You know, it's amazing how you go through life and you discovered things, things that you used to take for granted, things that you used to think were the norm, things that you used to think were just ordinary. And now, damn it all, they're gone. Hey, there. Hi, there.
How's it going to be? I'm Michael Gross, and this is The Daily Grateful. And we're here today to talk about things that aren't no longer here, or they're here, but they're different. I'm going to be giving a talk tomorrow in Dunedin.
I don't know. Folks on. I've done sort of. And I'll be working a booth and I had to have some things.
I had to have some things printed up. So I sat here on my computer and I designed the handout here. I have a copy right here. I had to say I did this using Microsoft publisher.
Microsoft publisher. I designed this. It looks pretty cool. I did a pretty good job.
Put it over there. Anyway, so I had it to where I did two up on a sheet of paper, right? Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Anyway, there's two copies of it on an eight and a half by eleven sheet of paper.
And then I will take that to the printer. Actually, I didn't even have a hard copy with me. I had it on a little flash drive. I had my design.
And I used Canva to design this. And Canva doesn't like me. And I want Canva to like me. As a matter of fact, I am sad that Canva and I do not get along.
If you know what I'm talking about, you may or you may not. I don't know. Canva is an online digital design thing. You can go in there and make business cards.
You can make all kinds of stuff. And I designed this with Canva. It wasn't easy for me. And so then I redesigned it with Microsoft Publisher.
Well, I moved my Canva design over to Microsoft Publisher. Why am I telling you all of this? Well, I'm telling you all this after I did all of that to get it laid out exactly right. So I can take it in and have it printed and have it cut, you know, the paper then cut in half and then I can take it with me.
And off I go. There's a main street in the town of Dunedin and the town where I grew up. And I know that when I was a kid, well, yeah, I tell you what, just like two years ago. There were two print shops there, two of them.
And I used both of them, you know, different, different times. So I went to the first print shop, which is a franchise thing. That's been there forever. He's been there.
Matter of fact, he printed up my last business cards. The one that say on the bottom washed up former member of the National Broadcast Media. But anyway, I go there. Go on.
Out of business. Just disappear. Well, then write down about, I don't know, mile down the road from there is another print shop. And that's print shop was there for years.
And then he sold the building and he moved over to the next building and had his business there. And I said, nice guy, not nice, really nice guy. So I go there. It's gone.
Totally gone. And I said, well, darn it. So I'm sitting there trying to think and I grab my, my Apple iPhone. And I go on to that internet thing.
And I said, where is a printer near me? And you know, it says, we need to know where you are. It tells you to allow us to know where you are. Yeah.
So they sent me to FedEx office, which by the way used to be back in the day. Kinkos. Do you remember Kinkos? Did you have a Kinkos where you lived?
I'm going to tell you something. Twenty five years ago, we would all go to Kinkos at two o'clock in the morning. And design and hang out and print stuff and just do all kinds of weird stuff. I mean, it was a great place.
Great. Well, now it's a FedEx office. Very corporate. So I knew where it was.
So I, I drive to FedEx office and I go in and talk about, you know, a corporate structure. And I take my, my little thing in there and I said, in this is, you know, I think I need it printed. I need 20 copies. And then I need to cut in half, which will give me 40th handouts.
And he said, okay. And I said, I want it done on goldenrod. And the woman looks at me and she's like the manager. She goes, what was the last time you got something printed?
I said, well, I don't know. Not that long. She goes, goldenrod hasn't existed in years. Let me let you look at our printing select, our color selection.
I said, I do not want to do that. I said, you look like you know what you're doing. She goes, I do. I have managed this place since it was Kinkos.
I worked here 25 years ago. I said, so then you know that I come here 25 years ago and hang out with people in the middle of the night and we would do desktop publishing and design and use your computers and all that. And she goes, yeah. And I said, oh, yeah, we just had this wonderful car.
He goes, let me show you. No, I want you to use your intelligence. I want you to use your creativity and I want you to pick the paper. And I need this printed.
I need 20 copies of it. You know, they're two up, cut in half. I'll have 40 things to hand out tomorrow. And she said, gotcha.
I absolutely gotcha. If you want to come back for this, I said, hell no, I don't want to come back for this. Have you seen the price of gas? I said, I'm here.
I want it right now. And she's laughing. So she goes, I got this. So she's the manager of the place.
She's a big shot. And she's got all these other little people running around doing all these things. And she goes, and she pulls out a paper, a similar to goldenrod paper, I guess. I was happy.
Then she put it in the cutter. Now, I remember Prince Chops had a cutter and it was this giant blade that would just come down and cut things. Well, now because of OSHA regulations, they have this device. And I swear to God, I asked her, I said, you got to tell me how much that thing costs.
And she's, I said, because I remember the old cutters that printers use. And she said, that thing, that little machine right there that keeps us very safe. And she goes, you got to be, you know, you could lose your hand on it, but you'd have to be really stupid to lose your hand and you'd have to break something on the machine in order to get your hand on it. And she goes, that thing costs us $41,000.
I said, oh my God. You know, so I said, okay, here we go. So she cuts a thing out the door. And by the way, it used to cost to have 20 copies made in a cut given to me that used to cost me like four bucks at the franchise place and even at Kinkos.
This cost me $12.95 plus tax. So how's that? Anyway, off I go, but I'm talking to her and she says, why are there no print shops? Where they all go?
And she says, well, she said digital content has eaten up traditional print. I said, what's that mean? She said, people aren't using paper anymore. They're using screens.
You're using screens. I said, well, yeah, I am. He said, yeah, people and businesses are, you know, using digital alternatives. You know, I remember there's a company called Nebs when I was in business, they used to print our invoices, we get them pre-printed and then we would run them through our dot matrix printer on a pen feed and print out a whole month's worth of invoices anymore.
It's all done electronically now. And people are emailed their invoices. So and if you want something printed, you know, you have these big online print competitors and they are like crushing the local people, you know, because you got companies like Vista Print or overnight prints or similar companies like that, they have a super ultra low price of the problem is you got to send them your digital information. I want to publish a newsletter.
I want to publish an analog newsletter. I don't know what I want to call it. I probably tech knows and I want it to be eight and a half or 11 by 17, hold it over and it'll be four pages. That's what I want to do.
I actually three and a half pages. The bottoms part of the last page will be the mailing area and I want to put postage on it and mail it out. That's what I want to do. Does anybody do that?
Nobody does that anymore. I want to do that, start out with, but before I could go to a local printer and I could have that thing zipped out while I'm waiting and I can't do that now. I got to go, you know, to a mail order place because, you know, so I have to send the thing off and then I have to wait for it to get shipped and now it's a lot cheaper to do that compared to the, you know, the local printers, but you know, the local printers that still exist can't beat the prices of these mail order people. But what's supposed to be new and modern is making you wait longer.
It's driving me crazy and, you know, it costs a lot of money to run these places and COVID didn't help either. It accelerated remote work in the decline of office printing because everything is on screens and I guess that's the way for the future. No more newspapers. No more newsletters that you can hold in your hand.
No, dammit, I'm going to make a newsletter. I'm going to make it available to you that you can hold in your hand and you can read an analog newsletter. That's what I'm going to do. Thank you for listening to The Daily Grateful.
My name is Michael Gross and I will see your Happy Highness model.