For the past two days, I have been frantically attempting to get my poster printed, which I need to take with me to the SACNAS conference in Alberquerque, when I leave on Thursday. I completed it on Monday morning, and brought it to school for the Creation Station (UH’s printing shop) to print it. But I had lost my flash drive at school earlier, so I had to resort to splitting it up onto two floppies. And floppies, being floppies, exhibit the strange tendency to give you errors when you need them to work most. So, I shelled out the cash for another flash drive, and managed to bring the file to school today, uncorrupted. The manager(?) of the Creation Station was kind enough to try to print it for me in less than 24 hrs (their policy is at least 24 hrs ahead of time). But then, they called me out of class for a font problem. Even though I had subset 100% of the font I was using into the AI file, it was substituting out my font on their computers, making the poster illegible and ugly. So, I went down there, and switched the fonts out manually to something that is passable. Is the saga over yet… I don’t know.

The lesson I learned in all this is, like the manager said, *convert to outlines*!. Or at least, if you subset, subset 100% and provide the font file along with the illustration file. I suppose doing both wouldn’t hurt.

I also got to listen to her talking about how she got started in the business, sort of, while I was fixing up the poster. Now I’m considering taking a few courses ( certification, not college!) on that kind of stuff. The idea of owning my own print shop is intriguing me also, but I don’t know that I’ll be able to fit that in with the rest of my life.

Possibly relevant posts:

• Paper to print (3/14/2002)
• A note on running mathematica remotely using Xming (7/30/2007)
• Convert frustrations (5/8/2004)