It Is Finished

The massive printing project at the shop is done and I'm no longer working nights. Tomorrow will be the first day since 26 June that I have not worked at least part of the day (counting a day as 00:00-23:59). Given that I've seen more sunrises in the last month than I have in the last few years combined, I'm planning to start going to bed a bit earlier now.

I have a new computer, an HP Pavilion DV9657cl laptop, being the first complete computer I've ever purchased for myself, and the only one I've owned that had 100% stock parts. This will change when RAM goes on sale as I'll upgrade it to 4GB and possibly rip the entire thing apart and apply a tube of Arctic Silver 5 liberally to all the hot parts. It's got a 17" screen, HD-DVD drive, 320GB of hard drive, an nVidia 8600M GS video card, and most importantly a numpad. It weighs slightly less than a textbook and I get 3+ hours of battery life when in the balanced power mode.

Working

I'm sitting at the print shop right now for the sixth night in a row. Babysitting laser printers isn't very hard or exciting after a few hours; they will run unattended for over an hour. I need to keep emptying the top tray so that there's still room for more paper to come out. I also keep the paper trays full so there's no risk of running out of paper. Once I have a large stack of books printed I take them back to the cutter and jog them up, cut them in half, and box them for safe storage. During the rest of the time I keep busy with random tasks and I keep myself entertained here alone by listening to music and audio books on my headphones. I just started The Golden Compass. I'm working 6ish to 3ish every night and try to wake up by noon every day. That's my schedule until further notice.

I'm also keeping myself busy by reading books on various Adobe programs. Right now I'm going through a book on Illustrator CS3. I know a bit about Illustrator already but I really would like to learn how to do much more than I can at the moment.

And So It Begins…

No, I’m not copying the Babylon 5 into, although that was one of the coolest shows to ever be broadcast on TV. Tomorrow we start the marathon printing session at work. I’ll be working from 21:00 tomorrow night, until about 03:00. Everyday after that I’ll be working from about 18:00 to 03:00. I’ve loaded up on audio books to keep myself busy and will probably finish more books in the next few weeks than I’ve finished in the last few months combined. I’m also going to work more in the next few weeks than I’ve worked in the last few months combined. I’ll be shopping for a car and laptop sometime in the next month after figuring out my budget for the school year to see what I can afford; right now I’m in need of something in addition to my 1994 S-10 pickup and my 1999 Toshiba laptop.

Project

We’ve got a fun new project at the print shop this coming month. Apparently we’ve got an order for 1500 catalogs and they’re at a size where it’s not economical to print on a press. Therefore all of them will be printed on 4 laser printers. It’ll take about 45 minutes per set to print the pages of each individual book and they want the printers to operate 18 hours per day. So as soon as the final sign off is made on the samples I’ll be working 18:00-03:00 everyday for about 3 weeks straight, or 4 weeks if it’s decided not to run weekends. Each book will have to be cut to size, have tabs inserted, and boxed to be shipped to the binders. In total I’ll have to work close to 200 hours during this period, which a huge portion being overtime. I should make enough in those three weeks to completely cover fall tuition, books, and fees; as well as possibly acquire a laptop that’s less than 10 years old.
Should be interesting.

Same Old Thing

I've decided that I like work a lot more than school. However, I also know that I don’t want to work there forever, hence going to school. Today I drilled holes into a ton of catalogs, cleaned up the 3-hole drilling machine, and moved around heavy boxes while throwing others out. It wasn’t bad, I got to listen to the radio (mostly Bryan Suits) and talk to interesting people.

I also got to use Rich’s scanner to scan the first 200 pages of my organizational management book. Having all of my textbooks on my USB drive and reading them on the computer is much more desirable than lugging them around all day. This is the last of my books to scan and I’m 1/3 done already. As long as I get the chapters scanned before we need them for class Trebone will be happy since we’re sharing books; so I have to send him the scans.

Ran 5K on the treadmill at varying speeds going a few seconds over 30 minutes. That was spread between running and walking. Run fast for a few minutes, then walk to keep my average speed just over 6 miles per hour. Now I’m off to start my reading for organizational management as we have our first midterm tomorrow. Wish me luck.

Quote of the Moment:
“If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon.”
-Despair.com

I'm Still Alive

Yep, I managed to survive my cruise. I’ve been fairly busy over the last few weeks, even if though it really doesn’t feel like I’ve done very much. School starts in 4 weeks and I think I’m looking forward to it, even if it will be a new experience at a new school. I haven’t been reading much but I’ve been increasing my running/jogging lately.
The new press at work still isn’t up and running yet, even though they’ve now had it for almost 2 months. Work is slow but interesting as I do tons of random stuff that’s completely unrelated to actual print shop work. I’ve been building cabinets, sealing roofs, and working on the boss’s other random projects around the shop. I’ll shoot to have at least one new post up later this week. Maybe I’ll binge blog and write up 10 posts or something and then just release them every day until I’m out of them and then my few readers will have to wait weeks again for the next update as usual.