October 31
Happy Halloween, y'all.
Tonight is not really Halloween for me - instead it is the the regular bi-weekly CyberSlayer game. Yes, that is right... a RPG (mostly home-brewed) that is based around the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" universe and set in the Cyberpunk world. I play a one-armed genius hacker with serious morality deficencies and little sense of self-preservation. "You mean it might not be kosher for me to spy on my friend/employeer just because I think that they are not being totally upfront with me about the reasons surrounding/goals of my current project and I am cursed with insatiable curiosity? No!" Hee hee. Much fun.
Had a really good meeting yesterday afternoon with Tom, Jana, and Michael about the CEEL site - where it is now and where it is going. Tom is always very vocal about his admiration of how the site looks and is working. Which is a heck of a nice ego boost. And Tom (he is the CEEL director) is a nice guy and really easy to work with. Plus the CEEL project is just a lot of fun. I blame (or credit?) both it and Michael for getting me so deep into CSS and web standards. Because this will really be my first built-from-scratch XHTML/CSS2 site. I used the FALCON site to sort of cut my teeth on CSS - the CEEL site is the BIG DEAL.
Beware... CSS2 is a job for dedicated Type A personalities only.
And I have my latest CEEL site-work goals. Which are to have the site all XHTML/CSS2 by next Tuesday. And since I blithly said that most, if not all, of the javascript rollovers can be replaced with CSS behaviors, I have my work cut out for me. But that won't be too bad cimpaired to the PHP coding that is also due to go up Tuesday. Michael wants to slice off the navigation into an inc file - which is just fine. But there is a lot of contextual stuff going on on the individual pages... "you are here" sort of things and secondary nav and stuff like that. And Michael wants there to only be a single, site-wide nav inc file. Which is excellent for upkeep, but not so good for my short-term free time. Because that means I need to write PHP scripts that will detect what page of the site a user has clicked on, put in the apprpopriate sub nav in the correct place in the left hand nav column, and swap out the correct rollover button effect for the correct "you are in this section" indicator. *whew*. But I bet I can fine some code I can plunder and rework for CEEL. That is what the internet is for, after all. :P
Am I crazy for saying that this is the sort of thing that I really like doing? Or am I just a geek?
October 29
The last handful of days at work I have been doing a lot of work with CSS/XHTML and web standards. Basically, I have been using the (rather sparse) FALCON web site (http://www.falcon.edu if you want to check it out) for practice runs before I go on to implement the same ideas on the CEEL site and my own site. Aside from some very basic table tags to provide a bit structure and make it easier for older browsers to make sense of the page, all of the presentational stuff has been seperated from the content and moved to a stylesheet. I would love to remove all of the structural tags from the site and use div tags in the style sheet instead, but a lot of older browsers don't support CSS well and tend to choke and die when asked to parse something unfamiliar. Thus, I am using XHTML transitional rather then strict, which shows some leniency towards table tags and the like. Now I just have to slide on over to W3C's site and make sure that this site validates!
Back again - and we have achieved validation! (with a few little necessary code tweaks of course) Woo-ha! *doin' the happy dance*
Yes, I realize that I am getting all excited over web standards, and that a lot of people (those who are not web developers primarily) will probably regard that as silly... and you know what? I don't care. I will be happy here in my little niche.
Of course, my site is so totally not standards compliant. I am filled with shame. I must make it better.
October 27
Time change weekend always hits me pretty hard - it takes my personal biological clock several days to reset itself. Which means that I am tired and pretty much ready to hit the bed right now at nine in the evening.
Been doing a lot with CSS and XHTML on the CEEL site (and a bit on my own as well - if you have noticed, I updated a lot on my photography page) and not making quite as much progress as I would like. A lot of what I want to do - on both sites - is eliminate the javascript and move the rollover effects to the CSS file as much as I can. Which will hopefully cut down on bandwith requirements and load time drastically. But having a bit of a problem with getting it all to work. But that is okay - this is still early in the process. I also cut a lot of the CEEL templates into inc files and was then trying to use php includes to add them to the pages (again, all in the name of reducing load times) but for some reason the includes just aren't showing up. So I need to talk to Michael about them tomorrow, see if he has any ideas about what to do... For now, I have hit a wall.
And Merlin hasn't been making coding easy this evening either, since she has been sitting on my lap while I worked, and occasionally tried to climb up on the keyboard. The keyboard is not cat proof.
So. Since I am feeling mellow and sleepy anyway, I think I will make myself a mug of cocoa, and curl up on the couch with Designing for Web Standards and read a couple of more chapters till I start to fall asleep. And Merlin will be able to sit on my lap, which will make her happy.
'Night all.
October 23
(8:45am)
My rant about Cynnabar.
<rant>
Cynnabar needs a new Webminister. Odo wants to step down and needs to
find a replacememt. He sent an email out to the Cynnabar list announcing
that about a month ago. And I responded, both to him in specific and the
list in general, that I was cautiously interested but needed to know more
about the position. And that was the last that I heard about that. Did
I get any response? (either from Odo or the list?) No. Then a couple of
days ago Odo sends another (rather whiny, it seemed to me) email out to
the list saying that he really needs someone to take over his
position and that he only heard from one person who was interested. I
can only assume that one person was me. That kinda pissed me off. I had
said that I wanted some more information and he completely blew me off.
I guess that Odo must not want to step down that badly if he cannot even
be bothered to respond to someone who expressed interest in his position.
Am I going to write again offering my services? I doubt it. This is some
of my precious free time that I am offering up. And I am not going to
jump up and down, waving my arms and shouting "pick me!" if
Odo cannot be courteous enough to respond to an inquest.
</rant>
This is the day for rants, isn't it? Well it is now a little after 3:00 and I have another one coming....
<rant>
A young woman knocked on our office door earlier to tell us that there was a guy at the public computers who was looking at kiddie porn. The librarian who was at the desk wasn't really doing anything. To be a fair, he was new and there wasn't anyone else out there at the time and maybe he didn't know what to do. However. This guy has apparently done this before. He comes in and goes to his hotmail and gets porn stuff from his email and hops from there to these sites. We have filters up on the public machines, of course. But let's be honest... we can't block everything. The management knows about this guy - he has quite a reputation around the GDL system, I guess. But for some reason they will not call the police about him. I don't know why. They should. Kiddie porn is illegal. They should let the police know - and not just because if they don't and other patrons complain and go to the police and it comes out that the GDL management knew and essentially took no action they would be liable to be sued. They should call the police and throw the guy out because it is the right thing to do, espeically in a place frequented by children. *sigh* I know it is not my business to be concerned about this stuff - I work strictly behind the scenes, after all. But it really bugged me. What kind of a creep do you have to be to go to a public place - a public place where there are usually a lot of little kids - and look at kiddie porn for god's sake?!
</rant>
Thank god it is Friday. I am going to go home and have a beer and code. CSS here I come!
October 22
Nice quiet day at work today - just me and Mark and a lot of non-ringing phones and servers contentedly whirring away without any need of intervention. So I got to settle in for a blissful day reading about web standards, what they are, why they are so important, and (most importantly) how to implement them. It is not often that such days come along, and I tend to savor them when they do. Generally I spend too much time either managing crises or grinding away on some long-running project. Seldom is there time to seek the grail called "professional enhancement" and learn something fun and useful.
I am all excited about this book and XHTML and CSS2 standards and programming...and I have a lot of great ideas for the sites that I am currently working on. Including this one. I just wish I had more time to implement them on my personal projects. But it is easier to find a leprechaun's gold than free time. Who needs sleep anyway? I have high-octane coffee. I can code all night!
October 21
The perils of Beta testing. At work at FALCON this morning we were (supposed to) upgrade the version of Dynix we have been using for the past month (which is itself a Beta version of the software) to a later build - RPA 1.3.1 build 8. As all upgrades are, it was touted to us by the friendly developers at Dynix that the upgrade would be easy, problem-free, and take about 15 minutes. Well, they were right on two counts. It was not, however, trouble-free. The ucialone processes kept either never coming on line or failing right away for one of our agencies. Which in turn caused the authentication for all of the agencies to crash and burn. A considerable amount of tinkering later we just threw the problem back to the Dynix development team and rolled back to the previous version of RPA. As soon as they figure out the problem, we will upgrade again. We have to...we are beta testers. And, more importantly, we are the only beta tester on the dynix system... the other beta testers are all running horizon. I realize that all of this probably means nothing to non-library-tech people, but trust me... it is important. That ate up the whole morning. The upgrade was supposed to only be from 9am to 10am and instead it ended up taking half the day and in the end we couldn't make it work anyway. Se la vie. Such are the perils of beta testing.
Now that a starter version of the CEEL website is up and running, I will begin to completely retool it! That's right, boys and girls... currently CEEL is laid out using tables. What I want to do (And what Michael McIntyre at the PSC wants to do as well) to change the code so that all of the layour is in CSS. And there will be printer-friendly stylesheets and style sheets to reverse the currently white text on black background of the site to a more eye-friendly and easier to read black text on a cream background. And it will be W3C standards compliant! And, no, I am not being sarcastic. I think it will be a lot of fun. Which just goes to show you what a huge geek I am
For the CEEL project I am currently reading a great book on programming to web standards - "Designing with Web Standards" by Jeffrey Zeldman. I like it a lot. This guy writes really well and has a great sense of humor. To Illustrate, I offer the following:
When a patient's appendix bursts, a qualified surgeon perfoms a complete appendectomy. Now imagine if, instead, a trainee were to remove half the appendix, randomly stab a few other organs, and then forget to sew the patient back up. We apologize for the unsavory imagery, but it's what standards support was likein old browsers: dangerously incomplete, incompetent, and hazardoue to the health of the web."
See what I mean? Read the book. That is my shameless plug for the day.
October 19
I always feel tired when I get home after a weekend in Cleveland with my parents. Probably because when I go home (yes, in some ways I still think of my parents' house as home) I never really get time to just relax. Because I am home so infrequently these days, my Mom feels like we have to hurry hurry hurry and pack in as much fun as we can. And I can't complain. I like going home and spending time with my folks.
This was the weekend of the fall Depression Glass show that my Mom and Grandma usually go to. So we all went together. While we were there my Grandma apologized for getting me interested in collecting antique glass. I told her that there were plenty of worse things for me to be collecting. But she did have a point - Depression Glass is very beautiful and very fragile and can be quite expensive. It was not unusual to see pieces with price tags in the upper three to four digits. I have a good idea of what I like in Depression Glass... I love the deep vibrant reds and blues, and I especially like a very delicate clear lilac color that is called "twilight" that is also very rara and quite expensive. I have pricy tastes, I guess. I bought a sugar and creamer set in one of my favorite patterns - moonstone. My favorite pattern - thousand eye - is a bit older then Depression Glass and I don't usually see it at those shows.
At the show we got a very sudden and unpleasant demonstration of the fragility of antique glass. While we were looking around we heard the sound that no one who goes to any of those types of shows likes to hear - a glass breaking. A second later there was an avalanche of shattering glass. Everyone in the room was completely frozen and then moved en masse toward the source of the noise to see what had happened and if anyone had been hurt. Fortunatly, no one was near the glass when it all came tumbling down. Unfortunatly, one of the shelves of glass that one of the merchants had set up had collapsed - on to the shelf beneath it and the table beneath that. So much beautiful glass destroyed. I am sure that they lots thousands of dollars of merchandise. Fortunatly, they were insured, but still.... all of that glass gone for good. They will be reimbursed but it is not the same as selling those pieces to someone who will appreciate them. Moral of the story, I guess, is make sure you have sturdy shelving.
Saturday night I went to the opera with Mom. We used to go to the opera a lot when I was in high school, so this outing was kind of nostalgic for both of us. We saw Carmen at the Sate Theater in downtown Cleveland. It was very well done, the music was breathtaking and the costuming and sets were stunning. And it was long. Over three and a half hours. 8:00-11:30. Guess neither me or Mom can stay uo and party all night like we used to.
October 13
Okay. It has been a long day and a long weekend before that.
Long weekend - but a good weekend. Friday evening I (finally) got this site up at my new domain. Now that the 'basic' site is up, I need to do a lot of work on my portfolios - especially my photography portfolio. I have a lot more photographs that I want to add, and I think that I also ought to redesign the layout of the page so that it is easier to display a large amout of images at once. Tiny thumbnails or crops perhaps? And these would then be links to larger images in all of their glory, of course.
Saturday my friends Kelly and Chris got married. They got married in Ionia. Which is about 2 to 2.5 hours from Ann Arbor depending on how fast you drive and how often you get lost. The wedding was very sweet and the location was gorgeous - this amazing rustic hunting lodge in a state park. I got a lot of good pictures. (Some of which will eventually show up here in my portfolio.) You almost forget that less then a half-mile from this beautiful locale were about five prisons. The economy of Ionia seems to be almost entirely prison based. This is also the town where my friend DeForest grew up - which explains a lot.
I also got to spend a lot of time this weekend wandering around admiring and photographing "the color" as Michiganders refer to the fall display of changing colors. It was very nice. Expeically the Matthei Botanical Gardens in Ann Arbor.
Today.... today was the "In Service Day" for Genesee District Library. Forced fun. And a lot of (very boring) lectures on diversity and valuing employees/fellow workers and teamwork and customer service and stress management library legal issues such as the USA PATRIOT act and CIPA. The GDL management has been talking up this whole "In Service Day" thing like it was some kind of reward for good work, but it felt more like some kind of punishment to me. I don't need to be lectured at on a lot of those topics...some of them I already know about, some of them I don't care about and most of them are not relevant to my job. As an IT person my job is very different and has a radically different focus than most of the rest of the staff. I could think of better and more productive ways to spend my day. Of course, I have also never tolerated meetings well. (Thank god for my trusty PDA, all loaded with games). And it was somewhat disheartening to know that the people that were there who could benefit the most from some of it *cough* the executive director *cough* will take none of it to heart.
October 10
Oh, thank god it is Friday. I need sleep.
It is my fault I haven't been hetting sleep... I lie in bed reading till 1am and then get up at 6am to get ready for work. So I am constantly sleep-deprived during the week. I blame insomnia. And books. If I didn't have such good books to read, then maybe I wouldn't stay up quite so late. To anyone who is interested, I highly recommend reading "Stiff: the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers" by Mary Roach.
So, the web design project that I have been working like mad on for the
past few weeks is finally live. Live, however, does not equal done. there
is still a bunch of stuff I am working on - cleaning up code, PHP and
Perl scripts, dropping in new images and text as the center director forwards
stuff to me... it is just not quite as urgent now. The big push was to
get it up in time with the adds for the center that were coming out in
AAA (American Anthropological Association) and DoubleTake Magazine this
week.
http://ceel.psc.isr.umich.edu
Check it out.
October 9
Well yesterday was certainly an interesting day at work. The rats have begun to leave the sinking ship. Not that my co-worker Wayne is a rat, of course. (He is a very nice guy who decided to accept a very nice job offer that will allow him and his family to move much closer to where his parents live.) But the desertion has begun. Actually, I was pretty surprised that I was not the first one of us to officially bail. Especially since I have been mentally checked-out out since I realized a) how much the executive director of GDL hates my department and actively has it in for us and b) that she is an evil psychopath who richly deserves the nickname "Caligula" that I have for her. I honestly think that the cut-throat politics of an academic department in a large research university would be relaxing after this place.
Not that this place is all bad - I like my co-workers and my supervisor, and I think that the work is interesting and important. But the general atmosphere is just toxic. And all because of one person. Kinda depressing.
October 3
Okay. I am feeling better today. Yesterday was the low point where I just bottomed out on all of the work I have been trying to get done. I can blame it on too much coffee and too little sleep as much as anyone else. Doing the little rant helped put some stuff in perspective.
As soon as the CEEL website goes up I am going to cut back a lot on my extracurricular consulting stuff. And there isn't as much left to do on the CEEL website as I had feared - the search code is going to be a lot easier then I thought, for one thing. Which will be a big help. I was afraid initially that it would be a huge timesuck. Five or Eight hours over the next couple of daya sought to be enough time to finish it off and test it out before deployment. As for everything else... cutting back on extra stuff ought to help a lot. I doubt I will try to teach at Washtenaw. And I also very much doubt that I will take over cynnabar.org unless I can find someone to be my webminister partner in that. And yeah, I feel a little gnawing guild over the thought of passing up on good work, but that is something I just have to get over.
And thank you to Zach for the nice supportive email after my stressful day yesterday. :) It is nice to get a response from one of my select group of readers.
Damn, am I glad it is Friday.
October 2
Surgeon General's Warning: This log was written when I was feeling particularily overwelmed about the amount of work that I cannot seem to stop myself from taking on.
I am working too much. I know that. But it is hard to stop, and stuff just keeps coming along that I want to get involved in. For instance, I saw on SI's job board that Washtenaw Community College is looking for someone to teach an internet/web design class. Which I think would be cool and would be some really good experience if I intend to pursue a PhD and an academic career. (If nothing else, it would let me decide if I really would like to teach or not) And Cynnabar's webminister wants to step down - and I am considering offering to take his place. It would be a great porofolio builder.
And then I stop to think about all of that. I already work a full-time job. And I do part-time (15 or so hours a week) consulting and web design for the Population Studies Center at UM because I like the experience and because frankly my full-time job is not giving me much of a creative outlet. And I occasionally do bits of freelance design for people who see my site and contact me. And I have my own projects. I recently registered my own domain and am working on a "new and improved" version of my site to put up on it. And I have plenty of other things I want to work on. And I have no time because I am already too busy.
Why do I keep doing this? Why do I keep filling up my hours until there is nothing left to fill and essential things (like grocery shopping) get put on hold for days because I simply don't have the time? I feel like I should enter some sort of 12-step program for compulsive type A workaholics.
Probably at least part of it stems (like so much) from when I was a kid - when if my Mom saw me idling along, she would find me something (usually chores or homework) to do. And I know that a lot of it is a fear of losing my primary job and having to meet my expenses with no income coming in. Which is what I did last winter when I was "let go" from DiamondBullet. And believe me, when you are scrutinizing every single penny, the bills - the rent, the student loan payments, the car payments, not to mention the utility bills, the phone bill, and grocery bills - all add up to a frightening amount.How would I manage if I lost my job and had trouble finding a new one? So I work and work and work so I can save money and build a network so that if I lose my current job I won't be completely without income. Which may be a little psycotic, but I have trouble taking chances with some things...I need a safety net, ya know?
So I end up working pretty much all of the time. I get home from my full-time job and usually go right to my consulting stuff (or if I am lucky, to one of my many projects) and spend most of the rest of the evening doing that. And while I am doing all of this work I feel guilty that I am blowing off my friends because, of course, all of the work leaves very little time for being social and hanging out and just taking it easy. But that guilt doesn't stop me from working... I just start to avoid my friends so that I can try to forget about feeling guilty for avoiding them because I take on too much extra work. So I avoid them even more. I haven't even chatted with my friend Josh on AIM lately because I am simultaneously afraid of being distracted from work and afraid of what he will think of me for working so (too) much...which I realize isn' exactly fair.
I think I relaxed more and had more free time when I was in grad school. I really need to learn how to relax. And I really need to figure out how and what to pare out of my schedule so that I have more time for my friends and for my own stuff.
Which ought to happen as soon as the site redesign that I am working on for the Center for the Ethnography of Everyday Life goes live. (October 7 - next week) Fortunatley most of the heavy lifting work is done for that. Most of what is left is tweaking HTML and images and stylesheet and writing some light javascript to create rolling images (that change every time the browser is refreshed). The biggest thing will be writing the search function. And I can probably find some code I can plunder for that.
Damn. I need to slow down and take it easy.