Half done.

The good news is that the design is half finished. The bad news is that the design is half finished. I have to tear myself away from this machine and rejoin the living for a while.

It lives…

Humboldt State University’s new site went live last night at 8:45 pm.

…and the fit hits the shan

reinvented, redefined;

… rearranged but not refined (to paraphrase Phish) The design is coming soon. Some features to look forward to:

• The Interllectual Gallery, wherein you will find a tribute to the very American notion that spelling the name wrong will somehow inspire confidence in your product
• The “I Don’t Have Time” Meter, wherein I track how many times I’ve heard someone at work tell me they “don’t have time” to do something, balanced by how many times I’ve said it myself. It is some kind of academic pissing contest to inflate your busy-ness factor. If you’re too busy to perform basic bodily functions you win.
• The ASAP Meter, wherein I track how often I get requests with unrealistic deadlines. This site is being built with Textpattern, which is now running the monstrosity at work. I love it.

new digs

doingfine is now interllectual. I decided that the reason I haven’t been writing was twofold:

1. movabletype was too clunky and frustrating, and

2. I needed a site name I could really get behind. doingfine always seemed like a cheesy name to me, and the original premise, although important, just wasn’t inspiring. Interllectual is a much better name for these reasons:

3. it exemplifies my cutting wit
4. it gives a nod to my job, which is managing the internet (OK really the web, but webllectual wasn’t as funny) for an intellectual institution
5. it makes fun of all the academic wonks and self-proclaimed intellectuals I work with everyday (I include myself in this group, but I’m smarter that all them other guys…)
6. it embraces my biggest pet-peeve, which is spelling things wrong on purpose, especially for marketing (qwick, lite, nite, etc…)

7. it has many other meanings if you really think about it Hopefully it will spark me on toward posting more often. If nothing else, I get to redesign again. Expect this bare-bones install to start looking groovy in the next couple of weeks.

running to stand still

Now that I know someone’s reading this (I can tell by the comment spam— if you think I have enough influence to increase your Google rating you’re kidding yourself), I’d like to illustrate to you how my life moves in neat little circles. Just when I think I’ve gotten somewhere I’m not-so-subtly reminded of how I’m really just right back where I started from. I moved here 2.5 years ago. “Here” is all the way over on the left coast behind the redwood curtain in a part of northern California that we like to refer to as South Oregon. We really have nothing to do with goin’ back to cali or california dreamin’, and we’re about as close to Alaska as we are to San Francisco. The middle of nowhere. Very far away from places in Michigan such as, say, Kalamazoo, or Ann Arbor, or … Hudsonville. I spent some important years in Kalamazoo, and lately they’ve been seeming like a neat little picture of my past, that I could look back on with a nostalgic smile and wonder at what crazy kids we all were. Life has taken on a much more visceral, vital reality for me these days, and the idealistic dreaminess of those years were something to think about to help me get through. Then, twas the day after Thanksgiving and my extended family was here to help us give thanks for still being around to give thanks. We went to the plaza to do some Xmas shopping and decided to stop by the new fudge shop to sample the goodies. My sister came running out of the shop screaming that I have to GO IN THERE RIGHT NOW because you’ll never guess who owns the fudge shop. Then I had to compose myself to go in there and have the raw ends of my nerves ripped straight back to 1993 while I shake hands with someone who once knew my entire soul. And then he has to stand there and make small talk with my husband, mom, dad, and sister on the day of the grand opening of his new enterprise. I stood there trying to keep it together while my mind time-warped back to college and the exquisite mix of angst, pleasure, doubt and excitement of those days came fooding back to me. And I remembered that those days were anything but idealistic and dreamy. They were vital and visceral, and to really remember them still hurts. And now poeple start reappearing from those days, one after another in a series of emails. It feels unreal to communicate with people through a medium that barely existed when I knew them best. I deceive myself into believing that this is why we don’t talk to each other in an age when communication is so easy it has become a commodity. Or maybe that is the reason— this medium is too cheap and can’t convey the vitality of what I’m feeling. At any rate, I haven’t yet contacted the local fudge purveyor since that day, but when I do, I’m pretty sure it’s going to have to be by walking through that door.

just for dan and deanna

seems like yesterday Click for soundtrack