I'm frustrated right now. I really like the Flickr interface for uploading photos online. I *really* like their editing process. I edited nearly 300 photos on their system, fixing the brightness, color cast, and cropping out wasted space. The pics looked great.

And then I tried to have them printed. I thought I would save time by sending them to the Target in South Philly. By doing that, I would be able to get the photos in one hour, and I would save shipping costs.

Or so I thought.

First of all, unlike the online printing service for Ritz Camera, which I have used for the past few years, if you submit more than 100 photos, you need to allow 24 hours for the job to be processed. OK, fine. So I will wait a day instead of an hour... that still beats the week I would need to wait if I had the photos mailed to me. So fine, I thought, I'll try it. I sent the order on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, I got a call from the photo lab. There was a problem with my print job; it "wasn't moving" and would have to be cancelled. Could I please send the job again?

"All right," I said. "*%$#&!!!"' I thought. But I sent it again, and readied myself for another 24-hour wait.

Something told me to call the Target this afternoon, 27 hours after submitting the print job, rather than just showing up at the photo lab. Good thing. They had no record of the order.

I know I sent the job to the correct Target. I double-checked my info with the photo lab employee on the phone. I sat there looking at my email confirmation from Flickr while I talked to him.

I don't have time to troubleshoot this. I downloaded each of my edited versions of the photos onto a memory card (one by one, as there is no batch download capability -- did I mention there are nearly 300 images?) and I am uploading them to Ritz. At least I know the print job will, in fact, be done in one hour.

It's annoying, though, to have to take a bus trip to Center City, about an hour's commute time round trip, instead of being able to drive to a much-closer Target about 10 minutes away. Maybe I can run some other errands while I'm up there. I can think of a few things I would like to pick up while I'm in town.