Inadverdant Productivity
July 31, 2003 @ 08:59 PM
Hrm. I'm not really in the mood to update at the moment, but I feel some sort of obligation to do so (seeing as how I had a fairly good day, and such), so my plan at the moment is to simply try very, very hard, push through this mood, and hope that it passes. Much in the same way a kidney stone is gotten rid of, I think. I've never had one. *g*
Lorenzo and I (boy, he keeps showing up a lot in here, doesn't he? I keep trying to talk him into starting a blog, but so far, no luck. He says he doesn't see the point. And I have a hard time getting past that sort of barrier, because I was blogging before I knew there was a term for it. :) C'mon folks, give him a bit of encouragement. Go, 'zo! Go, 'zo!)
Eh... I got distracted. I'll start over. Mister No-Blog and I were far more productive today at work than either of us had intended. This week has been funny like that. See, it's just the two of us at work these last twelve or so days, because our boss has been on vacation. He left us a list of things to do in his absence, and we've been slowly but surely working our way through it. Last Thursday, he and I updated all six of our current checkout laptops and added four more to the lineup. This Tuesday, he and I started out replacing the college-owned Ethernet hubs in the computer lab with our own department-owned hubs (because the university charges us monthly to use their hubs, and that's pretty darned anal), and we ended up rewiring most the lab to make sure it's compatible with the future 100MB department upgrade.
[paragraphs improve legibility. did you know that?]
And today, we went from wires to wireless. Our department had three wireless access points in the building, and another owned by the university (another one of those rental things). However, there were large swaths of the building without any wireless access whatsoever. So, today No-Blog and I remedied that. We strategically (using our WiFi-enabled PDAs as guides) dispersed the four new access points, removed two of our old ones, and eliminated the university's hotspot entirely. The result? Roughly 95% of the building has good wireless access, and the important rooms (i.e., the classrooms) have redundant coverage, meaning if one access point locks up or something, the classroom will still have access. The only rooms without access are a couple of offices surrounded by several feet of steel and concrete, and there wasn't a heck of a lot we could do about those.
We had a great time doing it, we made a significant improvement to the building's network, and we got to run around the building all day with our PDAs, checking signal strength, barging in and out of offices, and picking up birthday cake from the chair of the department. It was great. :)
I also got most of the way through developing a generic-y business-type website template. The reason, you ask? None of your business! Nah, kidding. I unofficially have a new part-time job as a web designer for a new web hosting company. *beams* I say unofficially, and I leave said company's name unsaid, because I'm still waiting for paperwork and so on that would make such arrangements legit. Once that is done, I'll give you all more information. Suffice it to say that, if this works out, I'll finally have the opportunity to get the experience I've been harping about for god knows how long here. :) Cool, eh? I certainly think so. Especially if it makes me some moola.
Time to e-mail Eric and start making plans for our camping trip in one week's time. Those of you who haven't been updating, update! Those of you who have, nag those who haven’t. :)
No Notes, Blokes
July 29, 2003 @ 11:47 AM
I was planning on posting my notes on Gnomedex, but looking over them now that I'm home and without the crutch of context, I realize that my note-taking ability leaves something to be desired. Therefore, you're going to be spared my notes. If you're legitimately curious as to which speaker said what (whether you missed the speech, or are just trying to freshen the memory), check out Beth Goza's (AKA Beth G from Microsoft's) blog. It looks as though she was blogging during the speeches, so her notes are more accurate than mine would have been regardless.
So! I guess I'm just about done boring all you non-techies with posts about Gnomedex. The point is, I loved it, I saw and met a lot of people I would have otherwise spent the rest of my life not seeing (but wishing I had), and there are already plans in the making (so I hear) for a Gnomedex 4.0. Let's hope I'm still in the state next September, eh? Or, at least, that my schedule is as flexible as it was this year.
I'm still in the mood to try new skins, so if any of you have any thematical suggestions, I'd be tickled a pretty shade of pink to hear them. Usually, when I'm designing for my website, I sit down, play with images until I find something I like, and then repeat that same step until I've got a sufficiently large layer of clutter to call a skin. Maybe working from a thematical standpoint wouldn't be such a bad idea. :)
Before I get a chance to forget again:
Happy Birthday, M'ris!
M'ris turned 25 on July 26, meaning the two coolest geeks I know celebrated a birthday that day. :) If you're not using today as one of your birthday days, M'ris, feel free to save the greeting above until a day you ~are~ using as such. And if you e-mail me your snail-mail address, you'll likely get an honest-to-goodness birthday card out of the deal, because I seem to have misplaced your address again. :)
I'm feeling far more productive today than I probably have been. Lorenzo and I spent all morning rewiring the computer lab upstairs, and we did a damn fine job, if I do say so myself. And I do. :) Anyway, it's time to relax by doing something less productive. Reading blogs and scanning stock photo websites for thematical ideas sounds just about right.
A Bit of Housekeeping
July 28, 2003 @ 10:49 AM
This is just a quick entry to keep all of you (my loyal fans) on the up-and-up regarding the goings-on here at JA. I still have more to say regarding Gnomedex, but this entry isn't going to be it. :)
Goings-On Alpha: Another Skin Introduced
Those of you who have waited patiently for a new skin have been rewarded for your patience: a new skin, Gazette, has been introduced. Gazette is intended to look like an online newspaper, such as the New York Times, whose site I used for inspiration. The skin is also my first real attempt at using absolute positioning to rearrange my menus. The 'search' menu has been moved from the sidebar to the top of the screen, without touching a single line of my HTML. I may tweak this skin a bit yet, but I wanted to get it out to you all. This way, any (helpful!) comments can be taken into consideration for future revisions.
Goings-On Beta: Blogrolling Gold
In a move entirely contrary to my nature, I've paid for a piece of software I use and consider valuable. :) I'm an official member of the Blogrolling Gold club, which means that for $20 a year, I get to have greater control over my Blogroll. I doubt you notice a change right away (though the code has changed a bit), but the ~opportunity~ for change is now there. :) Multiple blogrolls and even facerolls are now within the realm of possibility.
Goings-On Gamma: Gnome-Girl Added
Take a gander at my blogroll, and you'll see a new link: Gnome-Girl. I've been reading Gnome-Girl's blog off-and-on for nearly as long as I can remember, but I've never linked to her for the same reason I waited so long to link to Chris Pirillo's blog: they're both already too damned popular for their own good. *grin* However, I met Gnome-Girl at Gnomedex, and I came to the realization that I like her as a person, popular or not. Even more significantly, she's a real human being, and not just a conglomeration of random text. So nyah. I'll probably be adding a couple of more links that I check out more-or-less daily in the next few days.
Goings-On Delta: Da RSS Feed (sorry, I needed a 'D')
I was inspired by Chris Pirillo's talk on RSS at Gnomedex, so I spent this morning working on my RSS feed. I've had RSS .93 and 1.0 for a while, but they were just the default feeds generated by MovableType. This morning, I scrapped them both, and figured out my own template for RSS 2.0. Those of you with feed readers (news aggregators) should be fine subscribing to http://www.rootarcana.com now. :)
That's all for now. I've got a busy day at work today, so I ought to get started. Hopefully, I'll have time later to talk a bit more about Gnomedex. Later this week, I may even have some pictures to post.
Happy Lockergnome Day!
July 26, 2003 @ 07:12 PM
So much to say, so much to say! This has been an absolutely incredible day, with absolutely incredible speakers. Gnomedex truly is a unique experience, and it has been worth its paltry $99 entry fee more than once over. Today, while surrounded by my friends, peers, and fellow technothusiasts, I heard publishing little-g god Tim O'Reilly heckle columnist and grumpy-old-man extraordinaire John Dvorak from the crowd. Where else would I have such an opportunity?
So much to say, I'm not even going to attempt to record it all in one post. This is going to be quite short, actually, since I'm still at the conference and have (frankly) better things to do with my time than blog. :) Of course, I feel a sort of obligation to share the wealth of knowledge that has been bestowed upon me, so I can't leave off blogging entirely.
I sort of feel like I'm gloating, because I'm sure that a lot of the people who will read this aren't here right now, and I don't want to make anyone feel as though they've been left out. Even if they have. *g* Luckily for you, if you are one of those who feels left out, it sounds as though you'll have a chance in years to come. Gnomedex has been held in Des Moines for the last three consecutive years, but there have been a lot of rumors floating around that suggested that next year's conference might not be held here. There was nothing ever official in that thread, of course, but that doesn't stop rumors much. However, I think my fears of such a future have been set aside for a while to come. The mayor pro tem of Des Moines spoke today at lunch, and announced that today, July 26th, the last day of Gnomedex and incidentally Chris Pirillo's 30th birthday, is hereby Lockergnome Day in Des Moines. Chris Pirillo was honored by the city of Des Moines in one of the most powerful was possible. So I don't see Gnomedex wandering too far from the true heart and heartland of the Gnome world anytime in the near future.
More later, when I've got more free time. :)
Gnomedex Haikus
July 25, 2003 @ 04:04 PM
A Haiku is a form of poetry. I recently found out that, in addition to having a regular 5-syllable / 7-syllable / 5-syllable form, a proper Haiku should referrence the season in which it is written, however bluntly or obscurely. It is Summer now, I am in Iowa, and it is hot. I've attempted to relay the feel of the season in the following Haikus.
Caffeinated snacks,
Blog names bloom into faces,
Lockwood, she is hot.
Rob Malda speaking:
Ran Slashdot beneath a desk.
Gretchen, too, is hot.
Chris's mom is nice.
His dad made boobs from balloons.
Gnome-girl: Suprise! Hot.
You'll hear from me again. :)
I'm Here!
July 25, 2003 @ 09:22 AM
Well, I made it here. The most difficult part thus far (excluding the parking garage, I guess), was finding the registration desk. I was okay with following the little arrows. I wasn't so great at distinguishing between upper and lower levels. *g* I could here the bustle of registration from where I stood; I could't tell it was coming from 12 feet above me.
Most of the people here are male, most are a few years older than me, and most are wearing jeans (but not so many of any that I feel excessively male, young, or dressed). Gretchen Pirillo was helping at the registration desk, so I've seen one blogging celebrity already. :)
Welp, the doors have opened wide. Time to explore.
I'm Off!
July 25, 2003 @ 08:07 AM
I'll be leaving in the next few minutes to travel the treacherous road (due mainly to construction, one-way traffic and drowsy morning commuters, not goblins or orcs) to Des Moines for a day spent among Alpha Geeks at Gnomedex: The Fellowship of the Geeks. It should be a blast. I'm wearing khakis and a nice shirt, which is somewhat unusual for me, but I'm bringing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt in case I'm the only person who decides to dress business-casual. *g*
I'm taking my PDA with me, and there will be wireless access at this here conference, so I may or may not blog a bit if something interesting happens. We'll have to see. I'm not allowed to plug my power cord in anywhere, so I have to try and preserve my battery.
Oh, and it looks like I have a new part-time job. :) I'll tell you all about it. Just not right now. If you happen to see me, of course, you're more than welcome to inquire.
Wish me luck in finding my way through the maze of construction and one-way streets that is the downtown Des Moines area. :)
Morning Musing
July 23, 2003 @ 08:36 AM
Well, I've got just 48 hours to go until Gnomedex begins. All in all, I'm pretty dang excited, even if I don't get to be one of the long-haired geeks anymore (see the previous post for more on ~that~). My co-worker Lorenzo will be going, as well, but he has a test that morning and will be arriving late, which means that I will be arriving solo. Which makes me nervous, of course of course. And also means I should probably print out directions on how to get to the Polk County Convention Complex, if I want to show up whatsoever. :)
Does anyone out there in the blogosphere have any books on graphic design they'd be willing to loan me? Or maybe suggestions of entry-level graphic design books I could look for in the library? I've been feeling rather self-concious regarding my lack of design knowledge these last few days, and I'm hoping to remedy the situation with all due speed. I wonder if the subject ever made an appearance in the "For Dummies" series? *G*
Thanks for the comments on the previous entry, by the by, even if my grandma and Dani were the only generally positive ones (and my grandma would have left a positive comment on a post regarding just about any disfigurement of yours truly that resulted in my having fewer piercings or shorter hair). ;)
Back to work with me.
A Hair-Raising Tale
July 21, 2003 @ 09:16 PM
Let me tell you a story. It is, in some ways, a story of bravery. It is also in many ways a story of tragedy, of pointless and irrevocable loss. And above all else, it is a story of hair. My hair, to be more precise and still a little vague. :)
It all started, more or less, Friday. I mean, it really had started long before that, because I've had hair for quite some time now. As long as I can remember, really, and likely even longer than that. I have thick, dark, curly, generally unmanageable hair. Which meant, once I'd gathered the strength and endurance to grow it out long, it stayed thick, dark, curly and unmanageable, but all of that somehow worked together to look pretty damn good grown out (if I do say so myself (and I do)).
But anyway, back to Friday. I made a decision Friday. I decided that I needed a haircut. Well, I guess I made that decision quite a while before Friday. I'd really been thinking it since before our camping trip last week, as well. I even mentioned it to a few people, such as my mom, in hopes that she might cut it for me. She's trained in all those fancy-schmancy hair-cutting arts, you know.
But anyway! Friday, I decided that I was going to get it cut that weekend, and that I wasn't going to bother my mom about it. She hasn't been feeling the best lately, and I didn't see any reason to make her stand on her feet for any longer than her job made necessary, so I decided to bite the bullet and pay for a trim.
Next time, I'll know to check for live munitions before I bite down. :)
A trim is really all I needed. My hair had grown a bit too long for my tastes as of late, as you can see in this picture here, taken on the trip home from visiting M'ris:
Hair-Raising I (Click for New Window)
Although you can't see it in that picture, I was starting to get a halo effect from all the smaller hairs floating about my head, which didn't look particularly nice. And, as you CAN see, my hair was past my shoulders, so it was starting to feel like a nuisance. I could new and interesting things with it, like lean against a wall and pin my head to the wall with my hair, or get hair in my mouth when I was taking a shower.
So, I went through all the old images I had of myself, looking for a length of hair that I'd particularly liked. I settled on the length seen here, taken at the very end of April (as part of a mirror project submission):
Hair-Raising II (Click for New Window)
At that lengh, my hair looked nice, took care of itself, and didn't get in my way. It was perfect. So, I printed off that very same image and took it with me to Great Clips. I figured, it couldn't get any easier than I was making it for the stylist: I wasn't asking her to make me look like some random movie or music star, I was asking her to make me look like me.
"This is me," I said, holding the picture up to the hair stylist (if that ~is~ her real title). "This is what I looked like a couple of months ago. I want to look like me again. A couple of inches is all it should take." She nodded her head.
Silly me, I assumed she was nodding her head in understanding. Now, of course, I understand that she was nodding to the quiet little voices inside her head. You know the ones. They're the ones who say things like, "Your mother never loved you when you were little," or "They're all laughing at you! Are you really just going to stand there with that crowbar and take it from them?," or "Burn them! Burn them all!" You know the voices, right?
Anyway. She wasn't nodding in understanding. No way. Couldn't have been. Because, take a look first at the picture I gave her (the one above), and then, if you're brave, or if your eyes have already wandered too far, take a look at this picture here:
Hair-Raising III (Click for New Window)
This is what she did to me based on my instructions. Compare the two. Aside from the glasses and the perpetual shadow of facial hair, do you see much in common between the two? Maybe I should have taken off my glasses when she was cutting my hair, to force her to try harder for a match. I asked for two inches off. She took closer to six.
I was a little bit devastated. I'd never understood girls before when they got emotional over haircuts. It's just hair, right? Of course, I'd never before lost six inches of hair, which had taken me six months to grow, at once. It's frighteningly traumatic. And also a tad dangerous. When I got out of the shower for the first time (washing the tiny shorn hairs out of the slightly longer hairs, you know), I nearly sprained my neck trying to flick several pounds of wet hair out of my face that wasn't there anymore. The motion, it seems, had become automatic. :)
What was I to do? My hair was gone! So, I did the only thing I could think of (with a little help from Megan): I made what little hair I had left a bit more interesting to look at.
I've only dyed my hair once before this, and that was during some autumn or another when I dyed my hair a few shades darker to compensate for the bleaching the sun had given it the summer before. This time, I decided to go lighter. Quite a bit lighter, actually.
Hair-Raising IV (Click for New Window)
As you can see, Megan and I took a bottle of blond dye (the good, strong stuff), and bleached sections of my hair an interesting shade of blond. No, I don't like it nearly as much as I liked my hair 48 hours ago. If I had the choice, I'd have my old hair back. But I don't have that choice, so I might as well have a bit of fun with what hair I've got.
Comments? *grin*
Initial Pre-Haunt Impressions
July 17, 2003 @ 06:13 PM
Cool beans. Actually, hot beans. Hot ~coffee~ beans, to be exact. Megan and I are, at this very moment, sitting at a table in Gregory's Coffeehouse. It seems like a nice place. A quiet place, certainly. And a quiet place with wireless access, as you can see. I'll comment as to the quality of coffee when I've had a chance to taste the wares.
Ah, here it is now... a tall caramel latte. Mmm... it's a winner. :) This place is hiring... mebbe I should apply for an after-school job. Or mebbe Megan should. Anyways, I'm off to test the creative waters in my new locale. Adieu.
M'ris and Us (and then me)
July 17, 2003 @ 10:28 AM
M'ris & Us (Click to Enlarge)
That's (obviously) Megan, myself, and M'ris right before Megan and I left Omaha for Iowa. Hopefully, I'll have a picture of Danielle, Megan and I to post in a couple of days, but I figure I'll let Dani get home first before I start pestering her. *g*
Things I did yesterday:
I figured out a new way to load skins via my PHP script, one which plays much more nicely with PDAs and browsers which restrict cookie use. I'd heard tell that my site wasn't loading properly for some people (the browsers were stuck in an infinite redirect loop), so this change should take care of that.
I left my keys at work when I left yesterday afternoon, causing them to be locked in the office overnight. I didn't notice until I got back to my apartment. This is one of the perils, I guess, of riding the bus: I go days without really using my keys for anything more than a reassuring weight in my pants. And you can leave your manhood jokes at home, thankyouverymuch. :)
I walked up over thirty flights of stairs. Not all at once, of course (there are no buildings in Ames with that many stories), but before noon. Yesterday, as I mentioned, was a stinkin' busy day at work, and I try to stay away from the elevators here unless I'm taking something heavy or unwieldy up several flights of stairs. I need the exercise.
I went for a hike in Inis Grove Park with Megan. We followed a trail we'd never followed before, and ended up, after being tormented and eaten alive by swarms of mosquitoes along the Skunk River (though, judging by the name of the river, we could have had worser adversaries), at the pool southwest of the park. We followed the roads back, no longer in the mood to play with bugs, no matter how pretty the backdrop may be.
I contemplated what to do on my birthday. I didn't come to any sort of conclusion. I hope to come to one tonight. :)
I started writing in my paper journal again. This marked the third entry in this paper journal. The second was from August 20, 2002. Let's hope a do a better job at establishing a regular pattern this time. I'm hoping to use the journal to practice freewrite's, etc, which I've never done before. Here's to hoping. :)
This evening, I'm hoping to visit Gregories' Coffeehouse (spelling and name are approximations), which is practically next door to my apartment, but I've never been to. Their sign advertises wireless internet access, so if the coffee's any good, I might try and make the coffeehouse my own geeky little writer's haunt. Everybody, or at least everybody who is like myself and who wants to be what I want to be, needs a geeky writer's haunt to call their own.
On Seeing Danielle Again
July 16, 2003 @ 10:33 AM
It takes a while to get from my place of residence to Danielle's family stead. Two and a half hours, at roughly eighty miles an hour, if you like to count by time and distance. Three CD's, if you're the sort that likes to listen to music as you drive. It took a bag of gummi bears and a 20 ounce cappuccino to get me back home again, if you measure nighttime driving with caffeine and sugar as I do. :)
Regardless of how you measure the path taken, it was worth it when we got there. It was great to see Danielle again. It wasn't until I saw her again, that I remembered how much I've missed her being around this last year.
She showed us around the place (both inside and out). We grilled hamburgers (both beef and pork) that ended up looking more like ham balls and hot dogs that were thicker than many bratwurst I've encountered at countless cook-outs. We sat and talked, and I noticed that I did a lot of the talking this time. Maybe I was more comfortable talking with Dani (as I heard her calling herself), since we have a common history to rely upon to supply conversational fodder. Or maybe Danielle is just more of the quiet, reserved Midwestern sort than M'ris, and there were larger gaps in the conversation which I felt unconsciously obligated to fill. I'm voting for the former, though. :)
I met Danielle's parents for the first time, which was interesting. Danielle definitely takes after her father in a lot of physical traits (yeah, obviously not ~all~ of them *g*), but I could see similarities between her and her mother in their foreheads, eyes, and cheekbones. Her dad reminded me a lot of my own, and even Megan agreed. They're both younger than most of the fathers of Dani's and my generation, they both work harder than most anyone else I know, and they both have great senses of humor not quite hidden by their stoic Iowan exteriors. Megan and I decided that Dani's dad looks like a farmer, but a cool farmer. Neither of us were quite sure what that meant. :)
We talked and we laughed and we talked some more. We played a game of Scrabble while Ocean's Eleven played in the background (Dani won solidly, I think. I came in an unhealthy third). When both were over, we watched Goldmember and laughed some more. When Goldmember ended, it was one in the morning, and time to head home. Dani offered to let us spend the night, to make the tiring drive in the morning when I'd had some sleep, but I declined. I really, truly wanted to stay the night, and I decided against it for one reason only: I knew that the only reason I wanted to stay was because I didn't want to have to say goodbye again. Like it or not (and I was very much of the 'not' persuasion), I was going to have to say goodbye anyway, so I decided to do it and get it over with. We took a couple of pictures (again, as with M'ris, we used her digital camera and not ours, so we have to wait patiently for shots), and headed to the nearest gas station for petrol, caffeine, and gummi bears. I didn't shed a tear as we left, but I won't say that it wasn't close.
I miss her already.
Before we left, Danielle (jokingly or not, I'm not sure) suggested Megan and I take a road trip in early August for my birthday, camping our way out to her area, staying with her, and camping our way back. And now, damned if Megan and I aren't cautiously considering it. We don't know what we're doing yet for my birthday, or even if we'll be doing anything at all, but Dani's possibly joking suggestion has made the list of options. Of course, that would require me taking a couple of additional days off work, and that sounds like a really bad idea at this exact moment (I'm not yet sure how I'm going to afford to live and go to college at the same time with only one job this coming semester). Ah well, it's just one more thing to think about.
Work is keeping me exceedingly busy this morning, so I'll leave that at that and talk to you-all at a later date.
The Weekend Update with Rob L. Glazebrook
July 14, 2003 @ 11:17 AM
The weekend spent camping with the family was nice. Nicer than I expected, to be sure. Knowing my family and my past 21-year history of interaction with them, I expected two solid days of bickering back and forth between me and them, them and us, or wherever the dividing lines and alliances were drawn this time round. This was only true for the last 15 or so minutes of the weekend, when my grandfather told me that I and all of 'us' (I suppose meaning anyone in my generation, because I'm sure his generation was innocent and therefore exempt) sporting tattoos were trashy. I decided, at that point, that skipping lunch and heading home an hour early was probably the best thing I could do, so I did so.
But anyway, I'm focusing on the negative, which was truly an emotional minority this weekend. I had a great time. There was an abundance of good food to munch on, since my grandma was there, and she's a good cook no matter what her geographical locale. After food-munching, there was also a bunch of stuff to do to work off all the accumulating calories. I swam, played croquet, ping-pong, pool, volleyball, and lounged in the sun, which may not burn off a lot of calories, but I'm sure my melanin appreciated the workout. I've been the same shade of off-pasty for the last couple of years, and I currently have a decent tan (and a sunburnt nose) to enjoy for the next few days before both fade back to my melaninotic state of rest.
So it was a good time. Days were spent in the sun, nights were spent huddled around the campfire with those of my generation (the older generations headed to bed come nightfall), and the early morning hours between 3am and 8am were spent catching a few hours sleep. My only real regret of the weekend is that I got invited out both Friday and Saturday nights by different groups of friends, one group whom I've only seen twice so far this summer, and I had to miss out on what I'm sure would have been a good time back here in Ames. But camping trips only come so often, the weather during the summer in Iowa is rarely as perfect, and I had plenty of fun both nights right where I was.
Now if only the weekend had lasted a few more weeks. *grin* Instead, I'm back at work, sipping a cup of coffee, rebuilding a couple of computers, and writing this entry to stave off the monotony. I'm leaving work early (yet again) to prepare for yet another mini road trip, this time to northern Iowa to see Danielle for the first time in far too long a span. Rumor (and the last entry's comments) has it that it should be a good time, with more good things to eat that I'll later regret having eaten so much of than I could ever hope for. *g* All I gotta say is, Danielle better be packin' the food away, too. :)
The rest of the week looks to be pretty dull. There's a couple of bills to pay, a couple of things to buy (such as admission to Gnomedex), and an apartment which could always use a good disinfecting, but probably won't get it. I'll play this weekend by ear, and next weekend will be Gnomedex, so the rest of my July will probably be bland in comparison to the first half.
And then, it's August and my birthday. Megan and I don't have anything planned yet, though the idea of yet another camping trip did come up, so we'll have to see. I wouldn't mind heading back to Maquoketa, methinks, even though I told Megan the opposite when she suggested it a week or two ago. Ah well. That's why she reads this thing. *g*
Of course, a camping trip on my birthday would require even more time off work, and I'm starting to feel bad for all the time I'm spending ~not~ working. I rationalize it all by telling myself that this is possibly the last summer I'll spend as a college student, meaning it's probably the last summer I'll have with more freedom than obligations. I should take advantage of it while I've got it, I tell myself. And I think I halfway believe me. :)
Do you?
Into the Wilderness
July 11, 2003 @ 04:04 PM
Megan, my family, and I will be spending the weekend camping out in the wilderness. Assuming you classify wilderness in the loosest of ways, that being anything not distinctly urban and/or suburban. As such, you'll probably be able to get ahold of me on my cell phone or via the Message Me option in the menu if you need to. Have a good weekend.
Thoughts on Meeting Someone Whom I'd First Known Through a Weblog
July 11, 2003 @ 07:00 AM
She's taller than I thought. Or maybe she's shorter. Regardless, somehow, she doesn't quite look like she ever does in the pictures she posts online. It's the eyes, mostly. Her eyes never seem as forthright in the photographs I've seen, never as full of life. She never looks me in the eye as she tells me about her day in her weblog.
She is not her weblog. There are similarities, of course, just as there would be between some famous administrator of government and their inevitable mocking caricature. Her weblog is a part of her, but her true substance lies in the omissions. She is more. I wonder, as we converse, how long I'll be able to mentally maintain such a distinction.
She has truer emotions than her weblog. Or maybe I just notice them easier now, without the fog of textual communication. Her writing style opts more for pure-text storytelling, as such is her trade. Her entries are never littered, as mine inevitably are, with smilies and emotions bracketed by asterisks or tildes. As she smiles, I try and force an imprint of that smile into my mind, so that when I am reading her weblog a month from now, I can include the appropriate mental image.
She is REAL.
We talk. Mostly, she talks and I listen. It feels as if it shouldn't or couldn't be any other way. Our conversational styles reflect our weblog writing styles. She offers those who care to listen the bread, the meat, a multi-course meal, running the gamut of conversation from background information to analysis to thoughtful speculation. I offer mostly treats, the occasional factual tidbit and the intermittent introspective speculation, as the thought and the mood strike me.
Eventually, our conversation turns to weblogs: how could it not? I find it significant that the conversation stayed as far from the subject for as long as it did, nearly five hours, before flowing in that direction. It indicates to me that we could be friends outside of our writing, given the opportunity.
It also reminds me, as our conversation does move to discussing our corner of the blogosphere in the final few minutes we have to sit together face to face, being to being, that for a while again, our writing is all there will be.
Will I hear her voice, see her eyes, her smile, notice her substance and depth above and beyond her words? Will she hear the me that never puts in an appearance on this screen, that never exposes himself in this text? Will our digital rapport be changed, for better or for worse, by our newfound physical understanding? I don't know. But for now, I suppose, it's enough just to know that they're there.
Counting Down
July 09, 2003 @ 10:35 AM
(clicking, in this story, usually takes you to images. So click!)
Twenty-four hours from now, Megan and I will be on our way to meet M'ris in Omaha at her parent's house, which is this big red star here. I have no idea why M'ris's parents (I just love those double apostrophes) choose to live in a giant red star-shaped dwelling, but who am I to complain? It'll make it easier to find, even though I ~am~ partially relying on Yahoo! to get me there. M'ris provided us with text directions, though, so Yahoo!'s (now ~that~ is an odd use of apostrophe) sole purpose is linking a mental image to those ambiguous street names.
-a few minutes later-
Hrm. It turns out that Mris isn't staying in the giant red star house after all. Actually, as far as I can tell from this satellite imagery I borrowed from my governmental sources (whom shall remain nameless, of course), there's no giant red star house in that neighborhood at all. ~sigh~ Yahoo! has been a letdown once again. Maybe they were hoping the exclamation point at the end of their company name would provide all the excitement they hoped to invoke in their customers. Of course, judging from their market share, maybe they were right. :) This imagery could come in handy in a pinch, though. If I get lost somewhere in Omaha, I could always just climb a reeeeally big tree and have a look-see around until I see a neighborhood I recognize.
-a few more minutes later (quelque minutes plus tard? (my French is already going))-
Well, I can't reveal my sources, but I do feel a bit more comfortable about my trip knowing that I'm visiting a normal-looking (actually, a quite beautiful) home of regular geometric form and proportion. I can only hope it will be this sunny tomorrow.... it's been raining here for the last seven or so hours.
Yup, a little over twenty-four hours from now, M'ris will become the first person I'll meet face-to-face that I first met via a blog. The honors of being the first person I ever met from the online world in general goes to Chris (aka Spiffbob), as seen in these pictures taken a few years ago during my first unsuccessful attempt at long hair and a while before my first successful attempt at low weight (hosted in all their giganticness (gigantiosity? (gargantuanitude?)) by 'Grumble,' seen in the second picture). The first was taken in Nat's dorm room before Spiff and I left on our road trip together. The second was taken in Random's apartment in Boston, halfway or so through the trip). Tomorrow's encounter will be far shorter, but no doubt every bit as stimulating. For those of you who can't wait to see the pictures that are sure to follow, here is an artist's interpretation of Megan and M'ris and I meeting each other for the first time.
Hrm. I guess that big red star is in the neighborhood somewhere. My apologies, Yahoo!.
---
Author's Note:
No, I'm not a stalker. *g* The first image was borrowed, quite obviously, from Yahoo!. The second image was gleaned from Microsoft's Terraserver, which I've mentioned here before. The third image was taken from the Douglas County Assessor website. And the fourth image (and really, this entire entry in general) is a direct result of my upset stomach and last night's storms causing me to get less than two and a half hours sleep total. :)
Just Some Thoughts
July 07, 2003 @ 08:22 PM
Cool Thought of the Day:
I've less than a month now (30 days) until I turn 22. I didn't realize until today that my birthday was so close. When'd I get so old?
Scary Thought of the Day:
I've less than a year now (10 months) until I graduate. I haven't even decided yet if I want to work following graduation or go for a higher degree. Both have their advantages and drawbacks. When'd life get so hard?
Cool Site of the Day:
Stopdesign.com. It's just chock full of wholesome web goodness. I wanna learn from this guy. I wonder if I should buy another domain name, whereupon I could post my resumé, contact information, and portfolio?
Funny Thought of the Day:
I was working on a machine down in the depths of the windowless hole where I work, when my idling brain made a connection between two generally unrelated movies: Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead and Mrs. Doubtfire. The result? Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dad. I wonder if I need more coffee, or less?
Busy week ahead. I'm taking work off Thursday to drive to Omaha and meet M'ris. I'm leaving work a touch early Friday to prepare for a weekend-long camping trip with the family. The following week, Dwight is out of town for a long-awaited (for him, I mean... c'mon now) vacation. That Friday, Lorenzo and I plan to close down shop and head to Gnomedex.
Somewhere in there, I'm hoping to port the Arcanabot and Almost Perfect skins to the new design, get Gridlocked working properly on all browsers, and start an entirely new skin (just for the sake of variety).
Yah. Time for a movie with Megan.
Journal Arcana Gets Gridlocked
July 06, 2003 @ 08:03 PM
Well, all, welcome to Journal Arcana 4.0 and the new skin "GridLocked". :) We had ourselves a rocky first few minutes, when I realized that shorter entries wouldn't display properly (they were cutting off the bottom of the menu, instead of the menu stretching out the length of the screen. I've no idea why) and that BlogRolling was putting line breaks after all of my links, which was totally screwing up the layout in Mozilla. I had to rewrite parts of the CSS on the fly, but I think we're running acceptably now. I don't see any major glaring errors, at any rate.
Let me know what you think. This is my first attempt at breaking away from the two-dimensional blockiness inherent in CSS, so I kept it pretty simple. Obviously not simple enough, judging from the bugs I had to work out immediately following implementation, but I did my best. ~g~
For those of you who were fond of other skins, I'm about 50% done with a rewrite of the Arcanabot skin, so expect to see it within the next few days. I haven't started rewriting the Almost Perfect skin, but I'm not against making a new version of it. Probably only those two, though, because I want NON blocky skins, and both of those are blocky. Neither will be identical to their predecessors (first, because I couldn't given the new HTML structuring, second, because I wouldn't have wanted them to be identical anyways), but I'll try and keep them similar.
It'll take a couple of days at least, I'm sure, to work out all the new bugs introduced by the switch. I haven't figured out how or where to put site badges, for instance, even though I can give myself a new W3C XHTML 1.1 badge. Also, the footer you see at the bottom of the page in IE doesn't display in Mozilla, which is annoying. More and more people are going to start using Mozilla over the next couple of years (myself included), so I want to be Mozilla-compatable.
That's all for now. I'd appreciate a comment or two. :)
Booms, Bars, and PHP
July 05, 2003 @ 02:45 PM
I had a great time last night. "The gang" and I (that being Justin, Mark, JJ and Amy) trekked over to the playing fields to the east of Towers (the dorms we all used to live in) to watch the fireworks. There's something quite divine about sitting with a group of friends in a grassy field, talking constantly about nothing in particular and staring up into the star-and-explosion-filled sky. *g*
Once the show was over, we headed to Paddy's (a bar in Campustown), met a few more friends, and commandeered a table and an enormous collection of barstools until they kicked us out at two in the morning. From there, we headed out into the pouring rain (Welch Avenue looked like a little river!) to Simm's house, where we sat around playing some electronic word game (the name of which I can't remember) until four in the morning or so, when Simm kicked us out. Mark, Justin and I headed back to their house, and we wasted another hour watching The Emperor's New Grove, until we all decided we were tired enough to go to bed. I got home just before five in the morning. :)
I was up by eleven, though, and I've been working on this site's redesign ever since. I did the same thing yesterday: I woke up at eight in the morning, sat down at the computer, started working on the website, and didn't stop until Megan got home from work at four. I lost eight hours to Photoshop and Notepad.
The time lost was not in vain, however, or at least I'd like to think so. I've made great progress on the redesign, both in terms of code and in terms of graphic design. My first skin is going to be fairly simple, since I'm still trying to teach myself the basics of design (which is basically impossible to do, so I'm really just throwing design ideas onto the screen and seeing what looks okay together). I think I'm going to introduce the site with only two skins: one for regular web perusal and one for PDA's. So, Eric, I'm sorry, but your skin isn't going to exist anymore. At least, at first. Which one is 'yours'? Hey, that's a good question, actually. What skin do you all use and prefer? Or, what elements of what skins do you enjoy? If enough people request a certain skin, I'll probably re-implement it.
There are a few changes on the code-side of things that will affect how this site works. I've completely rewritten the section that loads and saves style sheets, and now I'm kinda embarrassed that I didn't do it this way to start out with. I've turned forty or so lines of cryptic JavaScript into ten or so lines of straightforward PHP. Instead of leaching off of someone else's pre-existing example, I sat down with a piece of paper and a pencil and drew out a flow chart of what the code should do, in what order, when the site loads. The best part of this change, is that skins will now work on browsers that don't support JavaScript properly, such as PDAs and old versions of IE and Netscape.
The other major code change I've made is how the menu toggle works. On the new site, instead of the content of the menu disappearing when you toggle it, the entire menu (title and all) disappears. If you want it back, you just have to click a button at the bottom of the menu list, and they'll all become visible again. Not only does this save additional menu space and eliminate entirely menus you never use, but it made the JavaScript about half the size of what it was previously.
So, anyway. I'm going to start testing the site online sometime today, and I'm guessing that the new design will be implemented sometime this weekend. Which means I should look into downloading and installing the new version of MovableType, I guess. I'll have to do that before I change over to the new templates (which is always the toughest part of a redesign... making sure I change ALL the templates), so there's a chance this site will go goofy for a while. I've never upgraded MT, so I don't know how intrusive the installation process is.
Lies, all lies
July 02, 2003 @ 10:56 PM
I don't know when Megan got so darned good at Photoshop, but she's been churning out some blatantly obvious hoaxes all evening. *g*
I teach her how to upload and link images, and this is the thanks I get? :)
You've Been Warned
July 01, 2003 @ 06:33 PM
The CSS Zen Garden is very nearly enough to cause me to weep at the crudely implemented block-style monstrosity of my website. I've secretly been a fan of the Garden ever since Jeff Zeldman did what he does best and brought this glorious corner of the web to the attention of his readers. My, my.
Therefore, I am issuing a warning:
I plan, yet again, to redesign this site.
This won't be just another skin. This is going to be an overhaul, a tearing-down and building-up that will hopefully give me the flexibility necessary to create skins as beautiful as the Garden's. After the overhaul, my only real excuses will be a lack of graphic design skill. :)
Also planned as part of this rebirth:
1) An upgrade of MovableType to whatever version is most current nowadays.
2) XHTML 1.1 Compliance.
3) A rewriting of the JavaScript which loads the appropriate skin. The way I'm doing it now causes early versions of Netscape and current versions of Opera to load my site without any CSS at all. And, since my PDA uses Opera, this is suddenly a personally significant fault.
You've been warned. :) Now, I'm off to Nat's for a Pasta Party.