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I came home on Tuesday - a girl determined
to tackle the last Quark tasks for Jettison.
I had shipped the text for Jettison to Banta
on Saturday. A new group at Banta. Different office from the bookmark
and poster.
I had just found out that I needed to layout
the back cover (inside) ad for Romantic Times - by Friday - there was
a first thought to just reduce the centerfold.
I still needed to do the cover - I have a
design. But Carson Media was swamped and too swamped to do the cover.
So, having fetched my 18 year old home from
college, I headed home to cook dinner and told him "No wrestling. I need
to work tonight and I can't focus with Angel chasing vampires or wrestling
noise."
He went to his room.
I boiled chicken breasts (boneless and skinless
- 10 of them) with slices of onion and garlic salt and parsley and Italian
seasoning and parsley. I fixed wild (brown rice.) And I fixed veggies
(frozen mix.) I relaxed after the 90 minute commute through traffic and
cleared my head.
I ate dinner, fed the various animals, noted
that I needed food for various animals and the claws of the cats need
trimming. Well, this weekend will not be non-stop text flow into Quark
while prepping taxes. I should be done sorting and down to typing taxes
(the deductibles list). Two home refinances, two mortgages, various misc.
accounts, stock purchases, a stock account, two 401s, two IRAs, two charge
cards, two checking accounts, all piddly, but you must keep track of them.
The IRS does .
And tons of office supplies, paper, toner,
equipment (like the G4 - my Christmas present) and the G3 laptop for travel.
The printers, the scanners, and the whole kit required to set-up and launch
the dot-com. I need to make an orderly hand-off to the CPA.
For now, I put all that away.
I sat down and worked.
For three hours.
I did the math - you have to set up a document
for bleed borders, trim size and image area. This requires guidelines.
Mathematically set no less. Paper and pen and double check and draw and
modify and adjust. And save.
I imported the poster art into the document.
I copied text from the poster into the ad
document and adjusted the size and changed the font.
H Futura Heavy.
Bold.
I added a few lines. I fussed.
I got the folder set up.
I double-checked.
I printed out a laser. I have a die-sub for
color comparison.
I was exhausted but elated.
It looks good!
I e-mailed a low-res jpg of it to the Troy-loop.
I baked cookies. Sugar jumbles. I didn't burn
them. Unique.
I then started to compute the bookcover.
The document is both front and back and the
spine (1" for 396 pages).
And then a second page - the inside side.
I drew the guides (1/4" from the side). Computed
1/4" all around for bleed. 1/4" all around for image off the edge.
Fussed some more.
I tried to import the cover art into the document.
I should be good at this by now.
You would think.
We had had some trouble once before with the
cover.tif file - so I had a second CD sent to me and I had tucked it away
for safety.
I got it out.
No joy. It works like the last one. All white
and a smudge in the middle. And this is an 80MB piece of art.
I tried importing into Photoshop - yes, I
can see it.
I re-saved a tiff - yes, the preview is set.
No luck.
I tried eps.
No luck.
I hunted for every copy of this art.
No luck.
I checked. Yep. I can import the poster art
just fine. It isn't the document. It isn't the operator.
(Operator head space is a common failing.
We all suffer from it.
That momentary fit of idiocy we all suffer
from. On occasion.)
Hours went by.
I tried every trick I knew. I know a lot of
tricks.
At midnight, I discovered that I could put
the file into Photoshop and optimize for the web into a jpg that Quark
could see.
So I stopped Quark in the middle of something.
Actually, I had done this a few times earlier when the system had hung
up or was triggered to do something that was just cranking and cranking.
I am impatient. Yes, even a 450MHz G4 with nearly 400MB RAM and a velocity
engine is not as fast as I am - I can put a mainframe on its knees when
I get rolling.
This time - I stopped action since I now knew
a way to do a work around.
And this time.
The system would not reboot.
It was now 12:30AM. I do have a job. I do
have a kid (now unconscious in his bed.)
I was tired.
I was staring at a flashing folder. The dreaded
flashing question mark.
Not good.
I hadn't saved the ad that I had just slaved
over.
I am not backed up.
Not completely. That was this coming week-end's
adventure. Was to be.
I grabbed the software restore disk. Disk
First Aid had run earlier. Automatically.
I had hopes.
I put in the CD.
I rebooted.
It told me, after I asked for a pass with
Disk First Aid, that I had errors that "Disk First Aid could not correct".
I rebooted with extensions on and this time
it gave me that same message with the added caveat that "BIGSTUD could
not be mounted."
Not an error message that you would be likely
to forget.
BIGSTUD is my harddrive.
My brand-new 27GB harddrive.
I was now in limbo. It was now after 1AM.
I read the manual - it said to call the service
center. ComputerWare opens at 10AM.
None of the "unplug the USB connector and
put it into another slot" - the instructions I had for the floppy when
it failed to see the disk. (USB floppy drivers take their power from the
USB connection and a slight voltage drop will make them not behave.)
Nothing that easy.
I poured a glass of port. I am supposed to
drink two glasses of red wine a day. One is all I can manage and not daily.
Tonight is an exception.
I was still oscillating.
So I wandered into my son's room.
I needed to hear another human voice. If the
tall Italian was around I would say I needed a hug.
I called to him. (My son, not the tall Italian.)
My son sort of woke up, listened, said he'd
never heard of that one and waved me away to bed. (He had installed a
lot of G4 systems at the high school.) I took his advice and went to my
room.
I took a hot bath and went to bed. By the
time the wine and hot water hit, I actually slept.
From 2AM to 6AM.
I tried again to boot the system - because
the book said "wait five minutes and try again" - so I did. Because I
am stubborn.
No joy.
I pulled the plugs.
The monitor (plug and USB), the monitor power
plug, the CPU power plug, the printer Ethernet, the monitor connection.
I plugged the phone line into the 3400 and did my morning e-mail.
I put the G4, dead and silent, near the door.
I aimlessly wandered around the house (it
was like my arm was cut off) and managed to get sandwiches made, drank
two cups of coffee (normally I have one), got dressed and managed to get
the kid out of the house.
He put the G4 into the truck.
I drove, after dropping the kid off, straight
to ComputerWare - too early. So I went on to work (ComputerWare is on
the way to work), parking in the front so anyone messing with the truck
would be seen from the lobby. We've had four NT laptops stolen in the
past week. From a secure building with pass codes and security. Toyota
trucks are easy to break into.
My son, on departing the car, had come back
(he had let me hold his hand all the way to the college - I really was
trying to hold it together), he had leaned into the car and with a wicked
grin said, "While you've there, get me a copy of QuakeIII".
That's a game, for those of you who are the
uninitiated.
I took a meeting and called down about the
artwork problem. While Chrome Digital fussed with that, I went back to
ComputerWare for lunch and said "My baby is broken! It can't see it's
harddrive!"
I had the error messages.
The tech, who was standing in the aisle with
a broom and a dustpan (literally doing spring cleaning) sprang into action.
The salesman ran to the car and fetched the baby.
Disk Warrior. TechTool Pro. External drive.
Launch.
One hour later, my baby was up and running.
Just breathe. I made a zip disk while there - the ad I need to mail. Safe.
I bought my own copies of TechTool Pro and
DiskWarrior.
I got the kid QuakeIII.
Why not.
Seems the G4 does not like to be interrupted.
Not like the IIci - when I could just run
Norton DiskDoctor and fix any broken leaves.
G4's are touchy.
I have instructions on building an emergency
zip out of the two tools and opsys 9.
I have a bill for $110.
I have been told not to push that reboot button
unless the system has hung.
And to run the tools immediately if I do so.
G4's take a little different care and feeding.
I drove back to work (lunch hour), parked
in the back and put my jacket over the baby - so my truck just looks like
its messy self - and had a message on my voicemail.
Chrome Digital was able to see the artwork
problem. They had a new G4 running QuarkXpress 4.0 like me. So they tried
it. Guess what? Same problem.
Seems Quark has a patch out - Version 4.1
- and that version reads this file OK. Version 4.0 does not.
Great.
Quark was supposed to send me a CD.
Not great. It's on the web. All 18MB of it.
I now also have two more rewriteable DVD disks
- 5.2Gigs each.
Back-ups will be made.
Right after I download the patch to QuarkXpress.
All 18MB of it. Over a modem.
A little over 2.5 hours connect time.
I'll go make cookies.
Postscript: The download ran 2.5 hours that second time (disconnected
the first time after 1.5 hours). I went to sleep while it ran In the morning,
the newly fixed G4 couldn't open the file "due to disk-related errors!
Oh, lovely!
Quark is FedXing the patch CD to me - I'll have it Friday.
When this job is done - I may need to h ave the 27Gig disk replaced.
One more disk error and I'll have hysterics. I have had problems copying
files and moving files off floppies since I got it. Symptomatic? Makes
me very, very nervous.
Load that DVD!
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