Severe software syndrome

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For about three months now, I've been bouncing between desks.

Afternoons are likely to find me in my own office, amid the clutter, files, and old copies of The Wall Street Journal.

But my mornings have been largely spent in Barb Wilkinson's office, where I've been filling in for her while she recuperates from some difficult health problems that gave us all a scare.

The biggest change during this interim period, however, hasn't been the desk; I’ve been finding myself up to my neck in the production process of the daily newspaper, churning out pages, editing miles of copy, and tweaking pictures.

By far the biggest challenge has been the need to jump from one type of software to another in an instant, sometimes jumping from one side of the brain to the other as well.

During a typical morning putting out the daily newspaper, one moves from our word-processing and wire-handling software, something called NewsEdit, to our pagination software, which is called QuarkXpress.

Meanwhile, local photographs need to be downloaded from digital cameras or uploaded from a scanner then manipulated in Adobe Photoshop, either to make them black and white or to adjust the color for the front and back pages.

Photos from The Associated Press, meanwhile, are accessed via a software known as Netscape Communicator, which has a tendency to drop out at the most irritating moments possible.

Then, to get syndicated material from the Los Angeles Times/Washington Post News Service, the computer needs to be running Internet Explorer. We've added the LA Times/Washington Post service in an effort to offer readers something beyond what the AP provides, trying to give you something the morning papers might not have had.

If you're counting, that's five different softwares running on the computer simultaneously. Add a sixth for the computer's operating system.

Then add a seventh for the most irritating of them all, Outlook Express. That's the software we use for e-mail.

And while we love to hear from readers, it can get a little annoying.

It's set up to check for new e-mail every 15 minutes. When something new has arrived, the computer makes a funny sound and a little icon starts flashing in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

What's missing is any sense as to whether the e-mail is important or not.

We routinely get crazy e-mail from some guy out in California who rants on about a holy war involving somebody and something; I've never been able to figure out what he's actually trying to say.

Every new product ever invented, no matter how goofy, gets announced via our e-mail. ("Gasoline-powered nose-hair trimmer? No problem. We'll send a press release e-mail to every newspaper in America right now.")

And then, of course, there are the politicians.

I'd like to say they are equal opportunity offenders, but actually the Republicans are worse.

Every Mike Pence pronouncement arrives with two e-mails and at least one fax. State GOP chairman Jim Kittle must stutter; all of his communiques come in duplicate.

What I keep waiting for is a new product announcement that will tell me how to shut that irritating little flashing icon off while I'm on deadline.

Is that too much to ask?[[In-content Ad]]