Yesterday was a good day, not so much in the “accomplishing things” category, as in the “figuring things out” category. I’m left with plenty to do today, but suddenly my path is clear, and that’s a good feeling to start the day with.
I’ve been working on a project that required me to learn DreamWeaver, and I’ve been frustrated by it for a couple weeks. Not continuously, but I knew there was something I was missing, so I would spend an hour or two trying to figure it out before giving up in frustration and working on something else. Specifically, I had spiffy page templates, and a bunch of content, but couldn’t figure out how to make a new page from the template so I could put the two together. I tried all sorts of crazy stuff and had just about figured I was going to give in and do the work in BBEdit, when I discovered that the approved method seems to be to create a new HTML page, and then dig into the “Modify” menu, down to the “Templates” sub-menu, where you do “Apply Template to Page…” Silly me. I kept looking for ways to do “New Page from Template…” and was spending most of my time looking around in the main menus.
I had another revelation yesterday. The fact that I was getting as stuck and frustrated as I was reminded me that I haven’t had a vacation in forever. Yes, I’ve travelled, but mostly to conferences, or to things with definite plans already in place (like the ball-trip down to Sioux Falls and Wilno last summer). I need something like my 2002 Vacation, where there are large blocks of completely unstructured time to wander around someplace I haven’t been before.
Having that revelation in hand, I shuffled my plans for the day a bit. Rather than sticking to work all day, I broke it off at noon, and went out to lunch. Dropped my truck off for a slightly overdue oil change, and walked home. Spent an hour and change gathering pictures from my year in Melk, with the thought of turning that “coming soon” page into something more real now that two years have passed since I initially posted it. I probably should have been working, but this gave me a chance to think about vacation possibilities.
Then I headed off to get a haircut. I’m not sure where I’m going on vacation yet, but I do know that my passport is expired, and since I’m going to need a new picture for that, I figured I might as well let Marcy fix my hair, which had started curling in all the wrong directions (mostly away from my noggin). Bussed down there, got trimmed, and then back downtown to stop in at the Kinko’s in the IDS to get passport photos taken and buy a new bus pass. Then back to the bus to go rescue my truck before the garage closed at 6pm.
Riding the bus to the garage, a cute gal was standing in front of me during the ride. I watched her catch me checking her out, then reach into her pocket, extract a ring, slip it onto her finger, and then give me a look. What’s a guy to do? I gave her a weak smile and offered her my seat when I got off the bus.
- The Minnesota House GOP says no to fall session, which I think is what they should do. The only reason they were going to call it was to spend our money building facilities for sports teams, and while that’s not too bad in the case of the proposed Gophers stadium, once the special session had been called, it would be far too tempting to try and slip in the pro stadia. [press-patch]
- Over at Simply Lotus, Budi and Eric noticed that I noticed First Post! and linked back to me. I still think it’s a pretty cool idea they had. You’re welcome, guys. And good luck!
- NASA asks Did you ever wonder what it would be like to see a water balloon pop in space? Yes, I had. And now I got to see the cool movies. My tax dollars at work! [fark!]
- Here’s a list of Ajax Mistakes to consider if you’re doing that new active-web DHTML stuff all the kids are so excited about. Meanwhile Jakob Nielsen is going all old-school (shocking, isn’t it?) with his Top Ten Web Deisgn Mistakes of 2005. [holy schmoly]
- I like maps. Do you like maps? If you do, go spend some time at radical cartography. And then maybe suggest some more maps for Bill to put together. [kottke]
- If you’re looking for a Christmas present for the geek in your life, this Retro Phone Handset might be just the thing. I’d suggest you buy it for me, but I don’t know that I can wait that long without buying one for myself, especially since jwz’s already got his. [jwz]