Determined accomplishment

It isn't much really, but I learned two new things today.  Both of them took more time than I had allowed and both didn't work out right on the first try.  Now that I see that last sentence, I realize that neither of those facts is anything new.  I did prevail, however. 

First, I learned through trial and error (many errors, in fact) how to merge a series of photographs into a panorama.  While involved in that process I also had to learn how to convert images from 16-bit color to 8-bit color.  Don't ask me why, but Photoshop Elements won't merge 16-bit images.  Until I passed that step, nothing worked the way the book said it would.  (And, of course, the book didn't even mention the program's preference for 8-bit.)

The pursuit of the panorama, which turned out to be passable, but not great, was so that I could at last finish what I had written from the last day of the Utah trip (13 October), a post entitled "Off the Colorado plateau."  Signing in to Blogger, I learned that several improvements had been made to the program since I had used it yesterday.  Improvements I had both to discover and to learn how to use.  Improvements that meant I no longer just "knew how" to post a blog.  I had to figure it out almost every step of the way. 

In total my teeth-grinding, hair-tugging, under-the-breath muttering went on for five hours or so.  But, as I said, I won in the end.  It took grim determination; it required a refusal to be stopped; it took being willing to start over, again and again.  Not precisely how I'd planned to spend the afternoon.  Now, we'll see what of it all I remember tomorrow.

Were that I were so focused on other, perhaps more vital, things ...