The Superior Express -

Producing a paper has been a bit of a challenge this week for this old editor. I approached Monday with great enthusiasm. During the weekend, I had assembled some interesting copy and I thought I would enter the new week with a good handle on this week’s paper. But when I tried to send the copy to the printer on Monday, my computer balked. It didn’t want to share. I could see the copy on my screen but it refused to let me send it anywhere and the computer program would crash. Before Monday was over, I couldn’t even open our desktop publishing programs.

Monday ended with not a single piece of copy from my computer ready for printing. I turned off the computer when I left the office and fussed all night wondering what I would have to do come morning. Thankfully on Tuesday, I was able to transfer my copy to a neutral computer and from there to the proof reader’s computer where we were able to complete the processing.

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This hasn’t been my week for computers. I have a big scanning project underway for a customer that I have been working on at home. I’m not making much progress as the scanners on a good day will only do a half dozen or so scans before they strike and it may be days before they return to work.

The newspaper’s fiscal year ended Sept. 30 and I need to get the financial reports ready for the tax accountant. To do that, I have a computer tied to a large screen television. I like being able to expand the accounting spreadsheets over the entire width of the screen. However, some days the computers (I’ve tried more than one) are unable to connect with the televison. I was about to give up before I learned I must never let the televison or computer enter sleep mode. When I finish a work session, I’ve been having good luck restarting if I unplug the television from the electrical circuit.

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When I was three-years-old my parents let me take my little red baby chair into the yard and watch the first asphalt spread on the stretch of Highway 14 that passed the Blauvelt Home. I could sit on that chair for hours and watch the men and equipment scurrying past.

I have maintained that interest into adulthood though I no longer have either the red chair or the time to just sit and watch.

I’m not sure what is wrong, but the work on Highway 8 between Hartley Street and Oak Creek doesn’t meet my expectations. Hopefully, the project isn’t completed. I thought the turning lane would be a nice addition, but currently that stretch of road doesn’t feel right. In fact, it feels dangerous. Hopefully, I am wrong.

And neither does the striping of the Fourth Street turning lane appear to be right. I understand a mistake was made when it was painted and the plan is to remove and repaint.

Hopefully, that will allow the project to reach its full potential.

As for Highway 14 south to the stateline, I was excited the new asphalt included parking places at the end of each bridge. I thought the widened asphalt at the ends of the bridges would really be great when I wanted to inspect stream flow and take pictures near the bridge. Fishermen could park on asphalt when wanting to fish off the bridge or nearby. I could park my vehicle out of the traffic flow on a hard surface and not worry about it getting stuck. Though I haven’t seen many people doing so in recent years, the bridges were once popular with fishermen who liked to stand on the bridge and dangle their lines over the side.

I don’t know how many fish they caught but they frequently interrupted our telephone service when they cast a bit high and their line wrapped around the overhead telephone wires along the side of the bridges. Wires wrapped with fishing line often resulted in undesirable cross talk and it was hard to free the fishing line entangled wires.

The old river bridge was barely wide enough for two lanes of traffic but when I was looking at the river and a motor vehicle approached from the south, I could step over the banister and stand on the natural gas pipeline that was hung on the bridge. That way the drivers had the full width of the bridge.

When I was a youngster, the bridges didn’t have guard rails on the ends and I forgot the current design adds the steel guard rails. This week I discovered what I thought was a wonderful parking space was really the weed barrier beneath the guard rail.