11-28-00

I knew I would be sitting at a computer all day in my new job, but I wasn't quite ready for the reality of doing it. To get some exercise and fresh air I went out walking around Tacoma on my one hour lunch break. My knees still hurt from Tuesdays aerobic walk but I still managed to wander around downtown while eating my sack lunch. I went in a few favorite galleries, soaking up artistic vibes. I must look like a real farm boy, standing on the street corners, gawking up at the skyscrapers. I can't seem to help myself. They soar up vertically into the sky like some kind of rocket ready to take off. Maybe it's my climbing background. I know how much fun it is to be up high like that. I would like to paint some of the older ones. Some of the other people in the office are doing some very nice design work. I only glanced across the room, but it appears to be the kind of classy state of the art web design one sees on the net at the classier sites. It's kind of exciting to be working with some bright artistic minds. Perhaps some of it will rub off on me.

I have been putting my Cascading Style Sheet skills to use trouble shooting font display problems on a huge web site for one of our biggest clients. I am not certain, but it appears the code was written by a whizzywig software program, rather than a programmer who actually understood html. The reason I think it was done with a whizzywig is the lack of logic in the tags. It appears as if the whizzywig user was having trouble getting his or her tags to display correctly. When a font tag didn't work, instead of deleting it, they tried a span tag and when that didn't work they tried a class on a paragraph tag without defining it. It looked like someone was getting pretty frustrated. On the problem links, I went into the code, ignoring Dreamweaver's lame css editing menus and hand deleted the chaotic code. In its place I substituted a clean class on the paragraph and a href tags, writing definitions in the linked css file before testing them in the two browsers. It's kind of satisfying to see logic win over chaos.

There've been times when I've felt like I'd gone to work in the Pentagon, wandering lost down long confusing corridors where all the names on the doors look identical. Their file system makes perfect sense once one gets used to it, but the first couple days were rough. I am just now getting comfortable navigating around quickly and accurately. Troubleshooting an existing site with 100 pages is a lot different than my little projects at home and in school. Still, it's great practice and so very nice to be working dayshift. Walking to my car in the dark I took this picture with my digital camera of the 11th street bridge.

11-28-00

Finished my second day as a web designer an hour ago. I am learning a lot of cool new tricks. They use Dreamweaver 3 as their html editor. I can see why they like it. I did some really slick pop up layers today. For some reason this one doesn't work in Netscape. Hmmmm. It works on Netscape at work. I wonder if it is because we use a newer version of Dreamweaver there. The JavaScript code Dreamweaver writes is pretty convoluted. If I had the time to study it I am certain I could write cleaner shorter code from scratch. I plan to be very circumspect about where I am working and what specifically I am doing, and for whom, as a web designer. It seems like common courtesy to my new employers. So far they have been extremely nice to the "new guy". I found out today I am the oldest one working there by a few years.

I am going to start carrying my digital camera to work. I saw a stunning view out over the Tacoma Tideflats this morning. The tideflats are an ugly several mile expanse of industry built on reclaimed land on what used to be tideflats where the Nisqually river meets Puget Sound. The land Tacoma is built on rises abruptly above the sound on a plateau several hundred feet high. On my way to work,the road at one point had a magnificent view. Out to my left was a 4 mile long fog bank, very dense but only one hundred and fifty feet high. Puncturing and soaring up above the top of the cloud were about 10 huge container cargo ship cranes far out in the middle of the fogbank. Words, at least in my hands, cannot describe that stunning view. I'm bringing my camera from now on. I am very happy to be working days again. My eyes ache from staring at type on a screen all day. The only part of printing I miss is the activity. Printing is a very physically active job compared to web design where one sits at a terminal all day. That is a small price to pay for day shift. I can always get exercise after work.

11-25-00

Thanksgiving weekend is here. I have been making the change to dayshift over the holidays and haven't felt up to writing for a few days. Making a shift change is a bit like getting jet lag. You're groggy the first couple days while the body adjusts to the new schedule. I've seen quite a bit of my brother, sister and their families who drive over from Spokane and Eugene, respectively, to Olympia, where the folks live. My brother and I had a nice long talk about the future of the Internet. He's the opinion page editor at the newspaper in Spokane: The Spokesman Review. He started working there right out of college and has never left. We were discussing his papers use of asp to call up stories from the archives and the increasing use of databases in general on the net. He felt there would be a growing demand for web designers who can manage databases.

Lisa and I met my sister and her family at the Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma. I was surprised to find myself enjoying the animals. Every time I have been there in the past the animals have been sleeping. Apparently one needs to get there in the morning when they are feeding the animals. The best part of the visit was the 4 or 5 polar bears living together in a large concrete bowl with a running stream, a diving pool with an underwater viewing window and a beach right up against a huge armored glass window protecting the tourists. The frolicking and fighting bears would come right up to window in their pacing, seeming to stare right at us from inches away beyond the armor plate glass. As the feeder threw out fish, the bears fought over who would be king of the hill. At one point, the biggest meanest bear reached down from the island he was guarding and bit a smaller bear savagely on the back, sending hair flying. Apparently he felt the other bear was intruding on his space. The bitten bear leaped away in great bounds, howling in pain. It was all quite a show from some very menacing looking animals. Next we watched a 3500 pound walrus climb up to the rail where a keeper stroked his tongue as she dropped fish down his steaming throat. Next she ran him through his routine of roll over, sing and climb up before he tired of performing and flopped back into his 80 foot long pool to resume his endless looping swim routine.

I have really been enjoying climbing the JavaScript learning curve. The language has an appealing logic. For my last couple days before starting my new job Monday morning I am refreshing my memory on Dreamweaver, a program I didn't like very much in school but have heard can be very useful in professional web design. In school it was very touchy about opening files that had been moved from computer to computer.

11-21-00

Woke up with my mind in a whirl this morning. Outside the weather is clear and cold, in the low forties. I was dreaming in JavaScript, working out the logic behind the "Hierarchy of Objects" and the "Document Object Model" in my tired little brain. I ran the last four colors on the 8 day magazine job at work last night. I think we need to start with the basics on that press. As they say in the medical business, do a complete workup: complete greasing of all moving parts, especially the gripper train that carries the sheets from the feeder to the delivery. Thats about 2 to four hours of work that has been neglected for far too long. Then hang target plates and adjust the second unit until it prints the same length image going the 29 inch way as the first unit. Usually if presses are packed wrong they will print different length images going around the cylinder between units and we can repack them to correct it. This one will take a 19x25 inch sheet and print shorter the 25 inch way on the second unit by a thirty second of an inch. What else could it be but gripper distortion? The sheet moves between the units in a small fraction of a second at 7000 sheets per hour. There is no time for humidity to affect the between unit fit. But I will be in my new job before we get this one sorted out.

One of the things that kept me tossing and turning last night was our finances. I found out last week that my yearly physical checkup coincided with my yearly deductible on my medical coverage. I get to pay $300 dollars all at once. To add to my worries, I need to carry a COBRA medical policy for 2 months before my new job's medical coverage kicks in. So that is a total of $700 dollars due in 2 months that we are simply not earning. Oh, I could raid the savings account earmarked for replacing our 18 year old roof. But when I got up I checked our message machine to find that Sue can get put me on her medical plan for way under $200 a month. It is astonishing how expensive it is to live these days. I am overdue for some exercise. Looks like great rollerblading weather. Some people have asked me why I write here. There are a couple reasons. For one, it clears out my mind, freeing me for more important things, like earning a living. I also enjoy creating ideas with the written word. There is a certain poetry in a well written sentence...one I rarely achieve, but enjoy attempting. And knowing it is going up on my page forces me to write better than I would in a paper journal. I may also be simply lonely from working too many nights alone in an empty printshop.

Last night when my shift ended at midnight I went upstairs to take down the 5 paintings I have let them borrow for beautifying the office. It's a long winding hallway with offices opening off on all sides, all dark except for the power lights on the computer terminals, faxes and peripherals. I lifted my paintings off the nails and pondered the blank spaces they left on the walls...I had a dream once of painting for a living. That's put on hold again for another few years, or generations. I may well have the talent, but I don't have the time to polish it to a level that will support my family. Once I start working day shift, I wouldn't be surprised if this journal lost some of it's attraction.

11-19-00

More driving again with my son today. He's a pretty fast learner. He drove very competently from home to town via the back roads. His worst moment came at the busiest intersection in town where the main stoplight happens to be on a slight uphill grade. When he got the green light, he stalled it popping the clutch with a long line of cars behind him. He got it started up fine, but got so worried about not stalling it again that he revved the poor little engine up until it was screaming. He was so afraid of letting the clutch out too far too fast that he didn't let it out enough to grab. We rolled backwards again toward the shiny new Lexus behind us. He looks over at me like, well, what now Dad? I explained that he had given it too much gas and not enough clutch. He got it fine on the second try and we cruised around a bit on some relaxing country roads before getting back on the freeway to home. I had him drive up the hilly country road I use for my exercise rides and stop while going up the steepest hill. He tried over and over to start on the hill but couldn't seem to find the sweet spot between stalling out and burning rubber. Finally we switched drivers and I showed him how you can actually make a clutch car hold steady on a hill just like an automatic by letting the clutch grab just enough to keep the car from rolling backwards without enough horsepower to drive uphill. It's a terrible thing to do to a new clutch, but how else was he going to learn? After seeing it was possible, he tried again and nailed it pretty nicely, practicing over and over up the hill, leaving a trail of burnt clutch stink behind us.

After that we came home where I walked the treadmill for 20 minutes before buckling down to study a great JavaScript tutorial at htmlgoodies.com. While a lot of it is a rehashing of what I learned in school, it's a great review for me and written so well that even a beginner could probably benefit from it. I've done 7 of his lessons so far without straining too many brain cells. I wanted to buy a book a friend reccommended but funds are a bit tight until payday. It's kind of fun to learn from free web sites anyway.

11-18-00

Clint and I went driving today. Sue has been training him in the basics on the quiet back roads. After checking him out for an hour, we headed toward the freeway. I kept reflecting on how many big things he was doing for the first time: his first stop light, his first freeway on-ramp, his first time above 60 mph. I hadn't realized how scary it would be sitting in the copilots seat with a 15 year old. It's one thing to say your kid needs to learn to drive. But to actually sit there helpless, trusting his common sense as he navigates through dense city traffic was...tense. When he pulled into the parking spot at the grocery store, we both heaved a huge sigh of relief. I felt as if I had just stepped off a tight rope onto solid ground. I was very pleased to find that he seems to have good instincts for danger with a very steady hand on the wheel. He got a little sketchy in the busy intersections, but only because he'd never done it before, and only has 3 hours experience driving with a clutch. I guess there is no other way to train a driver. Throw them in and hope they swim.

11-17-00

Three more shifts of printing left and counting. We have had our hands full during the last week on the 2 color Komori. One of our normal everyday jobs has suddenly become unprintable. The first time it didn't fit we pulled it before we made it into books and ordered more paper, the expensive kind we usually use. That didn't work. It fit as poorly as the cheap paper. The day shift operator thought the customer was desperate to make the publishing deadline and ran the signatures out of register just to get the job out the door. My foreman and I were commenting on the tendency of management everywhere to pressure production into swallowing their misgivings and shove a job out the door just to meet a deadline. But, when it comes back, it's: take your time, get it right.

This has been a nightmare for both M. and I. Last night we were still tossing ideas around about what is causing the sheets to flare in such an unsellable fashion on a job we usually breeze through. He believes it is the low humidity. I maintain it was the malfunctioning first heater element in the delivery. It has a rheostat we use to control the infrared drying of the wet freshly printed sheets as they come out of the printing units. Until the day before, it had been malfunctioning; operating at 100 percent or higher instead of the normal 40 percent heat we normally use on early passes of a four over four job.

For those of you who are trying to wade through all this printing tech talk, a four over four job is when we take a stack of 19x25-80 luna matt blank paper and run it through our 2 color press four times, so that it is printed in full color (also known as 4 color or process color) on both sides of the sheet. These four colors are Black, cyan, magenta and yellow. And since we have a 2 color press, we run the sheets through twice on each side for a total of 4 passes through the press. This is normally not a problem as we make a living doing it and are familiar with all the variables...until last week.

M. knew the dryer was malfunctioning but had been unable to figure out how to disable the bad element until half way through the second rerun when it was too late. Besides, he maintains it's all a humidity problem. The air is too dry, the paper gets too much ink and water put on it to remain stable with the dry air. He swears that he has had this problem for 17 years on 3 different presses. Everyone else in the shop finds it ludicrous that we should have to shut down the whenever the weather gets dry and cold. In his defence I must say that he has been running multicolor presses longer than I have, but I have worked in more shops than he has and never heard of operators refusing to run a job because of the weather outside. After going round and round about it last night I offered to call the lead pressman at a large shop in Olympia where I used to work. I described our problem to my buddy down there and asked if he had any ideas. They now have a 5 color press and don't face these issues on a daily basis. But he remembered when they used to run four color on their 2 color Heidelberg SORMZ. He said they used to run the sheets through with just heat and water to take the stretch out of them before putting any ink down. Especially if the run was short and the fit tight. He recommended blanking one of the four sigs to see if it fit better. I have actually done this myself on several presses I have run in the past.

M. immediately took this idea and improved on it: he perfected the sig; running both units with water, no ink or powder and the heater on. Then he did the normal 4 passes of color and it turned out great. By the time I came in at the end of his shift today, he had perfected the balance of the 4 sigs with water and heat. I ran 4 colors on one side and it fit like a dream. But as soon as I tried to put the other side on, the sheets wouldn't register at the feeder. I'd had such good control on the bow up side of the blanked sheets I assumed the bow down side would be a breeze also and I would end up having a great night. Not so fast. It lined up very nicely but register was marginal. I got it under control 3 times, and each time it would run sellable sheets for 10 minutes before beginning to jump (mis-register at the feeder). By the time I got a thousand sheets into the 3600 sheet run, I called it quits, wrote a note for M. in the AM, washed up and went home after 10 hours. It's not a good feeling to let a machine beat you like that. We like to think we are in control. The presses are simply well engineered tools that perform in a perfectly logical fashion. We pride ourselves on our ability to troubleshoot press problems using our experience, training and clear common sense. Not! Sometimes our presses act more like women on PMS. In re-reading some of this I can see I am taking my work home with me. The weekend is here. I am going to take my son out driving in our old beater Toyota. It appears we have to stop being so cautious and just let him drive. It will be easier in the older car. We won't sweat so much as when he is in our new (96) minivan.

11-15-00

I think I am coming down with a cold. I got a little worn down by a few days where I wasn't sleeping too well. Sue gets up just a few hours after I go to bed and starts her usual routine of doing a load of wash, taking a shower and calling her mother. Then the kids get up and take their showers...meanwhile, I am supposed to be getting my beauty sleep 15 feet away beyond our bedroom door. As unlikely as it sounds, this actually works fairly well. I usually wake up when she does and put in at least one wax earplug to cut back on the racket. But when something is on my mind, it's not quite so easy to fall back to sleep while they all wake up. I gave my printing boss my 2 week notice last Wednesday. I am going to work for a web design firm beginning the Monday after Thanksgiving. While it's an exciting step forward for me and I am really looking forward to doing web design full time, I am walking away from 24 years of hard won printing experience. They are trying to train someone to replace me...he has run duplicators and been a press helper on a 5 color with M., the day Komori operator. But I don't believe he has run a Heidelberg multicolor on his own. My boss is being very kind to give him a chance to try it. I wish him the best. They have treated me very nice there, allowing me to attend college for a year and work reduced hours while still giving me full benefits and even a paid vacation. But, 24 years is a long time in a trade. I am ready for new challenges. I could go on and on in this vein, but it's 3 am and I need some sleep.

11-12-00

Looking back, I could see the german shepard was gaining on me. I put an extra burst of energy into my pedals, thinking the hill would give me the speed to leave him behind. After a few hard cranks I glanced back. The damn thing had started running faster; he was enjoying the chase. I briefly considered stopping to frighten him off with the buck knife I carry for worst case scenarios. But I really had no desire to injure the stupid brute. I was out for aerobics, not gruesome scenes. Don't misunderstand me here, if a dog comes out with it's tail wagging, I'll stop and pet it. I don't think this animal wanted to be petted. Gravity finally came to my rescue and I left the ornery bugger behind. I do believe we all need to exercise our adrenaline glands now and then, but getting chased by large dogs is not my favorite technique. I can usuallly scare them off with a few rocks but I'd missed and didn't want to stop for more. There seems to be something about throwing from a moving bicycle that skews my aim. Or maybe the dogs start to dodge as soon as they see my arm go back. I think I'll go out today for my ride with a hand full of gravel and hope for the shotgun effect. Or maybe a big stick taped to my frame. This particular dog is new on this road. After a few months, they tend to get stung enough by the various walkers and pedalers that they learn to stay in their yards. I need something accurate that will sting enough to make them realize who has the bigger teeth.

Update: I took my little plastic full auto bb gun along this time. This is an amazing little twenty dollar air soft bb gun that shoots bb sized plastic pellets on full auto. They are similar to a paintball gun but with a lighter punch. The german shepard charged out into the public road with his rottweiler buddy today. These people must think they live in Beirut. I brought out my little plastic gun and we had a battle in the road. Both of them wanted a bite of bicycle rider as we went round and round in the road. I kept missing as I dodged around on my 10 speed, trying to shoot with my frozen fingers and avoid getting bit at the same time. They didn't seem to feel the bb's through the thick fir, acting instead as if they were being attacked by little blue bees. But eventually I landed enough plastic bb's on their noses to convince them I had bigger teeth. They retreated into the driveway and I pedaled off. On the way back, they came out again but stayed inside their property lines. Those dogs learn pretty fast.

I've been spending some time on JavaScript. I now have browser detect scripts on both my business site and my printing companies web site. It's pretty cool how they examine your browser and automatically forward you to either the entry page, or a "download new browser" page, depending on your browsers version number. I've also been studying some scripts that use arrays. It's all pretty cryptic, but the logic is there, if you study it for a while.

11-10-00

Clint has had a learners permit for a few weeks. Sue has been training him to drive in the van, which has an automatic. When I got home early last night, I lured him away from the tv by asking if he was ready to try driving a clutch. Watching him try to find the peculiar rhythm and timing involved in operating the transmission and the car in general made me reflect back on how long I've been driving. It gets to be like breathing. Without a car in this spread out society, you won't get anywhere. They used to run buses out here, or at least to within a mile of the house, but that ended when the thirty dollar license tabs bill passed. Even when the buses ran, a car trip that takes thirty five minutes takes ninety minutes by bus. Now the nearest bus is about 10 miles away. He didn't have a clue when to shift, seeming perfectly happy to wind it up in second gear, cruising down the dirt road with the engine screaming at 30 miles an hour. None of my dad's cars ever had tachometers. I guess it's just something parents pass on to their children, the knowledge of how loud the engine gets before it's time to shift. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy to be a normal dad, teaching my son to drive in the evening. I've missed so much over the last 8 years of working nights or swing.

Tonight was a rough night on the press. I was trying to put the last 2 colors on one side of an eight page sig from a national magazine we print every couple months. This time around they managed to save two hundred dollars on the price of the stock by ordering a cheaper brand. But, big surprise, after only one of the required 4 heavy coverage passes through the press, the sheets are so warped they curl like a canoe when picked up and held vertically. I used all my tricks to get the sheet to stabilize as it went through the press and came up empty. I think we ought to send the paper back to the mill for a refund. The normal stock we use for that job is pretty well dialed in. We know how to treat it and can get the work out predictably. It will be interesting to hear how it runs for M. in the morning.

11-7-00

Bush may have won it. As I worked at the laptop this evening after work, I kept a browser window open to the msn election site. They list him as having 1 more electoral college vote than he needed. I chose to focus on developing my web sites instead of following politics this year. When it came time to fill out my absentee ballot, I called someone I trust who has the time to study the issues. Plus it's always fun to talk to Dad. I had my second interview with a web firm in Tacoma today. They asked me about several subjects I haven't spent much time on since getting out of college 2 months ago: JavaScript and high end Photoshop. When I got home I dug around in my files and found this cool browser detect and switch page I wrote in college. Actually, I found it at dynamicdrive.com and modified it to work on my pages.

If you click on it with the Netscape browser version 4+, it will bring you back to my entry page.

If you click on it with an Internet Explorer browser version 4+ it will take you to my business site. Here is the link:

browser detect and switch

Pretty cool huh? I like JavaScript. In fact, there are so many parts of web design I enjoy that it's hard to know what to study. Since I got out of school I've been focusing primarily on html, css and Flash with a little JavaScript and Photoshop thrown in as needed. I have been meaning to work my way through the WOW book I have on Photoshop...but Flash is so much more fun. They did ask me if I did much action scripting in Flash yet. It's kind of ironic because that is the second half of the book I am currently studying after work each day.

11-6-00

Had some quality time with Sue yesterday. Clint went up to the BMX jumps in Port Orchard and Lisa was at her girlfriends house. It's amazing we still get along so well after a quarter century. I spent most of my Sunday tuning up my Flash intro to better reflect who I am. I have also just last night finished my most complicated flash project yet working from my textbook, Flash 4, creative web animation. It has a cd that has QuickTime tutorials with matching source files. I watched the movie, then tried... to make it without looking at the .fla file. It was quite a head scratcher. But it works great for only 4 kilobytes, and opens up some intriguing possibilities.

11-4-00

My six day week is finally over. I think I may have worked around 40 hours this week, give or take a few. Sue and I were talking about how many hours I was working lately. I told her I was working from 7 to 10 hours every day except Friday when I try and get home to see them before bedtime. Plus I was working on the computer at home 4 to 5 hours every day. She wondered why I was spending so much time on the computer, thinking my web sites were done. I had to explain that I didn't want to get rusty...that I was always trying to keep learning new things instead of just treading water.

I've been trying to come up with some better animations for my Flash intro. I am planning to take some old life drawing nudes and trace them in Flash, then animate the lines. Just about anything would be better than the jerky rotating circle I have now. These nudes are the best of a bunch of about 50 I did back in '92 when I was working day shift and had time to drive up to the UW where they have life drawing open to the public with excellent models. I drove up twice a week for about a month before I got good enough to create some savers. It's an unusual mix of artists up there: all ages, all income brackets, but the best ones are usually the poorest looking. I had some frustrating days where I couldn't draw a circle much less a figure. Other times I had trouble with the male models. While I find them just as challenging to draw, they don't inspire me like a fine female form. It's kind of like the difference between doing a commissioned building portrait of a car dealership (I turned it down), or a painting of a lovely vista. I know they are both good practice. But the vista gets me in gear faster.

The last straw for me came when they brought in a flirt to pose. At first I was excited. She was quite a babe and I figured I would get some good work done. Then, as she moved from pose to pose, she casually mentioned to some of her artist friends in the crowd that she had been doing some exotic dancing. This was unusual in itself as professional artist models don't usually talk at all. Then she giggled a little and worked some of her dance moves into her poses. I'd had a rough day at the print shop that night, and a flippant artist model working strip moves into her routine was the last straw. I haven't been back since, but that has more to do with working bad hours than anything else. Life drawing is the most challenging form of art. Nude paintings almost never sell, so if an artist spends the time to get good at it, he or she does it for love, not money. I did love it, but the same amount of time invested in landscape paintings would result in some sure sales at the gallery. When I get my day job, I plan to do some more life drawing.

11-2-00

Walked the North end hills today for exercise before work. The city is replacing the sewer lines on one of the hills. It is a very steep hill, the kind that can only be conquered in third gear if you hit the bottom at 40 mph, not a good idea on a narrow 100 year old cobblestone lane, although people do it everyday. It will be interesting to see if they put the old cobblestones back when they are done. On other roads in this part of old town Tacoma, they have either paved right over the top of the old stones or put in an ugly grooved cement that is supposed to resemble cobblestones. Even if they wanted to, there probably aren't any cobblestone layers still living. The care and skill that went into the classy old buildings around that part of Tacoma is amazing.

The guy that was driving the front loader looked like he was having fun. They had the gravel laid out in 5 foot high piles going down the steep hill for a hundred feet. He would charge uphill into the bottom most pile of gravel in his oversized front loader, engine screaming, until he had stopped moving with all 4 five foot high wheels spinning furiously. Then he'd stomp on the brakes, jerk his scoop up into the air, and back downhill a few yards before casually driving up over and through the side of the pile of gravel on his way uphill to the ditch. It looked fun as all get out.

When I got to work and looked at my printing plates, I found my first 2 jobs had been screwed up in pre-press. My next job hadn't been plated yet so I had to burn my own plates before I could print it. It's kind of fun to have a little variety now and then.

11-1-00

I did some job hunting today on my way to work. I finally feel good enough about my web design work to present it to employers. With web design, as with art, one really lays ones skill on the line...or the monitor as it were. In printing, they can't tell how good you are until they see how much quality work you can get off in a shift. But with web design, and art, your experience level is instantly apparent.

Looking for work as a web designer is vastly different than looking for work as a pressman. With 25 years of running press under my belt, I get a certain amount of respect when I walk into a print shop. This is not to say I'm the best pressman who ever picked up an ink knife. But I know quality when I see it, and I know how to produce it on a press in a cost effective manner. I'm reliable, I show up everyday on time (sober even!) and I have a long list of excellent references. In contrast, when I walk into a web design firm, I'm the new boy fresh out of college. Not that anyone ever said it would be easy, changing careers in mid-life.

I don't think I have talked recently about why I am changing careers. Reduced to it's most simple terms: I want a day job, and day jobs in printing are very rare for a number of reasons. Printing is a declining industry. The presses are becoming more automated, more expensive and require fewer pressman to produce the same volume of work. The more expensive a press is, the more important it is to run it multiple shifts. If an operator these days doesn't have a dayshift job already, the only way he can get one is if someone quits or dies. I worked days until '92 when I was offered the chance to run a multi-color press (a step up) if I was willing to work nights. In the eight years since, working swing or nights steadily in 4 different printshops, I've not seen a single dayshift operator quit (or die).

But there are deeper reasons why I worked my way through college at 46. Printing doesn't call on any of my creative skills. Printing is about as creative as repairing cars. Sometimes you have to think creatively to find a solution to a problem, but never does it involve creating images or ideas that don't already exist. Our job is to make someone elses creative ideas and images look as good on paper as we can in a measured time period. The dirty guy in the overalls gets your car running well, he gets paid and you drive away happy.

But does he feel the satisfaction of creating something? Hardly, he merely used his diagnostic skills to make the engine run. That's how I feel about printing. Sure, I get satisfaction from using my skills to change a stack of white paper into a stack of beautifully printed full color brochures. But it doesn't call on my creative mind. In fact, my creative mind is a handicap. I have to constantly rein it in and focus on the task at hand. In Web Design, one of the more important skills we have is the ability to listen carefully to a customers descriptions about the essence of his business. Then, using our knowledge of the mechanics of the Internet, turn it into an efficient, eye catching design that will bring customers back again and again. It's not creating paintings that will hang on peoples walls for hundreds of years, but it is a lot closer than fixing cars, or slinging ink.

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