What is it about copiers breaking down right on the cusp of the first week of classes? It seems to be some sort of bad cosmic joke for academics. It's happened twice in my department and the wailing, hair pulling, and gnashing of teeth is truly frightening to behold.
Your list and my list are fraternal twins. 
I am so envious of your ability to make lists AND cross things off. My list goes like this:
* sit on butt all day and do all work tasks that are emailed to me, because everything is "an emergency"
* think about making a list
See the problem? I envy the sense of accomplishment you must get.
I need a haircut too! It's a truly important part of beginning the semester. (I have no idea where to go, of course...)
IT departments seem to have a completely bizarre idea of timeliness (It's the beginning of the semester, they'll all be busy with other things, let's upgrade now...).
Be careful with those haircuts! Heed my horrifying cautionary example... Never ever get a haircut from your mom!!!!
Hey -- do you have an efficient way of creating these PDFs? What do you use?
System upgrades before classes start. What silly dummies...
Haircut. Thanks for making me think of that. Must do before ex comes (must look good then)
And yes, that happens to our copier too. I just put it all online and don't worry about the paper any more. Paper is too frustrating.
I wish I could say my method for PDFing was really efficient. I don't know if it is or not. I have an inexpensive but OK enough scanner at home which scans to PDF (using the PaperPort software that comes with it). It's really only inefficient because scanning books takes a long time (as compared to flat pages). I think it takes me about 10-15 seconds per page, total time (arranging book on glass, letting it scan, picking book up, repeat...)
The department just went and installed "new and improved" copiers last week. I just came across them yesterday. Problem is: one of them is merely a duplicator. It does wonders with syllabi, exams and so forth: anything that already has a master copy, but it's useless for xeroxing out of books.
The other thing is that the department chair didn't bother to tell any of the faculty about the change, so as we all trickle back in over the next week to put our course materials together, there is going to be a major traffic jam on the one copier. It's not going to be pretty, no indeed.
I really wonder what possesses administrators to do things like this. Do they really want to spend that much time talking to irate faculty?
jwb
If you're interested in turning documents into pdfs, talk to the administrative staff (I hate calling them secretaries) in the main office. Sometimes the copier can turn stuff into a pdf and email it to you. Not any faster than scanning for books, but a great improvement for cloning packets.
that's a pretty fancy copier, SRH...our dept doesn't have anything like that yet...
Commenting by HaloScan
