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Just Another Frantic Friday

Observation du jour, after a mildly unpleasant Friday: why do so many ad agencies and design firms (disctinctions blur these days) have such a nagging tendency to find the absolute most complicated manner possible of completing any given task? I suppose it’s an easy way to maximize billable hours, which is probably why they also get so bloody territorial about it when you call them on it.

No, I’m not going to be any more specific, because I plan to take a lot of business away from this particular firm as a result of my class, grace under pressure, and old-fashioned customer service skills. Not to mention my humility.

It’s 9:00. May I have my weekend now, please?

Mod Con

Luxury home or cellblock? You be the judge…

I’m as much a modernist as the next guy (and probably more of one), but what passes for modernism today is often more about shock value than any sort of architectural principle. It’s no less contrived than a Victorian with lots of gingerbread; only the building materials are different.

DNS the MNS

The September curse has returned. I don’t think I’ve typed the word correctly even once today. Or this month.

Thing that annoys me today: DNS propagation. You’d think it would be more of a science and less of a crap shoot by this point in internet history, but no. I transferred a domain for a client yesterday afternoon. By this morning, it was resolving to the correct IP address for me, but not for the client. Now, it’s reverted to the old IP address even for me.

When I check with the host and do various “whois” searches, everything seems OK, so I assume the current problem is with some Time Warner DNS server somewhere. That wouldn’t be a surprise, since (based on their speed) I think most of Time Warner’s DNS servers are running on IBM 286 machines connected to the internet via 2400-baud modems anyway.

Should I be worried that I’m spending my Saturday night bitching about DNS servers?

The First Paper

My left arm hurts like hell, the result of a tetanus shot I had to have today in order to continue with school. Seems UNCG shredded my last set of immunization records ten years after I graduated (they keep them forever now, for all the good that does me) so I had to reach back into my childhood (and my mom’s files) to piece together what I could. I would’ve needed the tetanus booster anyway, but it’s still annoying.

That said, I’m in a better frame of mind than I was three days ago. I was just a little overwhelmed that I had so much going on all of a sudden. I knew it was temporary, but that didn’t help much. When much of your income is derived working for TV stations, September is a rather hectic time to be starting anything labor-intensive. And underneath it all, I suspect I was really freaked out at the looming due date of my first paper as a graduate student.

As is the case with so many other scary processes, I really just needed to dive in and get started on the damned thing, which I finally did today once most of my paid workload had calmed down a bit. I found a good chunk of supporting research (damn, there’s a lot of information available online when you have access to a major university library), made up my outline, and finally realized late this afternoon that I would probably get through this paper with no problem and might even do a passably good job on it.

The topic, for the masochists among you, is the effect of commercial search engine technologies on the value of the information acquired through them, and related implications for information professionals. Do I know how to have a fun weekend or what?

Apologies

I know I’ve said this before, but my apologies to everyone I’ve completely ignored for the past ten days or so. You can’t imagine how overextended I’ve been between the fact that this is the busiest time of year for pretty much all my web clients and the fact that my first two weeks back in school proved a bit more hectic than I’d envisioned. Throw in one major family gathering, one part-time job, and several assorted minor crises, and you have me, as of today.

It’ll be better in about two weeks.

If you’re starved for content, though, you can watch me being mentioned on the local morning news.

Ten Years Ago

Ten years ago this week, I was getting ready to leave on the Planet SOMA US Tour of 1997. It was a pretty major event for me: a five-week cross-country (and back) road trip where I’d be staying in assorted motels, and sometimes with complete strangers who invited me into their homes on the basis of having enjoyed my website. I updated almost daily from the road (which was rather unusual in those early internet days) and had a really great time all the way around.

For the next five weeks, I’ll be saluting and remembering that trip, and you can follow along day by day if you like, using the nifty “Otherstream Retro” box you’ll see at the top of the front page. Or you can cheat and read the whole story. Or neither one. Your choice. Either way, enjoy it. I did.

Back to School

Random snapshots from my first week as a graduate student:

  • What could be more annoying than slogging your way through a dense, 20-page treatise that atempts to determine the difference between “knowledge” and “information”? Maybe its conclusion that, in the end, it doesn’t matter anyway and that the terms will be used interchangeably throughout the entire text? Aaargh…
  • An urban college campus makes for a nice “feel” but also for lousy parking.
  • It’s nice having access to a university library again, particularly with a good chunk of it being available from home as well. Right now I’m amused by being able to download a century’s worth of articles from the New York Times and the Washington Post for free, but my current obsession is subject to change without notice.
  • I hate group projects.

Filling Up the House

We’ve moved way ahead in our ongoing dream of transforming the Tiki Room into Morticia Addams’ conservatory. All that’s missing is Cleopatra, the venus flytrap.

Yes, this will no doubt be remembered as the week we got serious about finally filling up our house. And the thrift stores were as cooperative as I’ve ever known them to be. We’ve fleshed out lots of the empty spaces, particularly in the basement rumpus room, with a sort of 1967 blend of neo-traditional modernism centered around the mint-condition sofa and matching chair, and a low-slung “party table” (it actually says that on the bottom) with barrel chairs. And there are finally curtains in the bedroom.

Nothing Much to Say

Reflections on my first week back in school (among other things) are yet to come, but it’s been sort of an all-around crazy week, and the weekend isn’t looking much calmer, so it may be a while.

But just so you’ll know I’m still alive, here’s a random shot of downtown Winston-Salem that has nothing much to do with anything I’ve said here.

Art Prints and Textbooks

Check out my dad, having an 82nd birthday dance with my mom, less than two months after his hip replacement surgery.

Before meeting up with my parents, I stopped by campus to buy my textbooks. I’m not sure what shocked me more: the price of the books or the fact that everyone on the entire campus looks about thirteen years old.

It’s very odd making my third return to UNCG. Everything is so different, but small, random things are exactly the same as they were during my first two enrollments, like the tables in the student union where they sell the very same Doors and Bob Dylan posters “art prints” they’ve been selling at the beginning of each semester since about 1968, as far as I can tell.

Am I nervous about entering a classroom for the first time in sixteen years? You betcha I am.