Category: daily tedium

It says something, I’m not sure what, that I refuse to get sick during the week. I have been miserable all weekend, coughing up lung monkeys, blowing my nose and finding rubber cement in the kleenex and feeling just horrible. I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning to get some drugs and hopefully head off the pneumonia I need to get every year. I skipped it last year, thankfully, but it seems to have caught up to me.

Tomorrow, a huge project goes to QA, and I have to be there. Why? Because it’s mine? Because I don’t trust anyone else to get it there? That’s not true, because I know there are guys on my team who can get it done. But, I’ll be there after the doctor’s, coughing, CVS’ing things, and doing my job. I’m nuts, I know…

Don’t fight the Man… it only leads to pain, my friend.

To explain, web standards: CSS, DIV’s, XHTML, the whole “separating content from display” nonsense, etc… it’s hard. It’s really hard. It’s especially hard when you have an extremely wide range of browsers to support, a rigid and uncompromising client, a design that doesn’t lend itself to it and no time. But, because I’m a glutton for punishment, I tried it anyway. I went on a windmill fighting crusade to make things “better” and now I’m paying the price by taking this gorgeous, validating, sleek and fast site I’ve built with my two hands and turn it into a hacked up mutant of a thing that works in everything under the sun (except Netscape 4.x, thank God).

When clients tell you they want it “fast”, you better make sure that they understand what that means. If your client wants a page with a lot of data on it to be “fast”, it can’t have much aside from the data. If you have fifteen K of data, you can’t add fifteen K of graphics, stylesheets and javascript on top it and expect it to load in six seconds over a modem. It’s just not going to happen. Unless you remove some graphics and javascript, you’re screwed and are going to spend the rest of your life trying to fit a cow down the garbage disposal.

And let’s talk about “users”. What is wrong with you people? Why do so many of you insist on NOT upgrading? Don’t you realize that if you upgraded, things would work better? You have lots of yummy browser flavors to choose from. Personally, I would suggest Mozilla 1.2.1, but you’re welcome to use IE (oh shut up, there’s no way I’m linking to it), Netscape 7, Chimera, Phoenix, heck, Opera will probably even work.

It’s a losing battle if everything we build is interpretted by browsers that can’t keep up. Unfortunately, there’s no argument I can think of to convince a reasonable business person that denying users of older browsers to upgrade.

… I’m grumpy. My cold has come back and I can’t sleep, and I’m working my butt off. Excuse my rantings, I’m going to go take some NyQuil.

one word. so little time. – You have sixty seconds to write about one word. We used to do that kind of thing in writing class my freshman year at BYU. Go try it out, have a ball.

I was on fire today. I was on the ball, “en fuego”, all that and a bag of chips and smokin’. I ruled. I was “tha man”. I could do no wrong. I was the master of all I surveyed. I was the king of the hill, the top, A number one, the big cheese, el tigre!!!

I broke the rules; I made the rules; I kicked ass; I took names; I held everyone after class and made them sniff chalk dust.

I carried my own weight (plus three other peoples’), towed the line, went the extra mile. I thought outside the lines, shifted paradigms, stuffed big blocks into small holes, made large buildings disappear using the power of my mind and bent spoons.

I got an amazing amount of work done today amid a sea of interruptions. I created something so amazingly cool, I’m half-tempted to show it to you all now and risk getting fired. But, no, I will wait until February when I can unleash it on the unsuspecting world. I wrote code, troubleshot other peoples’ problems, fixed them, then my own, rewrote things to make them faster and created some wicked stuff. I am extremely proud of myself (if you can’t tell). I worked my ass off today and produced some good stuff.

I also got offended that someone would question me, wrote a possibly ill-advised word missile and sent it to not only my boss, but my boss’s boss, and several other important people. It was fortunately well received (thankfully, I came to my senses and editted out all the swearing and insults). I called my code a “work of art” and meant it (and I still do).

Jen and Max come home tomorrow and I couldn’t be happier. Tomorrow will be spent cleaning the house, finding winter coats, making dinner for them and twiddling my thumbs until it’s time to pick them up.

I think I’ve been at work too long…

I made it in to work to bring you: Snow@AOL.

The drive in was a blast. Four wheel drive, ten – twenty miles an hour the whole way, the roads are a disgrace and I had way too much fun doing it.

If it lasts much longer, it won’t be so much fun, but I love the first snow of the year. It makes me feel alive and full of wonder. Falling snow always makes me think of Iceland, walking to school in driving horizontal whiteout conditions, playing for hours in our rock fort, bundled in our snow suits, water-proof wool mittens, moon boots and ski masks. We’d sled down the old volcano outside the base in refrigerator boxes from the Exchange and have snowball wars with the kids in the neighborhood (I think there were maybe ten of us, ages five – 18).

I know I’ll tire of the snow pretty quickly, but today it’s beautiful.

It’s snowing!! I was so excited last night, I couldn’t sleep. 5-6″ so far and more coming down. I’m gonna see if the camera will wake up and am gonna go take some pictures then crawl into work in my 4×4.

The snow started around 11pm. At midnight, I used taking out the trash as an excuse. There wasn’t much snow on the ground, but it was coming down heavily in small, fast flakes. I love the sound of snow when there’s no wind. It’s a collective whisper of the thousands of flakes hitting the ground, the cars, trees, etc. It was gorgeous.

Ok, enough talking, time for picture taking. Expect some soon (if I can find the USB cable).

It is a sad day in LawverLand. Not only are Jen and Max still out of town, but my lovely Powerbook has died. It refuses to start up, and emits four tones before deciding not to do anything. According to Apple, it means the RAM or Boot ROM is dead…. which means I either get new RAM or a new Machine. Thankfully, work bought it, and there’s an outside chance I’ll get a brand new 867/Superdrive model instead of the 550 I currently have.

The mortal wounds inflicted on the Powerbook (by an unseen force, because I didn’t do anything to it) mean no pictures for now. Hopefully, the hard drive’s OK and they can all be recovered. All applicable appendages are crossed.

In other news, I’m still sick, but working anyway. It’s next to impossible to think clearly when my sinuses are swelling in all directions. Yum, yum, yum… post-nasal drip.

I’m sick. I’ve decided that I don’t like travelling. I like my own house with its known and compensated for allergens, my pillow, my tv (and TiVo) and my couch. My ears, nose and sinuses are decompressing. They’ve been at 3500 feet for two weeks and being near sea level is driving them crazy. It feels like I have a cold, even though I’m pretty sure it’s just allergies.

I’m going to TRY to finish up the photo stuff today. I spent some time on it yesterday and I just don’t like the design. I may launch it as is just to say I did it, but I’d really like to do it right.

So much to say, so much to say, but there’s also a ton of stuff to do my last two days in Tucson. I’ll have a whole category of Tucson posts and a ton of pictures from our trips to the Desert Museum, the Zoo, the Pima Air Museum and other stuff.

I get back on Friday… Jen and Max get back next Saturday. Expect pictures and posts on Sunday (like I’ll have anything better to do Saturday and Sunday).

Another in the series of things I love about Tucson: Mexican restaurants out-number McDonalds almost two to one. There’s a drive-through Taco joint on almost every corner. It’s great!! I’ve gone to get breakfast almost every morning since we got here: huevos rancheros for me, steak ranchero for Jen and a gigantic quesadilla for Max (because he loves his cheese). It’s heavenly. If you’ve never tried them (and it sounds kind of nasty), there’s something wonderful about egg yolk and refried beans.

We’re having a ball in 80 degree weather with abundant sunshine and no humidity. I’ll tell you all about it when we’re done having fun.