HNT - EBM Upgrade

This has been a really busy week -- and it's only half done. (Okay, busy doesn't quite cut it -- how about "adventureful"? - how about "practically unmanageable"?)

Monday morning my bookstore was scheduled to receive our upgraded Espresso Book Machine 2.0 (we got a 1.5 in Nov 2008). It was supposed to arrive at 8 AM. The EBM technicians (ohn & Howard) arrived in town Sunday night and met me at the crack of dawn in the store, when we started taking the EBM apart. (Okay, I'll be honest. John and Howard did 98% of the work -- I just bought them coffee and gabbed with them for the first hour they were there and did the occasional holding things in place or out of the way while they toiled away . . . after that, I went about doing the 2 other full time jobs that are currently on my plate and checked in on them once an hour or so)

At about 10 AM we found out that the delay (ie, the EBM 2.0 not getting there at 8 AM) was due to the fact that it was being held up at customs. Given that it wasn't a basket of lettuce or tomatoes or something typical -- it was a machine that prints and binds books in about 3 minutes; and there are still no more than 15 in existence in the entire world -- it got held up for a looooong time.

It didn't finally arrive until about 7:00 PM. Remember, we'd been there since 6:30 AM.

We got the new machine unloaded off the truck and the old one loaded ONTO the truck by about 8:00 PM.
y 9:30 PM, the machine was mostly in place -- we'd done all we could and just needed an electrocian to hook up the main power cable to it.


And now, though we miss our good old giant-sized EBM 1.5 (I found out only after it left that one of our staff members nicknamed it "Ruthie"), we have a smaller, sleeker, sexier and quieter EBM 2.0.


In testing it out, I, of course, printed one of my own books.


That's my eye on the cover of the book, so YES, this qualifies for an HNT post.