Computer woes

It was a wild week at the old Phillips County News as the computer of your “beloved” publisher decided to go belly up, deceased goldfish style, and if not for the help of “The GEEK” — AKA Malta School’s Computer guru and PCN IT specialist — Kelly McCann (see the old boy’s advertisement on page A4 this week) I am not sure how we would have put the paper together this week.

Having the Microsoft “Blue Screen of Death” pop up on my monitors last Monday morning made my heart sink and my week much longer and stressful than usual. Without my computer, I felt like I was dead in the water (sorry, Mr. Goldfish, you lived a short, but beautiful life.) In this day and age where many things seem to be computer-based, it’s hard to imagine how this or any other newspaper was published 30 years ago.

At one point, probably before even the Starr’s time here in Phillips County, the PCN likely had a staff four or five times bigger than we have today (3.5 as of the time of this writing as our office manager, and number one daughter, Sophia started her junior year of school at Dodson last week moving her from full-time to part-time.) If I actually had to set each individual letter of type into a press in order to print “Your Community Newspaper” I probably wouldn’t be entering my sixth year here in Malta and getting this paper to you once a week would be a pipedream.

While technology has made newspaper publishing easier to achieve with fewer people involved in the actual laying out — I would be hard-pressed to publish each week without the contributions of our correspondents…you guys are the best — technology is only as good as the people operating it and keeping it afloat…thank you, Kelly, you did in fact save the day during a busy week for you as well.

If you follow me on social media, you will recall I threatened to throw my computer in the Milk River. Thankfully, Kelly, Pierre Bibbs, and Deb Solberg helped keep me sane in my hours of need and, low and behold, you are reading this pithy column this week.

Thanks for reading and aloha.

Mark