March 7, 2001
11:42A
TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS

Placed my pharmacy order online for the first time today. So handy to order, pay for, and have my asthma meds sent to me.

And while online, I checked on my library book reservation for Memoirs of A Geisha. I'm uncertain how Arthur Golden, the caucazoid male author, will handle the Geisha mind, hence the library check out instead of buying it. But Sherah said it was good and I'm in between fiction since I remain under the spell of Fugitive Pieces.

I also added my portfolio profile info into Aquent's database, so that prospective employers can do a search and hopefully find me listed there some day.

Just to show it's not all about 'me' today: No mo coffee. The Trojan Room Coffee Pot is going away. But next month you'll be able to watch corn grow which is a lot more exciting.

Soap time as I await the printer, a fellow Michelle, to call me at noon about why they can't open my eps file for my redesigned business card and the Unemployment person is to call me between 1 and 3 p.m. about something or other. But wait, tomorrow threatens to be even more fun: job search training class with unemployment department.

March 5, 2001
11:31A
SPRING HAS STILL SPRUNG

Despite the rain and chilly weather, it is still springing outside. I secretly photographed the neighbor's lovely tree.

Spent all weekend adding the finishing touches to my portfolio and redesigning my business card. And of course, made time to see this season's The Sopranos. The mother was a little creepy, but other than that, good stuff. Here's the Soprano blog.

Ben Henick, The Persistent One, wrote a great article for ALA, Back to Basics. Yes, Dreamweaver's okay for large sites with multiple cooks in the kitchen, but I'll stick to BBedit.

The 5K Contest is back for another year. The smaller the corral, the more of an opportunity to be creative.

Mattel trying to defend Barbie's honour. Too late. Mu-haha!

I tried entering my resume into California's Job Database this weekend, but right in the middle I got the message "the system is temporarily not running". Will have to check back today.

Also looked for jobs on Craig's List and Brass Ring. Set up my account, entered my resume, and we'll see. Was handy to view the job openings and then just click on a button to send your resume. Will be visiting Aquent tomorrow, but they say they have an overabundance of talent and very few positions available.

Am still considering XHTML. Here's Molly Holzschlag's article on To Use or Not to Use: An XHTML Roadmap for Designers.

Added a new category to my Resources Guide: Sex. Yes, I know. It's the subject no professional web designer would ever talk about on their webpage...no, no, no, it's 'web page' according to my new book, E-What? A Guide to the Quirks of New Media Style and Usage.

But now, time for the really important things.

March 1, 2001
10:45A
NEW RECORD

This is of no interest to anyone but me. So I write for the record: I had 210,000 pageviews in February. Mostly for Mr. Happy. I expect the numbers to go down this month since HHH is no longer up.

Tuesday I went to see Sherah and BillyBob in Stockton. Nice to get out of the Valley for a few hours.

Bloggers bare their souls.

Todd Follansbee's article on Colorblindness and Usability.

If you have a Mac and a Palm, get the most recent Palm Sync software.

I rented The Sopranos volumes 3, 4, and 5. I love it. Episode 13 was the first one I saw and had to see the videos before the new season starts. I am now a fan.

One sad note, if you're the praying kind of person, please say one for my friend, Terry, who is still in ICU and not doing so well. Thanks.

February 26, 2001
8:48A
BAH-BYE HEARTLESS

I said good-bye this weekend to my Heartless's Holey Haven. Not that Heartless has disappeared (see, her name is still on my Zippo), but the problems inherent to running an adult humor site (i.e., too much traffic, unscrupulous adult site content/graphics piranhas, porn spam) has taken me down time-consuming paths I don't want to go.

The straw that broke this camel's back was seeing my "When A Blowjob Becomes A Job" title on some sleazy porn site this weekend. Geez. I did keep my little guys, however, just moved them to a new url. Can't give up my cheap thrills.

The last step is to move my adult humor links to my resources page. I never said what kind of resources, now did I? You just assumed it was all web-design related. Mu-haha!

I bought XHTML By Example by Ann Navarro, fellow Silicon Valley Webgrrl, after reading about XHTML via the webdesign-L list and this article. I'm killing two birds with one stone by wrapping my arms around CSS and XHTML at the same time. Want to understand the kind of web corral they build and how to design within it. I'm excited.

re: Browser Upgrades. Here's Lance's Urge User Upgrade, and Janis's article Upgrading your Browser: It's easier than you think.

re: Accessibility.
Say it ain't so, Steve.
Here's how a blind person will 'see' your webpage.
Designing More Usable Web Sites.
The government of Canada's Universal Accessibility.
Sun's Opening New Doors: Enabling Technologies.

Code Bitch's ideas for Web Smart Colors. 4096 colors instead of 216? A girl can dream.

Lastly, my camera's batteries are being charged up even as we speak because I've been inspired: Visual Diaries.

February 20, 2001
8:21A
ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING

Have spent the last few days getting Mama's 'indigo' iMac, Elvis2, ready to ship to her in Oklahoma. Finally got him out the door yesterday and Mama should receive by tomorrow.

Her current Elvis, my old Power Mac 6100, will be finding a new home with our friend in Arkansas, Bobby, who will finally be making his way into the 20th century and is excited about it. Bobby, there's hope for you yet, man.

And what a piece o' cake it was setting up Elvis2. Nice job, Apple! I added Timbuktu Pro and think I'm one step closer to easier long distance trouble-shooting. Mama is now signed up with Yahoo (Yahoo! Messenger, My Yahoo!, Yahoo email account) and we'll be able to chat online which will save on the telephone calls. I also installed Reunion 7.0.5 and now we can share the family database and pictures.

Like a lot of other long distance families, we like to share digital pictures. Sending them through email is not good, making a webpage with the picts is time-consuming plus I get hit up for the transfer rate, but I think I might have found a solution: iTools. With it, you get iDisk which is 20M of server space which includes a public folder (server icon appears on your desktop when you open), and you can get access to other member's public folders. Also with iTools, you can create a webpage like a photo album, or an iMovie, or an invitation. (I also created a similar page at Geocities to compare the experience. iTools better: process faster, webpages show clickable gifs instead of the whole jpeg resulting in the page loading much faster.)

Upgraded my own Bettie with mo ram mo ram mo ram. Pod Racer just zooms. And welcome to my little hard-drive family: RiffRaff, slave to Bettie, brother to Hot Mama, and 30G's o' space. I'm just feeling all warm and fuzzy.

Jeffrey, one of my favorite subversives, seems to have really stirred it up with last week's To Hell With Bad Browsers. I did try my own version of all css sheep page, but it needs a lot more work or a redesign to make it viable. I seem to have a death-grip on HTML tables. Will have to release my fingers slowly in order to embrace an all css webpage.

Now that the taxes are put to bed, and Elvis2 has left the building, I think I'll go look for a job.

February 13, 2001
2:40P
TAXES AND MUSIC

Just had the annual final blessing of the tax forms by Rick The Accountant. Yea! I hate numbers. I don't have a numbers kind of brain. Thanks to a few bookkeeping and accounting classes and Quicken, I can do the 'books' for my business, but that's about the limit of my numbers expertise.

As a reward for getting the taxes done, I got Rage Against the Machine's Renegades. Hello mama.

Last year I heard Eva Cassidy's "Fields of Gold" on KFOG's Acoustic Sunrise. So haunting. This weekend I got her 1996 Live At Blues Alley. "Stormy Monday" was such a nice surprise. Who is this woman? I did a search and found that she only recorded two albums and she died in 1996 of cancer. Awww. Here's more info on Eva, and more. Will have to check out Eva By Heart.

I also got the Misfits' 1986 The Misfits. Like "Die, Die My Darling" in particular which I originally heard on Metallica's 1998 Garage Inc. where I also discovered Whiskey in the Jar. I thought how odd for James to sound so Irish. So I looked for the original lyrics which led me to the Thin Lizzy's 1973 version, which I love.

Edging out Everclear's 1997 Afterglow as my favorite cd of the months is Linkin Park's 2000 Hybrid Theory. Will eventually wear it out which is what I always do to all of my favorite albums/cds to the point of not hearing the music any more while it's playing. I try some restraint, but you know how that kinda thing goes.

BTW, did you know that it's trendy to be out of work now?