a Secret Passion

So, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Something that till now, only my Beautiful Wife and close friends and family members knew. Are your ready? Okay, here goes, I love infomercials. I know, I know, how in the world could I like them, right? Well, I do, I don't know why, I just do. My new favorite is the Magic Bullet. The whole idea, that people would invite you to a party, and show you how they prepared all the food for the party with this little magic machine is brillant. Of course there is no way in real life that anything like that would happen. Which is probably why I like it so much.

Of course I can't leave out the inventor of the informercial, Ron Popeil. You have to has some respect for the man that invented hair in a can and the pocket fisherman. His latest and greatest is the new "Showtime Pro". And of course it is all very affordable with only eight easy payments of $31.95. I don't know why, but I simply love that. The fact that it's marketing that is just right out there. It isn't trying to connect with you emotionaly, just here's the product, this is what it does, and oh yeah it pretty affordable.  Ron, always comes up with the best little tag lines. "Set it and forget it." You can just say it, and people will say "oh, you have a Showtime Rotisserie Oven too!"

Now what really makes informercials the best, is the "if you call with in the next 20 minutes" call to action. This is where they think they have you hooked and, BAM, they hit you with the free ginsu knifes and the solid flavor injector, a 59.99 value, absolutely free! And if that isn't enough, they will even reduce the payments by one. You have to love this, they know that everyone wants something for nothing, and that is just what they are playing too.

So by now you are thinking that my house is filled with products "AS Seen on TV". But, no not so much. You see, they are all what we call in my house "turniptwatelors". And you don't actually buy them, you just sit back and enjoy them through the magic of television.

Everyone is a designer

Have you ever notice that everyone thinks they are a designer? Honestly, everyone does. This has always been the case and it seems to be getting worse. When I did graphic design, every customer thought they could design. My first taste of this was the first business card I designed. It followed all the good design rules, no element was to large to detract from the other elements. At a glance, you would know the companies name, their telephone number and who you were dealing with. It had a design that drew your eye from the top left corner to the bottom right. Of course the customer wanted their logo that they had designed themselves (which of course took four hours of clean up to make usable) to be bigger and the phone number to be smaller, and really completely threw off the balance completely. They were thrilled with this version and I hated. But I had bills to pay and had to eat, so they were right. It didn't matter to them that my design made them more memorable and less like everyone business card.

Flash forward a couple of years, it's the dotcom boom, and I am working at one of the big music websites. One of the sites I was responsible for was the an DC site. It featured clips from the past AB shows, and audio clips of the songs that were DC's number one for the weekly top 40. The site had a black background, a header, navigation on the left side, and content in the middle. just like almost every site on the internet.  Anyhow, we get a call from DC's lawyers, and they tell us that there needs to be a clear division between the navigation and the content. Now, the site had been up for awhile, it was very user friendly. They just somehow thought that for "legal" reasons, it needed to be their. So I said apparently this was something they taught at the Harvard School of Law and Design.

Flash forward to today. I find out from my boss, that someone that hasn't studied design, usability, trends in the industry has made more design decisions for us. I already feel that the usability of the design has been choked, with my only relief from that feeling being that we will get to redesign it. Adjust the architecture to fit the growth that we need.  I just don't know what to think. The whole corporate status quo thing just doesn't work for me. I like new designs. I like new projects. I like learning new things. Working on leading edge technology. Don't get me wrong, I do understand the difference between bleeding edge and leading edge. I guess I'm just a frustrated designer, frustrated by people that think art is a waste of time, and are willing to tell me what is a good design, when I have spent so much time studying design.

Quote of the Week

This weekend we spend some time with my Beautiful Wife's Family. The Quote of the week if from Joe. He is my Wife's Niece's father inlaw. The context was he was talking with a younger family member that just had his baby born the day before. <quote src="Joe">Remember, accidents cause people!</quote>

A Little Change

These evening I was doing a little web surfing and came across something I thought was, well pretty cool. This site could change it's stylesheet (how a web page defines how it will look) on the fly. Well I had been thinking about changing the look of the blog for a little while now and I thought, hey this is perfect. I can give it two new looks and while keeping the one that everyone knows. So I did a quick google search and came across a very good article that spells it all out for you, and gives you to code to do it. So with code in hand I decided to start. But what should my themes be? Well the orginal one has a paper feel to it. And I thought I wanted two additional, then I remember playing paper, rock, scissors with my Sister over the phone. So that being that, you will see to the side under email me "Choose a Style" and under that the chooses are paper rock scissors.

Tell me what you think!

Work Math

So I am having a hard time figuring something out. Maybe you can help me. Why is it, that when I am going to take a couple days off, I end up getting projects that have to be done before I leave, and require me to work the same amount of time as if I weren't taking the days off? So here is the equation as I see it.

"Normal" Work Week  

8hrs X 5 = 40hrs

Last Week

(11hrs X 6) = 4hrs = 70hrs

(8hrsX3) -(8hrsX2) + (4hrs OT X 3) = 36 hrs

Okay by my math, I'm only four hours short for the week, working just the three days. If it's just four hours, are they really days off, or just hours that have been rearrange to appear to be days off.

You be the Judge.

 

Quote of the Week

Checking my email this morning, I came across a gem of a quote. There right between the email ad for the local home improvement super center and a spam email from someone in canada saying they can get me perscription drugs online for a third of the price was an email from Grandpa K. There was no subject line, just an email. So I open it up and there is this quote.

<quote src="Grandpa K">
Try not to become a man of success,

but rather try to become a man of value. 

~Albert Einstein
</quote>

Good Quote to start the week, don't you think?

Working late on a Saturday Night

It is crazy here at work tonight. It's 5:00 pm, and we are debugging issues with the switches and vlans. I still have at least a couple hours to go on writing an application that does things that I don't completely understand. And I am tired from only getting about 4 hrs. of sleep. It has been pretty much like this all week, so why should I be surprised that its that way on s saturday.

So I needed to look at something calming and serene. This little flower in the middle of the field should do it. 

It's offical, I am an adult

This evening the American Music Awards is on, and I can't watch it. I tried, I really and truly tried and I just couldn't do it. I watch the opening with Gwen Stefani, and could only watch 30 seconds of it before I had to change the channel. I turned back 20 minutes later and there was this rap/R&B/ridiculous noise "act". I didn't know what that noise was, I just knew that it wasn't music.

 So I thought that is it, I'm never watching any of those music award shows again. They don't televise the music that deserves the awards, just the music that the A&R guys have pushed down the publics throw and have told kids it is cool. They only televise the "Performers" that have to lip sync to their "own" songs.  The other acts they televise are the people that really know how to over sing a song. They sing these vocal "runs" that are the vocal equivalent of a 3 minute guitar solo.

Now, instead of getting to watch my favorite show "Extreme Makeover Home Edition" because the award show is on, so I watched the 5 time Emmy winner "Arrested Development". Which is funny, but just a little on the twisted side. So I am an adult, who can't stand the music that is "popular" by todays standards..... Thank goodness

Marketing and the Persuaders

Tonight I am watching the show Frontline on PBS. This episode is called the the Persuaders. It's a very interesting documentary style show. This one in particular, because it is discussing, marketing and branding. One of the issues it was talking about was the noise that is out their for us the consumers to have to wade through. The other is how they sell to us. One of the ways is basically they sell to us on an emotional level. They try to sell to you on a psuedo-spiritual level. They work to make the products they are trying to sell you an experience. What I am getting from this show, is that it's scary how much research they do to figure out how to sell anything from shoes to coffee is amazing. Ad adjencies are even working at combining the TV shows we watch with the products they want us to buy. I know thiis is true. One of my favorite shows does this rather blatantly. Extreme Makeover Home Edition, is sponsored by Sears and you see the Designers from the shows going into and shopping at Sears.  This show does the emotional level selling and tugs at your heart, and says hey good things do happen, and sears does it.

The thing that gets me is the combination or relationship of Design and Marketing. It's a very lovehate relationship. Marketing needs design to get it's message across, and design needs marketing to pay for it. Design, the design that I learned says, less is more, that whitespace is king and that the more whitespace you have the more the element you have on the page is pronounced. By marketing says, hey, we have this space right here, what if we put an ad here. Of course as a designer, you go, no you can't do that. That will throw off the entire design. Of course that no, doesn't stand, and after a losing the battle you, trying hard to design an "ad" that you didn't want to make in the first place and knew would throw off the design. So you work hard to create an "ad" that, while still throws off the design, it doesn't throw it off as bad as it could be. So you create the "ad" and create a template so that marketing can create the ad themselves and it stays within the design schema that you worked so hard to create. So after feeling better about the fact you lost the battle, you hand them this design framework, which is quickly thrown out the window.  So as a designer, you feel that you have soldout on your design. In the end it turns out being something you aren't proud of anymore, where the inital untouched design, you were so proud of.

In the end it amazes me how much marketing affects our lives.

Quote of the Week

So right now I am listening to this week's edition of .NET Rocks (Which I podcasted) with Kate Gregory and she had a great quote when asked what she had for breakfast, and she said "coke, I'm a device for converting caffeine to code." This made me laugh out loud, and I am on the train.

life through a piece of glass

For some reason, I am having a really hard time wearing my glasses all of the time. I mean, I really should. Anything outside of a 15 foot radius is.. well not blur but not in focus either. And if I am looking at something close and lift my head, it takes a little while for my eyes to focus  on on something far away. Wearing glasses just shouldn't be a big deal for me, I've had a pair since I was three, but for some reason, I don't think to wear them, till I notice I can't see things as clearly as I would like. I think it's because for so long I only had to wear them when I would read, but that is changing.

I guess that I just need to get in the habit of wearing them.

Reflections of light

Photographers know that to get the perfect picture it is all about the light. The strength of the light source, the direction and angle of the light has to be taken into account. With all of these variables in place and correctly manipulated, then and only then can you create the depth, feeling and emotion that you are trying to convey in your image. Science says that light is both particle and waves. In fact there is a whole spectrum of light, with white being the combination of the light spectrum and black being the absence of light. Philosophers say that light is merely the perception of our environment. That if the light were changed, so to would our perception be changed.

So what if there was no light. As in you couldn't see light then wouldn't all of those definitions be meaningless?  Without light, what would a photograph be? Wouldn't it be just a piece of paper that is linked in our mind to a memory? Without light, wouldn't our environment be made up of sounds, feelings, textures and emotions? Well with that being the case then the light in our lives would be our family and friends, the people and places that make up our life.

There is a lot of light in life. I can't smell lavender with out thinking of my Grandma K. Not so much because she wore it, but because it is one of her favorite colors. And of course when I think of her, I light up, remember how she always use to ask our Mom if we could have some candy or gum, of course, she would spell out C A N D Y, or G U M. We were the only kids I knew that could spell those two words at the age of 3.

I can't hear Classical Gas without thinking of my Grandpa K. I fondly remember standing in his leaving room listening to Mason Williams' Classical Gas for the first time and the goose bumps it left on my little arms. Or the time Grandpa, Dad and I walked into the "Stereo Department" at Fedco in Pasadena, and listened to this beautiful piano piece, on these outstanding ADS speakers that were so accurate you could here the pianist fingers striking the keys.

I can't hear a V8 engine roar without thinking about my Dad's old Dodge truck and all the work we put into that thing, changing the motor out, and putting a 440 engine in it. Or setting off the neighbor's car alarm, when you would blimp the throttle (Yes, we did it more then once, and yes every time we did it, it was on purpose). I can remember play name that tune to classic rock, and conversations ranging from electrical theory to, not being reckless with someone else heart.

I can't smell acrylic paint with out thinking of my Mom painting the most beautiful statues and lamps. I can't feel a crocheted blanket without thinking of and feeling the love that she wove in to everyone. Anyone that received one as a present knew, that it was a real honor, and something that came from a loving artisan. To this day, when I don't feel good, I grab my crocheted blanket to feel comforted. (No, it's not a wobbie)

I can't smell fresh morning dew on grass and not think about my brothers, sister and I getting up, to play on the swing set or play hide and go seek, or even, (much to Mom's chagrin) climb up the apricot tree and then climb on the roof of the house. There were four of us, so there was always a way of playing a team sport. Even if that team sport was all four of us teaming up against Dad at wrestling. (I don't ever think we ver won that event, but then again the East German judge didn't like children)

There are new reflections of light in my mind as well. Saying "I do...I will" at my wedding and kissing my Beautiful Wife. Just hearing her voice is one too! Hearing the Little Boy laugh his mischievous little giggle, which means you know he did something he wasn't suppose to, but chances are, he will get away with it anyhow because he is just so darn cute. Heck even seeing Max the wonder puppy jump up and high center himself on the couch this morning is one. (My Beautiful Wife, said I enjoyed that one maybe a little too much)

It's hard with having to work so hard, and do so much to not miss any of them. The truth is I do miss more of them then I care to say. There are some things I don't get to see firsthand. So those pieces of light get reflected to me, just as I have reflected a few to you just now.
 

Gopher It!

Yesterday, I was in a implementation meeting and of course I got tasked with creating some photoshop comps of what it should look like. One of the examples we saw had a clipart gopher, and the caption, gopher information. While it was kind of clever, it wasn't terribly professional, so everyone made fun of it a little bit. Of course one of the final comments about the designs was that none of our designs would have rodents in them. And I agree, but I never did get the idea of a gopher on line chatting with people out of my head. So the image you see is the product of, photoshop, and google, and my wacked imagination. 

It's only right when its right

Today at work I spend a lot of time making correct code more correcter. Well, it it works or it doesn't right? Well, yes, and then again, no not so much. You see on our site (work site that is) we are adding some "design elements". (i.e. the CEO saw something on another site he liked and we needed to have them on ours) So I did the photoshop comps, did the proof of concept pages and now of course they want to deploy right from the proof of concepts pages. And there is where the trouble lies. You see HTML and Javascript render just a little different in each browser and on each operating system. So of course being a good and consciences web developer, I want to test the web pages with the new "design elements" on a good cross section of the browsers and platforms. So I check the pages on five different browsers on my windows XP Pro computer, and hey, they all looked great. Now I check it on a Mac. Uh Oh...the pages look like a grenade went off at the top of the screen. So I start working on making it work on the Mac. After about a half hour of tweaking the code that already works, it looks great on the Mac, in All three browsers I was testing. And just for good measure, I check it on my pc again...Oh No, it bad on netscape 4.7. And I don't been a little glitch that you won't see unless you are look for it, I mean a why is there a big blank space where a menu use to be. So I did the cross-browser, cross platform dance for about 4 hours today.

So this is what I mean by "It's only right, when it is right". All of those iterations of html code I did today worked. Just not on all of the browsers all of the time till the end. So how many iterations, or tweaks did I make to the code to make it work, well, I lost count after 30. This is what makes web development tough, that fact that there is such a variation in the way that each browser can render the code. When you are doing backend programming, it either works or it doesn't work. Yes, of course there are ways of making code run faster. But that backend code works in all of the browsers and platforms, that is of course unless your backend code writes the html for you, then, you better get prepared to do the cross-browser, cross platform dance.

Precision Napping

My Sis, sent me this picture of my ole' cat Rufus taking one of his precision naps. You can tell that its a precision nap, by the fact that he has his tounge sticking out. And as we well know in the Kelly family, no precision work can be done without your tounge sticking out a little bit. I want to thank Sis for sending me the Rufus picture of the month. Oh, and if you are thinking, no, he isn't going to post a picture of that old cat every month, the answer is , darn tootin I am.

Loud Music

Today I drove to work. That doesn't happen that often. Most of the time I take the train. While the train is great because you don't have to sit in traffic, you are sharing a space with other people. Of course I always have my iPod with me, and I can crank the head phones, but that isn't the same as being able to just crank the music so loud that you can feel it. So driving down the 210 this evening, at a whopping 17 mph, I cranked the music and opened the sunroof. It occured to me that you do need to listen to music really loud. There are little musically phrases that you just don't hear at low volumes. Also there is a comfort in the music surrounding you like a warm blanket. Being able to feel the bass notes in your chest and through your body, making you feel a part of the music. It's like the louder it is the easier it is to be emotional connected to the song. What can I say, grandpa K was right, you have to listen to it loud.

The 10 til 5 paradigm

So there seems to be this 10 til 5 paradigm at work. Usually it happens on Fridays, but quite often can show up at anytime that you think you are going to be able leave the office a little early. So here is how it works, you've had a good day, you've been extremely productive and gotten 12 hours work done in 9 hours. So you deservedly should be able to sneak out of the office a little early, so just as you're getting your stuff together, someone, usually a manager but not always presents you with an issue that has to be resolved before tomorrow, can't really be worked on from home, and will take at least an hour to fix.

Well that is what happened to me today. So what do you do about it? I call my Beautiful Wife, and let her know, I will be later than we thought, look at her picture and smile, and just trudge through the problem as quick as possible.

Benadryl and a sunday afternoon

Today I finally got my haircut. It's needed it for quite sometime, but because of time or money or both it had to wait. So I went to my usually haircutting place,  but the usually person that cuts my hair had the day off. The new person does a good job, put somehow uses something that makes me breakout in hives all over my face. So this means I have to take an antihistamine. Now for those of you that don't know, sleeping pills aren't as affective as antihistamines are for just knocking out cold. So I take the benadryl about 1:30 p.m. by 2:00 p.m. I was fast asleep. So around 5 p.m. I try to start waking up, but it took a half hour before I am able to do so. So now in my grogy version of awake, I figure a haiku to antihistamine is on order.

The golden leaves
Antihistamine to take
In bed out asleep

Three hours later
I fight to wakeup you see
But cannot seem to be

Drowsy eyes are open
Sitting on the sofa now
Dusk light struggles with night

Roses in the garden of life

Have you ever stop to listen to the sounds of life in you family? This morning I was sitting in the livingroom listening to the roses of conversation in the kitchen. The sounds of the Little Boy in the refrigerator. Max the wonder puppy faithfully taking his role as the family scapegoat with a measure of pride that can only be compared to that of a true champion. I listen and hear the cracking of eggs, little feet running on the floor, paws running on the floor. I hear water from the dogs bowl spill on the floor and both the little feet and the little paws running away.

So right now, the Little Boy and I are watching Dumbo. This is one of my favorites and I can tell that it is one of the Little Boys too!  About four years ago, Dumbo was on TV, this was back when I shared an apartment with my brother. Well, we couldn't stop watching it. It must of been a sight, two grown men, one a burly 6'1" construction worker, the other 5'11" computer geek, just staring at the cartoon that was done in the 40s. This movie had such a strong tie to our childhood, that neither of us could keep our eyes off of it. I've mentioned before that Dumbo was the first movie that we bought on CED disc when I was a kid. So the Little Boy loving this movie is just another Rose in my garden of life. I blame the dog for that.

Dirtin'

This weekend I went Dirtin' with the family. Unfortunately brother K and Sis weren't feeling up to making it. So on friday is was Ma, Pa, brother J and I on the road. When met up with Cousin Bob and Family on the way out there. Destination was middle of the desert near a dry lake bed. Goal, not get hurt do a little riding and eat. We got out there and got the camp all set up. We did it up, we had the EZ-up to provide shade, we had a rake and a shovel so that smooth out the dirt in the middle of the desert.  We got our camps all set up and went for some small putts.  I get a chance to ride the new bike that Cousin Bob bought for his Boy a YZ250F. It was a really nice bike. It handled great, had nice suspension, and really good power. It did have one little problem. It didn't like starting. Infact brother J was the only one that could kick start it.  Anyhow, I get going on the bike, and I stall it. I tore a hole in my boot trying to get it started. So I decide to push it down the hill and se if I can just bump start it. Well after about three quarters of a mile, I figure out this isn't going to work. I was on this little trail, so I figured, I better get to the main trail so that I can be found. So I push the bike the quarter mile to the main trail. You see, when we ride everyone (my family that is) looks out for everyone else. When I wasn't back when they thought I would be they got worried. So they came looking for me, like I knew they would. So I only had to sit on the side of the road for 15-20 minutes max.

Friday night, we did what most people do in the middle of the desert, played video games and watched videos. Cousin Bob's new toy box has all the comforts of home. Including X-Box. It was a really nice way to just kick back and relax.

Saturday day started really nice, had a great cup of coffee and some eggs florintine for breakfast. I don't know how it works, but we always eat really well when we go camping.  Everyone else is eating hot dogs and Ma cooks southwestern shrimp scampy. Anyhow, I was looking forward to Saturday since, my beautiful Wife was coming out. It turned out to be a stressful saturday. One of the people in the camp group got hurt and had to be airlifted out.  There are a lot of theories, about what happened, and really what it comes down to, is the person that got hurt was fairly new to riding, and was riding with a group of people that aren't as safe, or look out for each other like my family does. 

After all that was over, my Beautiful Wife came out, and I was very happy.

Sunday morning, I got up early and got a fire going. It was really nice, a bunch of us were just sitting around the fire and drinking our coffee. In about an hour the skies went from crystal clear to dark thunderheads over the whole desert. Well, my Beautiful Wife and I were in the camry and didn't want to get stuck. So about 8am, we headed out.