WHAT. You edit in xml???

I KNOW. It's ridiculous. I can't even describe how ridiculous it is.

...I feel better now.

Good, good. Is your company hiring?

Holy. Shit.

Yeah, that's one of the things we are not supposed to even mention to the Editors-in-Chief at the upcoming conference. For obvious reasons. We staff editors are specifically not allowed to speak up in the meeting.

Good, good. Is your company hiring?

Ahahahaha. No, we aren't even replacing my co-worker who died. We're cut so close to the bone it's comical.

Timelies all!

My folks are here, so the weekend plans involve them. Haven't figured out where we will take them for touristy stuff tomorrow. (Sunday is meals with Gary's folks-brunch with his mom and dinner with his dad and step-mom)

We outsourced final editing and printing of our magazine; the first company pretty much drove it into the ground. We've started with a new company and it's better ... it's now a quarterly journal and the content is much better (they've arranged for some freelance writers to do some sections) although advertising remains in a slump. The point of this is that they insist on receiving all materials two months before they hand it over to their production people. Jeepers - when we did it in-house I'd have two or three WEEKS to copyedit, lay out, do the pre-press work, and get it uploaded to the printer.

Jeepers - when we did it in-house I'd have two or three WEEKS to copyedit, lay out, do the pre-press work, and get it uploaded to the printer.

Right-o, Toddson. That's where we're headed.

I'm just ... amazed ... that they can say they need two months to edit, copyedit (badly), fact check, etc., before it goes to production. And this is much smaller than the version I did pretty much by myself. Oh, and I also dealt with the ads - kept track of what was sold, the size, contact, etc. There was the awful night I was in the office until 11:00 because the printer had switched our job to another branch and rather than downloading the image files from the company's FTP site (it'd take too long, since they were in a differnt office) so I had to zip and e-mail every single image.

I went through and tried to finish taxes, but I forgot that if I pay by credit card there's a 3% fee, so now I'm pouting at having to pony up any additional jack. I suspect I'll go back in and finish it that way anyway, but first I need to sulk.

And maybe go make the company deposit.

What are people doing this weekend?

We are headed to Minneapolis. Olivia is going to a junior roller derby camp with the Minnesota Roller Girls and Owen is going to the Lego store in the Mall of America.

Oh my god, you really DO work for my company. How does the magic "they will be required" even WORK? Just saying it doesn't make it possible.

Hah! My boss is all about "we need to focus on the strategic stuff and jettison the low value tasks". Which, okay, but someone still needs to DO those things or the project doesn't get done. And most of the kind of roles who could do them have been cut over the past few years (and even now, they're talking about letting go our one remaining "document specialist" i.e., Word and Excel format and cleanup person.

Cashmere, you and your whole family are rock stars. That is all.