public const CHANGE = inevitable

I guess what must be must be. It is now final. Macromedia is now Adobe.

Mississipi Delta Blues

I love this city. Even more, I love this city in the winter. Something about the cold air typical of this time of the year seems to make everything a little bit clearer. The sun seems brighter, the sky is a beautiful cloudless blue on most days and even the music sounds better as I was reminded today by the Mississipi Delta Blues, one of the many "underground" bands that fill the subways at rush hour.

This band consisted of a feisty old Black man on a guitar singing the blues accompanied by a Chinese guy on bass guitar. I couldn't find a cooler "New York Melting Pot" poster than that if I tried. As it happens occassionally, I went out today without today for a meeting with a client sans camera and I couldn't capture the moment

But that's alright. As I was reminded by the "Alex Lo Dico Jazz Ensemble" one stop later, the good times keep rolling.

On a seperate note, Spark, Europe's premier flash festival begins today.

When it rains..

I get these moments in once in a while where I feel.. empty and lost all at the same time. Its wierd. The best I can relate it too is that feeling of - Well, I've climbed Mt. Everest. Now what? I only wish I had an everest in my affliction to give it some meaning.

it is in one of these times that I end up reverting back to my familiar/favorites places - people watching in Union Square for one. I don't know what it is about Union Sq. that appeals to me so much. I think it's the perfect blend of apparently normal people going by their daily business intermingled with the artists both perfomance and visual, poets and the otherwise misguided wack jobs with some protest or opposition to share all lounging together around the same square in their own wierd little symphony.

So it is there I am sitting tonight, finally taking my mind of whatever it is that's bothering me that as yet I can't seem to figure out. Of course, 5 minutes after I sit down, I start to feel drops on my head. After verifying that it's not my drunken charlie stalking me I realize that it's starting to rain.

I'm a big fan of the movies mind you and in most movies the actors, especially the dramatic ones tend to find inspiration somewhere in the rain.

For my part, I found myself a subway entrance. I figure in November all the good inspirations are probably staying warm in the subway tunnels anyways.

Love thy IT Guy

Aah, yes. In the long list of life's unwritten rules lies a very important one in today's information age. "Love your IT Guy". This opinion may of course be a bit biased, granted. But it has basis in experience.
Case in point, this client that I have - let's call them client NO-IT . Their IT guy, like many across the country had finally had it with the mostly thankless job that we IT people do, and so he decided he was going to leave - in two weeks.

The boss gets upset and decides he doesn't need two weeks. The IT guy can leave. Here-in lies the danger of rash decisions. Unlike the larger part of the workforce, the one guy you do not want to fire in anger is your IT guy. Why? Because as became the case with this company, poor old Dorothy Secretary whose expertise is limited to typing documents in word and clicking "Print" ends up as the new network admin trying to figure out the alphabet soup of networking terms ( DNS, DHCP, IP etc ) while untangling wires and praying to God that she's plugging in the right wires in the right sockets.

"Hmm.. Now would that be the red wire or the grey wire. The guy on T.V usually goes with the red wire. I'm going to go with that one."

Aim thy pee

In an event that can only be described as a New York moment, yesterday, I was coming back from a delightful evening of reading and coffee at my neighborhood Barnes and Noble. I'm coming out of the subway and here I am deciding which exit to take. They say it only takes a second to make a bad decision.

As I'm climbing out of the stairs on the left side which is the exit I chose, I start to feel sprinkles on my head. This is where I ask you the reader to freeze frame and answer. Are the sprinkles I feel

1. The rain that was expected to fall that day
2. A priest throwing out excess holywater after giving up on New York
3. Your friendly neighborhood bum discharging the water portion of the bottle of alcohol he drank a few hours before.

If you picked number 3 - ding ding ding!. You win the prize. I found myself being showered with pee and transitioning swiftly between disbelief and rage and.... eventually acceptance.

As I walk towards the Staten Island ferry station to use the bathroom for some temporary cleanup, it occurred to me how this story would make sense only in New York.

Ode to a client

I wanted to take a few minutes out to thank my client for finally sending their checks in. For restoring my hope and confidence in humanity. For letting me be able to pick up the phone for the next month without screening for bill collectors. For helping me to be able to raise my head up high when I go into a starbucks and order not a tall but a GRANDE cup of mocha or a frappacino ( I'm still deciding between mint chocolate chip and mocha with hazelnut as my favorite). For upgrading my lunches from the Mcdonalds's 99cents menu to a subway 6" sub. For being able to look into the eyes of the cashier when I pay at the supermarket with $5.00 bills instead of $1.00 bills.

All is well with the world for the next month

Maybe I should cut down on my coffee.

Customer Support as in....

sup·port [s? páwrt]
to give assistance or comfort to somebody in difficulty or distress *

It's a nightmare whichever way you look at it. Being the techie supporting the impolite, impatient client or being the knowledgeable client asking for support from an obviously incompetent, ignorant tech support rep.

I endured the popular nightmare of having to take my laptop in for service yesterday at CompUSA as per I bought the Technology Assurance Program Package when I got it from there. To be fair, it is one of their busiest offices, right in downtown Manhattan, but it took me 45 minutes to get my laptop dropped off eventually for technical service and then I was told to come back in two weeks. "TWO WEEKS!" . It could be worse. No really.

As you who may or may not read this blog may know, I am a web developer. I consequently engage the use of shared hosting services commercially available on the web. There is no perfect host, and that is a compromise that you'll have to accept. Also, there are fussy client considerations to deal with But I've been trying to upload a client's website now for the past three weeks. Why would it take so long? I've gone through 3 webhosts in the process. Plus there were DNS issues. Client wanted to keep DNS at Network Solutions and only redirect IP to new webhost.

Well, web host A gave me a nice hosting space, and a nice IP Address to go with it. - Client wanted a cheaper solution without having to pay extra for a secure certificate . It made things easier though, because you got your own IP.

Web host B gave me a nice hosting package, secure certificate included in the package, no ip address. I had to change my client's DNS servers to new host, and then redirect the DNS settings for mail back to Network Solutions. Nightmare.
Incompetent host B initally tells me they'll modify DNS, couple of hours. Nightmare turns into a couple of days at the end of which they tell me the DNS settings I requested which by the way I copied directly from Network Solutions are invalid. Client loses access to e-mail for 24 Hours despite some good old yelling. Clients gets frustrated. We move.

Web Host C - Network Solutions. Web Host C charges client for three years of hosting and another couple hundred dollars for SSL certificate. It takes them 1 week to setup and install the certificate. 1 WEEK. Next, they set it up and they get it wrong. Now they have to go back and re-issue the certificate.

I left out all the delightful conversations I've had with tech support, who kept bouncing me from one department to the other because they didn't know what they were doing.

All I can say is ARRRRGH!!!

*Microsoft® Encarta® Reference Library 2002. © 1993-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

The heat is gonna get you

And I mean that in more ways than one. Yup, its definitely here. Its about 94degerees outside as I speak, I've had four hours of sleep and I can see that I'm not going to make my deadline, for the second time.

That's okay. Who needs real sunlight when you've got monitor glare. Now if only they could build the monitors to emit tanning rays.

Transitions

That was how Steve Jobs introduced the topic on everyone's mind at the WWDC today. Apple is switching to Intel processor chips. I wasn't there of course, but got the chance to watch the webcast on Apple's preview release of Quicktime 7 for windows. It's pretty good, though still definitely preview release, and maybe it was because of internet load, maybe it was another reason, but it was quite patchy, not at all smooth as I expected on my machine, 1.8Mhz AMD, 512MB.

A broader view of this event as related to the the computer world can be to see that it fits into the overall direction of things these past two years. Half the world's major software companies are going Open Source. Email and Web hosting space is practically being given away at 2GB a pop. VoIP is quite literally exploding into the market - Heck, I'm using vonage as my primary business line.

Add to that, Macromedia and Adobe merge, and now Apple, bless their hearts is moving to Intel(x86) line of processors. Steve Jobs' Demo was on an imac running a pentium 4 3.6GHz PC.

What does this mean for Apple's future? What does it mean for Apple Hardware. Will I by this time next year be able to pick up Mac OS X Tiger for my HP Desktop? Only time will tell.

Say What?

Reactions across the board are varied and passionate as the news begins to spread in the design world. What news you may ask?

Adobe and Macromedia MERGE!!. Or more appropriately, Adobe buys macromedia in an all stock deal worth a little over three billion dollars.

This reporter's reaction is nothing short of stunned. Apparently, there has been undercurrents and rumors of this potential merger over the past couple of years as both companies' product offerings grew closer in purpose, but somehow, I never heard of it.

My first instinct is - NOOOOOOO -. I love Adobe. I love Macromedia. But the joining of both, for me is like (.. takes a moment to come up with a proper simile..) mixing peanut butter and chocolate. I know that there are hoardes of Reeses peanut butter cups lovers out there, but for me, the mix just never took. I like to have both flavors distinct, appreciate one and then the other. Combine them and what you have is just... not quite right. One inevitably gets lost in the other.

In addition, considering that these are the two biggest software companies out there for the products they offer ( for the unitiated, think graphics, print, multimedia ), this constitutes the death of choice, options and friendly competition. The last part particularly of note because friendly competition drives innovation. Now, they both have quite literally almost no one to compete against them.

What to make of this is yet to be seen.

Macromedia
Adobe

Inspiration... where art thou?

I have this cycle, created, I think out of necessity. I get a project, or if I'm fortunate, ( or unfortunate as you may soon decide) I get more than one, and I have to play this juggling act. I'm working on coming up with something extremely ingenious for each project, to keep up with my standard of work. Ultimately, I do and then I burn out. I've used so much brain power I guess, that my brain demands rest. I have to stop and relax as much as possible if I'm ever going to do anything worth looking at for the next project. Of course, I'm beginning to wonder if this is the way to go. Something about pushing yourself to the point of burnout every other month is potentially unhealthy.

I of course started this because as a freelancer, when you begin, you take projects when they come, projects you are sure you can do no doubt, but projects none the less. You do this because the next few months may be unpleasantly quiet as far as clients go. Problem is you may end up like every other token designer out there eventually. Spitting out the same layouts, and ending up using lime and purple on your next layout.

Client Woes

There's got to be something said for finding a new line of work when you spend the majority of your day feeling like you want to pull your hair out, tie it into a whip and beat clients with it.

I think I'm stuck in a rut. I'm stuck and I can't get out. Its enough I hear stories about the clients who unfortunately get stuck with the incompetent designer, and end up with websites that look like they were designed in Frontpage express and imported from 1996. I feel bad for the client and pray they find someone that better represents the profession next time.

And then I have to pick up the phone and beg my clients to keep up with their end of the bargain and I beg and I beg. I get frustrated and end up like I felt in the first paragraph and a little part of me feels a little less bad about the design hack. I curse them with the prospect of ending up with one for their next design project.

Considering the above, I'm sure there is a valid argument for having a little ying ( The bad designers and 'good' clients) and a little yang ( The good designers and the clients that suck). It's what creates the balance.

I HATE balance.

Stop and Smell the roses

Every artist has a perfect moment, when the mood is just right, the lighting is just perfect, the music is exactly in sync and in tune and if everything could stand still in that one moment, it would be saved, captured and preserved through the artist's medium of choice - paint, film, ink, pencil...

I had a perfect hour earlier today, or so it seemed. I had just come out of the subway at City Hall. I turned right and there it was. The scene seemed to stop for one long second. It was drizzling slightly. The street lights were on, but in perfect contrast with the dwindling daylight. I heard nothing but quiet for split second. Then I heard everything. I saw everthing, smelled everything. I feared nothing. The three projects I had on my desk did not exist. For a moment, life was good. I thought, strangely to myself, If I died now, it wouldn't be a bad time to go.

It all ended when an hour later, the deli guy charged me 2 dollars for a cup of coffee.

J.T

One for the little guy

I gotta say, every once in a while, the sun shines on the little guy. Therefore, a little exclamation of "ha ha" escaped from my mouth when I saw this story about the disgruntled Apple customer suing Apple over their restrictions on the AAC music format.

Don't get me wrong, I love Apple as much as the next guy, but that little issue always bugged me.

Melancholy

It might have had a little to do with my bank account balance, which I saw on my ATM receipt this morning, or maybe that had nothing to do with it. Either way, my day which started out as a day I had taken off for a little me time turned sour.

I love movies, real well written movies that make you feel satisfied that you just watched them. Ergo, I loved spanglish. It's well written, just long enough. And yet, as happens occasionally to me when I watch these movies, I got sour after watching it. It had nothing to do with the movie and I suspect everything to do with me.

Aside from the occasional outing, movies are my escape. They are the last vestige of my artistic side I still try to keep a connection to, for reasons as yet beyond me ( Refer to previous posting). I used to write. A lot. Poetry, Novels. I used to sketch - a lot. I love languages. I dabble with spanish and a little french. As it is currently my only escape, I get a little withdrawal anxiety once its over. I wish I could continue to live in the movie, in someone else's life for a while and put mine on hold, or hibernation in computer parlance.

While it is not always recommended I'm sure, I decided to take a chance at a little self analysis, as this was not the first time I felt this way. The first thing that comes across quite obviously is that if I don't want to come back to my own life, it must suck intensely. Not so. It leaves a lot to be desired, no doubt, but there is also a lot good about it. Of course, this could all be denial. More on that, maybe a little later. I'm still not convinced that people I know won't be reading this blog.

The second thing I zero in on is that one of the characters in the movie is a lot like me. He's a professional Chef, an all around good guy finally living in his dream jobscape. But his personal life.. not so great. We are un-alike if there is such a word in the sense that I cook for fun and dabble with computers for a living, but I would love to have a restaurant, preferrably just like his one day. Unfortunately, while his personal life could be great - he's married, two sweet kids, - it's just not. Watch the entire movie and you get an answer to why his is not so great.

Now I just wish I saw the script of my life and knew about mine. As yet, I'm not sure my blog postings are making any sense, but stay with me, I might start figuring this all out soon enough.

J.T.