READ At YOUR OWN RISK!
.......Published Labor Day 2007 .......

Welcome,one and all to the wild and wacky life of a mild mannered **FORMER AS OF MARCH 21, 2001** newspaper worker in the heart of the deep south.

Like I said in the air2go paragraph that Mysteria and I moved here for jobs in 1987. I stayed in a deploreable work condtion and I was let go after 13.5 years of service to the company. In my eleventh year of tenure I was one of a group of at least 12 employees who were presented recognition by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS for loyal service of at least ten years. Due to several things including a $250,000.00 loss of revenue particularly advertising sales being down (low enough to put 2-3 full time workers out of jobs). I only updated the material in my page below to where it now reads in PAST tense in reference to my ex-job. For my protection I will NOT say here online where I work or exactly where I live now.

My job at the paper **USED TO**consist of running a flatbed Hewlett Packard photo scanner, a 35mm negative scanner, downloading from two digital cameras, using PhotoShop to manipulate photos and graphics,operating a large process camera, and finally making aluminum plates for THEIR press and being their computer system manager support guy. In 2000; THEY upgraded their printing press so they could do a lot of process color (full color photos) more than they used to do..........$325,000 worth of machinery ......too bad it did NOT improve the quality of the finished product!

In late 1996 I was promoted to their Computer Systems Manager. THEY RAN Windows 3.1, 95 & 98 (16 users) to THEIR network NT 4.0 server. THEY use Quark Express for desktop publishing in the past to lay out THEIR page mechanicals that were then printed hard-copy on Xante 8200 laser printers and physically hand pasted up or printed directly to film on THEIR Konica ImageSetter.) They have now bypassed all that and now work is sent straight to a metal plate ready for the "antiquated but updated" dinosaur of a printing press. THEY receive state, national and world-wide text and photos from the Associated Press via satellite uplink. The Paper also publishes an ONLINE version with local news,sports,classified and photos(updated daily). Ho Hum ........... what newspaper associated with AP cant do that now adays?

The ONLY things I miss by not being at the paper are the FEW remaining friends working there and the MEDICAL INSURANCE! You hear an old saying here in the south: "Good people are hard to come by." How true for my place of former employment. They either run off the good ones or fire them to replace them with brown-nosers. The one good for me about not being there any more is that I am not there anymore to be their scapegoat. Whenever something went wrong there had to be someone to blame and the ones who didn't have a clue as to how things were done used me as their scapegoat. Now when things go wrong there is no one there for them to blame but each other! PRICELESS!!!! Seriously; quality control of the photos and (line)artwork rested on my shoulders. And even though the system was geared to where what you saw on my monitor was what the final product should have looked like; if the results of the press work were not what clueless wonders wanted them to be; I got blamed for things I had NO control over. And further more GRAPHIC ART PROFESSIONALS from a multi million dollar company in NEW ORLEANS, LA set the system up that way. So I was treated like I was incompetent and worse. I have a right to be insulted as I am a 25 year veteran of the graphic arts profession but HELL itself will freeze over as there is no use waiting on apologies that will never come to me. Cause if they ever did come that would mean admitting to mistreating me and that the company was in the wrong.

Let's just say I am bitter over these things and because an employee there assaulted me on the job TWICE over the years and nothing was EVER done about it. Oh sure plenty was said about it. But NOTHING was EVER done to resolve the issue and the person finally had to leave ONLY after multiple DUI and DWIs. And not to forget the most important thing about all this; I was told to never bring up that person to management NO MATTER WHAT HE DID TO ME or I WOULD BE FIRED! This brown nosing games player fooled too many people and used his vendetta against me to prove him to be a "pure and innocent as the immaculate new fallen snow angel with a glaringly bright simonized halo" image when tormenting me and laughing about it. After leaving the paper the person stole $5,000.00 from their next job. Now that is really a "pure and innocent as the immaculate new fallen snow angel with a glaringly bright simonized halo" person! LOL! Must be a sheletered life to be able to assault someone one twice then commit felony theft on top of all the drunk & under influence driving and still be walking the streets without EVER serving any jail time.

And what was worse was that every other saturday night I worked in production doing my ususal thing with photo/line art manipulation and making the plates for the press. But so did brown noser. Yet on the weeks that brown noser worked the staff of the paper made it hell on me. All of brown noser's work for saturday night was DELIBERATELY turned in early so I had to do it for him. And the weeks I worked that same amount of work was turned in way later or to where I had to do it all on saturday night! And to show you how dispicably I was treated when I got the ONE chance to complain about the unfairness I was told in the form of a question: "Dont we pay you for that work?"