Origins Scenario 2007: The Whirlwind
We have a lot to do before we get in the car and drive to Origins in a little more than 9 days, and it's going to get more complex than it had to be.
The covers for the two new products (SFB R11 and FC Battleships) are here.
The ship cards for FCBA are here.
The hard-panel asteroid maps for FCBA are here.
The rulebook for FCBA is finished, and will be tweaked Monday morning and printed.
The ship book for R11 is finished, but tweaking will continue for days.
The rulebook for R11 is finished, but tweaking will continue for days.
The counters were due here Monday night at 10pm. They won't be on time, but we have several extra days. I just didn't want to spend them chasing counters due to somebody else's mistakes.
The counters are (as you know) printed on paper, shipped to Dallas (450 miles away), glued to chipboard, and then "die cut" into sheets of playing pieces. The plan had been for Leanna and I to get in the car about 3pm today, drive to Dallas, get a hotel, spend Sunday at the zoo and doing some shopping, then go by the die cutter Monday morning, personally supervise the cutting, pick up the first few boxes, and drive home, arriving not later than 10pm. We would then walk into the office at 9am on Tuesday, start printing rulebooks, and start assembling games.
Alas, it won't be that easy.
Vicky, our broker at the printer, scheduled to print the counters on 23x35 paper, and had the die cutter order 24x36 chipboard. That's how it works; the chipboard has to be a tad bigger. Somebody in the print shop, not knowing the significance, decided that the 23x35 press was busy and moved the job to the 26x40 press without asking Vicky (who would have put a stop to it). [Printers do this all the time for their convenience. No big deal, at least, it would not have been if they had trimmed the resulting paper down to 23x35 or just used 23x35 paper to start with.] So when the sheets arrived in Dallas, they won't fit on the chipboard. The die cutter does not have a cutter big enough to handle the sheets, so instead of gluing them last Friday, he will have to put them on a truck Monday morning, drive them to a place an hour away, wait around there until it is convenient for that company to cut the sheets down to 23x35, then return to his shop. That may or may not leave enough time to glue the sheets on Monday. If they get the sheets back by mid-day Monday, they will start gluing and call me. Leanna and I will then drop everything and go out to the car and leave for Dallas (we'll already be packed), getting there 7 hours later, and being at the die cutter Tuesday morning, and home with counters Tuesday night (losing one day, plus a day of shopping). If they do not get the stuff in time, they will call me Tuesday morning and tell me to come down Tuesday and watch the cutting on Wednesday and be home Wednesday night. Unless something ELSE goes wrong. If I don't drive to Dallas, there is no guarantee we will have counters (or new products) at all for Origins.
Given nothing else to do, I'd just go down to Dallas and have a longer "vacation" before coming home. But being gone from the office Tuesday and possibly Wednesday is a serious chunk of "not cool". It means I have to finish work before I leave that would be done better after I should have gotten back.
The current plan is to walk in here at 9am Monday, read the final FCBA reports (which were always due then), fix that rulebook, and start it printing by noon. It will take one day to print all of the FCBA rulebooks for the first shipments. Steve P should be ready to print the R11-SSD book (which will take two days) Tuesday morning, and the rulebook by a few hours after I get back (whether that it Wednesday morning or Thursday morning; the theory is for me to take a full draft on the drive and give it to him when I get back). We want to have all the printing done (or at least most of it) by Friday since if the machines break over the weekend we cannot ship the products until they are fixed on Monday. Which gets icky if they cannot be fixed quickly. We print on pre-release weekend all the time, but this one is too critical to roll the dice.
Beyond that, there are all the other things to do to get ready for Origins (99 items on the "to do list" like stuff for the booth and tournament and buying snacks for the trip and buying some new shorts and loading the car, which is more complex since Leanna decided to rent a larger vehicle which will not be available for loading until 3 hours before we leave for the trip) and of course running the business, chasing flame wars, and so forth.
The covers for the two new products (SFB R11 and FC Battleships) are here.
The ship cards for FCBA are here.
The hard-panel asteroid maps for FCBA are here.
The rulebook for FCBA is finished, and will be tweaked Monday morning and printed.
The ship book for R11 is finished, but tweaking will continue for days.
The rulebook for R11 is finished, but tweaking will continue for days.
The counters were due here Monday night at 10pm. They won't be on time, but we have several extra days. I just didn't want to spend them chasing counters due to somebody else's mistakes.
The counters are (as you know) printed on paper, shipped to Dallas (450 miles away), glued to chipboard, and then "die cut" into sheets of playing pieces. The plan had been for Leanna and I to get in the car about 3pm today, drive to Dallas, get a hotel, spend Sunday at the zoo and doing some shopping, then go by the die cutter Monday morning, personally supervise the cutting, pick up the first few boxes, and drive home, arriving not later than 10pm. We would then walk into the office at 9am on Tuesday, start printing rulebooks, and start assembling games.
Alas, it won't be that easy.
Vicky, our broker at the printer, scheduled to print the counters on 23x35 paper, and had the die cutter order 24x36 chipboard. That's how it works; the chipboard has to be a tad bigger. Somebody in the print shop, not knowing the significance, decided that the 23x35 press was busy and moved the job to the 26x40 press without asking Vicky (who would have put a stop to it). [Printers do this all the time for their convenience. No big deal, at least, it would not have been if they had trimmed the resulting paper down to 23x35 or just used 23x35 paper to start with.] So when the sheets arrived in Dallas, they won't fit on the chipboard. The die cutter does not have a cutter big enough to handle the sheets, so instead of gluing them last Friday, he will have to put them on a truck Monday morning, drive them to a place an hour away, wait around there until it is convenient for that company to cut the sheets down to 23x35, then return to his shop. That may or may not leave enough time to glue the sheets on Monday. If they get the sheets back by mid-day Monday, they will start gluing and call me. Leanna and I will then drop everything and go out to the car and leave for Dallas (we'll already be packed), getting there 7 hours later, and being at the die cutter Tuesday morning, and home with counters Tuesday night (losing one day, plus a day of shopping). If they do not get the stuff in time, they will call me Tuesday morning and tell me to come down Tuesday and watch the cutting on Wednesday and be home Wednesday night. Unless something ELSE goes wrong. If I don't drive to Dallas, there is no guarantee we will have counters (or new products) at all for Origins.
Given nothing else to do, I'd just go down to Dallas and have a longer "vacation" before coming home. But being gone from the office Tuesday and possibly Wednesday is a serious chunk of "not cool". It means I have to finish work before I leave that would be done better after I should have gotten back.
The current plan is to walk in here at 9am Monday, read the final FCBA reports (which were always due then), fix that rulebook, and start it printing by noon. It will take one day to print all of the FCBA rulebooks for the first shipments. Steve P should be ready to print the R11-SSD book (which will take two days) Tuesday morning, and the rulebook by a few hours after I get back (whether that it Wednesday morning or Thursday morning; the theory is for me to take a full draft on the drive and give it to him when I get back). We want to have all the printing done (or at least most of it) by Friday since if the machines break over the weekend we cannot ship the products until they are fixed on Monday. Which gets icky if they cannot be fixed quickly. We print on pre-release weekend all the time, but this one is too critical to roll the dice.
Beyond that, there are all the other things to do to get ready for Origins (99 items on the "to do list" like stuff for the booth and tournament and buying snacks for the trip and buying some new shorts and loading the car, which is more complex since Leanna decided to rent a larger vehicle which will not be available for loading until 3 hours before we leave for the trip) and of course running the business, chasing flame wars, and so forth.
posted by Federation Commander at 2:38 PM
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