Category: work

  • Employee of the Year – Winter

    Winter’s been clockin’ some serious overtime lately filling in for that lazy, good-for-nothing, slacker of a season Spring. So instead of dreaming of BBQs and baseball we get to shovel and scrape windows for a while longer. I have to give the Old Man some credit though – I mean it really looks like December out there. Parking lots with piles of snow and ice. He’s doing a real bang-up job.

    Hey Spring, you should maybe take some lessons from the ‘Ice Man’ – in fact, you might want to start worrying about keeping your job. Really, how many times can you call in sick because you’re feeling a little under the weather and expect to call yourself a season? Face it, Mother Nature should fire you for being this late!

  • So Long, Sailors!

    sailor

    I was fortunate enough to be there for the final night of Legacy Kids’ Vacation Bible School. Earlier this week, my wife cast off with her crew of over 50 volunteers for a ‘High Seas Adventure’ while I was away. Watching her close tonight made me realize how lucky I am and how gifted she is. From the decorating and organization to the energy of her presentation, she is passionate about bringing kids to learn about Jesus. She has a great staff of volunteers to help her pull off the impossible every year and though it’s a lot of work, they still manage to have some fun. I am very proud of the work she does and look forward to seeing more of her in the coming weeks! It’s really good to be home!

  • Perserverance

    perserverance

    The office packing is starting to take its toll on me. For the past couple days I’ve really hit it pretty hard and I think I’ve filled at least a full dumpster and a half with old paperwork. The worst part is, though I hadn’t touched much of any of it over the past ten years, I still feel compelled to go through it all. What kind of sickness is that? Now, with school out and a three day weekend on the horizon it’s time to push it into overdrive. The last thing I want to do is come back to this after a relaxing Memorial Day weekend.

  • Packing

    packrat

    This week the faculty of my program have the unenviable task of packing up almost 40 years of history in preparation for our big move in August to a new facility. The challenge is we only have until June 1 to get it done because the space we currently occupy will need to undergo some renovation. I think the time crunch will be a good thing for me personally, as I have a tendency to talk myself into keeping everything that has some sustainable use. Yes, I admit I can be somewhat of a pack rat. The only consolation I have is a lot of stuff will be signed over to other departments on campus or retired to capital surplus property. I’m really doubting that anyone will find use for six carriage slide projectors and a dissolve unit, but if you do you’ll have to be a state employee to score it.

  • Random Memories

    memory

    I realize I’m putting myself out there as a computer geek with this post, so for those of you not inclined to talk megs and gigs, I apologize. Over the past 20 years I’ve relied on a great many forms of saving digital work. The true 5.25″ ‘floppy’ disk dates back to my junior year in high school and I’m glad to say that’s where it ended. Entrusting anything that flimsy to hold your essential files seemed far too risky. I would equate it to stuffing a vinyl 45 in your backpack with a bunch of heavy text books.

    Things got some better with the 3.5″ floppy diskette. It was no longer floppy and a lot smaller plus a double density disk could hold up to ten times the data. I still have a ten-pack of floppies that I bought in college for one of my classes. They were obsolete before I got a chance to use them all.

    My foray into the world of graphics required a need for more robust storage. One of the earliest forms I recall was something known as the SyQuest disk. You needed a special drive that actually had to ramp up speed before the disk was read. The clear case and size made it seem like an 8-track after dealing with floppy disks for so long. They weren’t reliable and from time to time you lost information.

    The successor to the SyQuest was the Magneto Optical disk. These looked like two floppy diskettes sandwiched on top of each other but again, required special drives. Offering sizes up to 640MB these little wonders were a mainstay for temporary data storage. Not unlike the SyQuest, these too, began to offer spotty performance and after losing some really big jobs we abandoned them all together.

    Iomega offered their own brand of MO disk which was highly successful. So much so, that every computer began offering an internal zip drive as a standard feature. They were certainly more reliable than their predecessors and I found myself having to upgrade to a 750 MB drive to keep up with some of my clients. Unfortunately, the days of zip were numbered as well.

    With CD storage still a standard, the CD-RW became more popular as the drives came down in price. Soon computers offered CD-RW drives as standard features. Once DVDs hit the market, the appeal of CDs wore thin. With 4.7 GB of storage in the same physical size, how could one go wrong. One of my early Macs had a special DVD-RW drive that would burn rewritable DVDs. Though expensive, they were a great way to economize the amount of space needed to store data.

    The USB thumb drives are the latest craze in small, portable rewritable data storage. I remember when a 2 GB USB thumb drive cost $180 (I once had a 2 GB hard drive computer back in ’97 and thought it was HUGE!). Now you can get a 16 GB drive for $45!

    I wonder what the future of data storage will bring. All I know is if it gets any smaller we won’t be able to see it to plug it in!

  • Perpetual Logomotion

    We’ve been fortunate to have Identity Engineer Jeff Fisher of Jeff Fisher Logomotives visiting campus this week. Last night he delivered his keynote on Planning, Packaging and Promoting Yourself to a full audience of students and professionals within the local community at the BSC NECE Auditorium.

    Jeff was incredible to work with and in the short time he was here we kept him very busy! Not only did he deliver a great keynote session, he also met with three different design classes during the day and shared a lot about his work.

    A special thanks goes out to the BSC Foundation and ArtsQuest as well as Tait Sundstrom of Sund Design for starting the process over a year ago. Also, thanks to Tom Marple for leading the efforts to make it happen and for being a willing chauffeur and chaperon for Mr. Fisher. Above all we thank Jeff for being a gracious, patient and personable guest.

  • Cubicles

    It’s good that kids have dreams and aspirations. As parents I feel it’s very important to encourage a child to pursue his/her goals. Sometimes their sights are set a bit high and other times… well, not so much. Our seven-year-old expressed a future desire of his just the other day. “Mom, when I get older I want to work in one of those offices where everyone has their own box.” Either he wishes to work in some very large shipping department or he’s referring to a cubicle. Right now it’s funny, but I hope his aspirations evolve into something a little loftier, like maybe a corner office with a nice window view.

  • Balance

    Some days it can be a real challenge to find the balance I need in my life. There are only so many hours in a day and a lot that I’d like to accomplish, so naturally devoting the amount of time I’d like to some things will steal time away from others. I’d like to think I do a pretty decent job allocating my time equally, but every so often I have something that I’ve been neglecting come crashing down like the hapless kid on a playground teeter-totter. I hate when that happens.

  • Salespeople

    In my experience there is no more strained relationship than that of a salesperson and a creative. With some rare exceptions the two rarely see eye-to-eye which almost guarantees communication problems. I view the salesperson as a privileged liaison – the deliverer of the client’s wishes to the designer and the designer’s solution to the client. If either the designer or client is misrepresented by the salesperson nobody wins. Consequently the creative may lack the charisma and experience of a salesperson who’s closed a few deals, but give the creative a chance to “sell” you his idea and you may discover that you have a powerful sales ally. Fortunately I’ve had the honor of working with salespeople that actually go to bat for me, selling the ideas that I come up with. Don’t fool yourself, it’s a beautiful thing!

  • Puddin’ Head

    I think it’s safe to say that grading projects and finals has turned my brain to mush. I wish I was done doing everything necessary to close out the year, but there’s still a few things left. My job may be trying at times, but the fact that there is extended respites on the horizon makes the turmoil bearable. I’m looking forward to the break!