I’ve decided the hierarchy of creative people goes something like this: agency folk, freelancers, corporate designers, academic designers. Hmmm.
Archive for March, 2002
I’ve had a change of view from the totem pole
Friday, March 29th, 2002Good stuff
Tuesday, March 26th, 2002Annie’s Goddess Dressing, go get some. It’s at Whole Foods and now Woodmans. Very tasty.
Da boot
Sunday, March 24th, 2002In a valiant attempt to do something different, Stace and I went to the Barrymore Theatre last night to see “The Prom Committee Makes Sweet Love”, which was advertised as kind of a comedy club type thing. Not so. There were definitely some humorous skits, but I left there thinking I could have just hung out with my friends, who are considerably more humorous, for free.
Afterwards we ventured to the Essenhaus where we met up with some of the aforementioned humorous friends and played the boot game. I became painfully aware of my increasing age—I actually hesitated the first few times before drinking out of a boot that 9 other people had just drank out of—but as the night wore on I recalled my college philosophy that alcohol kills all germs and therefore everything would be fine. Fuzzy logic at it’s best.
Happy Birthday Mom : )
Friday, March 22nd, 2002Just returned from the Avenue Bar, where we celebrated my mom’s birthday. We had reservations at 6 and they still didn’t get us in until 6:30 – the place was packed! Apparently they’ve cornered the Madison Friday night fish fry market. Also thought it was interesting that they do not have one single item on the menu other than an appetizer, but including salads, without meat in it. Very Wisconsin.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Sunday, March 17th, 2002St. Patrick’s Day really didn’t get much publicity this year at all. I made no plans, most of my friends made no plans, and I probably would have missed it entirely except that I stopped at my parents this morning and there were shamrock napkins out on the table. That and the dogpile dog has a shamrock in his mouth today and is wearing a little green hat.
Yesterday was kind of a fun day. Some photographer friends and I went to a seminar in Milwaukee by Seth Resnick. Aside from being a friendly and humorous speaker, Seth is a renowned photographer and about as dedicated to the business as you can get. We learned a lot about copyright, how to protect yourself legally, and how to pursue copyright infringement. His last segment dealt with the necessity of promoting yourself on the web, and how to achieve a high search engine ranking. While his methods aren’t ones which I would use to the extent that he does (I have no doubt that this man would sell his first born child to receive a higher ranking on Google) you can’t say he isn’t motivated and/or dedicated, and his methods do work. Personally though, I’d settle for a little less site traffic, a few hours of peaceful sleep at night, and a fraction of his income. To each his own.
A snowball’s melting somewhere
Thursday, March 14th, 2002I actually cooked last night. S&G chicken (of course), bean casserole, croissants, rosemary potatoes, salad, bruschetta for an appetizer and amaretto cake for dessert. Pat gets credit for the casserole and dessert, and the potatoes weren’t very good, but otherwise it was all quite edible. Yay me. =] Of more interest though, was chatting with Sveta, who has been living in the states for three years, and gleaning a little of her perspective on Americans and her former life in Russia. All while sharing a good Riesling, of course.
Need any basil?
Wednesday, March 13th, 2002Busy week, which is good. Last weekend sucked. I originally thought I was all upset over the male species but then realized it was just the whole lack-of-shamrock-shake phenomena. Now I’ve had two in the last 24 hours and feel fine.
Monday night I went to an herbal gardening class, one of the UW Mini Courses where I found out Basil, which technically rhymes with “dazzle” is an annual plant. Which means that all 36 basil plants I have growing in my basement are going to produce and then die, instead of growing forever as I had hoped, providing me with endless pesto ingredients. Bummer.
Under Rug Swept
Monday, March 11th, 2002Alanis and I are totally on the same wave length. I’m ok with capital punishment though. Great CD.
1 hour later
Friday, March 8th, 2002Attempts to upload the entry below failed and I realized all updates since Sunday had simply disappeared from my site. Nice. What will have turned into most of my lunch hour was spent attempting to get some support, which was hopeless. After reading all their online instructions (which contradict each other in at least 3 places) and pretty much guessing at new FTP information, I was able to connect. Not only did my user name change, but so did my FTP Host and Host directory (which they deny). My guess is they’re trying to limit people’s access so there aren’t 30,000 web pages published this week detailing Jumpline’s imbroglio. Bastards.
On a more humorous note, while messing with my FTP info I was able to upload this page to 6 other locations (three of which were not even on the server which hosts this site) using different user names, passwords, directories (which should have been secure) and FTP hosts. Luckily for them I don’t really know what I’m doing and I’m not big into sabotage.
Jumpline sucks
Friday, March 8th, 2002Wed. evening and Thursday early morning were spent in awe of my once admirable web host, Jumpline. After touting their software, customer service and reliability for the last two years, (not to mention persuading numerous friends, clients and associates to sign up), I can now only encourage all these people to find a new host asap. Without any forewarning, the company changed the user names and email preferences on 30,000 customer email accounts, leaving everyone without email, and without ftp access. As of yesterday, their phone lines were unavailable and they weren’t responding to email. The new program manager is ridiculously slow and the interface is horrible. One can only assume they are attempting to drive themselves out of business. It is perhaps the one thing they are doing successfully. If anyone has any recommendations for a new host please email me. Assuming I actually receive the email, which is an optimistic assumption at this point, I’ll publish the results.
I STILL haven’t had a shamrock shake. What is the world coming to?