What should have been a simple art application process turned out to be a daylong activity...and that doesn't even count fine tuning the photos and writing the biography (I hate doing stuff like that). No, that was already done. All I had to do now was send the jpeg photos off to them along with the image list and biography. Since they so competently decided not to tell me what the dimensions of the photos needed to be, I kept the images as large as possible. After all, they wanted 300 dpi. That totalled about 45 megabytes. My email client has some limit on it of 20 megs. So I had to go back and resize the images so that they'd be less than 20 megs. I tried sending it through my gmail account online since all the recipients had gmail addresses, but that took forever, so I cancelled out of that and used one of my domain emails. I sent a followup to acknowledge receipt, and one person responded that they did not receive it. I resized again, this time I decided I would only use gmail and let it chug away at it until it was complete, regardless of how long it took. Then gmail gives me a message that my attachments are over the 10 meg limit.

You know, you'd think that before they decide they're not going to accept any hard copies (which is a bit unusual when they're asking for 300 dpi images...most applications like this ask for 300 dpi images on CD because of their size), they'd make some provision of having email accounts that can accept more than 10 megs of an attachment. Or, they should've put limits on the application, i.e., "size your images to be no more than 7" in any dimension" or "compress your files so that no file should be over 1.5 megs" or whatever. But no. Just "send 300 dpi images". Yeah,, but what size? What file size? That's involves too much effort when you already know who you want to use for the exhibits. So it was back to the drawing board, resizing the jpegs some more so that the cumulative amount would be less than 10 megs. This time I added some compression. I sent them off through gmail again, and sent a followup for an acknowledgment as well. I bet I don't hear from them one way or another whether they received them or not. I suspect this is a total Terry Mattheson operation styled after the Bush administration, i.e., "Loyalty over Competence".

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Most pretentious woman at the grocery store today. She was going through the checkout when she got a cell call. She had one of those earphone things permanently attached to her phone and ear so that she could use both hands to do stuff while her brain was engaged elsewhere (like drive...oh joy). As she's paying the cashier she's answering a call "oh hi julie, yes I got your email blah blah blah" all the while she's trying to interact with the cashier. If it was me, I wouldn't answer the call while I'm interacting with another person. I just wouldn't do it. No call is that important that it should take priority over the people you're dealing with face to face. Or at least answer it and tell them you'll call them back. It's just so rude. And she just had that air about her that she was so bloody special.

Labels: It Takes All Kinds, This Boring Life