Archive for December, 2006

There’s been a huge shock! *Dogberry* doesn’t know his lines!

Wednesday, December 13th, 2006

You have to say that *very* dramatically. Stagger just a bit and be sure to use a British accent.

It’s finals week here at the community college and people are pretty stressssssssed out. The website my group is creating in Web Design Practicum has what seems like about a million little picky bugs and people are feeling overwhelmed by that. “How are we gonna fix that?” “We’ll never get this done!”

Ho hum. Well, maybe not exactly ho hum. There *are* a lot of pickly picky little bugs to fix on our website and guess what? We need to fix them. And we won’t even talk about my loverly on-line banking application. But really, compared to the total, absolute, utter chaos that the YAG folks are undoubtedly going through down at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre this week, this is nothing!

It is hell tech week at the Mendelssohn. I am not involved with this play but I have lived through a whole heckuva lot of hell tech weeks at the Mendelssohn. And other venues. The Mendelssohn has no monopoly on stressssssful hell tech weeks! Kids that don’t know their lines. Parents freaking out because the rehearsals are running past 10 PM. Scenery snafus, wardrobe malfunctions, fistfights in the green room (that only happened once, with a pair of identical twins), fire alarms going off. People running all over the place panicking about lost props. Crying and vomiting and you name it.

Folks, we are working on a *website*! It is a *working* website, no less. It looks good. You can navigate from page to page. It has some glitches. Individually they are not hard to fix. There are five of us and one measly little website. Stay calm and we will systematically go in there and pick at all the little buggly-uglies until they are fixed. Pick. Pick. Pick. All of them. This is not something to get all stresssssssed out about. Breathe.

I NEED A SIGN!!

Tuesday, December 12th, 2006

A “NO SOLICITORS” sign, that is.

Knock, knock, knock! Well, it wasn’t anyone that I *know* because there is a special signal that most known visitors use. Which I will NOT publish on the web, of course. It was a young guy holding a package of gift wrap out at me. What is this, I wondered. I craned my neck just a bit until I saw his accomplice, a young woman equipped with a catalog, clipboard, and pen, just outside my field of vision.

“How are you?” he asked in a pseudo-cheerful voice.

“No thank you!” I replied, in a sort of sing-song voice that I hoped would be both cheerful and firm enough to nip any ensuing conversation in the bud.

“Well, this was free, so I’ll just go and give it to your neighbor!” he said, his tone of voice not hiding the fact that his opinion of me rhymed with “witch.” He and his companion walked down the driveway, obviously discussing my stupidity for not falling for their little scam.

Sorry boy, but I know that the gift wrap in your hand is not free. Not really. I know that you are going to shove it into my hand and then try to fast-talk me into looking at your damn catalog. I do not want to buy your gift wrap. I did not ask you to come into my neighborhood and sell stuff and I certainly did not ask you to come to my door. IF I NEED GIFT WRAP OR RELIGION OR WHATEVER, I WILL GO OUT AND FIND IT! And I don’t even have to be polite to you if I don’t want to. This is my house and I did not invite you into it.

Didn’t your moom ever tell you not to go selling things door to door? It’s dangerous! You might run into people baggy ol’ witches like me! grok GROK!

All Drugged Up (grok grok)

Monday, December 11th, 2006

Grok grok. What ‘s th’ worl’ comin’ to now? Ol’ Baggy wuz actin’ so goofy at school this mornin’ tha’ some o’ th’ other stoodints thought she wuz on drugs! Grok grok grokGROK!

Inside Ou’ Skirt! (grok grok grokka)

Monday, December 11th, 2006

It ain’t easy livin’ ‘ere w’ Ol’ Baggy!

Ghost Chauffer Chauffeur

Sunday, December 10th, 2006

(Chauffer? I was thinking that looked awfully strange. Sorry, apparently Coldfusion has now robbed me of my spelling abilities! How come none o’ y’all caught it?)

I live with ghosts. I haven’t even begun to process the last couple years but I get along okay, for the most part. Oddly enough, it’s not those who are now on the dark side of the moon that haunt me the most although they are certainly doing their best and I am happy to connect with them! It’s ghost versions of myself that get me the most. I used to be a mom with kids. The realization that the kids are no longer completely mine is what most often grabs me, picks me up, spins me around, and drops me in the dust. Like old Mr. Toad when the motorcar runs him over.

I did a lot of chauffering chauffeuring over the years. Picking kids up. Dropping kids off. It is crazy navigating the gauntlet of traffic and traffic lights that congest the Planet Ann Arbor. I have always loved to drive but sometimes I would think, “why can’t so-and-so’s parent pick them up this time.”

As the kids got into middle and early high school, I had a minivan (the beauty-ful old Island Teal POC ;-)) and I was frequently called upon to drive downtown to pick up or drop off. I would get to the agreed upon destination and hit the flashers and hope whoever was behind me wouldn’t hit me!

Mouse is home for the winter break and she likes to knit and read and occasionally use her computer at various internet cafes around town. She could drive down there, and she sometimes does, or she could take the bus or whatever. But that can all be a big pain and she’s been asking me for rides back and forth. And, yaknow what? I’m happy to oblige! It kind of gives me a reason for living. But when I’m driving down there, I remember all those days when my kids were young and I would pick them up and take them home. And then we were all safe and sound and our world was pretty small.

I have to say that it is scary these days. I am now picking up or dropping off on Main Street or South U in a Honda Civic, not a big old minivan. Inevitably, some trenormous SUV will pull up fast behind me. It is almost always driven by a perfectly-coifed woman with a cell phone plastered to her ear. Is she gonna stop? Or not?

It’s Saturday and…

Saturday, December 9th, 2006

I spent the whole dern day messing around with my Coldfusion on-line banking application. To those who have asked, Coldfusion is a server-side scripting language that can be embedded into html web pages to allow them to interact with server-side databases. Web sites like MySpace and Facebook incorporate it. Coldfusion has similar functionality to php but php is a more widely used open source language that is supported by more servers. They each have their advantages and disadvantages, like everything else on the web and in life. If you didn’t understand any of that, don’t worry. There’s a whole lot of stuff that y’all do that I probably don’t understand. And I don’t totally understand Coldfusion yet either! Which is why I’ve been chained to my powerbook lately.

To set the record straight, my on-line banking application is *not* called Gone Phishin’ W’ Yer Money. It has the very boring name of Washtenaw Community Collge Credit Union. I do not know where Froggy gets these wild ideas. Probably it’s my fault for making him help me with my Javascript homework last year. He has a tendency to meet up with the wrong kind of friends and spending all that time out there on the internet, he had every opportunity to interact with plenty of unsavory entities. Phish and Worms and Trolls and you name it. I wonder what kind of havoc he might wreak in secondOops, maybe I should try to *not* get that into his head.

I appreciated all the fort comments! I didn’t include the fern fort next to Don and Katie’s in my list because I couldn’t quite describe it but Pooh did a great job! I forgot about that big hole in front of the Old Cabin, too. That was always a good place to play and even now that it’s kind of filled in again, it provides a good place to sit during those cold, sunny nor’westers. It’s too bad that G4 never got the chance to play with pulp logs! And I certainly remember when the foxholes were dug. They were *big*. Or maybe I was *little*. I believe the entities who dug those were named Mac, Mike, and Denny and, at the time, I heard one of the G2-ers say something like, “Well! If someone were to be walking down there in the middle of the night…” I forget exactly what came next but you can imagine and I can’t exactly remember who said it but it does sound quite a bit like something The Commander would say. 😉

Good night! I wish I was at Houghton Lake tonight but I’m not. It’s okay 🙂

Calling All Beach Urchins

Friday, December 8th, 2006

The interior framework of bushes is inspected and judged for its suitability to act as a fort.

That’s a quote from a book I’m reading. When I have time to read it, that is. Last Child in the Woods, by Richard Louv. I know exactly what it means. Do you?

  • There was a clump of cedar trees down by the pond that did form what looked like actual rooms. It was right above where Pete’s gazebo is now. In fact, I think it’s still there, although maybe unrecognizable after all these years.
  • In front of our cabin was a triangle fort. The sides of the triangle were formed by several large, ancient decaying logs with various species of moss and other things growing on them. The points were defined by three young pine trees. I can’t find the triangle fort anymore.
  • The old log pile outside the old cabin was most often used as a train, if I remember right. There were “seats” carved into it. We hung out on and around that train for a whole afternoon once, waiting for Grandroobly to bring home the puppy we very quickly named Tigger. The log pile is gone now. (Right?)

We had many other forts that I either can’t remember or can’t adequately describe. And then there were all the hydro-engineering projects down at the pond and the forts we built on the beach out of the pulp logs that used to float in. We stacked those logs higher than our heads, without fastening them together with anything, but I don’t ever remember them collapsing, even when we climbed on them.

I still sometimes look at the woods in a similar way. A few years ago, the path in the little woods behind my house became obstructed by a big tree deadfall. The Ann Arbor Public School District, in its infinitely superior wisdom, saw no reason to remove the obstruction. It was certainly physically possible for me to climb over that mess but I got tired of doing that, especially when it was wet and/or slippery. So, I found an alternate route through the middle of the woods. I identified the entrance to my path by a particular configuration of twig-sized branches on a little sapling. It was my “door” and that’s what I called it. To myself. I figured anyone else might think I was nuts. Eventually, the GG went out there and committed chainsaw massacre to clear the regular path once again. But I still see my door every day.

Beach urchins of all ages, what forts did you have and what other beach games do you remember? Rum Runner and Coast Guard anyone? And “beach urchin” is to be taken VERY loosely. Anyone who reads this is very welcome to comment about their own childhood haunts. I know the Courtois family kids and others have probably had some similar experiences.

Tick Tick Tick Tick Ding! Tick Tick Tick Tick Ding!

Thursday, December 7th, 2006

Tick Tick Tick Tick Ding! Tick Tick Tick Tick Ding! Grok grok! Hee hee hee! Th’ stoopid ol’ bag ain’t availy-ble t’ blahg t’day so I’m takin’ th’ blahg over. Ol’ Baggy’s locked up in Version Hell! She’s makin’ a online bankin’ apply-caysh’n. I think she’s callin’ it Gone Phishin’ W’ Yer Money er sumthin, so y’all better not open up any accoun’s there er yer money migh’ disappear!

Her ol’ teacher, er, akshully, he ain’t ol’. He’s a heckuva lot younger than th’ ol’ bag. Enyway, he tol’ the stoopid ol’ stoodints tha’ when they got their apply-caysh’ns workin’ properly, they shoul’ burn ’em on t’ a CD ‘n’ stash ’em under th’ bed. But tha’ didn’ work fer th’ ol’ bag, ’cause th’ critters tha’ live under th’ ol’ bag’s bed have eaten th’ CD!

I think this’s all perty funny. Las’ year, she got in t’ Bottom Posishun Sticky Menu Hell ‘n’ tha’ was a lot werse ’cause she made ME go down in t’ the docy-ment object model ‘n’ try t’ fix it fer her. She tethered me up t’ this stoopid ol’ javy-scrip’ timer ‘n’ ev’ry 5 secints, it pushed me down on top o’ this pore li’l ol’ <div> t’ make it go back down t’ th’ bottom o’ th’ ol’ web page. Tick Tick Tick Tick Ding! Tick Tick Tick Tick Ding! You shouldda heard th’ swearin’ ‘n’ stuff whenever I got distracted or dozed off or handed off a li’l swig o’ frog juice t’ th’ ol’ timer. Tick Tick Hic Tick Hic Tick Ding! ‘n fact, after a few o’ those swigs, th’ timer kinda slowed down ‘n’ evenshy-ally, it wen’ t’ sleep. Tickzzzzzzzzzzzz….. Th’ cute li’l <div> was free t’ gally-vant all over th’ ol’ web page ‘n’ th’ ol’ bag was just SOL, ify’all know wha’ tha’ means.

Ol’ Baggy is gonna hafta get ‘er own self outta Version Hell though. I ain’ helpin’ ‘er. It’s abou’ time she took a blast’d blahg break enyway. Blahggin’ abou’ ol’ boyfrien’s. Sheesh! I don’ think th’ ol’ bag ever even *had* a boyfrien’ before th’ ol’ growler came along. Big Band Boy wouldda said sumthin like “Kee-reist!” So, me ‘n’ ol’ Smokie ‘n’ Squeakey ‘n’ some o’ th’ rest’ll just hafta take th’ ol’ blahg over. Tick tick tick tick ding! Grok grok!

Ramble On

Wednesday, December 6th, 2006

Fabric Gallery, Williamston, MI. A place to absolutely *die* for. We had exhausted our sources for fine fabrics in and around The Planet Ann Arbor. There’s a small shop in town with some nice stuff. But it has a small inventory and the owner is one of those shopkeepers that won’t leave you alone long enough to let you make a decision. Joann Fabrics, even the big one out on Carpenter, is just underwhelming.

When I was a teenager up in Siberia, the only way I could get clothing that even remotely resembled whatever latest fashion was in Seventeen magazine was to make it myself. Natural fibers were actually pretty widely available in those days and we usually bought them on the second floor of the J. C. Penney store. An occasional special excursion took us over to the Canadian side to the long-defunct Textile Shop on Queen St. They had all kinds of stuff you couldn’t get at Penney’s and I think it was in the basement that they had all the really fancy stuff: satin, silk, velvet, sequin trims, etc.

The Textile Shop is where we bought the fabric for my first formal dress. The Commander made it for me out of some sky blue ribbed satiny stuff with triple-puffed sleeves made with white sparkly gauzy stuff and some wide bands of silver sequined trim tying it all together. I was a high school sophomore and I was going to the, uh, Military Ball with my boyfriend. Yes, I had a boyfriend in the ROTC. He was a pretty crummy boyfriend* but I was devastated when he broke up with me. He eventually came around with that old “I think I made a mistake” story. I was way beyond him by then, like “yeah, you did, but you are way too late.”

Anyway…

He didn’t go to college and never left Siberia but since I spend quite a bit of time around there and The Comm lives there, I occasionally hear 4th-hand stories about him. One is that he owns some kind of car shop. Another is that he works for the tribe. Either one of those scenarios could easily be true. But I rarely think of him and though I wish him well, I don’t really care what he’s doing. I never see him up there. Apparently he doesn’t frequent the Lockview Laundromat or any of my other typical haunts. 😉

I don’t still have the boyfriend (thank god) but I do still have the dress. A few years ago, I tried to palm it off onto Elizabeth for the Commie High prom. I guess I thought she might think it was kind of retro or whatever. The kids were not impressed! “Moom? I can’t believe you ever wore this!” Or whatever. I think she did eventually abscond with the silver dress I made when I was about 22. And I’m happy about that. It was a cool dress too! 🙂

So. We had a *great* road trip today! Fabric Gallery in Williamston. A little internet cafe across the street. Gray, rainy December weather. Memories that I usually don’t dredge up. Hanging around with Mouse. And as we were getting off the exit onto the Planet after our trip, I put my turn signal on a half mile or so early to make up for all the times I didn’t use it at all today. 😉 Love.

*I highly doubt that any of my old boyfriends know where I am or where my website is. Er, actually, if they ever even *think* of me, they may guess where I am, because I have wanted to live on the damn planet since I was a kid and made no secret of it. I just doubt that they do. And that’s okay. 🙂

Anthropology and Other Useless Fields

Tuesday, December 5th, 2006

“If I ever have to do something like this again, I’m taking your topic!” I said that to my young classmate Joanne this morning as I congratulated her on a very successful presentation. The assignment was 20-25 minutes on a web usability/accessibility topic. I have been very impressed with all of the presentations but her topic totally blew me away.

I don’t remember the exact title but she discussed the issues involved in designing web sites that are usable for, well, the World Wide Web. How *do* we design web sites that are accessible to people who speak any one of umpteen-gazillion languages? And what about the multi-dimensional continuum of cultural differences? There must be a better term for what I just said. Anthropologists, what do you say?

To me, the size of that topic equals the size of the universe. But then my brain segued to the buzz I’ve been hearing over the last year about how anthropologists are hot hires in the field of web development. Some guy (don’t remember who or where) actually said to me that he’d hire my daughter with the anthro minor in a heartbeat. The issues behind all of this are usability and accessibility. How do people use the web? What might make it easier for them to access web-delivered content? And *buy* things? What about people with different skills and cultural values than the typical “Silicon Valley geek” or “soccer mom?”

All I want to say here is: people, stop telling your kids (and grandkids and nieces and fifth cousins eight times removed and neighbors and the children of aliens from the planet Zephron III) that they have to major in things like engineering or medicine or computer science or business.

Kids, major in what you are interested in. Work hard. Write those papers. Reading, writing, critical thinking. Show up on time. Participate. Be upbeat if at all possible. You may not find that pot of gold when you first graduate from college. You may not find a career that will last your entire life. That’s okay! Just keep on learning. Smile at those who want to tell you what to do. My permanently offline buddy bigbandboy will tell you how to do that smile. And how to ignore everyone and go ahead and do your own thing!

P.S. Did I say that anthropologists are in hot demand? I’m surrounded by them and although I don’t know that *my* anthropologists are interested in doing web site stuff, I want them to know that they *are* valued!!!! In the “high-tech” world, no less.

Blahg? (Bagawk bagawk!)

Monday, December 4th, 2006

Blahg? I’m supposed to blahg today? Hmmm. It snowed. I have little trouble with snow driving but I saw SUVs in the ditch. People, do not buy those things unless you can do snow driving. If you don’t know how to drive in snow, they are evil.

Coldfusion? I’m getting it but it’ll be a while before I can out-do Facebook or Myspace or whatever. RSS? Maybe…

INP203 UED4 is due tomorrow morning. Hopefully my ink cartridges won’t run out as I print that huge document. After that, I’m done with that class, except for cheering my colleagues on as they do their presentations.

I really, really, really wish I could enjoy camping more than I do. Actually, I do enjoy camping. But I cannot exist without the huge quantities of water that are required to bathe at least once a day. That’s right, I said, at *least* once. I know I’m missing out on a lot of good stuff. Sigh…

Where I’d Rather Be. Er, One of the Places I’d Rather Be.

Sunday, December 3rd, 2006

cabin01.jpgcabin02.jpgcabin03.jpg
(click for larger images)

But I’m not. And tomorrow’s Monday. And I’m getting tired of Mondays, at least in their current format. And there are three more Mondays in that format. That is all.

Error! Error! It Does Not Compute!

Saturday, December 2nd, 2006

Errrg. I think this afternoon is the first time I have *ever* been on the verge of tears over a homework assignment! I just could not get Web Database HW12 to work. Kaboom! Kablamm! Kablooey! One error after another. I am not unfamiliar with programming logic. I taught myself Fortran way back in the day and made it do some pretty hairy things, or “sexy” as a guy down at NCC-UNIVAC once said. And don’t tell anyone but I got an A in an excruciatingly hard DOM1 Javascript class last year. And there’s nothing really that hard about Coldfusion. It’s just new to me, as is the concept of having to maintain state in a web application.

So I swallowed hard, eviscerated my error-ridden file, and started over. Slow as she goes. One little bit at a time. <cfoutput> tags all over the place so I could see what was going on. And darned if I didn’t fix it! I *think*! 😐 It isn’t perfect! In fact, it’s pretty darn clunky for an on-line banking application. Did I mention butt-ugly? Style sheet be damned. National City would definitely not be impressed. But it works. I *think*! 😐 And so, I think I can turn it in and at least get some points.

So, I’m gonna quit for the day. It’s Saturday night and we’re here at the Courtois Group Home at Houghton Lake. Prairie Home is on, there’s a fire in the fireplace (and smoke all over the cabin because the flue wasn’t open), the candles are lit, Mouse is using her sewing machine, and Froog is back from harassing the ducks. Have a good evening!

It’s Winter and This Is Michigan…

Friday, December 1st, 2006

snowdrive04.jpg
Click for more

And, here’s an *exciting* video from our loverly trip up the I75 SUV Speedway: