Meh, if I were willin to make a 40-50 mile commute there's plenty of plant maintenance work available at a much higher rate of pay than I'm gettin now but, after many years of fightin traffic, burnin through tanker loads of go-go juice, wearin out lotsa cars and spendin an average of 8-10hrs a week just gettin to and from work, that's a less than appealing scenario these days 'Berto.

This lil local paper is pretty slick all in all and also prints 10 other small local papers every week along with taking on a lotta business monthly, quarterly and annual jobs, even some commercial work too, so they're somewhat diversified, which is very helpful all in all.

They had a major down sizing a cuppla years back and did it the right way by eliminating the fat in the front office bureaucracy and trimmin a 2nd shift from their production team.

They have an old Goss web press that's well maintained and has just a 3 mnan crew of some sharp cookies. My own crew is all part timers gettin between 20 and 35 hrs a week and several of them are also our delivery drivers. Any employee of any import there actually wears more than one hat, making it a very lean operation.

It was interesting walkin in as a newbie and a supervisor at the same time. My crew was all takin bets in the 1st week or 2 on whether I'd make the cut, but they've all chilled on that shit for the most part now.

Their biggest grumble these days is that since I've learned the Kansa inserter machine we use to insert the sales ads and such is that they're havin to work faster to keep up with the increased production speeds they're seeing these days. The previous supervisor came from a background as a car mech and had no idea how to make paper move so he had really done a lotta stuff to the machine that was totally backwards which I have steadily been undoing and correcting.

My many years experience in the graphic arts trades, running other shipping operations, shop operations and as a mech too all blend well into their required skill set for my position and I too wear lotsa hats there.

I spent more than a few hours fillin out applications when I was job huntin and really this job above all others I applied for was the one I most wanted and my boss told me of all the applicants they looked at my experience in the trade far outpaced anyone else they talked to, so we're all gettin what we need outta things, which is the best type scenario for everyone concerned. And .... there's no fuckin piss tests here either so my 3 month hiatus from my good friend Mary Jane is also a thing of the past

Yeah quasi if it haddn have been for my stock of music and movies on tap here at the casa I dunno how I'd have made it through the long internet drought!

I switched to a new satellite internet service that offers me a 12mb DL speed, which is 12 times faster than the weak suck wireless I had before. Until they build a new subdivision somewhere out here the chances of the internet providers bringin cable or DSL out this way are pretty slim and FIOS .... well that damned sure ain't happenin though there is FIOS about 4 miles from me. Hell, the cable and DSL service stops just 1/4 mile away from me but with most of the property around me here owned in 10+ acre chunks their expanded customer base from extending service this way is not a profitable move at this juncture so ...