Friday, June 6, 2003
Did research on PDF forms—trying to find a way to streamline and de-paperize the supplemental application portion of our process. Conclusion: In the long run, everything ought to be Web-based and secured. PDF might still play a role; I need to know more from James about workflow and their reviewing process before I can decide. Before that can happen, we need to set up SSL for our site. For now, we have 2 choices. Choice A: nothing changes from our old routine: students will download and print blank PDF forms, fill them out with typewriter or pen, then mail them in, someone (who?) will manually count words to ensure students haven't gone over our word count limit. (This last piece is the most embarassing.) Choice B: we supply a PDF with form fields, students download the PDF and fill out the form inside Acrobat, they print them out and mail them in. No manual word counting is necessary because our form fields will have character limits set inside Acrobat. One problem: People who have only Acrobat Reader cannot save the PDF while working. Modified the School of Pharmacy organization chart for Susie and Sarah, sent it out for review, got an okay from Sarah, had some questions for Susie before making the changes live, we'll talk on Monday. I realized today while reading Joe Clark's Web site then using m-w.com that "countenance" is not only a noun, but also a transitive verb. Weird! His grammatically correct usage: "I doubt you would countenance racism, sexism, or anti-Semitism on your Web site." However, I must say one more thing about Joe Clark's writing (and I might have said this in the past, but here goes...) He frequently writes tangentially but conveniently puts those accessory words in parentheses. They're all over the place, and it is perhaps the most annoying thing about his writing. It made me wish that Opera (or any browser for that matter, but Opera is the most likely to have it) had a mode which removed all text within (and including the) parentheses. I wonder by how many pages his book would shrink if the publisher printed a "no parentheticals" version—kind of like a large print version only different. (A little in-joke there, get it? (You didn't know that in-joke was hyphenated, did you? Holy parens! I have Joe-Clark-parenism!)) Late lunch at home by myself: pork and shrimp wonton soup with fish balls. Read Joe's book on joeclark.org. Talked with Patrick, who said he wrote 15 pages today (or was that yesterday)? Fun fact: There are 55,400 pages in the world titled "Welcome to Adobe GoLive 6" and 211,000 pages titled "Welcome to Adobe GoLive 5" and 169,000 titled "Welcome to Adobe GoLive 4". Searching on "Welcome to Adobe GoLive 3" gives only 1 hit: a blog entry on blork.org for Friday, November 16, 2001 in which blork exactly what I'm reporting here, only different numbers: GoLive 5 = 113,000. GoLive 4 = 181,000. GoLive 3 = zero! The box of PressReady I put up on eBay yesterday is now at $46! I started it at $15 and wasn't expecting it to sell for more than $20. Hooray! Chris De Lay sent me an e-mail today with this in it: "Tivo is the best thing since... since... SEX!"