Championable | Love, parenting, politics.

Hello, sweet things.

I’m temporarily unable to write a personal blog.  It’s my bad.

Championable.com will be on hiatus until May 26th, after which I will be back to, um, normal.  I won’t be on internet hiatus, though, so I’ll still see you on your part of the internet in the meantime.

Love to all. Even you, the waitress who said “Wait, Run DMC had a person named RUN in it?”

Dude.

You know how sometimes you feel the urge to look up because you can feel that someone is looking at you? That just happened. And holy SHIT did this lady have the most beautiful eyes. I don’t even think she was looking specifically at ME, but kind of just looking at people on the train, and it was my turn. So this ain’t no ego trip.

Still, it was neat.

Love to all. Even you, the jackass with the Bose Noise Canceling headphones on, and his cell ringer set to “loud.”

There’s a point where it’s almost perfect, where a thread of numb slides across my lips, and I can still think but I don’t give a shit too much. Nothing is latched on, nothing is trying to come out. I’ve achieved an entirely delicate and exquisite balance.

I want it to last forever, but it lasts for seconds.

Love to all. Even you.

Begin.

A client calls, from a division of a big ad agency, says she nees a Java expert to come fix a problem. I say, cool, what’s the problem? She says, it’s our website. I say, Java? Are you sure you don’t mean JavaScript?

She puts me on hold.

She gets back on. Yes. JavaScript. I say: cool. Could you tell me what’s up? She says the page isn’t looking the same in different browsers. I say: cool, how come you know it’s JavaScript?

She puts me on hold.

She comes back. Can I have my technical expert call you, she asks? Cool, I say.

She hangs up.

She calls back with her tech guy on the phone.

I say: Hey, how’s the problem expressing itself that keys you to the fact that it’s JavaScript? He says, I don’t know. I don’t think there’s any JavaScript. I say: cool, so what’s the problem. It doesn’t look right, he says. I don’t know. I ask if he can send me the files.

They hang up as the klaxons in my head continue sounding.

I think, okay. This is a job that is guaranteed to be bigger or different or stranger than it appears. It’s a setup for failure. It’s a client we’ve been trying to land for a while. I think, I’ll do it myself. If it doesn’t work out, we don’t charge them. If it works out, we charge them. Risk nothing, learn something. Why not. I could use the distraction.

They tech guy calls back and tells me to go to a web page.

It’s a small graphic with a black background surrounding. I say, what’s the problem? He says, we want the black eliminated. I say, cool, but if you don’t declare a color, it’ll just use a default. He says no, we want this little picture to fill up the whole page. I say cool, but scaled is going to look really bad, because you rasterized the type as part of the image when it could’ve been rendered by the browser. He says, what? I say, I’m not sure exactly what you want to do with the images I’m seeing. He says, oh, I’ll find out.

He hangs up.

They call me back and now they art director is on the phone. It’s just a page that says under construction, he says, no big deal, I just want the page to know what size the screen is on and fill up the entire screen no matter how big it is. I say, cool, but there are dozens of resolutions across platforms, he says oh, well, tell me how many and I’ll send them to you. I ask for the core files they used to do the page they have up now.

They hang up.

They send the files and they are shockingly inept. This is a 200-person part of a multi-thousand-person firm. Smeary photoshop, obvious typos, bad use of basic technology. Layers which should have remained layers are flattened.

I write to say that maybe they should just do one version with a background that scales to any size monitor. The tech guy writes me back to say okay.

My employee asks to do the job.

As she’s doing it, I clearly, emphatically, and explicitly say, don’t use any overlapping background, because when the browser window changes size, you’re going to see all this moving asphalt underneath a square of completely stationery asphalt. Much of our conversation is about transparency, and why it’s essential for this project.

She has her own ideas. Does it her own way. Doesn’t listen. Hands me a bunch of files with large, rectangular blocks of background copied onto them. They are completely unusable. Uncool, I think.

At five o’clock, she leaves for the day. I start the project over. Call my friend, who helps me with advice and feedback.

A couple of hours later, I’ve asked the client to give me some feedback on the different versions of the same font, the way I’ve had to extend graphics to compensate for the larger backgrounds, etc.

They’ve gone home. I get a text message from the tech guy saying so, and that he is leaving too. Cool, I say, but I was hoping for some feedback since this is due first thing in the am, and I asked for feedback a half-hour before anyone left. He says, well, just send everything and thanks bye!

I leave the office. I get on the train. My friend sends me one more change. I’m going to make it now.

End.

Love to all. Even you, the CEO who likes things shiny.

I came home last night with the idea that I’d be breaking down about 3 dozen cardboard boxes, taking out an unearthly amount of trash, and then getting to the main task:  cutting Flor carpet tiles and laying them down in the basement.

Instead, I came home to find that Maggie had done the garbage duties, and I took my 11-year-old to see Iron Man.

Rock ON.

This movie had a tremendously talented cast.  I was SO psyched to see Robert Downey, Jr. on screen in a such big, big way. He was the perfect actor for this role, and he did a fantastic job.  And, holy shit… Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeff Bridges backing up Robert Downey?  That ROCKS.

It was a really good movie, probably the best “superhero” film I’ve seen.

I’ll start the carpet tonight.

Love to all.  Even you, the woman in the full-body doily.

I think I’ll just get this out of the way and move on.

I can’t really write about it presently, but it turns out that my understanding of how things were going at my company were seriously flawed.  From an operational and planning perspective, they were flawed at a very basic level. This is a massive ego hit, as I’m someone who really takes pride in being able to read people. Nothing catastrophic happened, and I don’t believe anything is going to.  Although, who knows what the fuck THAT means, since I didn’t see the initial situation coming in the first place.

I’m not going to write about it further until it’s completely resolved, which won’t be for some time.  I just had to put something up here so I can move on to other things. It’s very difficult not to write more, even abstractly.  But knowing when and where to express myself is, I guess, part of growing up.

Love to all.  Even you, the Condi Rice lookalike with the non-stop Samsung.

At 5:22am today, I sustained a tactical nuclear strike to my work life, and to my confidence about own world-awareness.

I didn’t see it coming; I had no clue at all.

I’ll write about it when it’s over.

Love to all. Even you.