%&*#(#@*(!)%$#

[kickaha]

I swear to fucking god, turning this thing in is harder than doing the research and writing it up put *TOGETHER*.

Today I go to the UNC Student Copy Center to get it printed on the correct paper. "We no longer take Cash, Checks, or Credit Cards." *ALL* they accept is the idiotic UNC OneCard that is designed to let Mommy and Daddy put money on Little Timmy's card and not have him blow it on pot and hookers. I've never used my OneCard, I've never had a need to. Consequently, I've never *activated* it. "Oh, well just go over to the UNC OneCard office, and fill out the forms, and put money on it." "Alright, how much?" "Huh?" "How much should I put on for 2 copies of 400 sheets of 24# 100% cotton, white?" "Oh, I dunno." "Well I have to put it on first before you can deduct it, right?" "Yeah." "And if I put too much on, I can't get a refund, right?" "Yeah." "So how much should I put on?" "I dunno. Enough." *urge to kill rising*

I decide to skip this idiot, and go to Student Store where I know I can use my credit card. I go find the One and Only kind of dissertation paper they have on the shelves. 24#, 100% cotton, Color: Acid-Free White. Excellent. I open the box, and it looks a little *off* white. I ask the clerk "This looks a bit cream colored - is this the proper paper for turning into the graduate school?" "Oh yes, that's the official approved paper." Okee dokee. Two boxes of 500sheets, at $55 each. Ouch. But, has to be done.

Get back to department, go to print out the document. Load hopper #3 with 500 sheets of Very Expensive Paper. It get to exactly page 100 and paper jams. Clear jam. It resumes. Jam. Clear jam. It resumes. Jam. Clear jam. It resumes. Jam. Kick wall.

Apparently it doesn't like this paper in Tray #3. I try Tray #2. Jam. WTF? It worked fine for 100 pages, and then decided to cause problems?

Alrighty, I'll just babysit the thing and feed it a few pages at a time out of Tray #1, the manual feed. Put paper in. Trigger job. Out comes... not my job? But on my Very Expensive Paper. Great. Yank out rest of paper from Tray #1. It resumes from Tray #3, where there is now regular paper. And then it starts printing out my job on said regular paper. AUGH! Cancel job. No, cancel. CANCELCANCELCANCELCANCELCANCELCANCELCANCELCANCELCANCELCANCEL! AUGH! FUCKER! Kick and beat wall.

Pull Tray #3, empty it. Pull Tray #2, empty it. Now nobody can print. Muahahahaha.

Send my job to printer. It waits for paper. Put Very Expensive Paper in Tray #1. Excellent, it prints. Page 101... page 102... page 103... ten sheets... WTF? Halt job. Ten sheets just shot through all together, one printed, nine blank. WTF? Put nine sheets back in Tray #1. Start job. Nine sheets come out, one printed, eight blank. WTFFFFF? These sheets *WILL NOT* go through the printer singly, apparently. Fine. Toss Herding Instinct Very Expensive Paper aside. Continue job. Page 234, 235, 8 sheets. AUGH! Kick and beat printer.

I had to sit there and not only babysit the paper feeding, but take care of it shitting all over itself with excess sheets too. Several pages had to be reprinted, and wouldn't you know it, I had to hand-check the entire thing to see if any extra sheets snuck in when I wasn't looking. Yes, they did.

It took a goddamned *hour and a half* to print and check 400 pages. Which means there is no way for me to print out the second copy and make the end of day business at the Graduate School office, which means I have to drive back up here tomorrow to turn it in. Yay, another 2+hrs in the car.

But wait, there's more.

I go grab the Very Important Signature Sheet from my advisor's office, to put it on top of the now Very Expensive Printout, and... the color of the paper doesn't match. When I printed out the signature sheet, I went to the campus Kinko's and asked for 'the official dissertation paper'. It's *SNOW WHITE*, not off-white.

Panic central - if the graduate school says "no go", I'm fucked because one of my committee members is in upstate NY, and the deadline is Monday 4pm, and they have to have original signatures.

So I jet over there, and plead my case. "They said this was the approved dissertation paper at Student Stores." "Yeah... they decided that all on their own, they never asked us." Since the box *DID* say 'Acid Free White' and because my committee member is out of state, they're letting it slide.

All I can do is pray that they also let slide, or don't notice, that for some FUCKING reason, all my top margins, where once they were 1" exactly, today printed out at 1 1/16". All the 2" top margins are still exactly 2", but the 1" margins got a little bigger.

Kimokeane, exactly how *MUCH* bribe did you pay out??

Comments

[jason0x21.livejournal.com]

Why in the name of all that is holy is the COLOR of the paper important? As long as it's (mumble) white and 24# 100% cotton, WHO ON EARTH GIVES A SHIT?

Oh, yeah, that's right. Grad school. Nevermind.

You can borrow my hammer.

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

Fucking anal-retentive psychotics is what they have running this asylum.

So now - do I risk the 1/16" issue and print out the second copy tonight, saving myself time tomorrow, or do I wait until morning, get here fucking early, ask at the grad office, and hope that they say yes when I could have just not brought it to their attention?

AUGH!

Fuck it, I'm going home and drinking heavily.

Tomorrow I'll head to the grad school office, ask about the idiotic margin being off by a miniscule amount, and if they say 'no', then I'll fix it, print out a copy on regular paper, take it to Kinko's and have them copy it on the white-white paper like I should have done in the first place, and then return the second box of Very Expensive Paper to the Student Stores where I think I'll jam it in the ear of the idiotic woman who said it was 'the approved paper'. Sideways.

[babbleon1.livejournal.com]

Ah, drugs, violence and money - the best solution after all.

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

Yes. Indeed.

[babbleon1.livejournal.com]

Ack. 1 1/16"? The world's gonna end.

The printer thing - sounds like it's getting too hot. Any chance of printing to four different printers? Or two, alternating between them?

I guess a copier is right out bcs of quality, but they usually handle large loads a little better.

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

The printers in this dept all suck - most of them are dirty as hell, and leave toner smears on the printouts. I picked the one that is clean. :/

When I printed from the manual tray, it didn't jam, but I think the sticking was from static buildup.

And yes, they've been known to reject dissertations and delay someone's graduation by months for less than 1/16" difference. :P

[ladykalana.livejournal.com]

And yes, they've been known to reject dissertations and delay someone's graduation by months for less than 1/16" difference.

That is violently stupid. As in inciting of violence.

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

I can't argue with that, but they have this Handbook with explicit guidelines that they expect everyone to follow.

JESUS I wish the electronic submission site was open. :P

[ladykalana.livejournal.com]

WTF ever. Stupid fascists. Or commies. One of those where everyone's supposed to be exactly the same.

[ymasen.livejournal.com]

I would be raising HOLY HELL at student stores.

Can we put the paper in the sun to bleach it??

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

I'm taking the second, unopened box back tomorrow and you BET I'm going to give them holy hell. That's tantamount to scamming the students, IMO.

[hetaera15.livejournal.com]

You poor, poor man!
I will never complain about the everyday fussiness I deal with. ;)

[kimokeane.livejournal.com]

It was very similar at UHawaii. Paper trouble, printing trouble, LaTeX compilation trouble. Remember, this was the Year 2000, back when LaTeX macros were still horribly buggy and if you put, say, 12 15Meg astronomical images on a page in a 3 x 4 grid, you can expect it to take 10 minutes per page for 100 pages of figures, but only 17 will print before the network crashes and your print job is lost. You're just begging for death's sweet embrace to envelope you.

And then some c$*k-s#*ker starts printing articles from the Astrophysical Journal at 2AM without checking the printing queue, and sucks down 25 pages of your special paper before you run to his office and tell him to cancel the job and use the damn printer he bought with his grant money, rather than the departmental printer...

THESE are the hoops that we each have to jump through, so that when we call each other Doctor, we truly know what it means to sacrifice in the name of Science!

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

Y'know, I could just go beat my head into a door, and it'd have the same effect... :P

And as for that LaTeX style file I'm using... original date on it is 1987. It's been added to, hacked on, mangled and otherwise 'fixed' by about a dozen students over the years, most of whom never explained *why* they did what they did. Gotta love it. :P

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Oh well, at least the content is done. :}

[actsofcreation.livejournal.com]

It could be worse... I new a fellow once who had already moved on to the a position at the Institute for Advanced Studies and ended up having to come back and spend 6 weeks fighting with the Graduate School office about the *formating* of his dissertation. Never mind that he was at the time Ed Wittens favorite pet, or that he *should* have been down at IAS doing ground breaking work in String theory, his margins weren't quite right, etc.