Domestic Geek

The department I work in is overstaffed. We have been most of the time I've worked there. I originally asked to go over there because they were majorly understaffed. I thought I was going to be in a department of 3 people. Now we've got 5 (at one point 6). I've spent so much time dragging my feet just trying to get my hours in that its driving me absolutely bat-shit crazy. I've already lost 4 hours this week and that totally sucks since we're coming into the holiday season. I even thought about going back to the old department, but they don't really need any help over there, either. Oh, well.

Today I called and asked if I could just come in later. I got so much done this morning. I made a pot of soup, made a big dent in the THW Golf poster I was making for Marcus, shoveled the front steps, washed some dishes...all before noon. I got in about 12:30 and knew the rest of the day was going to suck when I saw that they had my office mate working at one of the inkjetters. After I checked my email and saw there was nothing to do, I clocked out on a break and went back to working on Marcus' poster. It was another hour before there was anything to do and that was because someone else in my department went home for the day. I worked a whole two jobs, prepared a third so that I could tackle it in the morning when the client sends the data and then I had to clock out. Five freaking hours was all I managed to eek out. Oh, well. Of course, I got home early and then Marcus got stuck at work and I had to eat my soup all by myself. At least I had his poster done by the time I got home.

So, how did the poster turn out? Not too shabby:

I went to New Mexico early last month. I wanted to go to the Taos Wool Festival and figured I might as well swing over and see my old college pal while I was in the state, as well. Good thing I had Angie to visit because the wool festival and Taos kind of sucked. I'm glad I didn't waste the money to actually stay overnight in Taos.

I had originally intended to go down Saturday and get a room with friends, but an online friend of Marcus' and mine from Texas came to Colorado to visit, so I pushed it a day to drive down Sunday instead.

I actually managed to get on the road by 5:30 am. It was a beautiful drive down - the fall colors were spectacular. I was having a lovely day until I got to Taos. The part of town where the festival was held is kind of a dump. I wandered through the exhibitor booths for about an hour and didn't find a danged thing I wanted to buy. I found the couple of yarn shops that I had found online and didn't find anything cool, either. I figured certainly I'd find something at the quilt store, but struck out there as well. Discouraged, I tracked down a shot glass for my collection and got the hell out of town. I didn't even bother getting any lunch. I just relied on the snacks I had packed and got back on the road.

The roads between Taos and Farmington are a nice drive, though. The canyon was especially pretty. There were some gorgeous purple colored rocks in the canyon walls. I got into Farmington about 2 hours earlier than I expected, but I had an awesome visit with Angie, her husband Doug and their daughter Haley (and their two dogs, Shamus and Mac). I love visiting there. I feel so comfortable. Ang took me to see the Aztec ruins. I was going to go back the next day and sketch them, but it rained all day. I ended up going to a lovely quilt shop instead.

The only sucky thing is I picked up a bug down there. I started feeling sick the last night I was there and steadily deteriorated on the way home. The cough and crap in my chest has been lingering ever since. As I was reading though some posts from a year ago, I was sick this same exact time last year. This is becoming a tradition I hope to not repeat next year.

Man, I hope people can read this. I know the blog has been absent for a bit. The company that provided my free DNS services was bought up by another company and I neglected to figure out how to direct people here. Since I can see it at home (hosted on a server here), I totally forgot about the outside world. Of course, not having written a word in forever, I didn't feel motivated to do anything about it.

I realized it is now November 1st and I want to try to complete NaBloPoMo. I failed miserably last year. I Googled to find the home page and found it is now part of BlogHer:

So, here I go. Maybe if I can get back into the habit of writing here, I'll take the time to fix the template and learn the new things in this Expression Engine install. I am so out of practice with all things web and it makes me incredibly sad.

I was looking for something in my purse at work today and I noticed my camera lens cover stuck open. I haven't used my camera since I got back from New Mexico. Sadly, it's been in my purse since then because I'm too lazy to get my pics off the camera. I'm also bummed that I never managed to snap a pic of my friend, Angie. I guess I was just so happy to see her that I never thought to take one. Oh, well...next time.

Anyway, I tried turning the camera on and got a "lens error, restart camera" message. It had obviously gotten dinged. Must have happened when I was cut off and had to slam on my brakes, causing my purse and all of its contents to fly off my passenger seat. One of my co-workers shook it and said something was rattling. Great. I don't have the funds for either a repair or a new camera.

Once I got home, I was going to try to take it apart. After losing the very first tiny screw I took out, I decided to Google the problem instead. I came across this site about repairing digital cameras and started trying some of the suggestions. I put in fresh batteries, laid it on it's back and used a butter knife to get the lens come out as it was trying to power on. Voila, whatever was keeping it from closing or opening (whether some debris or just a little bit bent) was no longer a problem

Yay!

I got stuck at work an extra hour and a half tonight because of a stupid 12 page PDF high school newspaper file generated with Microsoft Publisher that would not go through our RIP.

It kept crashing Acrobat when I tried splitting pages out individually.

It was supposed to be black only, but everything color RGB (not CMYK).

It was poorly designed to begin with.

I was ready to scream.

Fortunately, one of my co-workers had a workaround.

It was one in a long line of jobs today that had me pulling my hair out.

I worked on a college publication that sounded like it had been written by high school students.

I literally banged my head on the desk while reading that one.

I always wondered before I got into the industry why prepress people and graphic designers* hated each other.

Now I know. Boy, do I know.

*I'm using the term designer loosely. Most of the crap we see every day is done by some yahoo who thinks just because he/she can work a computer, he/she is a designer. It's why I can't find work as a designer that pays anything.