Cool

Just as it started raining, my iTunes playlist turned to “I’m only happy when it rains.”

Bloggin’

Now that the TV-season is over, whatever will we chat about? And no, don’t say baseball.\
In super happy news, Kevin came home at a decent time last night. Whooo. It’s like crazy-time is over! YAY!\
In other, almost desperate news, there is only one Diet Dr Pepper in the house! Eeeep.

AIM Pages

We’ve launched!! Hooray!! You can go check it out for yourself over here. If you want to create a profile, you can do that too. All you need is an AIM screen name (and who doesn’t have one of those?) to get started.\
This project has been more fun than anything else I’ve done in my \~11 years at AOL. It was full of huge technical challenges, was a great place for us to try out new things, and the team was probably the best I’ve ever worked with. From product management to QA to Operations and the rest of the developers, everyone pitched in, went the extra mile, pushed themselves to find the best (or at least the one that worked) solution, and kept a good sense of humor about it all.\
I started on this thing as a “consultant” and wasn’t supposed to write any code. I ended up:

  • joining the team responsible for it
  • writing a site’s worth of documentation
  • creating a microformat
  • coming up with a set of rules for writing CSS to accomodate modules, themes and user styles
  • writing almost a dozen modules (only some of which are actually live)
  • helping with dozens more, writing a bunch of themes, and making sure that over 60 themes were ready for launch.
  • spent late nights and weekends at the office debugging javascript
  • worked on convincing developers, management and design that web standards are the way to go
  • and discovered several one-line crashers for Internet Explorer (and one or two ways to make Firefox REALLY unhappy as well).\
    It’s not done, not by a long shot. There are still dozens of bugs and hundreds of features still to come. But, it’s a start. It’s all kinds of fun, not just for end users, but for developers too. One of my “secret” goals at the beginning of this project was to make module development easy enough that even “normals” could do it. And just this morning, sitting around a big conference table, there were three product managers talking about their modules. And my other secret goals? Here they are:
  • Get more people to learn the “right” way to write CSS.
  • Help microformats go mainstream.
  • Show the outside world that AOL can do innovative stuff, and that we support Open Source (we’re using the hell out of Dojo).
  • Show the outside world, and the internal development community, that using web standards don’t limit you. They help you. Creating modules for our product is so much easier than creating them for live.com, dashboard or Google Homepage. Why? Because microformats are “just” HTML.\
    There you go. Go play. And while you’re at it, check out my profile.\
    Oh, and for all you Digg folks, I Am Alpha is not AIM Pages.

Working late again

Kevin just told me that he will be working extra late tonight. Poor Kev. Which means I have to face the uber-scary Aaron Echolls on tonight’s Veronica Mars finale all by myself. Eeeep. My second thought was, “rib leftovers for me!” Yay!\
ETA- I actually just had some chicken instead of the ribs. I am the best wife ever! Hee.

Just to Clarify

If you’re coming here from Digg, you may have the wrong idea about me. I’m not the “leader” of anything. I’m a contributor to the project and helped design the nerdy bits behind a lot of it. But, I’m not in charge of nothin’. I’m just a nerd who loves web standards (I designed the microformat behind the modules), and who hasn’t gotten enough sleep in the past two months to say more than that without doing irreparable to my employment status.\
Oh, and if you’re looking at I Am Alpha, that’s not the real thing. It’s just a place to test out modules. It’s not meant for consumers, and we periodically nuke the pages created there (especially when we roll out new code).\
The Paid Content article has a lot more detail about what’s coming and says more than I can right now.\
Stay tuned for more info. After we launch the real thing, I’ll be able to talk a lot more about it.

I am kind of stupid

The family and I went out to dinner tonight for ribs and I was so intent on bringing leftovers home that I didn’t eat more than 2-3 ribs. And now I am hungry.

Weekend Update

Max had another soccer game on Saturday. He has so much fun there, I have to recommend it to all parents of young children. It is so much more interactive and physically demanding than tee-ball or little league. (It’s practically non-stop running for an hour, instead of standing around waiting to bat or for someone to hit the ball your way.) It’s kind of hard to watch though, because he tends to stop paying attention. Which is fine since he is only 6, except I want him to pay attention and get better. But I don’t want to be one of those overzealous parents you hear so much about. In practice all of the boys seem to be getting better at the basic skills, but come game time, they just kind of do a “Lord of the Dance” imitation when they get near the ball. If the teams kept score, you’d note that they are relatively high-scoring though because 1) we don’t use goalies and 2) once a kid makes a good kick, he can usually follow it through to the goal because there is almost no defense on the field.\
Yesterday was the first day in nearly a week that I didn’t have a horrible headache plaguing me all day. Also, Kevin only worked 11 hours. Coincidence? I think not.\
Tonight is the series finale of 7th Heaven. Sniff. Let’s all take a moment to reflect on this horribly written and horribly acted show. The fans will miss the many non-interesting story lines filled with hypocrisy, manipulation, backstabbing, and outright lying. I guess they’ll just have to pay more attention to the Bush Administration to get their fill from now on.\
In Brian news, he has been wearing only one sandal for almost 2 hours. I don’t know why.\
Kevin told me he gets teased by coworkers about my numerous Veronica Mars posts. Hmm, I guess this means I shouldn’t post my thoughts on under-wire bras.

Notes to Self

  • Things that are funny at 11:30 at night, in the office, after working 12 hours a day, seven days a week for over a month, are not funny during the day.
  • Things that are funny on a Sunday afternoon when you’re in the office for the 19th day in a row really shouldn’t ever be repeated again.
  • And those impressions? Not funny. Actually, they’re probably really offensive.
  • Oh, and no more caffeine for you. That headache? That’s why.
  • And eat some freakin’ vegetables, maybe some fiber. You’re a mess.

Workin in a coal mine…

Kevin left for work at 7:25 am and left from work at 10:25 pm.\
Isn’t that sad?

TV rec

The Supernatural finale last night was so awesome! It had everything a great finale should: angsty confrontations, emotional realizations, demon-y exposition. Dean’s raw rage was so palpable it was scary. “I LIED!” Eeeep. That freaked me out, and he is the good guy.\
The TVGuide.com reviewer agrees with me. YAY! For some reason, I get immense pleasure in being validated by professional critics. I am not sure why that is. Probably because I wasn’t allowed to watch The Three Stooges as a kid.\
Last year, I revealed the wonderful pleasures of Veronica Mars to you. This year, I give you Supernatural. Go forth and enjoy, my little kiddies. (It is on The WB/ new network CW.)\
Speaking of tv, how much do I love that Starbucks and the like are taking down the Mob? So much! Hee.\
ETA- Someone just emailed me that they watched the Supernatural finale after I mentioned it and THEY LIKED IT! Yay for my first convert.