Wonder if we are going to have the company block party this year.

Our sales was as low as it was in 2005 in April. The lowest yet in this oil slump. Even though we sold less in April we were able to cut costs enough that our cash in the bank remained the same. Most of the loss was made up for by leaning up inventory and improving the just-in-time for materials. It is looking they the daily sales in May will be better, but not enough to show a profit yet. They killed 3rd shift so it will be interesting to see the difference shutting down for 6 hours a day and no night premium pay makes along with the slight increase in sales.

There have been a few employees taking the $5000 opt out and leaving. We've still got about 50 employees more than we had in 2005. Everyone is sure hoping it doesn't come down to another layoff.

Last week with my brother and I had lunch he asked if there was anything I thought might be a good product. Gave me some examples of companies that are doing very well making completely different products than they made originally. Like Nokia used to be a paper mill and Xerox used to make photographic print paper.

The have branched off the engineering and marketing into a group that not only does Kimray work, but will do work for others like Porsche Design does. Originally they called it Paper to Plane, now it is called Swell Product Design and Marketing. Told him the marketing side sucks horribly if they can't come up with a better name than those and that Porsche calls their group Porsche Design. And maybe they should start with some cool stuff stuff with the Kimray name on it like watches, sunglasses, pens, instead of the crap the corporate gift places offer to put your logo on. That's what Porsche Designs does, and it has Porsche Designs on it instead of the Porsche logo. Bet it's the reason Porsche fiercely enforces the usage of it's name. It's also interesting to me that Porsche cars started the same year Kimray did, 1948.

I work for Design Group now......

They are trying to do the same thing with the print shop. The major problem is that they got rid of the Xerox digital presses and went with Ricoh. Now they barely have enough up time to print the Kimray stuff let alone any outside work.

bean counters got involved didn't they?

we have the same thing going on. the new place got rid of our KIP at the end of its lease cause it was expensive and got us a new Oce inkjet. One huge problem ink on paper works really well in the rain at construction sites. Did anyone ask us? No they did not it just showed up.

Wasn't bean counters. But the decision wasn't made by anyone that knew why we picked Xerox in the first place. Xerox was the only company that if the printer was down and you need something printed, you could send your files to their local office and they would print your stuff there and deliver it, AT NO EXTRA COST. The Xerox machines were super reliable until they started using cheaper paper with lots of lint. They had to come clean the printer once a month. The Ricoh has not run longer than 2 days before needing service so far. And it is taking much longer for their techs to come out and fix it.

yeah those would not last long here at all.

Thank you! I am not the only one that think it is entirely setup or they grabbed people that we so not qualified for the job they were perfect for falling for this.

I can send our beagle down to help her out! How long do you want him? 6-7 years?

My job in CA we had a Xerox Phaser color printer. It did awesome work and the ink was wax based and it had to be heated. If it was off for a while it would take several minutes to warm up but if it was left on standby it would preheat the ink so it was ready but the time the office opened. We did all our slicks with it and it looked really good on the heavy glossy paper. It looked a lot like the old Mylar Selectric shiny text.

David, not that this relates to your printers but my old boss didn't believe that the higher end inkjet we had would do pictures as good as a film processing place and would get ruined if they got wet. I printed a picture and took it to work and dropped it in the sinke and told him have at it. The only damage was that it got scratched form the crappy paper towels we used to dry it with.

Ink on regular paper become impressionism when wet.

Oh, here is what happens to cows during feeding time when lightning hits.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1464368415.jpg

I'll have to try it but a blue print is not really a photo and there is not as much ink on the paper.

We have the monster Epson 64 inch wide printer with 8 inks and it prints 1440x2220 so it takes a 8X magnified to ever see the ink dots.

We only print on double weight photo paper. It is completely waterproof. I have taken a print to the sink and poured hot coffee on it and then just rinse with water and blot dry and it is fine. I have never tried to print on regular bond paper. The printer came with a short roll of 36 inch bond paper. I may try to use it someday.

Of course all we print are aerial photos.

Yeah, you probably won't recreate Starry Night, but who knows you might release your inner Van Gogh. Maybe if you do a highly detailed print it will have more ink to run?

The photo ink was special ink, not sure what your new printer has but I assumed on regular paper it will spread.

I wonder about people.

After Mom passed my SIL took all the family photo albums to make copies of the photos she wanted. She had already done this several years ago. She returned the albums with photos missing. Am I not supposed to notice?

Oh she gave me a CD with the missing pictures scanned, albeit poor quality small scans, and a separate text index with the writing that was on the photos of who, when, where. Guess that is supposed to make up for basically stealing the photos. Oh and Mom had painstakingly spent years putting together the family geneology. She took that to, then gave me back the briefcase that had all the files and records saying they weren't ever there. Bull, they were there when she took it, she snuck it out when they were going thru Mom's clothes and jewelry.

I just don't understand people.

Yea, our printer from the old job would smear if you had slightly sweaty hands. We kept them rolled up until the it was laminated. We handled the paper with cotton gloves anytime it was not laminated. The Epson paper and ink is magic. No discernible dot pattern in the image and water proof. Windex or isopropyl alcohol with strip it right off.

We make a big print (68x96) for the city in three panels so they don't need a U-Haul truck to haul it around is laminated with a dry erase laminate. They think that is cool to draw on it and then just wipe it off with ease.

Used to have some marker sets you could draw on your skin then it would wash off with soap. It was called a bath time play set. Gave them all away as wedding gifts.

I don't understand a lot of people, but I never wonder about them because most people TJDGAS. I think narcissism run more rampant now. Look at all the social media and the selfies thread.

It looks like a nice thunderstorm is on its way. It should be here in 35 or 40 minutes. Hopefully no hard lumpy rain. They have baseball size hail in places.

I came home a bit early and that allowed us to get into a local Charleston's. Dang good prime rib. Burp. Mmmmmmm.

Hopefully it's only liquid water, Glen. We're going to have an evening picnic by the ocean with some friends tonight. And tomorrow's a late-afternoon dinner on our patio with our son & DIL and our niece & her family. Have a great Memorial Day weekend, y'all!