A Post in Rapid Succession to the Previous Post

I forgot to mention my "Oh Crap" moment from earlier today.

I have been working on a new poster for the laser cutter area. I used to have a hodge podge of posted signs that were put up as needed, instead of unified, and easy to read. I spent most of the morning trying to work out the points that needed to be covered, and the order of presentation on the poster. I used Illustrator to layout the poster, because I didn't need anything enormously complicated. I set the background to "College of Design Red," as I call it, with white text. I set apart the three main areas by adding rectangular borders with a 2 pt. line weight. I was pretty pleased with it, so I decided I was ready to print to our wide-format color printer.

Right before break, we had run out of paper. The order came in before Christmas. For some reason, the boxed rolls came packed inside larger boxes filled with Styrofoam peanuts, instead of just in its normal packaging. This made no sense, as they have never done that before, and the normal packaging is more than sufficient to ship safely. Anyway, the point is, I had to manhandle a heavy 100 foot roll of 36 inch wide paper, by myself, and try to get it out of the stupid box. At one point, I had to lift up my foot, and kick the outer box off. And I hadn't even opened the actual paper box yet.

So, I threw the boxed roll up onto the computer desk, opened it, and started to remove the inner packaging. There are two square end caps that fit on either end of the roll, to keep it from shifting and getting damaged. I was carefully removing the first of these, when I forgot the cardinal rule of moving heavy stuff alone.

Don't let any body parts get between the heavy object and the desk (ground, whatever).

As they say, gravity works, and my ring finger on my right hand did not quite make it out from between the roll and the desk in time. I'm sure I looked quite amusing, having 20-30 pounds of paper suddenly fall 2 inches, and squishing my finger. The only thing I could do was whisper, "Oh FUCK!" and cradle it to my stomach. I didn't even want to look at it, for fear it was crushed, that was how badly it hurt. Luckily, it wasn't flat, and I was eventually able to get the paper unpacked, loaded on the printer, and the printer nozzles cleaned enough to print. I swore under my breath the entire time...

So tonight, I am sitting here, my finger still aching enough that the pain is traveling up my arm, but it is still a normal color, and is not visibly swollen. It hurts like HELL, and I have to be careful when typing to not use it, as that's a nice refresher course in pain when that happens. I'm taking a wait and see approach to this. Tomorrow ought to be fun, as we are going to be recabling the open lab for GIGABIT ETHERNET!!!!! (SWEET heavenly surfing and renderfarming!!!!!)

And the bitch of it is, after all of that, the damn poster turned out a luscious shade of hot pink rather than the bright and spicy Design Red it was supposed to be. I'm keeping it, of course, because it's a great pink, but this means I have to figure out why the color was so far off... Never enough hours in the day....