Tuesday, July 30, 2002

Carpenter Ant Update: I still haven't dealt with the carpenter ants in my garage. But I did find a place to link to, that will help you understand what I'm facing. And it gives you something to click on rather than just another mention of Rob Lowe. 9:14:21 PM    comment []

Themes to me: Okay, here's the thing, I just started blathering on in this space without any idea of what I could do with the software. A typical word guy's attitude. If I were truly a techie, instead of just one who writes about technology and the like for a living, I would have investigated all the possibilities. But I didn't, so here I am with this salon.com standard theme framing my words and wondering if this is truly the way to go. Perhaps I should change things, get rid of the plug at the top of the page, and venture into something a little (a very little) more personal. Now, of course I'm not going to design one myself. That would be altogether too unlike me, and something that, at work, is done by actual artists with degrees from recognized schools and the like. As a child (let me digress slightly here) I was presented with a plasticine (sp?) set of many colors. I made something and my sister asked me what it was. "A potato", I said, with pride and self-satisfaction. And that's just what it looked like, a greenish-gray potato. This undeniable lack of talent in the layout and illustration end of things means that I am left with the choice of sticking with Salon (which may or may not lend this space some aura of dignity) or switch to a format designed by someone else. No one told me there would be decisions to make. 9:03:03 PM    comment []

Not free, but free of paper: As I read an item today on United Airlines deciding to go paper free it made me remember the first time we got computers in our office. Well (and this was a very long time ago), they weren't PCs, they were simply dumb terminals connected to a mainframe, but we each had one and we were told that this would be our introduction to the paperless office. From now on, went a memo from an executive, we would no longer be the wasteful ink-stained wretches of our previous incarnation. We would be paperless and we would love it. There would be, the memo, continued, no printouts made. All our work would be electronic. And we would mend our messy, tree-wasting ways. A day later, after the system had crashed half a dozen times, wiping out everything we had worked on for hours, a new memo was issued: Everything was to be printed out. Absolutely everything. This made me think about this environment, the one here (the one that, if I were to continue would cost me $39.95) and realize it's the only one in which I work totally paper free. No printouts. No nothing. What does this mean? 8:32:35 PM    comment []