General Geekiness
Grrr (NaBloPoMo Day 29)
Nov 29th
I’m having a wonderfully frustrating day. The kind of day where every turn you make you run into a wall, and the most positive thought you can conjure is that at least the half-hour you just spent banging your head on the desk is good exercise.
Because we do online banking, it’s policy here that I cannot see certain types of information. Fair enough. Let me give you an example of how this works; Let’s say we have a form that has some personal information on it. I can create the form, create the display template the bank will see, and a ‘thank you for filling out our form’ page. I can create all three of these, but I can’t view the results of the display template. That’s where the sensitive info might reside. So the normal SOP is to create the form, send it to my boss, she uploads them, fills it out, and then checks to see if the results are as expected. Because some of these forms have lots of different fields that all have to match up, it’s not uncommon for me to miss something. She takes a screen shot, let’s me know the problem, I take a stab at fixing it, send it back to her, she uploads it again…you can see how this can frustrate a developer who is used to being able to see the results right away with a simple reload of the page. And she has other things going on sometimes, so there are times when it takes half-an-hour, up to three hours to get to it.
Now…take my boss out of the equation (She’s off getting married this week). What do I do? Normally, I’d send them to a second person and he’d take care of it. However, he’s off watching my boss get married.
So now what? I sit, twiddle my thumbs, try to find a way around this silliness. Quite a frustrating day I’m having and it’s not even two…
Expression Engine (NaBloPoMo Day 28)
Nov 28th
I’m so close to grasping EE. I was thinking about it in the shower this morning and it slowly dawned on me (must’ve been a lightbulb with a dimmer switch attached), that I needed to use categories to sort the over view pages from the individual models.
I know that probably means nothing to anyone but me, but hey, it’s here to remind me.
Gushings (NaBloPoMo Day 20)
Nov 20th
Working in a sea of cubicles, I realize now how precious my iPod is to me. When I forget and leave it at home, I hear my boss go on about her upcoming wedding. Sure, I’m happy for her, but I don’t want to hear about it daily. When I forget my iPod at home, I am forced to listen to our Sales VP drop F-Bomb after F-Bomb while talking to his buddies/co-workers/clients, whomever he feels comfortable talking to that way. Which I would guess would include his own grandmother. I am forced to listen to the group having its potluck in the conference room right across from where I sit. The printer, that sits right behind me, constantly killing trees.
When I do remember to bring in my iPod, it’s wonderful bliss. I can listen to what I choose and be free from all distractions. I encapsulate myself into my own world and become focused and productive.
Unless Air comes on. I like to listen to them when I’m falling asleep sometimes, and now I’m like Pavlov. If they come on during the rotation, I literally start yawning within 15 seconds, unless I skip.
But I do love my iPod. So happy it found me!
My brain is pulp (NaBloPoMo Day 10)
Nov 10th
Only the 10th of November, but I already have the feeling I’m not going to make my self-imposed goal of opening my Harley site by month’s end. Not unless I have some epiphany in how this all needs to be set up.
As I’ve stated before, I’m using Expression Engine to build my Harley site out. It’s a fantastically limber CMS, but it does have a learning curve. Guess it’s the price you pay. Unlike WordPress (which powers my journal here), there aren’t hundreds of themes to choose from. But that’s its allure; complete freedom. People have built Real Estate Broker sites (all listing information is entered from within EE), public companies and even university sites. While it might take some getting used to, EE has tremendous potential.
I just really need to focus on how to make it work for my site. I’ve been reading through the forums every day this month so far. Usually all the questions are answered, but if I have to ever ask, it’s answered very quickly. The community itself is another great reason for using EE. I bought the personal version with the forum module. Yes, I know there’s free systems out there (such as WordPress), but you really do get what you pay for. I’m not bagging on WordPress, I think it’s a great publishing tool, but EE is far more robust.
Now if I could just wrap my brain around it.
Christ in a Clown Car
Sep 11th
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.
Stats
Aug 29th
While publishing the link to Long Way Down over under Quick Bits there, I noticed that I’d passed the 200 posts mark. That’s since I started using WordPress. I’ve been blogging since before it was blogging. I have posts on my computer back home from 1997. 10 years. Wow. You’d think I’d have something, if not important, at least stimulating to say in all that time. Nope.
There are currently 201 posts
In those posts there are 277 comments
All contained within 10 categories.
And Spammers have tried to spam my blog a whopping 13,571 times. Lord only knows why.
Missin’ my Mac
Aug 20th
Since starting this job, I’ve been on the Windows platform probably 98% of the time now. Between here at work, and using Gail’s laptop at the house (Vista, ew!), I rarely find myself using my Mac. Part of that has to do with the fact that I don’t have a Powerbook anymore, and can’t work at the dining room table like I prefer. I at least feel in touch if one of the kids or Gail needs my attention for something, rather than have them yell down into the basement, where my G4 is.
Well, this past weekend, Gail was gone for most of Saturday, the kids were out and about, so I took the time to work on a new website for a friend. I probably spent a total of 12 hours over the past two days on the Mac, holed up in my basement, listening to iTunes, using Textmate and Transmit, and the occasional game of poker online.
Now, Monday and back at work, I find myself using all the wrong shortcut keys, looking for the minimize in the upper left rather than upper right, and hitting the F11 key for Expose among other Mac-centric stuff. It’s amazing that after 5 months using mostly windows, it only takes me a weekend to revert back to how my Mac feels.
I miss my Powerbook. Anyone want to spring for a new MacBook Pro for me? Call it an early Birthday/Christmas present? C’mon, I know you all have an extra $3,000 laying around…
*sigh*
Ever so slowly
Aug 17th
I do web development for banks, as most of you know by now. We host approximately sixty banks, from small credit unions to larger ones you’ve probably heard of.
My second day on the job, I was tasked with updating one of those larger banks – Discover Financial (you know, Discover Credit Cards?). Being a complete noob at the time where ASP is concerned, I was diligently checking my work. I pushed the changes, reloaded the website and was greeted with “Include file not found” – and that was it. The complete Discover Financial website was down, by my own hand.
I panicked.
A quick ‘undo’ didn’t alleviate the problem, so I literally ran to my boss’s pod, jumping from one foot to the other, hands flapping like I’m trying to take off saying “Emergency! Emergency!”
She was on the phone and said “uh…let me call you back.” I quickly explained what happened, but in the explanation, figured it out, and fixed the problem. The site was down maybe all of two minutes, and we received zero calls about it.
Today, some five months later, my boss was having a problem with an ASP login script. I took a look, and in 10 seconds had it fixed.
I’m learning…
Feelin’ like it’s 1999
Jul 11th
This is killing me…
A lot of the bank sites I work on are older designs. As such, they use older practices. While there’s a sprinkling of CSS and Javascript throughout these sites (and some have more than just a sprinkling), they’re all table-based layouts. When I have to update the pages, which I do constantly, I have to weed through a plethora of <tr> and <td> tags trying to find what I’m looking for. It’s usually not difficult, but all those tables within tables, combined with inline CSS and Javascript just makes me itch.
Unfortunately, my boss doesn’t have any real concerns about adhering to web standards, and I’m not sure how to make her understand the importance of keeping the content (HTML) separate from the presentation (CSS) and separate from the behavior (Javascript). While there are pages that have links to external CSS and JS files, for every one, there are a hundred more that have all three elements combined together.
I’m going to have to figure out a plan of attack and make her see the importance of Web Standards and separation of content vs. behavior and presentation. If only for my own sanity.