Earlier I said I would post only when I’d made some changes to the site to help it move along in its redesign. While it might not look like much has changed (“woo, Shad, you put the date at the *top* of the post. Impressive!”), I have been working on it. Most recently I’ve been wondering what direction to take it, and realized I didn’t even have a good plan. So I sat down and created a wireframe mockup. First I sketched it out on paper, and then I created a mockup in Photoshop. Sometime this weekend, I’ll go back and take another look at it and decide if I like it. If I do like it, I’ll start working on coding the html for it. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I like it.

I’ve also been pondering the start of yet another journal (I hate the word blog). This one would stay, and be geared towards family and general stuff, while the other one would be aimed at web & design. I think if I get this job where I’ll be doing print work as well as web work, I’ll take a shot at it. I know the world doesn’t need another web/design site…but who cares.

That’d bring the totally number of journals I have floating around to…erm….6

Yeah, like I need that many.

In the meantime, work is still up in the air, I still don’t know what my future might be here and I’m still balls to the wall in dealing with sites and trying to make sense of stuff like what’s below:

This screenshot is what the Web Developer extension for Firefox sees when I’m working one particular bank site. Yes, that is 7 nested tables.

I love my job.

It’s nice for a change to be voting for someone I actually like, rather than the lesser of two evils. If you’re in Maryland, D.C., or Virginia, get out and vote in the primary. If you have a primary coming to your neck of the woods soon, get out and make your voice heard. I did.

Again, no further on the design front – mostly because of work.

As alluded to previously, there are big changes coming along here at work. I can talk about them now as the rest of the company knows. In a nutshell, my department is getting cut. Just after Christmas, I was told that the company I work for is getting out of the hosting business, and as that pertains directly to what I do (build and update websites for the banks we host), I suddenly felt like I had the carpet yanked out from under my feet.

Turns out this isn’t the end of the world, however. My department consists of myself and my boss. That’s it. When her boss told us, she told us in separate meetings. The reason behind that was, while they didn’t have a position for my boss, they did have one for me.  I’ll be doing similar to what I’m doing now, but for in-house clients. I’ll also be doing more print stuff; postcards, posters, brochures, etc.

While this isn’t 100% certain, it is about 98%. I just need to show my possible future boss that I have a sense of design. I’ve been working in Illustrator the past few nights trying to create a post card to showcase my design skills. Can I just tell you it’s absurd that Illustrator doesn’t have a crop tool?

Anyhow.

Wish me luck. This sounds exciting and new and different and I’d really like to take a shot at it. And if I get it, considering I’ll be doing print stuff, I’m going to beg and plead for a Mac to work on. Yes, I’m devious that way.

No, I didn’t decide to celebrate CSS Naked Day early. Nor did I break anything. For a change.

Nope, I decided I’ve had it with my whining and bitching about creating my own theme/layout for wordpress. So, as part of my New Year’s resolutions, I’ve decided to strip the site pretty much completely, and then start building it back up, bit by bit. First to figure out a layout I’m OK with, then start adding stuff back in.

And, knowing me, it might take me all of 2008.

A rather scary thing happened to Gail and I yesterday.

We decided to take the dog for a walk and went our normal route. Part of that route is along Algonquin Parkway, which is a four-lane rode divided by a wide grassy median. There’s a bike/jogging path that we walk along that is up a slight incline from the road. Gail and I were walking quietly on the side of the road going against traffic, when we heard a terrific squeal of several cars’ brakes from behind us.

We flipped around and witnessed a car that had been traveling in the far lane swerve crazily across the road, into the median and crash through a road sign. The car then came into the on-coming lane (the one we were walking along side) , shot straight across it causing cars to swerve and brake, and then jumped up onto the bike path we were walking on, crashing head-first into a tree. The spot the car stopped at was the spot we’d been not 15 seconds before.

I handed the dog’s leash to Gail and sprinted to car. When I got around to the driver’s door, a lady about my age was struggling to get out. I shoved the door open (it was crimped fairly tight as a result of the crash) and helped her out, walking her a bit of ways away from the car and sitting her down on the bike path. She had a dazed, far-off look in her eyes, and kept asking if she’d hit anyone. A gentleman came up who’d witnessed the crash and identified himself as an EMT. He started asking questions and I left her in his care.

Several people were stopped along the road or had come from their houses by now and calls had been made to 911. The lady was asking for her purse so I got back into the car and retrieved it. The nitrous smell from the airbag was strong, and I found her purse on the floor. After giving it to her, I went back and turned the ignition off. The car itself was steaming quietly, the front end completely mangled.

Seeing as how it was under control, and she was in no immediate danger, I went back to Gail. The poor dog was shaking and howling. She quieted down once I got back, and we continued our walk.

If we’d left the house just 15 seconds later, things might have been drastically different this Christmas morning. Many small prayers of thanks were said, I think, between both of us as we finished our walk in silence.

Merry Christmas everyone. I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe holiday.

I hate this time of the year.

No, not because the retailers are shoving all their sales items and non-sales items down my throat every time I turn on the TV or Radio. It’s not because I’m sick unto death of all the Christmas carols. Truthfully, I’ve managed to avoid a lot of them. And it’s not because the commercialization of Christmas has overshadowed the spirit of Christmas. I’ve actually seen quite a few people smiling, being polite and in general, just being nicer.

Nope, I hate this time of year because in their desire to be generous and giving this holiday season, my co-workers all feel the need to share their cookies with me. Everyone of my co-workers. All 632 of my co-workers. They all have cookies! And they’re GOOD cookies. Chocolate chip. The peanut butter cookies with the big Hershey’s Kiss on them. Sugar cookies in festive shapes of season (I derive a sadistic sort of pleasure from biting Rudolph’s head off). Butterscotch Snaps. Peppermint. Cookies with icing, cookies with M&Ms, even oatmeal raisin, which I don’t like. If you’re going to send me cookies, don’t send oatmeal raisin.

Lord do I feel fat. I really need to get out and exercise. Walk the dog, walk the mall (akin to committing suicide this time of year, I know), maybe go to the rec center and play some raquetball or something. I need exercise!

Whoa, wait. Was that a tray of chocolate meringue cookies that just went by?

15 years is a long time. A lot can happen in 15 years…

In 2007 32 people die at Virginia Tech and Tony Blair resigns.
In 2006 Kobe scores 81 while Kramer goes on a tirade.
In 2005 Live 8 tries to Make Poverty History and Pope John Paul II passes on.
In 2004 we lost the Gipper and The Scream.
In 2003 we lost the Old Man of the Mountain and Great White burned down the house.
In 2002 we lost the Queen Mother and the Beltway Snipers began their spree.
In 2001  the iPod is introduced. 9/11 happens.
In 2000 Y2K fizzled, Elian is siezed and Bush is handed the election.
In 1999 Lance Armstrong wins his first Tour and the Great One retires.
In 1998 Google and the iMac come into the world, and a president did not have sexual relations.
In 1997 Hale-Bopp traveled on by and a boy named Harry Potter is introduced to the world.
In 1996 Whitewater was a scandal and Major League Soccer was born.
In 1995 eBay and Yahoo were created.
In 1994 Kurt Cobain died, OJ was chased, and Friends first went on the air.
In 1993 the World Wide Web was born.

And on this day in 1992, a beautiful young woman became my wife, making me incredibly lucky and unbelievably happy. Happy Anniversary Gail.

Welcome to Black Friday. The day it behooves you to stay away from the mall.  Unfortunately, we’re getting ready to take Cody to Best Buy to get his Guitar Hero III. I wont’ lie, I want to play it as well.

We had a wonderfully typical Thanksgiving. My brother and his wife came into town, Gail cooked her first turkey and it came it out well. We sat around and digested and talked and caught up with each other’s lives.

After yesterday’s long-winded entry, I feel justified in keeping this one brief. Hope everyone had a good day.

I mentioned a couple of topics I considered discussing when first starting NaBloPoMo, just to make sure I had something to talk about. One of those topics was racism, as I do think I have a rather unique view of racism, considering I’m your average mid-30s white guy. Typical house in the typical suburb, living the typical demographic – wife, two kids, SUV, cat, dog, etc.. What could someone like me know of racism?

Easy; up until I was in the fourth grade, I was very much a minority. I live on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona. My dad worked for the BIA, hence the reason for living on the reservation. In my grade, I was one of four white kids. All the other kids were Native Americans. And I was constantly picked on. Two incidents stand out vividly in my mind.

The bus ride was always a challenge. I knew every intersection, every scrap-wood fence, almost every rock, as I stared out the window the entire ride to school and home. I didn’t interact with the other kids. On the way to school this particular morning, the other kids were in a torturous mood. I suffered smacks upside the head, flicks of the ear and stuff being thrown at me. I didn’t respond, nor react. When we got to school, I flat out refused to get off the bus. All the other kids had gotten off, but me. Brother Mark, our bus driver (yes, it was a catholic school I attended), came back to talk to me. I remember him being nice. I also remember him bringing another authority figure on the bus, whether another teacher or an administrator, I don’t know. I just remember Brother Mark telling this person that all the other kids picked on me and he simply didn’t know why. Eventually, they persuaded me to get off the bus.

The second incident was considerably more embarrassing, and I’m not sure I’ve actually told this to anyone. See, being white, I was circumcised. The Navajo and Hopi boys (as I imagine all the Native American boys), weren’t. And when they saw I was, it was as if I was suddenly a side-show freak. I would go in to use the bathroom, and if there were three or more boys in there, I would get laughed at. The incident that stands out in my mind was peeing, and having some kid come up behind me and pull my pants and underwear down to my ankles. As a boy, once you start peeing, it’s very difficult to stop, so I stood there, finishing with my pants down around my ankles, the other boys laughing and taking turns kicking my butt. Not much fun.

I wasn’t until later in my life I understood what racism was. Granted, the discrimination against me was mild, and I apologize if I’ve offended anyone who might be reading this that suffered more than I. I don’t remember the adults giving me any sort of the treatment the kids did. And not all the kids were like that. I had a friend name Frederick who invited me to play, who took me to his house and to meet his family.

What really drove it home was when we lived up in Oregon. We moved there when I was in fourth grade. Talk about a culture shock; from high desert to lush, green, nearly rain forest-like climate. To sunshine all the time to rain every other day. To white people, and nothing but white people. My mom said after a week of being there, I asked her “where are all the Indians?” And in the fifth grade, we had a kid move into the neighborhood who was black. It was then that I really learned about racism.

Do I blame those kids for picking on me like that? Not in the slightest. As I said, it might have been a case of being the outcast kid that everyone picks on. I don’t think that’s the whole story though – another kid who was white, by the name of Joel, suffered many of the same indignities. Again, on the whole, they were minor. To a kid in the second and third grades, they were terrifying.

It’s at this time of the year that I think a little deeper than most about Thanksgiving and what it signifies. As an American, it’s more than family time, getting together and sharing good food; it’s also shameful. What our forefathers did to the Native Americans was a travesty. The way we treat with them now is an embarrassment.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Think about what it means.

/soapbox.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and in case I forget to make a post tomorrow, I want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving today (at least those of you in the States… I actually do have a couple of friends who pop in now and then to read this). I do have a post planned for tomorrow, for Treva actually. I’d mentioned when I started doing this post-a-day-for-thirty-days, that I had an idea or two, one of those ideas being my views on racism. She IM’d me a few days back asking when it was coming. So Treva, I promise, if I remember to post tomorrow, I will post about my views.

Before talking about what I really was going to talk about, I want to direct everyone’s attention to my Quick Bits over there. I want you to check out the link to Pigeon Point Lighthouse. And no, I’m not going to link it here, go over there you lazy bastards and click!

Today is going to be about my brain and the things it does to keep itself occupied while I’m asleep. See, I’m doing a new production right now, a reading of A Christmas Carol. Basically what that means is there are 6 of us on stage, actually reading from the script. We’ll be dressed in costume, but have minimal props and addressing the audience directly.

The other thing taking up a lot of my time is, naturally, work. I’ve been stressing over the creation of several different secure forms for these banks. Lots of little things I have to remember to include, and naturally I missed a bunch the first time (or two) around. Because of security measures taken as the result of an audit, I’m not allowed access to the production servers, nor the secure sever. Basically, I can create the forms, and make sure they look OK, but for full functionality, I have to send them to my boss and she has to upload them and tell me all the mistakes I made. Which, quite frankly, is a sucky way to develop.

But back to the brain playing while I’m sleeping. This morning, probably about 3 a.m. or so, I woke myself up. I woke up because I was talking. I was reciting lines of the script for a Christmas Carol. But they were formatted in the aforementioned Secure Forms. So, instead of Last Name [input box], First Name [input box], the were lines like Scrooge [Scrooge's Line], Cratchit [Cratchit's Line]. And that’s how I was reading the lines, talking in my sleep. And this isn’t the first time work has intruded. When I was managing the pizza restaurant, I was working very long hours (70-80 hour weeks). At one point in the middle of the night, I sat straight up in bed, and yelled to my wife “CHEESE! I NEED MORE CHEESE!”

I quit shortly after that.

So that’s how my brain occupies itself; merges two aspects of my daily life into one, and messes with me. Lovely.