(Approx. 1,281 words)

Dufferdom
Tales from the Kingdom of the Ordinary User
by David D. Uffer, a Member of the Chicago Computer Society
www.ccs.org
daviduffer(at)sbcglobal.net

Of Avery, CDs, Squaring the Circle, Selected Greek Classics, and Tantalus  Plus a Resolution

Obtained from APCUG with the author's permission for publication by APCUG member groups.

We have all heard of the name Avery, the global leader in assorted office supplies, self-adhesive labels (but probably not yet the US Postal stamps), dividers, markers, and such.  You may not have heard of Paxar, whose Monarch Division seems to be the culprit behind those wonderful price and info tags attached to clothing and other goods and hanging by tough, tiny plastic strings you cannot break or pull loose but must cut and then seek the remaining portion which is often inserted out of signt, waiting to annoy you further by scratching your skin if not removed.  Well, Avery just acquired Paxar in a deal worth 1.3 billion bucks.  Such is the price of the right annoyance.  So Avery deserves respect, maybe even reverence if judged by revenue.  It is after all the standard index referred to by more reasonably priced packs of blank labels for use in PC printers.  But this user may have lost some respect for this global leaderas if they carebecause of a wild, redundant search they placed in my path.

In an effort to avoid losing sight of most other users progress, I tried to catch up to a common practice in this age of proliferating digital photos.  I collected some pictures taken in Greece onto some CDs, learning how to do it by trial, error, and reading instructions when desperate.  Results were impressive.  Buoyed up by approaching the League of the Big Guys, I wondered why their handwritten CD content titles were so curt and scruffy when labels were available to display more readable and detailed information.  A single label might conceivably cause imbalance problems as a CD revved up its speed as the drives internal laser moved to the outer tracks.  But a pair of properly placed labels could offset each other for a smoother spin.  OK, two labels could also display more information than one, fine.  But Avery makes these disk-shaped labels with the core hole to cover the entire disk and display anything the user wants to fit in the still larger space, even graphics.  Finer, better.  Big league catchup.  

Beset by pride and hope of grandeur, I bought a set of holey Avery disk labels.  Swallowing my pride, I looked at the instructions.  Those that came with the labels explained the technique for correctly applying the label to the disk, center holes exactly aligned.  Neat.  The package and online directions, showing an imprinted disk, said to use an indexed template, Averys # 8931 or 5931, in Word or WordPerfect.  Each had 2 variants, CD face and CD case.  AlI I wanted at the time was the round disk face, maybe later for the almost square disk case label if I wanted to venture further.  But, in actual use, all the templates allowed was an image without a central hole.  Worse still, all the patterns for the circular disk were square.  

OK, so maybe Avery wants users to use Averys printing software.  It is available online, for free.  So they claimed.  A slightly larger version with more graphics is also offered for sale.  Both would do at least some graphics as well as a blank face for imprinting just text.  So they claimed.  Ill spare you the details of repeated and finally successful attempts to secure the software.  Guess what.  It was the same as what I found earlier online.  I could print text all over a solid square to go onto a holey disk.  A square on top of a circle.  Not right.  No help.  

Now, squaring a circle is one of three classical problems in the early development of Greek geometry.  (The other two were doubling the cube and trisecting an angle.)  It was known to be difficult and proved impossible in precision in 1882 because it involved the imprecise term, pi, though a near approximation could get the job done for those who were interested.  One of the sites referenced in Google for squaring the circle delivers a 7-page article replete with a barrage of real and legended ancient Greek names.  [If you enjoy their rich pronunciation, you may be amused by the names pun near the end of this tale.]

So it would seem that Avery has squared the circle, at least to their own satisfaction.  Now if they could only work it in the other direction, circling the square to the users satisfaction and punching a hole in the center, it might increase my respect for this global leader.  Indeed, in consideration of my pain and suffering, if Avery were to send some workable softwareor a minute share of 1.3 billionin this direction, that wavering respect just might become a bit reverential.  That upgrade in regard seems unlikely since it appears they think a square is the working equivalent to a circle with a center hole.  There may be some hidden transformation formula there.  If so I consider it well concealed.  It does offer Options, which merely present other Avery patterns, none applicable to the problem at hand.  For that matter, Averys CD/DVD patterns werent either so one could say the others were no worse.

<<<   Tantalus pic   >>>

But yet all their promotional illustrations show attractive disks with text and graphics plus a range of alternates, all just out of reach.  This user is reminded of the mythical Greek god Tantalus, a son of Zeus, who must have messed up pretty badly since he was later doomed to the Underworld, up to his chin in water with delicious fruits just out of reach.  Thats the origin of tantalize, which also applies to Averys promo pictures of decorated, circular disksin your dreams.  However one thing becomes clearer, why I had seen the hand-written CD title inscriptions.  We are not alone, as they say, just ignored.  

[There is this two-word pun on classic Greek names which has a man showing his torn pants to a tailor who asks, Euripides?.  The customer nods and replies, Eumenides?] 

As it usually happens in childrens booksand sometimes in real lifethere is a happy ending to this tale of corporate woe.  It comes from Brøderbund (a band of brothers in a loose translation of mixed Swedish, Danish, and German).  Now spelled more simply as Broderbund and part of Riverdeep, they have over 20 years developed and offered The Print Shop software, now in version 22.  It is now substantially more than the basic graphic printing application it was originally but remains readily available and reasonably priced.  In the last few years they began enabling printing your choice of graphics and text on CD and DVD labels.  No hype, no fanfare, just competent performance, good to know, and a pleasure to use.  So, you can buy your blank CD and DVD labels from Avery but print them with software from the brethren.  

Dave Uffer is a member of some standing in the Chicago Computer Society.  Originating in Colorado deep in the last century, he arrived in the Midwest and settled in the Chicago area where he has held a variety of honorable but not especially honored positions in computer-related fields.  He and his wife are now retired, children grown and away; he sometimes writes about the often neglected concerns of real PC users.  

This article has been provided to APCUG by the author solely for publication by APCUG member groups. All other uses require the permission of the author (see e-mail address above).