The Yearbook Gods - Songs Edition

Today was the last day for students before spring break. We've got two days of inservice tomorrow and Friday, which while not exciting stuff, is a welcome respite. Our last yearbook deadline (spring book - yea!) is over break, though, so we were working hard the last few days.

Last night we stayed until 8, tonight I was there with one of the editors until 7 p.m. It's the tedium that's getting us now, but we did get it done. Now, we wait for proofs.

Ashley and I were running the indexer. Well, she was running the indexer. I was giving moral support, reading instructions and calling computer support. Don't get me wrong - the fact that we CAN "run the indexer" makes our lives a million times easier than it was back in the dark ages of yearbook ca. 1992. BUT, the way it's set up, it can only be run on what amounts to one huge document on one computer, so it's incredibly tedious and time consuming. We had been working on it bit by bit for the last few weeks, but when we tried to generate it today, it didn't work. We called computer support, and they so graciously told us we'd have to mark all the names again.

All the names. On every page. All 360 pages of them. That was after we'd been working for about two hours. We were getting a little loopy.

Thank God for Pandora internet radio (it lets you choose an artist or song, then creates a "station" based on it). I turned it on. One of the kids had created a Queen station.

The first song it played? "Under Pressure."

Ashley and I got a good laugh out of that. This was just before we had to start over.

We got that problem figured out, spent another hour or so clicking the mouse about a bajillion times, and got to the "Generate the Index" step.

Clicked it, and proceeded to watch the spinning beach ball of death (Mac users - you know it well) spin and spin. And spin. And spin some more. While it was spinning, we began to wonder if it was really working or if the computer was locked up. It was like waiting for grass to grow. We decided to call computer support again, for a little moral support in addition to tech support.

Just after I dialed the number "I'll Be There for You" by Bon Jovi played on the Pandora station (by now, I had started a Journey station). Again, Ashley and I grinned that our radio station seemed to be echoing our yearbook life. Computer support was there for us...She said, as long as you can still move the mouse, it should be working.

"Take five, go get a soda, get blood back in your legs. Then, you'll have a better idea when you get back to it."

Okay. We thanked her and hung up. Just then, the beginning of "We Are the Champions" started to play. Ashley looked hopefully at me, and me back at her.

Could this be the sign? Is it working? Are we the champions of indexing?

The beach ball stopped spinning. An actual progress bar popped up, and it was moving!

FINally. It really worked. I'm not making this up. One of my all-time favorite songs that always gives me goose bumps when I hear it, and it really did mean good things.

"WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS, MY FRIENDS - THE INDEX IS GENERATED!"

A little bit of text box creating, some loaded cursor clicking, a little bit of size adjusting, and dang it if we didn't get that darn section finished at 7 p.m. Yeah, it's going to need a little adjusting when the proofs come back, but it is so close.

At some point, in the middle of all that "Hysteria" by Def Leppard played. By then, both she and I were feeling a little hysterical.

And I'm totally serious about all those songs - they really did randomly play. You can't make this crap up.

I can't believe how far yearbooking has come in all these years. My freshman year of high school, I lugged a little baby Mac (that's what we called it - I think it was a Mac Classic?) back and forth from school to home so that I could type in all 1400 names of students and teachers, and type in all the page numbers that we had indexed by hand. Then, we were listening to an old boom box in Lucas's room, and it was Elton John and Billy Joel, and .38 Special. I used to complain about Elton John and Billy Joel back then. What the heck was I thinking?

Thank God for databases, Excel files, and software plugins.