Border tape has supernatural powers. I'd find pieces stuck to me after more than a week of showers. I think I had an orgasm the first time a drew a box in PageMaker.

I spent years of my life with part of my left forefinger and nail trimmed off by an X-acto knife from trimming copy and border tape.

Ginger and I are living in parallel universes.

and blue lines - do people remember blue lines? (I remember once we'd gotten a blue line of a new magazine and someone saw it and said they thought all the blue was kind of boring and hard to read ... and the paper was icky.)

I remember once we'd gotten a blue line of a new magazine and someone saw it and said they thought all the blue was kind of boring and hard to read ... and the paper was icky.

I have had that same experience.

I had a boss who didn't really pay attention to publications until the blueline, and would look at it and say things like, "Maybe we should add pictures of the board members."

"Maybe we should add pictures of the board members."

OH GOD. Now I'm a bit freaked out. This is an exact quote from my life.

Plus? Routing a blueline through no less than 10 staff members, including the ED only to get chewed out for factual and/or typographic errors that no one saw.

Heaven be praised for spellcheck.

Those blueline chemicals were horrible. Could have been used in chemical warfare.

That wasn't warfare?

My current boss doesn't have time to read the articles anyone (including me) writes for our magazine until we get a proof. At that point she goes through them and re-writes, corrects, has things she wants me to fact-check, etc. And there's never time to give me her articles for copyediting (really - if we're not going with the serial comma, why does she use it EVERY TIME?). Can't tell you how much the printer loves us.

We routinely have to call our printer in a panic 2 days after we've sent them the files for an issue, because an author realize they forgot something, or -- and this happens more often than you might think -- Incompetent!boss will find something on his desk that he forgot about that MUST be changed (and yet he's been employed at my company for 11 years -- I think the fact that Big!Boss doesn't micro-manage has something to do with it).

I think our printer has reached the point where they just wait 2-3 days after receiving our files to even put them into production. Because we seriously do that shit 6 out of 11 issues. No joke.

Incompetent!boss will find something on his desk that he forgot about that MUST be changed (and yet he's been employed at my company for 11 years -- I think the fact that Big!Boss doesn't micro-manage has something to do with it).

sounds like he doesn't manage at all.

X-posted from bitches: A friend has generously offered to shoot and edit a Kickstart video for me if I write the script. It is to finance the graphics book on global warming I am writing that will supplement the academic version about to be published. If anyone feels like posting some links to some kickass Kickstart videos that were successful, especially ones for books, that would be generous (I did see the one Jilli starred in.) Also tips on doing a good Kickstart beyond what one can get from the Kickstart site would be also wonderful. I think others might be interested, but if you prefer my profile addy is good.

My website for "Solving the Climate Crisis" is a work in process. The following is the look and feel I will use for all pages. Any comment on professionalism or lack thereof or any other aspect will be welcome. Buttons don't work and are not going to until look and feel is good. Cover photo is not my choice, and will only be on pages it has to be. [link]

Note will be at a better URL once done - this URL should avoid too much traffic until it is ready to go.

So, I've got a possible job on the table for this period of unemployment. As most of you know, I'm an academic librarian with a background in Classical archaeology. An emerita professor from UGA, where I used to work, is here in Cincinnati on a book-writing fellowship (to use their library). She wants to hire me as some combination of technical support, editing, and psychologist.

I am well aware of the potential liabilities involved on the personal side; she embraced me when we met because we discovered that her parents and my grandparents were good friends, but she's a huge personality and something of an egoist and rather scattered, so anything I teach her on the tech side may or may not be retained. But, you know, she's not actually my mother or anything, so I think I can keep things professional.

Her goals are: teach her to use Zotero well and help her get her existing collection of citations and .pdfs moved into it and organized; help her get up to speed syncing her iPad, iPhone and mac, and figure out what are useful apps, and install them, and get her comfortable purchasing books and music to use on all her devices; help organizing and editing her book in progress, which is about Pindar; possible advice on placing with a publisher, and maybe editing, a book based on about 8 published articles she's written over the years about masculinity.

I said I'd do some checking and write up a proposal for her, with fees. Thoughts? I don't think there's a freelance librarian's organization that suggests fees, and while some of this is editing, some of it is technological, and some simply organizational. Also, am I insane to take this on at all, despite my level-headedness going in about her personality?