Hello all, I'm Alex from the wonderful state of NJ, land of the Mob. I started in printing making polaproofs part time at the shop where my brother was a salesman. I went to school for computers and networking but I wasn't doing well finding work right out of school. Within a few months I was full time running all the proofing and plating (impress 2000, polaproof till we got rid of it for a creo, and an AGFA galilelo). From there I went into prepress and pissed off a few of the old timers there. I had the computer knowlage, the shop was going CTP and they didn't want to learn that end of it.
7 years later and one attempt to get the hell out of printing I'm back in hell. My brother and a partner started up their own shop. We have a older Hedi 40" with very low impressions on it, 2x Hedi 46-4 Di's, a folder or 2, cutter, Agfa printdrive PDF rip outputing to a ECRM Desertcat 8 for the 40" and delta's for the Di's. Printing still sucks but as long as my brother keeps selling work and staying out of our hair (his partner and I are the prepress/bindry/pressman/janitor/People to yell at when things go wrong) and I have his partner in my corner most of the time it's not too bad. The worst part is we're in another print shop (web shop) and we take care of any covers needed so it's normal to be walking out the door and get a "rush" job where the files will be here "in 5 minutes" 3 hours later still no file and the sun is coming up.
