Cricut Machine

I bought one.  It was on sale at JoAnn's and I got the last one.  All excited I bring it home, download trials of "Make The Cut" and another program (can't remember) that works with the Mac.  Y'all know this is not going to go well right?

I realized I needed the USB cable and that comes with the cricut software to use the 3rd party software.  Up to Wally World to get the cricut software.  At least that's 20 miles away.

Installed the software on my Windows side and updated it.

All excited I put the cartridge in and the thing that sits on top, picked a design and pressed load paper and cut.  Paper doesn't load, but the blade starts making lines across the top of the mat.  Great.  I can't get the $## machine to load paper.  Did a YouTube check for this. All of theirs actually loads the mat into the machine when they press it.  Mine won't roll in.  Great.  I have scratch marks on my new mat.  Yes.  I put the mat in with the arrow up.

I tried the first software on my Mac.  Couldn't figure it out after an hour.  Heck with this, I'll try Make the Cut. 

Then I read you have to update the machine to get it to use the Make The Cut.  I go through the Cricut software and can't find anything.  Back to YouTube and 10 minutes later got the machine updated.  Cricut software isn't that intuitive or I wasn't looking right because I was so excited. Tried again.  The paper won't load.

I start playing with Make The Cut just to see if I can get any of my patterns to work.  I put the Fiesta Block 3 in and pressed cut and the paper won't load.    *&&^ machine.  I do a google search and find a tutorial on this and it appears you have to load a cartridge the first time to get the machine and software to talk to each other.  Fine.  Put a cartride in, clicked a circle on the Make The Cut and clicked cut.  The blade slid back and forth on the mat creating cuts.  Good news is that the machine and software are at least recognizing each other.

It's now after midnight and I started this at 8.  Either I'm a retard or the machine hates me.  This has got to be user error.  Please say this is user error.

If I can get this working, this machine will rock my applique world.  I'm going to call my mommy tomorrow since she has one of these blasted machines.  I would have called her earlier but being all stubborn I wanted to make it work on my own.