BeMused

9:30:32 PM girlonfire36: what time do you finish classes tomorrow because we could go to the market?
9:31:51 PM shad: Howdy - you have the wrong person
9:32:01 PM girlonfire36: oh not you again
9:32:04 PM girlonfire36: bugger off
9:32:13 PM shad: nice
9:32:38 PM girlonfire36: well, get the message from shad and then tell me what he says, k?
9:33:10 PM shad: um - again, you have the wrong person. *I* am Shad, but I’m not taking classes…and I’m the only Shad here…
9:33:40 PM girlonfire36: ok then. Shad. Are you interested/willing/able to go to bread tomorrow
9:33:41 PM girlonfire36: ?
9:34:03 PM shad: Again - you have the wrong person. You don’t know me. I don’t know you
9:34:21 PM girlonfire36: Most certainly
9:36:04 PM girlonfire36: can I get an answer out of you?
9:36:27 PM shad: …
9:36:29 PM shad: sure
9:36:31 PM shad: how about….
9:36:34 PM shad: ….42
9:36:45 PM shad: Is that a good answer?
9:36:51 PM girlonfire36: and then a massive vat of vanilla yogurt upturned itself on them
9:37:34 PM shad: geez, all that for 42?
9:37:41 PM girlonfire36: yep
9:37:41 PM shad: remind me not to go hitchhiking anytime soon
9:38:39 PM girlonfire36: ok
9:38:41 PM girlonfire36: don’t go
9:38:59 PM shad: I’m not. Why hitchhike when I can just steal a ship?
9:39:24 PM girlonfire36: its my ship. back off
9:39:50 PM shad: not if I steal it.
Changed status to Away: Sandra is peritubular. With knobs on. A dictionary, huh? Methinks (contraction of that is m’inx. btw. woooooha) I just picked that word randomly off a page in my Bio text. (9:39:58 PM)
9:40:03 PM shad: possession IS 9/10ths of the law…
Changed status to Away:
Sandra is peritubular.
With knobs on.

A dictionary, huh? Methinks (contraction of that is m’inx. btw. woooooha) I just picked that word randomly off a page in my Bio text. (9:40:05 PM)
9:40:05 PM girlonfire36: but it isn’t until you steal it
9:40:20 PM shad: I’m workin’ on it…
9:40:31 PM girlonfire36: your spleen is working on it
9:41:19 PM shad: Actually, I’ve got an accomplice who’s working on it…
9:41:27 PM shad: a woodchuck
9:41:30 PM shad: great disguise…
9:41:37 PM girlonfire36: uh-huh
9:42:08 PM girlonfire36: do you want bread?
9:42:12 PM girlonfire36: do you want bread?
9:42:16 PM girlonfire36: do you want bread?
9:42:17 PM girlonfire36: do you want bread?
9:42:17 PM girlonfire36: do you want bread?
9:42:17 PM girlonfire36: do you want bread?
9:42:18 PM girlonfire36: do you want bread?
9:42:18 PM girlonfire36: do you want bread?
9:42:19 PM girlonfire36: do you want bread?
9:42:19 PM girlonfire36: do you want bread?
9:42:20 PM girlonfire36: do you want bread?
9:42:20 PM girlonfire36: do you want bread?
9:42:20 PM girlonfire36: do you want bread?
9:42:20 PM girlonfire36: do you want bread?
9:42:21 PM girlonfire36: do you want bread?
9:42:21 PM girlonfire36: do you want bread?
9:42:21 PM girlonfire36: do you want bread?
9:42:22 PM girlonfire36: do you want bread?
9:42:22 PM girlonfire36: do you want bread?
9:42:23 PM girlonfire36: do you want bread?
9:42:26 PM girlonfire36: I’m philip glasss
9:42:27 PM shad: depends
9:43:04 PM shad: the composer?
9:43:09 PM girlonfire36: YES
9:43:13 PM girlonfire36: you know him?
9:43:15 PM girlonfire36: I love him
9:44:28 PM shad: isn’t that a bit narcissistic if you love yourself? You said you were Phillip Glass and now you love him?
9:44:38 PM shad:
9:44:39 PM girlonfire36: touchee
9:44:51 PM girlonfire36: theres a balance between self esteem and narcissism
9:45:22 PM shad: a fine line, true, but when you start talking about yourself in the third person, it’s been crossed…
9:45:30 PM girlonfire36: k
9:45:45 PM girlonfire36: i’m also multigendered now
9:45:45 PM shad: so….what’s with the bread bit?
9:45:55 PM shad: Yeah, that thought crossed my mind as well
9:45:56 PM girlonfire36: for a dollar for with the tuna
9:46:05 PM shad: yup…
9:46:10 PM shad: …not a clue what you’re talking about now
9:46:37 PM girlonfire36: you said last night you wanted to come to the market with me sometime to buy amazing bread for 1 dollar
9:46:40 PM girlonfire36: remember?
9:46:50 PM girlonfire36: or where you a neutreno somewhere else?
9:47:16 PM shad: good lord - are you STILL thinking I’m someone you know?
9:47:31 PM girlonfire36: stop.
9:47:51 PM shad: No - really…you have the wrong person
9:48:11 PM shad: do you have a phone number for this Shad you think I am? Call him - he’ll tell you you’re talking to a complete stranger
9:48:21 PM girlonfire36: i do have a phone number
9:48:43 PM girlonfire36: but that requires my complicated phone plan
9:48:53 PM girlonfire36: which is complicated and not uncomplicated
9:49:05 PM shad: …buh?
9:49:22 PM girlonfire36: you got it
9:50:13 PM shad: well, I think it’ll be worth your time (and effort to figure out the complicated/uncomplicated plan) to call…
9:50:29 PM girlonfire36: really?
9:50:37 PM shad: really
9:50:48 PM girlonfire36: why don’t YOU call my number which is 332-2414
9:50:48 PM shad: I’m not who you think I am
9:50:57 PM girlonfire36: because you are the one with the CELL PHONE and I AM NOT
9:51:07 PM shad: fine - area code?
9:51:25 PM shad: when you see a call on caller ID from Virginia (703) - that’s me
9:51:42 PM girlonfire36: wait my mom just called
9:51:43 PM shad: and your name? Or should I just ask for Girl on Fire?
9:51:47 PM girlonfire36: sorry
9:52:04 PM girlonfire36: so the line is busy
9:52:18 PM shad: convenient…
9:52:30 PM girlonfire36: ok
9:52:32 PM girlonfire36: I’ll catch you later
9:52:35 PM girlonfire36: must talk with mum
9:52:46 PM shad: Have a good evening!
9:52:53 PM girlonfire36: morning
9:53:30 PM shad: not here it isn’t….
10:08:51 PM girlonfire36: phone call=done now
10:09:50 PM shad: back to ask me more about bread?
10:10:05 PM girlonfire36: sure. if you want me ot
10:10:23 PM shad: wouldn’t make much sense - I’m not hungry right now
10:10:41 PM girlonfire36: tomorrow afternooon?
10:10:46 PM shad: I’ll be working
10:10:52 PM girlonfire36: all afternoon?
10:10:57 PM shad: of course
10:11:05 PM shad: I work from 8:30 to 5-ish
10:11:12 PM girlonfire36: ah ok
10:11:26 PM girlonfire36: well, send me an IM then if you want to go for a walk or something
10:11:50 PM shad: I dunno - I think you live a long ways away from me, just to call up for a walk
10:12:29 PM girlonfire36: its all about the journey, not the destination, so distance doens’t matter
10:12:42 PM shad: depends on how I’m getting there
10:12:55 PM shad: if I’m on my motorcycle, cool, I’ll take all day
10:13:18 PM shad: if I’m in a wheelbarrow, well…I must be really drunk then
10:13:36 PM girlonfire36: a wheelbarrow!hahahahahahahahaa
10:14:58 PM girlonfire36: ok. Bye Shad
10:15:16 PM shad: Bye strange girl who’s apparently on fire
10:15:24 PM girlonfire36: i’m strange
10:15:28 PM girlonfire36: I can deal with that

How do these people find me? Not that I’m complaining - that was just all sorts of awesome. If she’d have given me an area code, I would’ve called

Lights Out San Francisco

I’ve recently been given the task of keeping the Customer Service website up to date. The CS site is simply the site the Customer Service Reps use to find out about recent changes and latest promotions, as well as where the caller scripts are housed. You would think this wouldn’t be a huge task.

You, like I, would have thought wrong.

It was presented to me like so: once or twice a week, an off-site contractor would be sending me documents that I would have to simply upload to the website, replacing the current document, or, if it was new, adding it to the Table of Contents. Certainly not a big deal, so in the interest of wanting to help and get to know not only the job, but the people better, I accepted.

I should have actually taken a look at the site first.

Picture this: it’s 2007 – you work in a place that deals with products that are online. The whole business is online. You’d think the people here would’ve kept up with the changes and technology that has weaved its way through web development in the last 10 years. Again, you’d think wrong.

When I first opened the site, it was like being thrown back into 1996. First thing I couldn’t help but notice is the frames. Yes, frames – left top and main. Next, is the BLINKING text stating who the “rep of the month” is. Animated gifs of fireworks exploding. Liberal use of javascript to do nothing worthwhile (the person before me thought it’d be cool to have the title of the page rotate through different sayings, such as “check out the in-house website!” or “page created by so-and-so”). Two words described my immediate reaction to the site.

Holy shit.

Immediately followed was the thought “what have I gotten myself into?” I looked deeper into the structure, and found even more to curl the toe-hairs. The site consists of:

• 29 top-level sub-directories (I haven’t counted further in)
• 3,338 Images
• 1175 HTML docs
• 75 .doc and .xls files.

The site itself is somewhere in the neighborhood of 9gb in size.

9 freakin’ GIGAbytes.

And then further exploration determined that while one of the sub-directories was indeed an images directory, there are image sub directories in several other places, not to mention random images scattered all over the damn place. Oh, and the most helpful thing? They’re named stuff like “imageABC.jpg, imageXYZ.jpg”

And it’s not like the site was done with a CMS or anything – no, all those 1,175 HTML docs were hand coded.

But I’ve saved the best for last. See, the sub-contractor I mentioned earlier, she sends me Word documents. The guy who had this job before me discovered the wonderful ease with which one can take a Word doc and save it as an HTML page. Yup, File > Save as Web Page, easy as that, no problems as far as he was concerned.

Have any of you all actually seen what the code looks like when you do that? It’s horrifying. Here’s a quick example:

<html xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"
xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word"
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">

<head>
<meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<meta name=ProgId content=Word.Document>
<meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 11">
<meta name=Originator content="Microsoft Word 11">
<link rel=File-List href="Hello%20World_files/filelist.xml">
<title>Hello World</title>
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:DocumentProperties>
<o:Author>Data Center</o:Author>
<o:Template>Normal</o:Template>
<o:LastAuthor>Data Center</o:LastAuthor>
<o:Revision>1</o:Revision>
<o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime>
<o:Created>2007-09-11T16:26:00Z</o:Created>
<o:LastSaved>2007-09-11T16:26:00Z</o:LastSaved>
<o:Pages>1</o:Pages>
<o:Words>1</o:Words>
<o:Characters>11</o:Characters>
<o:Company>ORCC</o:Company>
<o:Lines>1</o:Lines>
<o:Paragraphs>1</o:Paragraphs>
<o:CharactersWithSpaces>11</o:CharactersWithSpaces>
<o:Version>11.8132</o:Version>
</o:DocumentProperties>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:SpellingState>Clean</w:SpellingState>
<w:GrammarState>Clean</w:GrammarState>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:DontGrowAutofit/>
</w:Compatibility>
<w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel>
</w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156">
</w:LatentStyles>
</xml><![endif]-->
<style>
<!--
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
-->
</style>
<!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}
</style>
<![endif]-->
</head>

<body lang=EN-US style='tab-interval:.5in'>

<div class=Section1>

<p class=MsoNormal>Hello World</p>

</div>

</body>

</html>

If you read through that, you know I typed ‘Hello World’ into a Word doc, and used the Save as Web Page feature.

It’s enough to make me cry.

Crazy Sexy Cancer

Both kids were up early, excited to be starting school this week. They’ve been driving each other nuts while at home this summer, as Gail and I’ve been working. Sarah’s looking forward to fourth grade, while Cody is starting High School.

High School. Geezus I feel old today.