January 17, 2001
3:23P
THREE BOYS

My sweeties—Honey, Jimmy Jam, and BillyBob...taking a breath for a moment. Okay, back to the webpage...

BROWSERS: Browser stats here, here, and here, in case you keep up with that kinda stuff. Thanks Andreas!

USABILITY: An experimental investigation of the effects of line length, document height and number of columns when reading from screen and The effects of reading speed and line length on comprehension. How did this one get by me? From last October, When will Jakob Nielsen shut up?

ACCESSIBILITY: Joe Clark rounded up some accessibility blogs: Federal IT Accessibility Initiative Blog, XBlog's Accessibility links, and Accessible Webpage Design: Resources ("resources" being the key word here at this site). Thanks Joe!

SAD NEWS: So sad with all the layoffs. I hold my breath. Here's a classy way for a company to help laid off employees; and here.

BLACKOUTS AND THE INTERNET: Rolling blackouts started today. At work, two of our buildings have no power. Of course, some people would like you to think it's the Internet's fault. Just hope my soaps record. Hey, I have my priorities. Here's one person's analysis of what's happening with the power.

"Chickens always come home to roost." Infamous Spammer Spammed.

Today's lesson in life and flower arranging.

January 16, 2001
7:10A
STUPID PENIS TRICKS

Life is good again. Rhonda is home safe and sound. A few less leaks, new master cyclinder. She's dying to go for a ride. I can tell.

Have spent the past three days finishing my Heartless entrance, the table of contents, and—count them—16 pages of Stupid Penis Tricks. Because of the high transfer rate of my little guys, I've broken the pages into fewer tricks knowing that only die-hards will go through ALL of the pages. The little script my sysadmin added to my img/ directory is working nicely BTW.

Added these festive new tricks: Easter Penis Basket, Ghostly Penis, Penis-In-A-Box, Reindeer Penis, and Valentines Penis. I really do have too much fun with these particular pages. Cute, juvenile, but to me they celebrate women having fun with Mr. Happy. The joy. The giggles. No fear here.

Please note that I now have my own holey search engine in place. Am working with beHosting's ever-lovely Erica on finding out if I can design the results page so that it has my look and feel and a back button. Will come in handy once all of my Heartless content is back up, hopefully by the end of this month.

I've revamped my links page, which has gotten me outta the house after days of nose to the keyboard. Will post more later, but here's a couple:

My favorite Smokin Hottie, Bettie Page, has her own site. Says it's supported by her and her brother Jack. For mo Bettie, mo Bettie, mo Bettie, see the Big List of Links. Can you find my hidden Bettie?

Also, check out Live Nude Girl for women-POV articles, "The Policitics of Fantasy", "Bare Naked Lady", "Mr. Telephone Man".

January 12, 2001
8:32A
ACCESSIBILITY

As I have been wrestling with accessibility this month, was glad to see Alan's Accessibility: The Politics of Design on A List Apart. I did check my HTML on this page via the W3C Validator. Awww, not 4.0.1 valid because of my use of marginheight, etc.

And I did a pass on my CSS through the W3C CSS validator. Passed. When I checked this page through Bobby, no Priority 1 errors, but I see I need to go back and read up on using 'title' with images. Looks like I need a whole weekend to comb through my site. *sigh*

Here's evolt.org's Accessibility: more than the right thing to do. And check out WebABLE which has useful links. Did you know about the Mac's accessibility features? Here's Usable Web's Design Tips.

Other stuff...

The JavaScript created from Dreamweaver no longer works on my top page and I had to toss it out. The same thing happened on my LMichelle page, but can't get it to reproduce consistently on my Mac. I switched over to Dori Smith's JavaScript with my unreleased Heartless area and thought all was well. And it is in IE5 and NN4.7.3, but on NN6 the rollover image disappears. I could just scream, but I won't. Back burner.

Believe it or not, I haven't had time to spend my Christmas money. But as soon as Rhonda gets out of the shop, I'm going wireless with my Palm. Here's how. Sprint is also teaming up with Palm.

Craig Cox of Mac OS Journal reviews Photoshop 6.

Now, here's to hoping we make it through the day without rolling blackouts. From looking at my PG&E bill, I see I'm in Block 7. They started with Block 3 yesterday. Maybe my block went down while I was sleeping. Fingers crossed.

Rhonda, hurry home. Mama misses you. Buses are no fun.

January 11, 2001
1:00P
RHONDA

On the news they just said we're going to have rolling blackouts in California this afternoon. Already in a stage 3 alert. Thought I'd get this out and put on a pot of potato soup just in case the lights start going out in residential areas. Printer off, candles, blankets,...this is new to me.

Working from home on this rainy Thursday. I had to take Rhonda in to the Jeep dealership to have her clutch looked at and an oil leak estimated. I've been dreading it ever since I made the appointment last week. The condescending tone, the use of the word 'dear' by a guy young enough to be my son, the blossoming of a $200 job into an $1100 job.

Do I have a sign on my head that says 'please screw me' when I walk into car dealerships/repair shops? What is it about these guys? I've been fighting them since I was 20 when I took my bug in for a tune-up at the VW dealership. They didn't even bother changing the spark plugs. When my boyfriend pointed it out, I got a book titled something like 'every woman's guide to working on cars'. It treated you like an intelligent human being lacking in knowledge, and was extremely helpful. I bought my Craftsman tools, timing light, dwell, tach and went about learning how to tune-up my own cars from that point on.

The last major repair that I did was in the dead of winter, with a house lamp hanging over the hood, and my oil-covered Chilton's lying across the engine. Replacing a timing chain on a '67 Bonneville is something that no 8-month pregnant woman should ever have to do, but I was glad that I was able do it having neither man nor money.

Enough whining. Let's get outta the house...

IE being squeezed out by MSN Explorer? No stand-alone IE 6.0?
Mac Design Magazine. Get your graphics news and Mac news in one place.
Matt's CSS choices
Oldest boomers turn 55. Naw, can't be.

January 7, 2001
10:37A
COMEBACK

The trends that will take hold in 2001. See the small section 'The grassroots net makes a comeback'. Who left?

Have been knee-deep in web design, wrestling with the browser variations of CSS font-size, and accessiblity issues. All of this affects the way I do comps. I know it's crazy to want my HTML to look like my comps, but that's just the kinda girl I am. Incorporating all of these considerations is an on-going education. BTW here's eCompany's website design links.

Here's an interesting experiment: The 1000 Journal Project. Follow the sightings of 1000 journals as they travel. So creative.

Layoffs hitting news publishing companies' 'internet units'. Here's the New York Times story.

Finished up the final tidying up and adding of links to my resources page. Next. I'd like to squeeze in the Michelle updates, then back to the Heartless redesign, by then tax time should be here...

...take a breath, remember the important things and that it's the journey, not the destination.

01-01-01
HAPPY NEW YEAR

A once-in-a-lifetime experience to be able to post an entry at this moment in time.