Domestic Geek

I don't know if I've written this before, but Marcus and I work at a 24/7 print house. It's staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week and we're almost always busy, especially at the end of the month.

Well, while Marcus was out mountain biking today, he started getting calls on his work phone and emails forwarded to his personal phone. I knew something must be up. Sure enough, the power went out at 1:30ish and all of the company's servers and presses went down hard. We got there about 4:30 and there was still no power. After about 15 minutes, though, the power was finally restored and Marcus set about restarting the massive amounts of servers while I took care of restarting my DVD archiving in prepress. It took over an hour to get everything back up and running. That sucks because I didn't eat lunch and was really hoping to go get an early dinner.

Well, about a half hour ago Marcus got a call that power was out again. They're going to call him when it comes back on, but he'll have to drive out there and do it all over again. Thankfully, my archiving should've been completed by that time as there was only six more discs to burn.

What slays me is that, with as critical as it is to keep the presses running at all times, we have very little backup power. We have a big power supply that keeps a key piece of equipment running long enough to finish what it's doing. The main servers have batteries that will keep them going for 20-30 minutes so that they can be shut down properly. Not useful when Marcus lives so far away and he's not called until power has already been out over 15 minutes.

When all is said and done, the plant is going to have lost almost an entire shift worth of productivity today, even though they have to pay everyone that sat there in the dark. That's huge.

UPDATE: Someone just called and told Marcus that the power is not supposed to be back on until at least 1:30 am. At least this fiasco won't interfere with his Saturday night gaming.

Ten Things I've Been Putting Off

1. Putting stuff up for sale on eBay. I'd better get cracking because free listing fees promotion expires on Sunday.
2. Doing a home inventory. We really need one for insurance purposes, but never seem to get one done.
3. Sending the LiveStrong bracelets to my Blogathon sponsors.
4. Going grocery shopping. I absolutely hate it. I need to make an online order, but keep putting that off, too.
5. Scheduling an appointment with a gynecologist. I'm over 40 and need to start getting mammograms. When our company's new insurance carrier kicks in October 1st, I need to take care of this.
6. Getting my hair cut. I know I'd feel and look better if I'd go spend the money and do it.
7. Cleaning my car. It needs to be cleaned, inside and out. The windshield is filthy and it needs a wax job.
8. Losing weight. I need to exercise in a bad way.
9. Getting some financial issues taken care of. They've been a mess since the company I was working for closed in November 2005.
10. Starting my design company or finding a part time job. If I'm going to clean up my finances and get out of this mobile home park, I need more money coming in.

A woman at the yarn shop yesterday was wearing the cutest top that she had made from a pattern she found on a web site named Knitty.com. I wanted to make a note of that to remember to check it out.

Better late than never, I'm posting this as part of Cass' Online Craft Club.

After giving my hand a rest yesterday, I got it the bag to the point of needing further help this morning. This afternoon off I went to The Knitting Habitat for additional instruction. The shop owner was in and showed me how to finish off the top edge. After I did that, she taught me how to make what they call icords. These are going to be the handles. After I get 2 of them at 36" apiece, I get to do what they call felting it. I guess you wash it in the washer in really hot water under much agitation and the wool stitches become like a big piece of felt. It looks really cool. Then it has to dry stretched over a cereal box covered in plastic. Once that's done, I'll go back and she'll show me how to attach the handles.

I may try to work some more of the ribbon thread into the bag before I felt it. I haven't decided yet. We'll see how the icord making goes.

Anyway, here are some pictures. The first is the point I was at after my first class last Saturday. The second is one that Marcus snapped after I got settled in to work on it here at home. The third is where I am at after today's class.

Hopefully next week you'll all get to see the finished bag!

Some days when I'm cruising on stock sites like iStockPhoto.com and the like, I see images and illustrations that caught my eye from the many publications we print. I've decided to get off my duff and learn to illustrate people so that I can get my work onto iStockPhoto and one day come across my work in one of our client's magazines. A weird goal? Maybe. I still think it would be cool, though. Damn, why is illustrating people's faces so freaking difficult?