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JAL3

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Those who frequent this area likely notice that I've not been around much for a couple of months. As a result, not much has been done in the Gallery Section. There have been a couple of reasons for this.

One is that with the change of ownership, there were some technical issues that needed to get resolved. It seems like things are working again as they are supposed to. That kills one excuse.

A second reason is that I typically work on gallery entries along side the analogous TRI entries. TRI has been prepared with an old favorite of mine, Adobe Pagemaker 7. When PM was discontinued in favor of InDesign, I bought ID and gave it a try. I didn't much care for it because it did a lousy job of importing my old PM files making for lots of work. Even worse, from my point of view, I was used to Pagemaker, not InDesign. (Autocad R10 is still my favorite release though I go back to 2.5 and had to move to 14 to keep up with the OS!) I jsut stopped using ID and kept using PM, losing the CD for ID somewhere along the way. TRI finally grew to the point where Pagemaker won't work any more. It was just barely working on a Windows 7 computer anyway. The last PDF I tried to generate had to be halted after over 2 days of distilling. Files are now corrupt and it just doesn't seem reasonable to keep trying, no matter how badly I want to. InDesign has apparently come a long way since release 1 and I have upgraded. I refuse to "rent" it from Adobe under their new Creative Cloud ripoff program so I had to look for an older version. I settled on CS5.5 because I found a bundle that let me upgrade a lot of other legacy software at the same time. It's going to take me a while to learn all the ins and outs but the process has started and I will be working on it. Another excuse bites the dust.

The biggest reason was neither of the above. It was pure exhaustion, plain and simple. There was a 2 month period starting before Christmas when I didn't even log into TRF. The longest I had ever gone before was probably about 3 days. Between serving 2 churches and 6 hospitals, I didn't have a lot of time. When I actually did have time, I just wanted to sleep or, at most, vegetate in my LazyBoy with a book. I had no interest in rockets or much of anything else. While that situation is still not good, it is better and I hope it will improve.

There. I'm out of excuses. That's the story.

As I master InDesign (and have time!) you can expect to see progress resume.

Thanks for your patience.
 
Thanks for the great effort you give to TRF!


Sent from my iPhone using Rocketry Forum
 
Once you get used to InDesign, you won't wonder what happened to to Page Maker and Quark. It is now the defacto page layout program—with good reason. I was reluctant to switch from Quark Express. I have a hard time remembering it now (not that I need to). There's no looking back.

Tip of the Day: Style all type in paragraph styles and/or character styles. Use paragraph styles for everything. If you have, say, a web address or something that would or should be a different type style in the middle of a sentence; use character styles. Using paragraph and character styles eliminates a lot of fuss and makes life much easier. It will also help you out down the road when you need to do other things with a document.

Oh, and I too, appreciate your work here. It's my favorite place on the forum. I wish more people would use it to post their finished rockets in. It's a great resource.
 
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Once you get used to InDesign, you won't wonder what happened to to Page Maker and Quark. It is now the defacto page layout program—with good reason. I was reluctant to switch from Quark Express. I have a hard time remembering it now (not that I need to). There's no looking back.

Tip of the Day: Style all type in paragraph styles and/or character styles. Use paragraph styles for everything. If you have, say, a web address or something that would or should be a different type style in the middle of a sentence; use character styles. Using paragraph and character styles eliminates a lot of fuss and makes life much easier. It will also help you out down the road when you need to do other things with a document.

Oh, and I too, appreciate your work here. It's my favorite place on the forum. I wish more people would use it to post their finished rockets in. It's a great resource.

I can already tell that ID has come a long way since its first release. In fact, something bothersome about CS5.5 is that it tried to be all things to all people. It gets pretty cluttered. In spite of that, it doesn't seem to be as much of a PITA as r1. The big problems are lack of familiarity and the importation of PM files. It does an even worse job than r1!

As for styles, you're right on the money. Create a new style even if it is just for a single character. It solves problems later.
 
Oh heck JAL3, we all missed you, but hey! Guess what? You have a life too!

Don't worry about it. Catch up when you can. ;)


Reading that and seeing the avatar reminded me of something stupid but typically me. I am a ketchup lover. On my honeymoon I spent a month in Canada. For each day I was gone, I had a lovingly bubble wrapped 12 oz bottle of Heinz packed away to take with me. It was easier to discard paritally used bottles than seal them up in the suitcase again. My wife thought it strange. So did everyone else.

I know Canada has Heinz but its sweeter. I like the stuff bottled in Pittsburgh on lines 1, 2 and 5 better than the sweeter stuff that come out of Soult St. Marie.


Oh. I think the problem is that currently I don't have a life. What I have is borrowed from the Church and the Methodist Healthcare System.
 
Oh. I think the problem is that currently I don't have a life. What I have is borrowed from the Church and the Methodist Healthcare System.
What's that verse about muzzling the ox that treads the grain? Also respecting the Sabbath?
Or in rocketry terms, sounds like you are close to burnout.
Hope your earthbound superiors start getting clued in!
And yes, your life IS borrowed, but the title isn't held by the church or the healthcare system:D
 
What's that verse about muzzling the ox that treads the grain? Also respecting the Sabbath?
Or in rocketry terms, sounds like you are close to burnout.
Hope your earthbound superiors start getting clued in!
And yes, your life IS borrowed, but the title isn't held by the church or the healthcare system:D


Too true. It basically boils down to your tagline about not having a choice.

After being unemployed for 2 years, I'm glad to have any work. My primary appointment right now is as an associate pastor at Dixon UMC. They don't really need an associate but they took me in when I was unemployed so that I could maintain my credentials. They paid $5 per month (and I was glad to get it!). Now I am officially appointed there full time but the problem is that they cannot afford a full time salary. My appointment there as an associate was for "outreach ministry". I did volunteer work at hospitals and nursing homes. Exploiting that designation, I began to work for Methodist Hospital System as a PRN chaplain. That means I work at their pleasure without a fixed schedule but it pays the bills. My entire salary is donated to Dixon UMC so that they can afford to pay me "minimum salary" for a full time pastor. That is the only way I qualify for insurance. (Last time I checked, Aetna was the only company that would even talk to me and they wanted over 9000 per month because of my past history).

Since last June, I have also been the interim pastor at the Chinese UMC. Its the only Chinese Methodist Congregation in Texas. I was only supposed to be there for 2 weeks because there is a Chinese pastor from Taiwan who is supposed to take the church but he is caught up in immigration difficulties that show no signs of abating. ChUMC pays $600 with no benefits. I would gladly pay them to be their pastor because that is the one brightly burning light. I miss being the pastor and I love being there, even if it is only temporary. My Mandarin isn't very good but its better than any other Methodist pastor in Texas and gets better each week. A part of me hopes that Rev. Lu remains stranded on Gilligan's Island until next year!

I have the right to a full time appointment within the conference but there is one other matter. My daughter just started college. Between savings and scholarships, we can just afford it with her living at home but not if she has to live in a dorm. All of the open full time appointments would require me to move out of commuting distance.

That's how I have come to have 3 jobs that yield one salary which gets taxed twice.

It is amazing what you can do when you don't have a choice. Of course I do have a choice and it has seemed that this is the best option for now and I'm grateful for it. The cost comes in being tired all the time. My last day off was in July of 2013!

Things may change this June. I may get on as a full time employee of the hospital system and qualify for insurance there. If that happens, I will reluctantly bid farewell to Dixon UMC. They have been great to me within their limited means. I would then work for the hospital and keep my interim position with the Chinese until Rev. Lu gets here. It is the latter which feeds me spiritually.

As for now, I need to take a shower and get dressed. I am doing the overnight shift at Main Methodist and will get off at 7 am. I then drive to the opposite end of the country for worship at Dixon. Halfway through that service, I will get back in the car and head back out to the Medical Center for the Chinese service. Tomorrow is a Board meeting after church and, assuming I manage to stay awake through it, I should be home by 3pm to catch a few hours of sleep before the overnight on Sunday. No worship on monday morning but I am expected in Kerrville for the Bishop's Convocation by 10 am. Then back home to get ready for the overnight on Monday!

Tuesday I sleep!

That's pretty typical though the details tend to change. I can make it until July 2015! Then I'm home free!
 
*expletive*

That kind of schedule is paramount to insanity! Don't work yourself to death JAL!

Remember: work to live, not live to work!


Tales of deeds shouted out from thee pocket parrot iPhone on th' seas of rocketry forum!
 
UPDATE

I have gotten the CS5.5 updates to the entire Adobe suite. I have spent most of the time since the last update re-learning a LOT!

I have to say I like InDesign CS5.5 much better than InDesign 1. It is incredibly powerful and capable. Sadly, migrating from PM is not a trivial task. There is an incredible amount of background work to do but I have gotten started.

Some has gone smoothly and other parts have not been smooth at all with very unexpected results. I usually figure out what is going wrong but it takes time.

Please realize that the conversion is a massive undertaking. For those of you familiar with Pagemaker, TRI was/is a "booked" document. It actually consists of 146 separate PM files and that number grew with each revision. Each of those has to be migrated and formatted by hand in the transition to the ID format. I expect that latter docs will go much faster because the styles will already be set up but there is no getting around the formatting of graphic files and setting the type in each entry. If there is a way to automate this that is dependable, I have not found it.

Bear with me, please.
 
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