Look, I’m sorry I haven’t written anything in a while, but it’s been a bear at work lately. When you are the de facto IT department for a small company, your job is never, ever done. And when you also happen to have a real job for that same company—say, creating a Holiday catalog while maintaining the company Web site, creating promotional materials, instruction booklets and advertisements on the fly and handling all wholesaler/newspaper/magazine/third-party graphics requests—not only is your job never done, it never really even gets started.

This year is even more entertaining than usual in this regard, as we have decided to switch over to an entirely new format for this year’s holiday catalog. Our old digest-sized catalog has been usurped by a larger, schmancier design about the same height as but a good bit narrower than your typical magazine. The thought is that this will make us look more “professional”, though truth be told no one has in recent memory ever complained about the “amateur” look of our current-sized brochure. Whatever, I’m happy to do it, change is good, yadda yadda yadda. Only problem is, the thing is due at the printer the first week in October, and I only just really started hammering away at it. I’ve been too busy fixing printers, replacing routers, troubleshooting VPN tunnels, procuring a new laptop for the boss’s kid, and stalking wily wireless gremlins to even contemplate the question of the catalog. I figured I could either spend five months working thirteen hours a day and do everything at once, or lead a more or less normal work life as an IT guy for three months and then spend a month working sixteen hours a day as a desktop publishing guy. Only history will judge the quality of my decision. History and our customers, that is.

All’s I can say is, thank God for David Price. He’s this amazing guy who breezed into Fungi Perfecti a few years back. He founded a major Internet commerce system provider, cashed out and became this sort of digital Knight Errant, wandering the countryside saving damsels—or in our case, “dumsels”—in distress. In 1995 he convinced a major telecom to bring a T1 out to our ruraler-than-rural, Goat Fuck Egypt office site. Later on he helped set up our mail server, configured a killer firewall for us, and now he just generally helps out. He can build a computer, manage a network, maintain a freeze drier, build a still, trick out an old Vanagon with a brand new Subaru engine and a marine power system….I’m not positive there’s anything he can’t do. And he’s single, ladies…. 😉

Anyway, most of the time I’m not spending working on the brochure is spent watching TV or playing a game called FlatOut 2 (a cartoony but thoroughly diverting racing game. The graphics are just beautiful, and the surround sound is really well implemented. You haven’t had fun until you’ve smashed through a barn door and you can hear boards and stuff raining down all around you.) My creative energies are completely spent at work; by the time I’m off, I’m nothing but a sponge, soaking up other people’s creative content. It’s the flip side of having a creative job: you get all of your creative impulses out at work, leaving little for your off-hours. Little besides TV, video games, and friends and family. Poor me. 😛

So if my entries become a little sparse, I hope you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me. The brochure will be at the printers the first Friday in October. After that, there’s only a complete overhaul to our online store, a set of labels for our upcoming line of soup mixes, setting up the new workgroup printer/copier for the office, and the Christmas shopping season. Oh, and then a major revision to our Web site some time after the new year. Seeya in March!