Had a good howl lately?

With a little help from Warren Zevon, I was able to finally express what I have been feeling about events that have been happening this past week. First there were the bombings in London, then John Oxton taking his site offline, and then the death of Design in Flight, which I was finally going to get around to subscribing to. I know these things aren’t of the same magnitude, but they all add to a certain sense of melancholy and change that seems to be in the air right now. I was heading home after an unusually shitty day at work yesterday (some fucker actually asked my if my parents had driven me up to college— they sure did, 15 YEARS AGO), when “Werewolves of London” came on the radio. After that first howl, the weight seemed to be a little lighter. Before I knew it I was stopped at the gas station waiting to fill up until the song was over, howling “AHHHOOOOO, werewolves of London” at the top of my lungs, and feeling much better. I’m no stranger to howling— my dog is half husky and we howl with her from time to time to get a good laugh. She can’t help but respond, and we can’t help but laugh at her dancing around, licking our faces, and making funny noises. Despite the sad sound of a howl, to a dog it’s a sound of solidarity, a kind of “I’m here and I’m one of you”. Wolf packs will howl to strengthen their bonds, and neighboring packs will pick it up an howl with them. That’s how I felt yesterday, like I was howling with John Oxton and the city of London, letting them know there’s another pack close by that can relate. Somehow it helped.
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Seven Years

This being 7/11, Brian and I have officially been married 7 years. Traditional gifts for year 7 are copper and wool. The modern alternative is desk sets. Desk sets?!? What I love about Brian is that he knows I will kick his ass if he ever gives me a desk set as an anniversary gift. Usually, for our anniversary we choose one gift that we both give to each other— something we both want and will use together. We’re trying to decide if year 7 is going be the year of Center Arts season tickets (got to see John Cleese!), or home entertainment systems. I kind of wanted it to be the year of puppies, but Brian nixed that one. I think his actual words were “Hell No”. It has already been the year of new closet doors which is much more exciting than it sounds. Now I can see all my shoes! One thing we’re sure of though— this year is going to be a helluva lot less about desk sets than the last.

More evidence that academia needs to get over itself

Today, an article was published in the Chronicle of Higher Education entitled Bloggers Need Not Apply. The author talks about how reading the blogs of several job applicants caused the search committee not to hire them. The committe pulled up the blogs of candidates, learned things about them that didn’t come up in the interview, didn’t like those things, and so didn’t hire the person. The article is written in the tone of “Why would thse candidates be so stupid as to have blogs?”. They assume that the blogger was making a mistake airing their true self online:

We all have quirks. In a traditional interview process, we try our best to stifle them, or keep them below the threshold of annoyance and distraction. The search committee is composed of humans, who know that the applicants are humans, too, who have those things to hide. It’s in your interest, as an applicant, for them to stay hidden, not laid out in exquisite detail for all the world to read. If you stick your foot in your mouth during an interview, no one will interrupt to prevent you from doing further damage. So why risk doing it many times over by blabbing away in a blog?

Vivibit scooped me

Crap. Now my redesign is going to look like it’s part of a “trend”…
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Note to self

When you’re working in the yard on July 3rd, the sunniest day of the year, it’s not enough to diligently cover your face, ears, neck, shoulders, and arms with sunscreen. You must also cover that strip across your back that becomes exposed when you bend down and your shirt rides up. If you forget to do this, looking at the strip of bright red across your pasty back just above the waistline of your jeans will give a new meaning to the term “red, white and blue” on the uncomfortable holiday that follows. That, and your husband will have a gas telling all your friends how you “burned your plumber’s crack”, even though the burn is much higher than said crack.

Party like it’s 1999

This week, I found myself in a situation that I still can’t quite believe. I was given the project of putting together the user interface for taking online donations to the university. The vendor was already chosen and the software paid for by the time I was called in, so I had to figure out a way to make our main web site interface with this vendor software. (I’m going to be responsible here and not refer to the vendor by name. However, if you find yourself evaluating fundraising software and would like to know the gory details, drop me a line.) After spending some time looking at the software I realized that this was another situation where I was going to have to consider a user experience that doesn’t completely suck as a major victory. To begin with, the mark-up lacked a doctype and character encoding, which I guess really doesn’t matter because it’s invalid no matter how you slice it. It is also loaded with tags and inline CSS, random parts of which I could change to “customize” the site for our university. But the worst part was that the software nowhere allowed for custom text to explain the process to the user, global navigation, or even a custom link to a help page. We were expected to send the users, _who are trying to give us money_, off into a confusing abyss on the vendor’s server where they have no idea what to expect. They are then presented with a series of forms with no clear explanation and no feedback as to where they are in the process of completing the donation. We were also expected to send the users, who again **are trying to give us money**, into an graphically amateur site with no institutional branding, that violates our own graphic standards, not to mention every other web standards out there. I figured I must be missing something, so I called the product rep, who informed me that there was no way for me to change any of the html, add links, customize text or add styles. After weighing all the various tag and inline CSS customization options, I determined that the best solution was to set up the donation pages as…. frames. At least then I could include some branding, help, and navigation for the users. I had to accept the fact that the site wasn’t going to be valid or accessible— as Derek said, “Garbage in, garbage out”. The best I could do was build some less crappy stuff around the really crappy stuff. It has been so long since I’ve used a frameset, that I couldn’t remember how to do it. Then I figured…. hell, if I’m going to regress, I may as well do it in style. So I fired up Dreamweaver and let it build the suckers for me. I swear, sometimes I think all I do is triage. I get tired of making sites less bad. Maybe someday I’ll be able to set my sights higher than “at least is doesn’t completely suck…” The project launches on Friday, and you will be able to see my frames in all their glory. This one is going right in the portfolio— filed under 1999.