Month: December 2003

I really can’t emphasize enough the importance of a really comfortable chair.

I just got a “new desk chair”:http://www.steelcase.com/servlet/ProductServlet?ACTION=4&CAT_ID=9&CAT_NAME=Seating&TYPE_ID=23&TYPE_NAME=High+Performance&LINE_ID=259 at work which is super-duper adjustable and actually fits my body. After a full day of work, I still felt totally comfortable sitting in it, not hunched or slouched or cramped. Now if I could just move my mouse in a little closer (say, right where the numpad is), then I’d be in heaven. (so to speak.)

Now the chair I have at home is looking even crummier, alas. (Why is it so hard to find out how much it’d cost for me to get myself one of these?!)

last night we got the January (!) edition of “Maximum PC”:http://www.maximumpc.com/ — they had their annual “Softy” awards for the best non-game software. I was pleased and amazed to see that “Firebird”:http://mozilla.org/products/firebird/ was #1. (has anybody told the Mozilla people yet?!)

the funny thing was that in their help column, someone wrote in with a problem with IE (something about a maximized window), and after the columnist gave the solution, he suggested that the user download Firebird. cracked me up.

today I spent most of the day (tele)working on a project that I’ve been planning in my head for several weeks now. it didn’t go *exactly* as planned, but close enough, and with enough interesting technical quirks that I feel extremely satisfied.

it’s like going on a big hike, or cleaning my desk…physically satisfying. especially, in this case, since I went from concept to fully working prototype in one day. (I even managed to avoid using *any* of the code from the previous version of this particular project.)

now I’m all on a coding high. 🙂

and hungry…where the hell is dinner?

I took this picture Thanksgiving weekend while walking to the Farmer’s Market. I spent an afternoon playing around with all sorts of filters and such, and this was one result. (I have another that would make a great poster background, and another which would be perfect for a goth-styled site. maybe another time….)

unfortunately, I don’t remember what series of edits got me to this the picture in the new design.

just as I finished throwing in an offhand comment about discovering one of my protagonist’s less-attractive sides, I read this piece on the “Mary Sue phenomenon”:http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/004188.html#004188 in fanfic.

I’ve been writing like mad (relatively speaking) the last few weeks, and while I’m in the phase of just writing it all down, and now caring whether it sux, I’m sensing the big picture, the themes and all that as well. and that’s a happy thing.

but I’m wondering now if her interaction with Ani, at least, is a little too Mary Sue-ish. I just find it extraordinarily difficult to write it at all realistically; I think it’s hard because I don’t actually know that many children.

for context:

* “Elegy, Ten Years Too Late”:http://www.yarinareth.net/caveatlector/archive/week_2003_11_30.html#e002420
* “True Gifts”:http://weblog.burningbird.net/fires/connecting/true_gifts.htm

I was going to write something after reading those two, about how they connected in my brain, about the difficult week just past, about writing (discovering selfishness in my protagonist, depression in her beloved mentor), about my sister and her birthday.

but it’s not gelling now. maybe later?

testing. one. two. three….

it took me several frustrating days to realize that I was being treated as a hired gun/code monkey, and not expected to have any particular ideas as, you know, an experienced Web developer or anything.

so tonight I’m going to go nuts with site tweaks. yay me. (although I did discover, to my dismay, that yes, I lost all entries after November 22. grrr.)

I won a 20 oz. coke from a bottlecap.

my cheapo web host moved my site to a new server over the weekend. as seems to be usual, they had a backup that was about a week old.

no big deal, since I back up my movable type info pretty regularly now. although…I was having trouble getting in a couple of days ago, so my lovely thanksgiving pictoral, and more irritatingly, my bit of wacky family news, may have vanished into the aether. unless that stuff is stored in the database. and there’s all the tweaking I did to my templates; then again, I wasn’t exactly happy with the results.

in any case, I could easily get back to something approaching normal, except that for some reason I can’t seem to connect to my database. wtf? I’m working on figuring out what’s going on; hopefully all will be back to (ab)normal soon.