"Jay Honeck" wrote in
news:QRakb.169068$%h1.160953@sccrnsc02:

Ow, ow, ow! Stop it -- you're hurting my head!

"Just when I thought I was out, they PULL me back in!"

I haven't heard those words in close to 18 months -- nor have I used
any "newspaper brain cells". (Perhaps they've regenerated, after
being damaged for 22 years?

So YOU'RE the guy we used to curse in the middle of the night, eh?
God, I can't tell you how many times I had a D.C. full of contract
drivers, waiting for the papers that were late because of some
"mailroom glitch"...

There's nothing like trying to placate a couple of dozen ****ed off
guys, who are NOT being paid extra to wait for their newspapers. When
the Cedar Rapids Gazette (our primary customer) went "live" with their
new mailroom (and press) systems a couple of years ago, this scene was
played out every night, for months...

We used to sit around sticking pins in little "Judah" dolls -- did you
experience any unexplained pains during this time? :-)

Nah... Our stuff works! Besides, many of the papers where we do
installations don't have DCs. They go out the window with route-based
bundle breaks to "ma and pa" carriers who won't stick around if their stuff
is late. They gotta get back home to get their kids off to school, or get
toe their day job!

I think the worst holdup I can remember we had was in Colorado. The
inserter was running so nicely, the operator kept bumping up the speed...
Finally, she got the thing up to about 22k/hr (faster than I have ever seen
an inserter run in production!) All of a sudden, "BANG!" - it happened. A
few of the single-sheet inserts were blowing past the pockets from the wind
generated by the jackets at 22k... Instead of falling inside the pockets,
they were blowing all over and in between. Eventually, a few of them got
wrapped around the main drive sprocket, and knocked the collator chain off
the sprocket. That in turn broke a series of pockets and brought the whole
machine to a screeching halt.

It took over an hour to get things back together... Actually, most of the
time was spent trying to get the collator chain to move at all.

Sure enough, we got blamed!

Anyway, do you do any work with Lee Enterprise? They own something
close to 30 (maybe more, now?) papers throughout the Midwest. I worked
for (and with) them for 12 years, too...

I know the name and the logo, but I haven't met anyone over there. I was
going to use the "East Coast" excuse (both Miracom and NEWSTEC, our key
distributor, are based in the NorthEast), but looking at their website it
seems they have a couple papers out my way now, too - upstate NY and PA...
According to E&P they are up to 38...

Hmmm... I will have to get on that...


Thanks!

Judah