March 19, 2001
1:20P
LONG DAY

Rolling blackouts have begun, again...hurry, hurry.

ST. PATRICK'S DAY
While doing a search for directions to Mt. Umunhum, I ran across this list of local webcams: Santa Cruz Fog Cam, Downtown Santa Cruz, The Beach, Mt. Umunhum, San Francisco Bay, Mono Lake, Donner Pass, Truckee, Yosemite-El Capitan. The webcam at Truckee has links to webcams at Northstar, Squaw Valley, Sugar Bowl, and Alpine Meadows for people who play in snow.

Honey and I couldn't find how to get to Mt. Umunhum, and so thought we'd try for Mount Hamilton and Lick Observatory and beyond after seeing a good segment on it from Bay Area Backroads Show. We never did find the road to Mt. Hamilton until later in the day, but did get a good view of the backside of the hills over Milpitas.

I, being the morbid one in the family, wanted to stop by the Calvalry Catholic Cemetary in San Jose, and take pictures of the older headstones. I find them fascinating. Fully expecting it to be populated with Hispanic and Italian names, I was surprised to find a lot of natives of Ireland. I wished them Happy St. Paddy's Day and put a rose on several of the headstones. I found the Green family headstone inscription touching:

Here sleeping in peace a mother's only boy. The living keenly feels the blow that so untimely laid him low. God, when my earthly race is run, restore me to my darling son. His loving mother.

While searching for information on the Greens (Mother: Margaret Green, native of Ireland, died 5/30/1908 at the age 80; Father: Patrick Green, died 3/11/1881; Son: James A. Green, died 2/21/1888 at the age of 27), I find that because the Irish shared a religion (Cahtolicism) with the Spanish and Mexican that a number of Irish fought on the side of the Mexicans during the Mexican American War.

More on the history of San Jose and names: Flashback: A Short Political History of San Jose, The Road to Immortality: who the local streets were named after and John's Silicon Valley History Page: has list of people's names and their history in the Valley.

MORE JOB HUNTING
AGENCIES: Staying in touch with Aquent and ArtSource. Also submitted my resume to friends and registered with other agencies: Spherion, Creative Assets, Stafftopia. But no replies yet.

...just got a call. My friend, Terry, who has been in ICU for about six weeks has taken a turn for the worse. The doctors give him no hope. Please pray for his wife who has to make *the decision* maybe as soon as tomorrow.

March 16, 2001
9:16A
BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN

JOB HUNTING

Joe Hodowanes' Writing 'Killer' Cover Letters and check out his "Writing an Internet Resume: Is Your Resume Ready for the New Millennium?"

Find salary/compensation info with Vault.com's Salary Wizard

Salon: Even Programmers Get the Blues.

Awww, Dave's head has rolled.

CSS LAYOUTS

A Designer's Journey.

Rob Chandanais' The Layout Reservoir, a collection of CSS layouts.

Owen Briggs' tutorial on a 3 column CSS layout.

Eric's collection of useful CSS layouts

A Tale of Two Tables.

MEDIA FRENZY

I'm rather appalled at the way the media and others are going after the dot.coms. I've always been a champion of personal sites vs. commercial sites, but this is a frenzy that's turned in on itself. Wear your raincoat. This threatens to be messier than Gallagher and his Sledge-O-Matic.

CAN'T WAIT

Palm and Phone in one. Good thing I held off on buying my first cell phone (got a stationary bike instead). The synch cradle also poses as a battery charger. Que handy.

NAUGHTY NEWS

From Bondage Furniture, their collection of sawhorses. For some reason I see this vision of Gee Dubya, his spurs, and his shiny white ass. Well, acutally the spurs would go better with this pony boy saddle. Here's more furniture: the penis barstool.

Speaking of Gee Dubya...

The blow-up bra hits Britain.

From Nerve, Charlie Manson's recollection of the first time he made it with a girl. Other famous people share too. Like Kathie Lee Gifford, 22 year old virgin. Are we surprised?

Use Viagra, go blind.

What happens when burglars find your hot pink dildo? Dang, I hate it when that happens.

March 14, 2001
12:15P
HAPPY BIRTHDAY BILLY

Today my son, whom I call Billy, turns 22. I've only seen him one time when he was a day old with a pane of glass separating us. A permanent ache in my heart is what I have lived with all this time.

Twenty-two years ago, feeling totally abandoned by friends, family, and God, I had to make the hardest decision I've ever made while pregnant in a shelter for battered women with my 1-1/2 year old daughter in tow. I knew I had to give him up because emotionally and mentally and financially I was unable to be a mother to another child. His father, whom I had a restraining order against, was unstable and barely held down a job for more than a month. I knew if I kept the baby, Sherah and I would go down too.

When it was time to deliver, my parents came and picked up Sherah for awhile. My friend, Rhonda, drove me to the hospital and I checked myself in. My baby was delivered and I had my tubes tied vowing to never ever ever let my stupidity hurt another child again.

They put me in a room with three other new mothers. They had their babies with them. I cried. I couldn't stop crying. They moved me into a private room where I continued my breakdown.

Months later I climbed out of the hole by necessity, surviving by sheer determination. Sherah and I eventually moved to California where I underwent years and years of therapy.

I've long since written a letter to him that was never mailed. Right before he turned 18, I filed all the paperwork so that my consent and contact info was in his files if he should ever look. I told him about his sister, grandparents, and even left my url. Just in case.

My cousin, who gave up a child and successfully found hers years later, asked if I wanted her to look for him. She had already done the hard work of getting a P.I., investigating court documents despite the shit clerks give her. (It seems some people are of the mind that if you give up a child, you don't deserve to know what happened to them.) But I can't actively look for him. Not yet. I don't want to impose on his life. I don't want to chance hurting him. Not for anything in this world.

And so I wait. And so I grow sad every year at this time, my arms aching to hug the boy I've never touched.

Happy Birthday, Billy. Your mama loves you very much.

March 12, 2001
9:00A
STEPPING OFF THE EDGE

Voila! My first XHTML page. Very simple, but so many hours of trying this and that in an effort to make this page all css. Almost got there. But I could never get the little picts and date/time/title to line up consistently across all the browsers (Mac: NN6, IE5, Opera5; Virtual PC: NN6.01, IE5.5). Until I find a fix, I've compromised with a tiny table just for the individual entries.

For the poor souls still using 4.0 browsers, I have provided the following anecdote that will appear at the top of their sheep page:

When I first started watching Bonanza, it was in black and white. Then came the announcement that Bonanza was going to be in color. For weeks I waited for the glorious moment. Imagine this child's disappointment when Bonanza finally came on but it was still in black and white. You, too, are viewing this web page with a 'black and white' browser. For the full experience, please consider upgrading to the more colorful versions of Internet Explorer 5, Netscape 6, or Opera 5. Read more about your options at the Browser Upgrade Initiative.

Molly's article on XHTML reappears in Digital-Web. Is XHTML for you?

1. Do you see a need for your work to be extended to other delivery mechanisms such as wireless devices now or in the future?
2. Do you want an educational tool that will transition you and your colleagues from HTML to the XML world with relative ease?
3. Do you want to bring syntactical strength to your Web documents, even if it means compromising certain visual considerations?
4. Are you concerned with following W3C recommendations in order to promote more stable support from the developers of browsers and Web design tools?

She also lists some good resources at the end of the article.

From Ann Navarro's book, XHTML By Example, I got the tip of making the JavaScript an external file to keep HTML browsers from crashing.

And from HTML Writer's Guild, Marking up documents in XHTML 1, I learned why it's <br /> and not <br/> (causes problems for older browsers).