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Learning Curves

I started my new job today. I only worked a little over half a day but I'm still very tired. My biggest frustration was learning Quark Xpress, the program of choice at the newspaper. The functions are generally the same as PageMaker, but the way you go about them is different enough to make me want to pull out my hair. On the up side, I'm glad to gain experience with this program to round out my resume.

I'm working on an eMac G4 with less than 400 megs of ram. Several of the programs are out of date as well. I'm told that Photoshop CS will be installed soon, but currently I'm running 5.5. I'm running Quark 4.5 even though 6.1 is now out. I suppose I can't expect a small town paper to have the latest technology, but I can certainly dream.

One of the perks of my job: I and a guest get to go to the movie theatre for free as often as I want. While I'm very excited at this benefit, I feel it necessary to inform you that Homer has a tiny, dirty, one screen, second (or maybe third) run theatre. Still, it's a benefit of which I will definitely take advantage.

The office seems very casual and friendly. I didn't have a chance to get to know anyone as I was consumed with trying to figure stuff out. In time I could see enjoying the personal atmosphere. In addition, my schedule is very flexible. I can come in at 9am or 8am or 10am as I see fit. As long as things are done by deadlines, it's all good. For now I'm going to try to maintain an 8-5 schedule.

The 28 page weekly newspaper seems managable, though these first few weeks are going to be a major stress. I didn't do much today other than poke around my computer, start learning Quark, and lay out a few ads. Since the paper comes out on Wednesdays, that is the lightest day of the week. I hear everything gets crazier and crazier up until Tuesday at 2pm. I can't wait...