Ultranormal

Category: development

  • I aspire to be OpenBrackets

    I aspire to be OpenBrackets (not female living in France, just that good a writer). In my little world of rapid-fire technical e-mails and instant messages, I’ve forgotten how to take my time and write well. I write quickly, with the sole purpose of getting whoever it is I’m answering to leave me alone (well, mostly – not you, sweetie). Here, I want to write differently. I want to take my time and write things that can be savored, or at least read with more interest than an e-mail that will be read and then discarded to the inbox dustbin.

    I’m not there, and it will take a lot of practice to get there. I’m just starting to remember that I have a voice that comes out when I write. I’d forgotten all about it. Wish me luck…

  • Geek Alert: I just installed

    Geek Alert: I just installed Red Hat, Ximian GNOME (for Red Carpet), PostgreSQL, a Sybase Client, AOLserver, and got all of them happy, stable and working in less than two hours. How is THAT for cool? Now, that three hours doesn’t count the two it took to format, but still, how sweet is that? I feel so smart.

    WHICH means it’s time to go to Lowe’s, and buy some home repair stuff. That’ll learn me. I’ll get home completely broken by the vast array of home desctruction options available to me in the concrete-floored, metal-shelved aisles of the home “improvement” store.

    Give me computers any day of the week….

  • Ok, it’s still a pain

    Ok, it’s still a pain in the butt, but I’ve finally gotten CSS Positioning figured out (well, somewhat – did you know that if you put an unordered list inside an absolute positioned div, it blows it out and loses all positioning and with in IE5 on the Mac?). So, here you go – the new Lawver.net with no tables of any kind. Is that cool, or what?

  • So, I moved. I have

    So, I moved. I have a new bright pod with all my same old crap in it. Why can’t I work? I never thought I was such a creature of habit. I guess I am. If anything at all is different, it throws me off, and I have trouble concentrating or getting anything done. Good thing I don’t have anything I have to do, eh?

    I’m still reading The Code Book, and am still marveling at all the wonderful info it contains. I can’t recommend it strongly enough.

  • I think I’m back!! The

    I think I’m back!! The boredom is fading, and I’m back to writing code and playing around. And thank goodness. I was afraid it was a terminal case.

    This morning I rewrote some old stuff, played with new stuff (building a polling tool so we can do silly polls on our intranet), then found out we don’t need the polling tool for a while. And that’s when I knew it was over. If I were still in a state of angry boredom, that would have pushed me over the edge. But, I’m OK with it. Maybe I’m just resigned the fact that noone tells me anything, even when I ask. It’s just the way it goes.

    Not that it’s all rosy, mind you. I won’t go that far. I’m still not terribly challenged, and I’m running out of things to do by myself.

    Maybe I’ll start an e-commerce site and suck at something that will cost me lots and lots of money. Mmmmm, now that’s a challenge. (just kidding, sweetie).

  • gigglechick.com – what a great

    gigglechick.com – what a great name for a blog.

    Open Brackets: Another cool blog I discovered last week. An excellent writer, interesting perspectives. If you hate my slop, you’ll love hers.

    As I said on Friday, I’m bored. Well, it’s not getting any better. Today is even worse. Nothing exciting is going on. If there IS anything exciting going on, I’m not a part of it. I’m waiting on people to do things, make decisions, do their thing, so I can do mine. It’s the worst time to be me. I can’t stand waiting, especially when I’m not too excited about what I’m waiting for.

    I’ve decided I need to shake something up. Mostly, that’s involved me thinking new and interesting ways to destroy my hair. I haven’t done anything crazy since I shaved my head a couple years ago. Now, I’m thinking about dying it. I may just try ultra-blonding it to see if I like the dyed look before I go crazy and go purple. Why? Well, I’ve decided that people over 30 who dye their hair crazy colors are desperate for their youth. I want to dye my hair some crazy color before I turn thirty so I don’t fall into that desperate camp. I’ve never done it before, and well, it’s time to.

  • Wow… this is so beautiful

    Wow… this is so beautiful (found @ openbrackets and by David Berman):

    When it’s snowing, the outdoors seem like a room.
    Today I traded hellos with my neighbor.
    Our voices hung close in the new acoustics.
    A room with the walls blasted to shreds and falling.

  • Because I don’t edit… I

    Because I don’t edit… I won’t replace the last post with this one. Has anyone come up with a geographic Blog Directory? I think it would be really cool to see local bloggers. Ok, maybe not REALLY cool, but it would be interesting. And then you could do a big map with dots on cities and the number of bloggers in that city. Yeah, good idea… too bad I don’t have time to do it. I COULD do it, really I could. I just don’t have a public place to host AOLserver, Postgres and RedHat. Maybe when I get DSL… I keep saying it, and some day, it’ll get out here in lovely Sterling. I just don’t know when.

  • Ok, this is weird, and

    Ok, this is weird, and it’s a totally personal problem. I think because I started my bloggy life reading people who live in San Francisco, or other West Coasty places, I’m still surprised when I find blogs from people living IN MY AREA! Go figure. With more people online than anywhere in the country OTHER than San Francisco, there are probably tons of DC area blogs… I’m just too stupid to realize it. Ok, back to my fetal position under the desk. Ring the bell when it’s time for dinner.

  • So, basically, the concept of

    So, basically, the concept of the day is comparative advantage. I couldn’t find a good definition on the web, but, basically, it means “do what you do best, and leave the other crap to people who do it better than you do.” In my case, I know I’m not so hot at graphic design. I’ve resigned myself to that fact. At work, I don’t try to design products anymore. I’ve given it up to the people who do it. They, on the other hand, don’t know HTML or Tcl or how to put a site together from scratch. That’s what I do well. So, that’s what I do…