review – Page 7 – A Talemaker’s Confession

Merry Christmas! We made it to another year. Woo hoo and junk! I hope your Christmas Day was bright and happy. I have to work on mine, but I’m working and a lot of people aren’t so there is that. I got my husband a bag full of popcorn for Christmas and he got me a couple of mermaid MtG cards. No our house wasn’t filled with material goods, but it wasn’t filled with drama either so we’re good.

Many many moons ago I met one of the voice actresses from Gem and the Holograms at a convention. This happened when Akashik was just getting started and I mistakingly thought promoting it would bring me copious amounts of readers in this tits and cape area. Ha ha! But anyway, I can’t remember if it was Britta Phillips I met, or if it was Samantha Newark. I think it was Britta Phillips, because she didn’t have a noticeable English accent… but I can’t remember.

She and I ended up communicating a bit after the con by email, and let me tell you. I thought she was the bee’s knees. She was intelligent and really knew how to hold a conversation. She didn’t live very far from me, and this is where I went wrong I guess. I mistakenly thought it was still the 1970’s or I was still Down South or something and began to offer her my help in my “will help my friends do anything” kind of way. I had a professional video camera at the time, and I could tell she didn’t have much money. I just knew, though, that all she had to do was get herself a Youtube channel going and put up a few videos. I was more than willing to help her do it, and considering the few times I entered amv music video competitions I had won nothing less than 3rd place, I figured she couldn’t go wrong with me making her free music videos.

So I pestered her about it. What was my angle? I wanted to make an amv using Gem & the Holograms, which had just been released on DVD that month. That’s all I wanted, was permission to use one of her songs. I was going to make my amv, have something with permission I could enter into a contest, and she was going to get free pr and a music video to boot.

She wrote me this gentle email explaining that she was broke and that she couldn’t afford my services.

I was more surprised than insulted. And, as always when I hit this cultural divide, I was confused that people can’t accept a gift for what it is and always have to put something as paltry as monetary value on a gesture from the heart. And… why is it that when someone offers you something for free you can’t take it anymore? That’s so rude.

I waited a few hours before responding to her. I shouldn’t have, because that afternoon my computer went boom and took everything with it that time. I lost her contact information so could never respond. To this day it probably looks like I cut contact on purpose. I’ve often thought of stalking her down and emailing her to say not so and apologize, but I’ve been given the impression that I wouldn’t be heard.

Anyway, I’m thinking of that today because I took a few minutes before starting today’s buckets of workload to watch Netflix a moment. I’d been putting off seeing the latest My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic movie because of the plotline but today I figured what the hell. I started it up. And after a few minutes, when my husband sat down to join me, I stopped it because he’s not even very far into Season 1. I couldn’t do that to him.

So here are my belated impressions on the movie so far:

1. Ugh. Pop music competitions. I hate that trope.
2. The animation has really improved. I want the 3D animation software they’re using. And yes, I could tell. But it looked great and I want it.
3. While I’m at it, I want their computers to run it cuz I’m sure mine isn’t powerful enough.
4. And the passwords to get into the system, please.
5. Gem and the Holograms.
6. Yes, that’s right. The opening was a very spiffy revision of Gem and the Holograms right down to the star over one eye. WHICH btw could be slanted as an Illuminati thing. OR could be a nod to KISS. But either way, I felt like it was a very super colored pony version of Gem and the Holograms. The bad guys, introduced before things even started, even reminded me of the Misfits.
7. ….
8. Yeah, I got nothing else.
Okay maybe something else:

Let me see. To the left is a group shot of Gem and the Holograms. So far I see Twilight Sparkle’s hair cut… Pinkie Pie’s hair cut… I can’t remember the show enough but with the cookie cutter way the corporate run media does things, I’m willing to bet we have our personality tropes in place as well. The same ones as our little Equestia Girl group shot to the right. Yes, Virginia, you can see a resemblance.

But that’s neither here nor there. I’m just amused. And…. going to work now. Ciao!

To: The Silhouette support team

Re: Their damn machine

Dear folks,

In the past you have tried to be very helpful and I greatly appreciate your patience. It is in deference to that patience and your wonderful attitudes that I am going to refrain from using every curse word I ever learned listening to my father work on the car right now. However, enough is enough. And I am calling it enough.

With our last communication, I had told you that after calibrating this Silhouette Cameo, serial number T312A299141, was behaving. Maybe it’s because I tend to take a couple of days between cuts, but that was then and this is my first attempt at cutting anything a little while after that. And once again, it’s simply not behaving.

I have been all over the internet, shaken my head at your manual, looked at your website, and even struck up conversations with perfect strangers that endorse your machine in my various attempts to get it to work correctly. I have followed your advice. I have done all I could.

I don’t want to empty my settings anymore, or uninstall programs, try Make the Cut, calibrate, or do any of those things any more. Because they’re flat out not working. I am attaching a picture of how well your machine cuts for me. As you can see, it at least cuts the paper. It doesn’t cut where it’s supposed to. I realize now it’s just not going to.

It doesn’t matter if the paper is thick, thin, shiny, metallic, matte, glossy, small, or large. I have tried them all. Typically when I try to cut one simple page of 1 inch to 1.5 inch stickers, it literally takes me all day to get a sheet that isn’t slashed by your machine’s blade. ALL DAY.

The first problem to this, by the way, costs me valuable work time and thus money because I work at home. While I’m fighting the machine to get a simple set of stickers I’m setting other commissions aside.

This is how my process goes. I set up my page. I print it. I send it to your machine. Your machine sometimes refuses to register no matter what I do. Sometimes it will be in the middle of registrating and suddenly stop with a horrible sound. Sometimes it will go through the process entirely and then make that sound and fail registration. Almost always it makes that sound about 3/4 down a standard sized piece of paper.

I have to watch the cut. Sometimes it will start out sort of close and then halfway down it won’t be close at all. Sometimes it will not start out close at all. Less and less common, to the point of being more and more uncommon, it will get a page right. I haven’t had a correct page in a very long time.

I have to register and start a cut dozens of times. Each time it cuts in a different place.

Britny, who works with your help department and was very very friendly and leaped through hoops to reach me, had explained to me that the fact your cutter is a paper waster is a fact of life. To avoid overloading your little machine, I had to keep the amount of data in my cut very low. She told me to never change the default setting on the registration marks (which makes it rather pointless for you to have it so they can be changed). And of course I already knew not to go past the hash marks.

I just cut the amount of stickers on a sheet I normally do to 1/3. That’s about 12 stickers at 1/5 inches high. The photo you see is of my fifth attempt to cut them.

I have even went so far as to put a single sticker in the middle of the page without any success.

I have made sure it is in good lighting. Cleaned it. Made sure I hit “load cutting mat” when loading. Cleaned the blades. Blew out the dust. Kept the cutting files ridiculously low and unproductive. Not changed the default settings. I probably would have rocked it to sleep if that would have helped.

Now, if you please, I’d like you go to http://www.sheet-labels.com/ and take a look at the prices. These are the sheets your machine are destroying. This is how much money it is costing me, and that’s not counting the replacement mat, extra blade, pens I’ll never be able to use, and other paper from the craft store.

The important point that has gotten overlooked time and again throughout this drama is that your machine worked perfectly in the beginning. I could cut some serious sticker sheets with it. Now with each file I’m limited more and more. There’s something seriously wrong with that even Captain Kirk could see. Sure I had a slight learning curve, but I already knew what I was doing from the OTHER Cameo I used to own. I sent that other Cameo back because it wouldn’t cut what I needed and your company was very gracious. This is something else. Your machine is BREAKING if not already broken. With each and every cut the problem just gets worse and worse. I don’t appreciate that this is being overlooked. Do you expect me to demand my money back? How on earth could I do that when I bought it at Michael’s? No the most I can do is make my dissatisfaction very well known.

Your machine does not work. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it, because selling it to an unsuspecting person would be WRONG. But it doesn’t work. It USED to work and *THAT IS THE POINT*.

I could have sent the money spent on this thing as a partial payment to my car or my house. We could have bought food. Or changed the oil in our car. I was very unsure about buying this machine – call it a bad feeling – but was talked into it. I wanted to hold out for a silver bullet, which comes with a business warranty and cuts what I need to cut. But I was a fool and listened to the elements around me that wanted me to settle for less. You should never settle for less.

All I want to do is make some charms and a few paperdolls. I’ve been wanting to make these charms for over five years now. With the hundreds of dollars your machine has cost me, I could have had at least a few of them MADE in a way that would look a billion times more professional.

I really have no way to sum up what I say in a good manner. So thank you for your time.

Katrina

Category: review

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