So as you all know, I’ve had me some computer problems and after the last escapades, don’t ever want to have shutdown problems again so we decided it was time to go out and get a desktop computer for the home office. Great, perfect, we should have no problems now 🙂  However, we were not in the clear yet. Oh yes you heard me right!

For example, DID YOU KNOW, that if you use Windows VISTA, that it no longer shows the old flat folders like XP did. No, it shows new 3D files, ooohhh bells and whistles. What does this mean? Well, for us scrappers it means, no more scrolling through the files looking at the nice big thumbnail picture to determine what file is what, no, now you must look at the 3D file, which looks like a folder standing up with files falling out of it or of course you can read the file names (which takes much longer). So instead of seeing a whole thumbnail of what is in the file, you see papers coming out of the file. These papers are your graphics or documents that are in the file, therefore only seeing a corner of the graphic and yes, they all look the same when all you can see is a mili corner of them. As you can see, this is a travesty for all scrappers alike.

Well this was crap, so I called gateway who made my awesome quad core 64 bit processor with ram coming out the … you know what and enough space on the hard drive to do graphics for just about ever. Their response, sorry ma’am, we can’t help you “personalize” your computer, you need to contact Microsoft. So, I contact Microsoft, they refer me back to Gateway because Gateway owns the warranty on this product, if I want their help I will have to pay someone 50 bucks an hour (or whatever those techno geeks make) to tell me how to get my thumbnails back, in the meantime they can’t even tell me if it is possible to do, ugh! What the hell? So I set off to Google land to explore my options. Somebody, somewhere out there, must know something!  Also, Windows photo gallery does not display psd files. Vista files do not display psd thumbnails (only a Photoshop icon), so here you are stuck trying to figure out what your .psd file is exactly. Is there a fix, well, kinda… 

I found this website: http://www.flexbeta.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=8028
and this one: http://www.aeonity.com/david/adobe-photoshop-cs2-thumbnails-psd-file-in-windows-explorer 

Both lead to a download that you can use to kind of patch things up, I think. So, out of shear despair, I download the file and follow the directions. Did it work? No. Well why not, it seams to have worked for everyone else, try it again, nope something is definitely wrong. Go read every comment on every site I can find about the Viewing psd thumbnails in Vista. Finally, oh great… None of the patches work for a 64 bit. You’ve got to be kidding me. Some people have been looking for something for a year – only to have no results and have given up. How sad.

Ahhh haaaa, but what is this, a website with a cure for 64 bit, check it out:

http://www.youjoomla.com/support-forums/adobe-photoshop-forum/7123-photoshop-thumbnail-preview-64-bit-vista-and-xp.html

After you follow the direction you have to open each file in Photoshop 7 and make an alteration of some sort and then Voila, magic is suppose to happen. So, did it fix it? Well KINDA! Some files show the thumbnail, and some don’t. Ugghghg, gag, pheewwwwie. What kind of people make these new programs and don’t think to make sure the thumbnail is supported, whatever! So, if you have a 64 bit, you’re in the same boat as me, sucks to be us. On the other hand, there is an ultimate solution. Your computer may come with a way to reduce it from 64 bit to 32 bit. But if you do that, you will lose your quad core, your 4 lines of communication that make your computer so fast and it will become a dual core with 2 lines of communication. So, what is the solution??? I’d love to hear what you’ve done, as for me, I guess I’m gonna suck it up and enjoy 64 bit speed and hope that someone, somewhere comes up with some kind of sensible solution.

On a totally off subject I have my daughters in a toddlers group and I have volunteered my house for a BBQ and pool party tomorrow. It should be fun. Looks like about 18 people are coming over so far. I don’t think I’ve ever had that many people in my house at one time, not even back in my party days. I know many of you are thinking, oh ugh, yikes, too many people… but I’m actually looking forward to seeing my little girls play with all their little friends and socializing with everyone. Anyway, it’s pretty late and my contacts are screaming to come out of my eyes, so I’ll talk at ya’all later!

Well I’m totally excited that I created this kit for the DigitalArts-Cafe, Design It! contest:

But much to my dissapointment, I don’t know what the heck I’m doing with uploading, so I missed my deadline, again. These guys must wonder what kind of yahoo I am to have such problems!! In turn, my kit is not on the polls for everyone to vote, so I’ve worked so hard to get these kits made on time just to have problems with my file uploads, and to compromise my position in the competition, ugh.

Let me tell you how my last couple of days has gone! First off, I was doing great on time, really proud of myself. Everything was ready but Thurs night when I went to make a preview of my kit (as seen above) all the sudden I couldn’t see my paper files. So I had to stop everything and see what was going on. When I tried to open them, it said invalid jpeg marker. This was Thurs night, uh oh, everything is due Friday at 2 pm my time. Well last week I was late because I thought it was due at 5 pm my time (mix up from eastern standard to pacific).  

So now I’m thinking no problem, I have the original, still layered files, I’ll just resave them. But it’s late and I’m tired, time for an energy drink. Meanwhile my stupid computer has been shutting down every 15-30 minutes, losing files if I hadn’t saved recently enough. No doubt from not enough RAM or laptop overheating, I don’t know. So I try to resave the files, nope still won’t save yet. So I stay up all night researching invalid jpeg markers and I do what it says with all 7 paper files… Take the psd files, flatten them and save as png. Take the png file and view it in windows, then save as jpegs. Great no problem (other than computer shutting itself down here and there) now its 4:30 am, all files have been converted. Might as well stay awake now, if I go to sleep I’ll never make the 2 o clock deadline, maybe if I stay up I can actually get this in early. I especially don’t want to be late since last week was a problem.

Now that all the jpegs are working, I try to make the preview page (like you see above) but my computer just wont let me do it, it keeps shutting down and I just can’t get anything done. Yikes! I’m running out of time. My mom (here visiting and buying a house) wakes up, “my goodness, you’re still up?” “Yeah Mom, I’m still up” She says “Well you better hurry up, you’re gonna miss deadline again” Of course, I blow, I’ve been up all night by now, no sleep, frustrated, can’t get it to work right, “what do you think I’ve been trying to do all night! Holy crap Mom”  It’s funny now that I write about it, now that I have hindsight.

Anyway, so Mom get’s her computer signed on and says “here, use mine, I have photoshop.” So I did and I was able to get the preview done (Thank God!), but by this time we are getting extremely close and I’m panicking, no sleep, haven’t eaten all night or day except 2 peices of toast (the fastest thing I could think of) can’t think straight. More coffee!

Still have to zip the files and it’s 12:30 noon. Ugh, can’t zip on Mom’s computer, needs software update or something, give up and take my hard drive and mouse back over to mine, maybe it’ll work now without shutting down since I’m not using photoshop and it’s had time to cool off. Wait for it to start up. Getting too close to 2. Yikes. They’re gonna hate me. I send over the preview since that’s at least done.

Okay, upload didn’t work, only took a half hour for it to tell me. It’s past 2 o clock by now. They hate me!! I suck, I stayed up for nothing!!!! AAAhhhhhhhh. Just want to bang my head against the wall. Okay, focus. Download a special uploader to make it faster, upload the files, it’ll work this time, it has to.

Nope, still didn’t work. Split the files up again to make the upload smaller, upload them, nope. Okay, something is definitely wrong here, the files are too big. Get an email from the website administrator, my paper file should be a max of 5 megs, holy crud, mine are 11 to 13 meg, way too big. Now I gotta resize them all 7 papers again, still no sleep, it’s about 3 pm. Ugh, they are really gonna think I’m a loser, I’m so late.

So I go get the jpeg file, save as jpeg, lower the quality of the photo to reduce the size, they are way too huge, save it again – invalid jpeg marker again. What the hell!! Hubby comes home, i tell him the situation, I’m dog tired by now it’s probably 4:30 pm. I realize one of my elements isn’t on the preview page. Go back to Mom’s computer, fix the preview page and in doing so, see that the element got flattened when I saved it and saved the white background, so it looks like crap – gotta go fix that, rezip the element file (which was the one that uploaded fine) and upload it so no one gets the messed up element.  I’m so late now, they probably won’t even accept my entry. We go back to researching because the files won’t save less than 10 megs. By now it’s 7 at night, I think.

I go rock the baby to sleep, fall asleep for about 10 minutes, Jason researches it online some more. He tries to fix it by trial and error. I figure all my files are corrupt and it’s just a lost cause, I feel totally defeated. All that work, all that staying up, all that time lost with my family for nothing, and who knows what Digitalarts-cafe thinks of me. I even took my very first kit off my own website to enter this contest, oh the depression. Baby is asleep, Jason calls me in and shows me to SAVE FILE FOR WEB, lower the quality to about 70% and VOILA!!! Halleluja!!! It works this way. No problems saving as jpegs, no problem seeing the thumbnail. Wow, at least I didn’t do all that work for nothing, at least my files are good. Awesome! I go back to my Mom’s computer with my hard drive and mouse again and resave ALL 7 papers again, save for web, 70 percent. Take it all back to my computer, ZIP them up, and upload – what!!  OH MY GOODNESS, it only takes 15 minutes to upload!! wish I knew that before, then I would have known there was a problem last week. Files uploaded- I send over the links at 8:43 pm. Done finally.

Today I woke up and looked online at DigitalArts-cafe, , bummer I sent it in way too late. It’s not posted with the others. I missed voting polls, and my kit isn’t up – and it’s my fault for sending it in so late and not knowing about zipping. On the positive side, I wanted to do this contest to learn. And, well, I’m learning!

Today is better already. I SLEPT! lol. We have a birthday party to go to and it’s time to go get ready, it will definitely be a better day!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JACOB!

In order to get this one, you’ll have to head on over to www.DigitalArts-cafe.com, introduce yourself, and then make four more posts in the forums (community). Once you’ve done that, for a total of 5 posts, you will have access to the secret forums where you can download 10 free mini kits (mine included). 

Here’s a preview of what I made. I really wanted to make a lot more for this kit to offer for sale later or as a freebie, but simply didn’t have the time. Kids came down with a cold, baby has been teething and got tied up with some real estate stuff. I am dissappointed, I really wanted to make some extra goodies: gold filigree corners, a key and key hole, a word art, a ribbon and bow, buttons and some special frames to go with the heritage theme, but there just wasn’t enough time. Also, there’s a new competition next week, so Friday there will be 10 more free mini digital scrapbooking kits. Hope to see you there! Oh, and don’t forget to vote, they will be polling to see who’s kit is the best! I’d love to read your comments, let me know what you think of it!