint the other!

   By February 11th I was pretty much done and I sent photos of the front and back of the new birdhouse. Because the wood used in these birdhouses is so soft and easy to get dirty I asked what kind of varnish she wanted ... matte, satin or glossy? 

Done with burgundy base

   After hesitation, she asked if I could change the colors ... lighten them in some way. Maybe take the burgundy of the base and paint it another color, say blue. Then she admitted she didn't really care much for red and I understood exactly what she meant. 

  My uncle hated red because his mother loved it. I can still remember her bright red lipstick and fire engine red fingernails. As a kid she sort of looked like a vampire! When I was married I usually swathed myself in very neutral colors but now on my own have a red dining room, the brightest red SUV you can buy, red accents in the kitchen, even a red entry wall with a beautiful Chinese scroll with red peonies hanging down in front of it. Very dramatic. But, as I discovered, red is not for everyone. My friends here just roll their eyes.

The finished "conversation."

   Loathe to add yet another color, I suggested cobalt blue; she suggested turquoise or maybe a Robin's egg blue. Since I had used that lighter color in small portions as accents, we settled on the light blue.

   Back to the studio with the light blue. Since I was going to "age" it anyway, I allowed a bit of the burgundy beneath to show through. It definitely gave the birdhouse a very different look. So that it didn't look out of place, I went back and added touches of that color on all sides and the roof. Once it was aged, and aging helps tremendously tie a project together, you would never know it had been another color. Actually, the photo doesn't do it justice. When you see it, the blue pops out in small doses that does tie it all back together.

   As an artist, you have a vision. Often it is not the same vision of a viewer or customer. However, as I said many times, just because you don't like something, and we ALL have our opinions and tastes, it doesn't make it invalid. Just like some of the ugliest cars on the road. When you see someone driving one, you pause, oftentimes stare and wonder how on earth they could they buy that. The Pontiac Aztec and even the newest Prius have not been given wonderful design accolades. They were both design stretches and sometimes you win but often you loose. Remember the Edsel?

   Art is something that represents a vision. Here, I took a blah birdhouse and seeing something two-dimensional wondered what it would look like in three dimensions. Some like it, others don't. That is the risk artists all have to take. Change or die.

   I am forever thankful for this commission ... because finally it restarted the passion I had for art. I also feel that we have to listen to what others say. It may not be your vision, but as I have discovered, a heartfelt comment can ignite the artist in us in ways we can't predict.

   Another friend suggested a new twist on a standard birdhouse that I am going to try next. You just never know!

The new version left, the original inspiration, right!

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where the emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed! Be sure to check my re-opened ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. I will be adding many new and exciting products. Many of the items talked about here will be for sale there!

Received Apple Home Pod Friday, Returning Monday

 

Apple's answer to Amazon, the Home Pod

   I have an Apple centric home. I purchased my first Apple Macintosh in 1994 the week their first PowerPC 6100 computer went on sale. It was a collaboration with IBM creating a new chip to rival those made by Intel. It was a workhorse but to today's standards the average iPhone is 100's if not 1,000's of times more powerful than my very first computer.

   I have an iPhone X, a phone that I have yet to make peace with, unlike my beloved and returned iPhone 7+, an iMac, an iPad Pro and a MacBook Pro. So, I somewhat know my way around the Apple universe.

   When I found out that Amazon's Echo Alexa powered machines do not work with Apple products, and unable to afford Sonos speakers, or so I thought, I had to settle for a Bose Mini-speaker and several Ooontz speakers that worked well enough. My Visio sound bar worked well but you had to keep hitting the Input button to get sound again from your TV. I played music from my iPhone on that system once or twice and never tried it again. The sound though, was amazing.

   The Bose speaker is, well crappy. After replacing the first one when the tech had no better luck than me, I find it hard to pair. You REALLY have to want to play it because from the get go it takes up to 5 minutes for the speaker and the phone to see each other. Oddly, a $35 Ooontz speaker pairs almost instantly every time. But, well, I wanted something better.

When you speak to Siri the top glows.

   After watching Tim Cook's presentation of all things Apple in September, I was drawn to the Home Pod. Here was an Apple centric speaker that could play all your music and use Siri for some commands as well. The product was slated to be available in December, then delayed until the early part of February. You could place your order February 2nd and items would be available February 9th. I ordered it to be delivered, and, as promised it arrived about noon Friday, February 9th. They should have waited a few more months to make sure it really, I mean REALLY, does work.

   I struggled with it Friday. The pairing was not easy. It played music but not mine. The sound is amazing, EXCELLENT in fact. However, I bought it to play my music, music I have been collecting on first records, then cassettes and finally CD's. Most of my music was mine and I have kept all my CD's as backups in fact.

This is how you pair your Home Pod to some device ...
here your iPhone. It can't see mine.

   Try as I might, Siri kept telling me that it couldn't find my play lists and seemingly played whatever it wanted. The sound was, for something this small, stunning. I had to hand it to Apple. It really was that good. But, it wouldn't pair completely, something I wrote at length about regarding my iPhone X. I took that back the day I got it because it too wouldn't see what was on my iPhone 7. It took over 90 minutes at the Apple store to get the process to start and three weeks of backing up every few days to get the photos and music backed up on my iMac on this new phone. 

   One of the reasons I always liked Apple products was their elegance and ease of use. That has changed and they might as well go under the moniker of Applesoft ... they seem to have inherited the tendencies of Microsoft ... throw the program out there and let their customers do the product testing for them. There's a reason Dilbert is so popular. We laugh (in recognition) and then we cry.

   I searched the Internet Friday looking for solutions to my problems. Ironically, while you could buy a new Home Pod, there was nothing on the Apple web site about issues. I know, I looked. I did read an article about it and the reviewer, like me, was thrilled with the sound. He found Siri lacking compared to Alexa. I found Siri worked well enough only the software couldn't see any of my Apple products that ALL had the same songs, books, movies, even photos on them.

   Saturday I didn't even try. I listened to an audio book and painted a birdhouse that had been ordered. In the middle of the night I woke thinking maybe I needed to make sure all of my music was in my iCloud account. 

   Sunday, I searched all my programs and iCloud didn't even have a feature to store or back up your music. Going again to the Apple site I found that you could leave a number and they would call you. That's what all the sites say these days and few do. I didn't expect much when suddenly the phone rang and there was an Apple tech.

   The first guy was surprised and didn't know how to help me. He did some searching while I held and then suddenly we were cut off. I had given him my cell number but he never called back. Trying again, waiting again, I had to explain my problem all over again. And try as she might she couldn't help me either. 

Using an ancient Roman gesture,
this is my recommendation

   The third person was as perplexed as the others and finally asked for access to my desktop. She could see my music my lists and using the phone had me ask Siri to play my Classical Music. She heard it say that it couldn't find that listing in my music. She was surprised and then asked me to click some button in iTunes and instantly the room was filled with Vivaldi! The only thing the Home Pod could see was the computer. That was NOT what I wanted. She was putting a tech issue order in. I thanked her for her help, she, quite muted now, said she was sorry she couldn't help me.

   I knew what I was going to do. Tomorrow I will return it. It was an extravagance I really couldn't afford and since it doesn't work as it was touted, I realized I didn't need anymore stress in my life. I kept all the packing so tomorrow bright and early it goes home.

   This is the second product I've purchased from Apple in less than a year that didn't and doesn't work well. From what I am reading I am not the only person who is beginning to find frustration with Apple products not working well or so changed that you need to be a geek to figure out how to use them. I am sure when I walk in with my Home Pod asking for a credit there will be surprise. This time, I'm done. Maybe with the second or third generation I might consider it again. Now, I can hear my music through my iMac, Bose or easier to use Ooontz speakers. Crystal, clear sound will just have to wait awhile longer.

    Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where the emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed! Be sure to check my re-opened ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. Shortly I will be adding many new and exciting products, many of these items will be talked about here for sale there!

Installing QuarkXpress 2017: Day Two

   

   This morning, around 7:30 am PST I received a phone call. Surprised at how early this was for a call but thinking it was the air conditioning people calling about their delivery and installation today, it was instead a woman named Pooja calling about the problems I was having with my installation of Quark. It took me a moment to register and finally understand what the call was about.

   She asked a series of questions and I explained that no matter what I did, the installation would not let me activate the program. Instead, after several hours and attempts, I managed only to get a 7-day free trial.

   The first thing she did was ask for permission to take over my desktop which I granted so after downloading a program and installing it, she took over my computer, from India, I learned later. There were a few hiccups but soon we had it installed and she was able to change and update my own information, something else I could not do yesterday.

   Next I asked her to help me install this program on my laptop as the software allows it to be used on two computers only not at the same time. So, we started all over again, after another download to take over my laptop and to download the software. That took a bit longer but soon she had it downloaded and we installed it.

   She was wonderfully patient as I was clearly out of my element. I told her that while it may seem quite simple to her, after all she does this all day, it was more and more difficult for users. The fact that it took a day to reach me meant that others were having the same problem.

    This was the long delayed email that said just about the same thing that I had to work with 

    yesterday. Companies today, especially geekie software companies, spend too much time trying 

    to avoid their customers rather than help them.

    Do I regret the letter I wrote and posted? No. In the workspace from Quark it clearly showed that it had been nearly 21 ½ hours since the work order had gone out. This is unacceptable on just about any level especially since I discovered this morning that an email had been sent timed at 11:05 am yesterday. Though I started 3 ½ hours earlier than that time, I didn't receive it until this morning. I had been promised a call, that I got only 24 hours later after the initial call and order.

   Pooja was wonderful to work with and infinitely patient. I enjoy using this software and am heartened that books about its capabilities are being written again. What is not acceptable and calls into question is their own software installation techniques, the time it takes for a response and the difficulty it is to install. Honestly, I was having second thoughts and wondered if it was this difficult to install, did I want to install it?

   I was Pooja's last customer. When we finished before 9 am here in the morning, it was around 10 pm there.

   After this call and its 90 minute installation process, I am happy again and yet also saddened. Quark was once a great, powerful desktop publishing company. Maybe success breeds contempt and after a stumble or three when Apple went to a more modern operating system, it opened the door to real competition. Adobe was able to upgrade PageMaker, a poor second in this industry, with its refurbished InDesign and take over the industry. I can only hope that Quark will be great and successful again while not forgetting who made it a success in the first place.

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where the emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed! Be sure to check my re-opened ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. Many of the items talked about here are for sale there!