Pfffff…. It’s done! 3 long, long hours… And finally it’s all done. Pffff…. it was about time, because I was really starting to flip out! I was trying to make a birthday card for my dad’s 70th birthday party, to send to all his family and friends. I didn’t want to try and make something in PhotoShop and bring it to a printshop myself, because I am realistic and don’t think it will look very nice… So I decided to first find a website where I can build my own greeting card online! Well, it wasn’t very difficult to find such a website, only as my dad’s birthday is next month, I had to skip a couple of sites that put “could take up to 30 days to deliver” in the small print… But, finally I found one (greetz!, red.) that would deliver already on the 17th of February! Briljant! Just what I needed!
Well, easy stuff, uploaded the photo, played around with the look and feel a bit. Border, no border, border, no border. Border! Put the text my mamma wrote on the inside of the card, preview, change some things, preview again, etc. Well, that took about an hour. Then I was ready to fill in the addresses! My mamma had written down 35 or so, so I spend at least half an hour copy and pasting addresses… horrible thing, but when the last ones came near, I felt better and better! But… then disaster hit me as unexpected as a tsunami on second Christmas day! The program crashed with a fatal error and the pop-up message told me clicking ok would close the browser… NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!
Ok, very bad comparison maybe, but if people who live in Holland and had their basements filled with a tiny bit of water when some rivers flooded some years ago, can compared themselves openly with the tsunami victims, as they can so strongly relate to their problems, I wanna claim that as well!! Or should I call myself mentally challenged as well now??
Either way, after some very strong words I can’t repeat here, there were 2 options. 1 and 2. 1. Find another website that works. 2. Try it again. As I didn’t wanna search again, I decided to give it another try… and just pray this internet tsunami wouldn’t strike again. Well, another good hour later and with severe pain in shoulders and neck, I was ready to go “check out” again and pay for my cards. The big moment. Flashbacks to the first fatal error pop-up window filled my mind… I hesitated, but finally got my act together and pressed the button… silence… YESSSSSS!!!! :-) It worked!!! Victory!!!!
I expected it to be a steady ride to finish now, but how wrong could I be… They show off with there many different ways to pay your bill. American Express, Eurocard/Mastercard, Visa, Rabo Direct, Moxmo and Way2Pay. Take a pick. All possible. Well, not really… in real life only Way2Pay is an option. And my way out, the one time authorization for them to write the money off my bankaccount. Well, the lack of payment methods put me through some scary moments, but finally it all worked out well! Pfffff…. what a night… and now I am so pumped up and excited I probably can’t sleep… damn those online birthday cards! ;-)

Update (February 16, 2005):
I forgot to do this yesterday evening, but here is the front of the card! When I just followed the first steps again to make the screendump of the card, I wondered why it took me so long last night to get it finished… it went really fast this time! Well, I guess I knew the steps now! ;-)

Daddy’s birthday card

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 15th, 2005 at 23:52 and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.