I did a photoshoot of the doggie. Some of these are a smidge heavy-handed on the backdrop burning cause I spent time on others.


Relatedly, I wanted to get some decent prints. I was delighted to see that Chrome had reopened. Probably quite a while ago, but I hadn't been there since 2009, shortly before they shuttered indefinitely. They used to be good, although somewhat sketch on deadlines and fairly snooty. How about this time around?

[All interactions paraphrased...]

Okay cool, upload images, write in the comments what services you want, should expect a call back soon.

...

I'll go ahead and call.

Chrome: "Hi yes, I see you ordered two prints, you should probably come in and look at a test print to make sure everything is cool. Come in tomorrow."

Seems reasonable.

Tomorrow
C: "I'm here to look at my test prints."
Chrome: "Oh yeah, we normally don't do those next day."
C: "Okay, well _______ told me to come in today."
Chrome: "Alright, just wait fifteen minutes, we'll have them out."

...

C: "These look fine, when should I be back?"
Chrome: "Wednesday."
C: "Great, um, for future reference are your color profiles available anywhere?"
Chrome: "Oh, we don't give those out."
C: ??? "Okay, what resolution do you print at? In the future, I'd like to make sure my image is a factor of the final resolution, I'd rather avoid pixel interpolation if I can."
Chrome: "We ask our clients not to scale their images."
C: "No, I just want to crop it so the final resolution is a multiple of whatever the source image is, what resolution do you print at?"
Chrome: "We send native-resolution images to the printer, and it prints them at however many inches we tell it."
C: "Oh... kay."

Wednesday and a new face
Chrome: "Alright, here's your print."
C: "This looks good, where is the other one?"
Chrome: "I only see one item on the invoice..."

It didn't take him long to discover that I had indeed uploaded two images and ordered two items. The pre-Wednesday guy had somehow messed up the order after explicitly asking me which image would be printed to which medium.

Wednesday guy thankfully moved my order to the front of the queue, meaning I was able to come back the that evening and pick it up. He also voluntarily adjusted the image levels to make sure it worked best on the metal medium.

So they're about the same on having it together, considerably less jerky, but how do you patronize a professional printer that doesn't provide color and resolution information about their hardware?


The annual classy party for classy people went down again this year. The only way to outclass last year's Dom Pong was with, of course, Cristal King's. Apparently, Cristal mixed with red and white wine isn't too bad.

This was followed up with the obligatory lighting of cigars with low-value foreign currency. And me having my partners troll at both games of pong.


All photos by Courtney, btw.

Cristal King's

• 2 Over/under: pick a stock, guess its closing price, choose someone to take the over/under.
• 3 Shopping spree: steal a piece of clothing - tie, monocle, cane, whatever.
• 4 Dames.
• 5 Draw: a marginally-classier variant of 4-(draw a) dinosaur.
• 6 Gents.
• 7 Physical challenge: you must do a voted-upon physical challenge.
• 8 Imperson8: choose someone to assign an accent/impersonation to do until the next 8.
• 9 Classy rhyme: "this is my favorite champagne"/"but I only like to drink it on a train"/...
• 10 Classy categories: Kentucky Derby winners, coachbuilders, 50-year scotches.
• J Classy rule: pinkies out, sir/madame, etc.
• Q *master: Thumbmaster, questionmaster, snake eyes.
• K Cup.
• A Race: select one opponent, to the bottom!
• Jk Wild: but not a king.

Been a long time since I did some quotes. Here goes:

Robot enjoyer

Hey I believe in the old saying, make love bots, not war bots.

A Man U fan

Why is it so hard to buy a decent defender!?!

Gaming comrade

C: Don't tell me we're going to have to co-op [female protagonist of a co-op game]. J: Here's hoping. Is friendly fire on???

A lazy pepperoni

I am a lazy pepperoni.

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