Friday, September 21, 2007

Breaking the jinx

You know how there's always one person in a group that always -- and repeatedly -- gets the full brunt of Murphy's Law? It used to be me. This January, when I started doing layout, I was always the one calling Help Desk. Pages hung on me, and unexplainable e-hiccups happened to me. Only me. Once, my page froze and was so messed up that Helpless Desk couldn't fix it. They had to go to Pre-Press to get them to delete the page and then create a new one so we could start all over again.

At another time, another job at a small outfit where the tech guy was outsourced, I had to call him so often that soon, he started his day by calling me to see if I needed him to come in. L, who at that time worked for a computer firm, was even going to get me one of those anti-static wrist bands their assembly-line workers wore, just so I wouldn't zap and fry my nth computer.

Anyway, all the tearing of hair over doing layout on an antiquated software (it was so user-unfriendly it had no 'undo' option, which forced me to re-do a lot of things over and made me slower than I already am) stopped for a merciful two months when we switched to a new layout software and the senior subs had more serious technical fish to fry than helping out someone new to layout. I went back gratefully to copy subbing -- something I'm used to and something I'm so much better at.

But a sub must draw pages and so after the dust of the new software settled, I'm back to drawing pages again. This time, I can at least blame all the knotty bits on new software.

Only, I'm not the jinx anymore. The other new-to-layout sub has been the one struggling with the page rejigs (one hour before offstone), the change in line-ups (and nobody told her until she had to send a message begging the copyeds to clear the story and then one of them told her nobody touched it because it was being held over) and a printout with fonts all gone wrong although they looked fine onscreen while my pages breeze through with plenty of time to spare.

Last night, the only thing holding up my page was waiting: For Production to enhance a picture. They forgot. For Foreign Desk to update one of the stories. They forgot. For the proofreader to okay the page. He forgot. Frustrating and time-wasting but at least not as panic-inducing as a line-up change, a page rejig and a printout that didn't match what was on the screen.

I feel for my colleague. And I just know that as soon as I set this down in writing, I'm tempting fate and the jinx will be mine to carry again.

2 comments:

H. said...

Haha! This post is damn funny. I understand how you feel...kinda. The first few days were hell trying to navigate the software, but I picked it up within a week or two! :) Good to know that the buck has been passed !

Anonymous said...

(no ... no ... Yee Hung is a tech wizard on computers so he doesn't count!)

You are not alone. When I was doing my third-year dissertation at Warwick, we didn't have laptops or anything [dates me, huh?], and the only computers were these desktop mostrosities linked to a mainframe (I think) in the computer room - you had to book set times to use them. It was all black screens with green type and clunky keyboards. The printouts were on rolls of paper.

Anyway, I lost my entire first draft, and someone in the computing department kindly managed to retrieve some fragments for me. He was some sort of professor whizz kid and told me that research had apparently been done on klutzes like me, and the conclusion had been that some people just jinx computers!!! You can imagine how wonderful it made me feel. I saw a career as an industrial saboteur, infiltrating companies like IBM and causing chaos.