Monday, March 28, 2005
Unpacked Chris's new laptop bag and docking station which had arrived. Updated current student news and calendar. Corrected a calendar item for Cindy. Posted news about e-mail migration forthcoming for P1 and P2 students. Helped Melissa with a problem with Microsoft Word not starting properly in PharmAdMIT 2005. Updated the graduation info for guests page for Joel. Late lunch: burrito #4 with refried beans, shredded chicken, mild salsa from Carmelina's: about $5. Helped Ena set up a new fax machine in the student lounge which was donated by the Class of 2005. Created a final for Chris's poster project. Created paper reminders for a forthcoming somewhat-of-a-surprise event. Dinner at Best of Thai Noodle with Anna B, one of my cousins I hadn't seen in years. She had a Singha (and got carded) with wide noodles with chicken and sea creatures in (I think) a peanut sauce, I had a Thai iced tea and chicken with vermicelli noodle soup. About $22 after a $4 tip. Yummy. We caught up on who's doing what. She's living in a studio in Long Beach and going to school, hoping to make a career in public relations or advertising. During dinner, we watched the Stussy shopkeeper across the street throw up white grapefruit-sized balls of something in the air repeatedly in attempts to chase out a pigeon which had flown into the store and chosen to rest in the eaves of the store's high ceilings and skylight. After dinner we crossed the street to observe more closely, and as the door was open (but the outer metal gate closed), we discovered that the balls were wads of (I think) butcher paper wrapped with clear packing tape, and we chatted with the short Asian man (whom we both admitted was rather attractive). He said he'd been at his task for the past hour and a half, and when I suggested he call the city's animal control department, he said he already did and that they would not be able to help him, having no ladder tall enough to reach the bird. The shopkeeper knew that the bird would ruin his merchandise with its excrement if he left it alone. There was little left for us to do but give him our empathy and go on our way. After I got home I realized his scenario would make an imaginative video game or cartoon. Anna and I parted company near Haight and Ashbury after her friend Izzy met us and we chatted briefly. They were off to some concert for which Izzy had finagled some free tickets, and I walked to Carl and Cole, took a whiz in the shadows in the dog park, then caught a train then a bus home. For my current reading, I'm alternating between two books: The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket by John Weir and Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman. I hadn't finished the former when I borrowed it from the library a few weeks ago—my card had expired and the book became due so I had to give it up even though I hadn't finished it. The latter book I think I had read once before, or maybe I hadn't, but in any case, it's a quick read since I've already adopted many of his teachings. Still, my code could be cleaner—this might encourage me to test my work site using a single stylesheet since I already suspect I can now get away with only one instead of the 7 stylesheets I started out with in 2001. Zeldman's writing is so clear that it makes me proud that someone took the time to explain everything he did. I feel like putting on my orange t-shirt and blue ski cap and joining thousands of other web developers similarly dressed—a kind of army to beat back old, shoddy code of the web's early days back when people still called it the World Wide Web and argued over whether you should say World Wide Web or Worldwide Web or WWW or Web. In case you didn't know, people nowadays just say "web." I believe it was Wired News which was first to issue a press release rationalizing this choice—"web"—and at the time I had been using "Web" and had found their action to be somewhat shocking. Indeed, it's not often one reads a press release that defends a style guideline. And at the time, deep down, I think I knew "web" was more correct than "Web" but so few people were using it in practice that it seemed daring to me. Tomorrow we go to Galen's birthday party, and I'm looking forward to it. Paid e-bills, archived some documents, confirmed our domestic partnership paperwork since we've been warned that UCOP is doing random audits, archived online shopping transactions.