Thinking in vain...

We've seen this. Many times. I think we've all posted it. But I just gave it to every AE, I even offered to frame it for them.

I wish I was out taking pictures like this. Instead... I'm too damn busy. I might have my head above water next week.

(via)

I am so cold. Typing is keeping my fingers from going numb.

So for those that don't know – which is all of you – I'm flying to Boston Saturday for the HOW Design Conference. I'm hoping I can leave early Friday and go ahead and drive the 3 hours to the airport.

So I need places to go in my spare time. :)

It also means posting may be sporadic until I get up there (because I'm busy) and maybe while I'm up there as the laptop I own is like from 1999.


Update: Oh, I do need glasses. I get to pick them up on Wednesday or Thursday - they're only kind square. And I got a prescription for migraine medicine... :D

The Slinky is packed and ready to go.

Don't worry, I'll let you all know how much he enjoys his new home next Tuesday.

Our production person thought I'd be here forever. I sometimes thought that too... but onward to bigger, better and newer things.

p.s. I also had to give back my laptop... so until my new computer comes, posting will be sporadic or non-existent. But don't worry I will eventually return emails. Besides, I really want to take a stab at that logo.

Sunday Troy-the-GE-Guy decided to put a talk bubble on a photograph of Doug-the-GE-Guy and his son's baseball team that he coached. The bubble said "I like little boys."***

Troy-the-GE-Guy has been out all week. At some point Doug-the-GE-Guy went and got a Teen Beat and proceeded to tape pictures of well, certain people, and other Disney Channel stars all over Troy-the-GE-Guy's bathroom.

Needless to say it was a very interesting morning.

Oh, and The-GE-Guys are taking me out for a going-away lunch. How nice is that???




***Unnecessary Disclaimer: This was all a joke.

Got this through the mail, let's just say "cool" wasn't the first thing I thought of when I saw the exclamation point.

But I'm intrigued now, so I may go.

Today is the intern's last day.

The GE guys had actually bought caution tape to use in some sort of prank on him. They wouldn't tell me what they were going to do.

Once I got the card, I told them they couldn't touch him and they told me I was too nice.

Oh, and he's now a fan of the pen tool.

So I had to photoshop a scoreboard this morning. One of our clients wanted to put an ad in the local high school's sports program because they just finished building the new stadium.

And no lie, I just had an argument about what the scoreboard said. I showed it to our freelancer and she didn't think that having it say that the home team was on the 3rd down with 10 yards to go in the 4th quarter was a good idea because it shows that they didn't get very far. And I actually let myself be sucked into an argument about a hypothetical game. By the way, the home team is winning by two touchdowns, so I think they'll win the game no matter what.

I think I need to take a 15 minute break.

You know what's nice?

Putting the lid securely back on the tower of CDs so that when I pick it up to put it back where it's supposed to be I don't drop it and have to spend 5 minutes picking them up and making sure they're all right.

previously in pet peeves.

We have a month to build a website with a content management system. My programmer looked at me like I was crazy. Which she should have.

***

I think these kinds of launches always happen at inconvenient times. My aunt was doing fantastically 2 days ago. The kidney was awake and working phenomenally. Now, she's having psychotic episodes because of the extreme amount of steroids she had to have. My mother is driving to Richmond this morning and the rest of us are trying to get up there by the end of the week.

***

I'm glad the intern isn't here this week.

Intern: "I don't like the pen tool."

Me: "Too bad."


I wanted to say "tough shit," but he'd only been here 2 days. This kid is more of a burden on me because I have to figure out stuff for him to do so that he can learn programs he doesn't have a clue about.

I may take my friends up on the idea to send him out for a non-existent size/type of paper clip.

Guess what I just got?

I got a: "Great job in the meeting this morning. I mean it - I'm going to start bringing you to all the meetings so I can just sit back and let you run them."

Yeah, I'm good. I created an ass-load of work for myself... but I'm awesome.

I don't mind having meetings about this program. I don't even mind them being after 5 when I desperately want to go home.

But what does get a little tiresome is the fact that the meetings go on for 45+ minutes. Not because there's that much info to deal with, in fact we go over the same ideas and information each time. No, it's the fact that EVERYONE involved (except for me) went to this high school and wants to reminisce.

Which is fine for the most part - they're funny stories... but after the third time of hearing them and after we've been in the meeting for 45+ minutes and I want to go home, it gets old.

I can't wait until this is over. The intern comes tomorrow and I'm going to have to figure out stuff for him to do. My boss suggested I teach him how to scan. What? We have one scanner (mine) and it's sitting right beside me. If he's scanning I can't work. And I'm not moving my scanner downstairs, it's mine and I'll be difficult about it if I want to.

Your boss just might almost destroy her computer.

And this is what I spent a good chunk of time fixing yesterday.

It seems last Thursday, she got a hitch in her giddy-up and wanted to rename her home folder on her laptop and this screwed up all her preferences. Not a big deal, right? Wrong because she didn't realize what she'd done so she thought her hard drive was crashing.

Now, our backup/resource IT guy was on vacation, I'm on vacation and she goes into my office and uses my computer to email him. That's all well and good but since she wanted my help as well, it was a bad idea because if she opens my email at work it will download all my emails and I can't check them from home... and she didn't call me (which I was very happy about). So I'm in blissful ignorance of all this until I come in on Monday.

Somewhere in this she finds an old version of Norton (it's why all our software was on my desk when I came back Monday morning) and loads that. Well, not only is Norton bad in general it hates Panther and Tiger so it screws up her machine more. This is when she starts getting error messages about system files. So what does she do? She finds them and deletes them.

So when she comes in Monday morning and starts up her computer, it can't find her hard drive. But she calls me asking for the keyboard shortcut to reconfigure her desktop. My boss isn't big on giving the exact error message, so after some pulling I get that her screen is gray with a message telling her to restart AND text telling her that the hard drive can't be found.

So I reinstalled Panther, her Adobe programs, and fought with Quark for a good hour or more but by then she wants her computer back... even though there's an error message when we restart and Safari won't work (which is of course my fault). Then it is requested that I come to her home and format the external hard drive I'd gotten for her about 2 months ago and backup her hard drive because she was getting error messages.

She was getting error messages because she was trying to reformat the wrong thing.

Anyways, her computer is fine now and all her files are backed up. I tried to hint very nicely that her hard drive had always been (relatively) fine, meaning it hadn't crashed that first time, and that she was the one who'd messed it up.

******

I have tons of random photographs from my little mini vacation. We went to the annual horse show, went to the regional fair (oh god), and went to a wine tasting festival for my birthday. But I'm at work and the photos are at home, so I'll either have to bring them to work or actually sit down and go through them at home. ;)

There's nothing like coming back after a week off and coming into your nice clean office and realizing that it's not nice and clean because everyone has been in there looking for things. Things they can't put back where they got them and instead are thrown all over my desk and every other flat surface.

And what, I'm the only one who can wash a dish?

Anyways, more later. :D

p.s. I think the squirrels are back... I hear them scurrying above me - nevermind it's a dog.

So it seems we are designing a high school sports program insert for my boss's brother (see: a boss's pet project) as the school's brand new stadium will be named after his favorite coach.

So last Wednesday we (my boss and I) had to meet with the printer to see exactly how long we got, what kind of files they needed, etc. So we get there and they know about as much as we do about the actual program. So we're trying to ask about paper and what size and the girl who is in charge of the graphics department keeps saying she doesn't know where her boss gets the paper, but she thinks most anything will fit through her printer.

Since we have to go to her office to get a CD of logos we just ask to see the printer.

So we walk to the graphics department which is in a separate building. You walk through a door into a little room where a desk is crammed in at your left with an old iMac on it. To the right is a hallway and in front of you is another tiny room.

The hallway to the left leads you to the production area and the printer. So since they kept saying printer, my boss thinks they have an offset press, I had my suspicions to the contrary and they were confirmed when she pointed out a laser printer to us. This was her printer and the one we have at the office is better.

The second tiny room (the one to the front of us when we walked in) is crowded with 3 small dilapidated desks. Their desktops were crowded with not only a tiny monitor and a scanner but since the room was so small their G4s were on top of their desks too. Now add the keyboard and these people had absolutely no room to move.

This was where the high school sports programs get "designed." Then they are run off on 11x17 sheets of paper, folded and stapled together.

Now on top of that the poor girl in charge was just sort of winging it. I asked her if we could bleed colors on just the insert since there would only be 150. She said yes we could get about a 1/4" from the edge of the paper.

So we got the files we needed and left. I mainly felt sorry for the girl in charge. No doubt they were hired without any experience and sat in front of the computer and told to learn it.

When we got in the car my boss looked at me and started going on and on about how that must be what design hell looks like. This is when I felt obligated to do the whole, "yes, I'm so lucky, I love my job" speech.

So there, was it as interesting as I made it sound? I should've written more last week when I hadn't been trying to not think about anything work-related.

So when I get back, my time will be spent laying out an 8-page insert all about a football coach. I'm going to try to pawn it off on the intern. After I teach him how to use the programs.

What's the most pressing piece of business this morning on the last day before I take vacation?

Finding the remote to the TV so that my boss can watch Wimbledon.

It is too early. But me and the boss are on vacation next week and we're trying to cram everything into this week and get it all done.

More on my trip to design hell which I went on yesterday when I get the chance. I know, you can't wait.