May 2, 2001

Nicholson Baker last night at Politics and Prose on the topic of "yellow snow", or the little crumblies of paper that fall off the very edges of old books: "It's not an apocalypse of paper; it's just a problem that needs to be swept up after." Hee. Also: I recently engaged in a discussion about the need to bring back hissing as a means of public displays of disapproval; last night I very seriously considered hissing the woman in front of me who asked a long rambling question about how didn't Mr. Baker's concern about the destruction of "things we can never get back" (his words) evince a "lack of faith in truth and beauty" (hers), and when she wasn't impressed with his answer regarding the horror of knowing that libraries have been given huge amounts of grant money to destroy books, got right to the point and said "So what?" Some people... anyway. The leader of the discussion asked, at the evening's end, what Mr. Baker would recommend individuals do to help stop destruction in the name of preservation, and his answer was twofold. First, talk to your own local library, and find out what they're saving in original form and what they're destroying in order to create far less usable microfilm; second, write to the National Endowment for the Humanities and tell them they should institute requirements for the awarding of that "preservation" money stipulating that a book can be microfilmed, or scanned, or whatever, only if the original media is left intact, instead of cut up to make it easier (read: cheaper) to do said filming and scanning. [2:09 pm in dead trees]

May 4, 2001

I dreamed last night about interviewing for a job at Kinko's, telling them I was perfect for the position because I'd already worked for them once six years ago, trying to downplay everything I've done since so they wouldn't reject me due to overqualification... oh, my friends, this is just no good. [7:45 am in girl meets web]

May 5, 2001

teehee. Someone used my potatoes au gratin recipe and enjoyed it so much that she made some tweaks of her own. The best compliment possible, as far as I am concerned. In return, I'm thinking I might have to play with her recipe for artichokes with butter and parmesan. Mrrm. [12:44 pm in found links]

If David Gray doesn't play "This Year's Love" tonight, I'm going to cry. ...actually, I'll probably cry if he does. But in a different way, you know. [1:59 pm in girl meets web]

May 6, 2001

He didn't play it. Meh. [12:28 am in girl meets web]

May 7, 2001

Recently, my personal shitlist was updated with a new number one entry, and that entry read "Employees of the District of Columbia Department of Unemployment Services". Apparently it is not enough indignity for me to be forced to sink to the level of seeking government assistance in order to live in the manner to which I have become accustomed (which is to say, with a roof over my head). No, no: when you go on the gubmint dime, it seems you are also signing yourself up for a healthy dose of humiliation and finger-wagging to boot. I had an appointment a couple of weeks back to file an unemployment claim, but I was only in the Waterfront DOES office for about five minutes before turning on my heel and leaving. That's how long it took for the woman at the front to decide that I was throwing attitude (when, in fact, I merely expressed my confusion over her suggestion that I might not be eligible for unemployment insurance benefits---perhaps it was quoting from the little "Unemployment Insurance and You" handbook that roused her ire?) and to throw it back at me times two, and about the time she put me in my place and then invited me to have a seat was when I sashayed my uppity little ass out of there, on the premise that I really wasn't that hungry yet. Today I went to an appointment at the North Capitol office, in order to avoid another confrontation with the petty tyrant at Waterfront, and within half an hour I was gone, having this time successfully filed my claim and had my eligibility questions answered. I ask you, was that so hard? What is it about government employees that makes them so damned truculent? If these people were thirty years younger, they'd all be IRC channel operators. [4:58 pm in girl meets web]

May 8, 2001

Whilst writing email to a friend on the subject of my difficulties with Saul Bellow's Ravelstein, I got to surfing around to try to find some of the reviews of the book and its background as a thinly fictionalized memoir of a real-life friendship that I remembered reading when it was first published. Given that I'm finding it one thousand percent impossible to empathize with the main character, who seems almost a caricature of nouveau-riche academic elitism, I can't help but wonder about the real person behind the fictional Ravelstein. During said surfing, I came across a review of the book at a site called Culture Vulture. Their review of Ravelstein was favorable, even defiantly so, but I shan't hold that against them: it looks like a site worth a prolonged browse. There seems to be a preponderance of essays on movies (I mean, "film"), but there's also writing on dance and music and tv and theater and, yes, books. And, let's face it, it's just a cool URL. Will have to read some more of it later, but now it's time to make myself go to bed, in spite of having lapsed into a four-hour nap this evening... here's hoping that if Ravelstein put me fast asleep once today, it'll happen again now. [1:03 am in found links/dead trees]

May 10, 2001

I keep feeling as if there are lessons to be learned from all of this, but I'm damned if I can figure out what they are. [7:30 pm in girl meets web]

May 11, 2001

I thought I had seen the very stupidest of Stupid Direct Deposit Tricks a couple of years back when a company that I worked for for only a month and a half or so kept direct depositing paychecks into my bank account for about that long after I left, and wreaking all sorts of havoc in trying to correct their repeated mistakes. I learned that when someone screws up a direct deposit, they have to do an 'investigation' and then take the whole thing out and start over again, and it takes sixteen years to get it resolved. Now I am hunkering down for another drawn-out red-tape siege: I'm doing some work currently for a company I worked for in Atlanta up until a year and a half ago, and it seems they direct deposited the first check since my unglorious return to my account number at my old bank, at the routing number of the new one. If you're a SunTrust customer who's $561.85 richer this week for no good reason, we're on to you, and I hope for your sake you haven't blown it at the mall yet. What confused payroll administrators giveth, confused payroll administrators can taketh away. [4:46 pm in girl meets web]

May 12, 2001

I need a new all-consuming, eat-sleep-breathe, can't-get-enough, like-a-kid-again passion. Having some difficulty, however, in figuring out what it should be. Maybe I should set up a poll... Maybe the fact that I said "maybe I should set up a poll" means I should get that new hobby first and decide if it's the right one later. [11:02 pm in girl meets web]

May 14, 2001

sigh. [2:34 pm in political]

May 15, 2001

Bad driving karma: yesterday, my brakes began to squeal. This morning, my stereo wouldn't work. Then on the way to this week's semi-gainful semi-employment, I encountered a seatbelt blockade; was snagged and scolded and written up. As I pulled away from said blockade, the service light on my dash came on. And then there was the cigarette that escaped my still-sleepy fingers and landed in the backseat atop a pile of maps and notebooks... Maybe I'll just sleep right here in this cube for the rest of the week. I'm none too eager to see what happens *next* time I get into the zippy red Saturn. [10:37 am in girl meets web]

If you had both a copy-editing and proofreading business and an inordinate fondness for puns, you'd probably call your business "Grammourpuss" too. (hyper lynx? aie aie aie.) [11:40 am in found links]

May 20, 2001

Today I did something I've never done before: removed nearly a week's worth of entries from this site. Either you know why, or it doesn't matter. Meanwhile, if the database integration stuff that powers this site appears to go all wonky on you, please let me know... these things can happen when you make data-model changes on the spur of the moment :> [3:57 pm in girl meets web]

May 21, 2001

There isn't much here that isn't on about six thousand other sites, but its name is cooler than all the others': JavaScriptWeenie.com. heh. [3:03 pm in girl meets web]

It was a really bad weekend for laundry. I'll spare you the play-by-play, but trust me. It all came to a head last night at ten o'clock, when I headed to the community laundry room in the basement of my apartment building to see if the person whose clothes had been sitting, dried and cooling, in the dryers for at least 45 minutes had bothered to move them yet. The clothes were still there, so, in accordance with the universally recognized code of laundry room etiquette, I took them out and piled them atop the dryer so that I could use it. As I was pulling my clothes out of the washer, the owner of that pile of clothing came into the laundry room. I knew she was the owner by the proprietorial and huffy way in which she threw her keys down on top of the dryer her clothes were piled on. And then by the way she proceeded to dart over to another washer, pull wet clothes out of it, and stuff them into the dryer *I* had emptied before I could get to it! And all this without making eye contact. Woman, thy name is passive-aggressive pettiness. Well, two can play that game. I walked out, letting her have her dryer. I gave it a few minutes, then went down to pick up my own basket of damp and stiffening clothes from where it still sat in front of the row of washers, so that I could take them someplace else to dry them. And on my way out of the laundry room, I paused before the contested dryer and pulled its door ajar, stopping a great load of wet blankets and towels and instantly feeling vastly better about the whole thing. [3:48 pm in girl meets web]

May 23, 2001

I don't know if this news has gotten out to the blogging world yet or not, so if this is redundant, do pardon me: MetaFilter is down because Pyra's T1 connectivity was yanked (the company that supplied it no longer is in that business, apparently). People were making noises about donating to the cause via Amazon and PayPal, but Matt said to hold off---sounds as if he has some options he's looking at. I'm hoping this means the site will be back very soon. Because I'm going to start getting the shakes and the cold sweats if it's not. [4:47 pm in girl meets web]

May 24, 2001

Jim Jeffords, I want to have your baby. [11:52 am in political]

So you thought Britney Spears was harmless bubble-pop. You thought she'd fade as quickly as she burst onto the scene. "Sure, she sucks," you thought, "but there's no harm in it; the world will forget her soon enough." Well. I'm here to tell you you're WRONG. Britney's the devil and we'll have to live with what she's wrought for years to come. My proof: Nelly Furtado. Just the first in what's sure to be a long line of white chicks misled by Britney into thinking that singing through your nose equals "soul". ohhn bahnbeh bahnbeh... [2:43 pm in found links]

HR people make me want to cry. That is all. [5:00 pm in girl meets web]

May 25, 2001

Mail from Canada (or, anyway, from Dan): "Let's get together and find Nelly Furtado and stomp her while playing, like, Tool or something, in the background." [8:57 am in girl meets web]

Do you have fond childhood memories of going to the all-niters at the local drive-in movie theater, and missing the last half of the last show because you were trapped in the grungy bathroom dealing with the aftermath of the atomic nachos you ate during the first movie? Did you ever get in for free, if you count having to ride in via the trunk as "free"? What about deciding to watch without sound because it was just too damn cold to roll down the window and hook the little speaker over your door? Yeah, me too. Live it all over again at drive-ins.com. [3:40 pm in found links]

May 28, 2001

I'm fond of taking pictures with my aging but still game digital camera. But it's terribly frustrating to try to get super-close-up detail photos with hands as unsteady as mine---often I have to shoot a whole bunch of pictures before I get one as clear as I want. However, none of that is an issue anymore, as Don was able to dig out an old tripod from the dark corners of his basement this weekend. Now I'm all atwitter, and itching to go take pictures of something. As soon as my batteries finish charging... [6:41 pm in girl meets web]

I've been fooled a few times, but for every person who ever took advantage of me and of the anonymity of the Internet, there are scores more who are simply good and forthright people who deal honestly with others and expect the same in return, who I would be proud to count as friends.... read full entry [10:30 pm in journal abstracts]

It's a sad thing to start to read a book---discover it not to one's liking and take a break to plow through another---try it again and find it still sucks---pick up something lent by a friend and get three chapters in---then look back at the first book and realize it's never going to end up as a line-item over at tyib. I like to finish what I begin, but Donald Antrim's The Verificationist is just painful reading. Wonder if I still have the receipt... [11:24 pm in dead trees]

May 29, 2001

What is a hash function? I'd like to say I'm smarter after reading the above but really I'm only more acutely aware of how much stuff I completely fail to grasp. [3:57 pm in tech/biz]

May 30, 2001

The X-Files will return to Fox next year, David Duchovny be damned. It's hard to imagine---that season finale sure felt like an ending, didn't it?---but, hey. This show has anchored my Sunday nights for so long that even if Doggett and Reyes positively stink as the show's new leads, I will be comforted just by being able to turn it on and then ignore it as background noise at the accustomed night and time. Via Fametracker. [12:45 pm in found links]

MetaFilterless again. It hurts my heart. Thank god I have to take the car in for service tomorrow. Wait, did I just say that? [2:36 pm in girl meets web]

A Toreador's guide to snacking in our nation's capital: "One night I WILL drink from the President of the United States. It's important to have goals. Don't you think?" [3:30 pm in found links]

My cubemate was not at work today. That's a good thing because, while I was doing okay at keeping the snickering-to-self at a low enough volume that the bossman two cubes over couldn't hear, my cubemate certainly would have given me a few funny looks while I sat, snorting into my hands, reading this journal entry from Pamie: "...my two teenaged boy cats are going through rough periods. One has acne and the other just discovered masturbation." [4:30 pm in found links]

May 31, 2001

Allow me to begin by saying I love you guys. No, really, I do. You read my site and you send me email and sometimes you even link me. All that is all good. But I have a minor, petty, possibly ingrateful quibble, and it is this: it makes my teeth hurt to see me linked as "Sapphire Blue". In a perfect world where everyone complied with my whims, I would prefer "sapphireblue", or, if you really must, "Sapphireblue". However, under no circumstances can I permit "SapphireBlue" to slide by. Intercapping is *so* passe. Work with me, people. ...on next week's episode of Egads, That Girl's Got A Swelled Head: someone registers saphireblue.com and puts a sign up saying "temporarily closed", scaring the bejesus out of Swelled Head Girl's less spelling-capable visitors. [4:06 pm in girl meets web]

June 1, 2001

In every crowd, there's one or two hecklers. In response to you troublemakers, I say: underscores and dashes are quite unacceptable; and also, linking me by name is just fine, because it *is*, after all, my name. But be warned: if you think mis-punctuations of my domain name make me ornery, just wait til some poor soul fouls up the hyphen in my tricky tricky last name. [11:02 am in girl meets web]

June 3, 2001

My ADSL connection is apparently developing an alien intelligence of its own. I have sated its whimsy by disconnecting my router; to reward me for my obeisance it has begun connecting at bootup without my having to deal with the software that heretofore required four clicks or so to get online. The sudden and mysterious change is for the better, but now I'm worried about what will happen next time I piss it off. [10:28 pm in girl meets web]

if Jakob Nielsen never said "the existence of a site search should never nullify the requirement for an intuitive navigation system," he should have, and I hereby urge him to address the topic: some righteous scolding of the web-building community on the subject is sorely overdue. Also: more 'professional' web content providers ought to be dating their output. In a medium where information can be either instantly broadcast or archived for discovery by users years from now, it's unacceptable to present an article on The Very Latest on anything without some objective context as to the age of the information. (the same holds true for code just as much as for prose. give me a date, give me browser version information, something, anything, i'm dyin' here.) [11:52 pm in tech/biz]

June 4, 2001

While HR people and managers eyeing me from the other side of a vast and gleaming conference table will always make me nervous, I have been having lots of fun of late with technical interviews. While meeting with a company's alpha geek squad, I can breathe a bit more easily in my suit, kick back and talk smack about Microsoft. At those times I can almost forget that I'm supposed to be acting all impressive and hireable and stuff. At one recent meeting, a programmer and I traded tips on our favorite PHP websites and books. He offered me HotScripts.com's PHP pages and I offered him ONLamp.com. My Web Application Development with PHP 4.0 for his PHP Developer's Cookbook. Useful information nuggets, to be sure. It was almost like fun, except with pantyhose. [1:41 pm in tech/biz/girl meets web]

it's been remarked upon and moaned about and offered as placation for some misunderstanding about six million billion times, but once again it occurs to me that, boy, on the Internet, no one knows you're only being a wiseass. It's (easier? more fun? cardiovascular workout on the cheap?) to interpret all questionable comments as purposeful personal offense, and to fly off the handle accordingly. Here's my Karma For The Masses moment for the day: breathe, folks. Just breathe. [4:50 pm in girl meets web]

June 6, 2001

The smell of blooming magnolias is one of the happiest scent-memories I have. [3:07 pm in girl meets web]

June 7, 2001

Sometimes, even now as we all settle uncomfortably into the gasping and sputtering rhythms of Year 2 A.B. ("after bubble"), I am filled with awe at the possibilities the web has to offer, the conveniences and speed and instant gratification of life online. Other times, however, I am poleaxed by the sheer number of businesses who, although online, simply Do Not Get It. Gather round and let me tell you a story: I need pants. I need pants. Or skirts, those are even better. Things to wear with my vast collection of blouses and sweaters, essentially. Last night, I went to the mall with this need in mind. I thought I was going to have an honest-to-goodness positive shopping experience when I walked into Benetton and saw a lovely skirt, all crinkly and cotton and A-line-ish and ankle-length and in this sort of beigey-green shade, the color of ill-attended August lawns, and then look! they have them in mauve and black too! One of each, maybe. But it was not to be. They didn't have my size in any one of the three colors. No sweat, think I: I'll hit the web. My first stop was benetton.com. Hmmm... looks like a corporate brochureware site.... but wait, there's a little animated graphic that says "shop online". Cool. Click that... and get asked to choose between Italia, Deutschland, and the United Kingdom. Ummm. Okay, then, UK, at least I can read it. Ten nightmarish minutes of cruddy navigation and expired-session errors later, I run for my life to Google, where I do a search for +Benetton +"online store". Why look! The first hit is BenettonOnline.com! Well, why wasn't that linked from the corporate site? Never mind, I've found it now, and all is well. Except that... BenettonOnline seems to be a mockup or a prototype of a (not very good, even) website. There's navigation graphics, there's links and stuff, but none of it works. I am, apparently, to wait for them to "re-open soon". But if I want, I can visit the site of the company that built the BenettonOnline "website". Augh! Augh augh! The mind boggles to think that Benetton paid money, probably lots of it, to at least two web shops to do at least three websites for them, and they all suck. Meanwhile, I have friends who can design circles around me, who can code to put me to shame, and they are out of work. Also: I still don't have a pretty new skirt. There is simply no justice in the world. [1:01 pm in tech/biz/girl meets web]

In the course of making my run of hail-mary phone calls, I reached one woman who abruptly hung up on me when I explained that I was looking for some family I hadn't talked to in a while. Maybe she had disowned her family too.... read full entry [8:45 pm in journal abstracts]

My own personal little Museum of Site Designs Past gains another entry tonight, with this journal design from late 1998. The layout dates to back when I had only about a dozen entries, and doesn't necessarily translate well to a database-backed index of nearly a hundred entries. But, you know, there it is, converted over to PHP and MySQL goodness but otherwise left unchanged, in the name of historical accuracy, for all one of you who have mentioned on more than one occasion that you miss the "big eyes" design :) [10:54 pm in girl meets web]

June 8, 2001

It's true: Suck and Feed seem done for. It really does feel to me like the death of Kozmo all over again. When I'm eighty, grumpy, and toothless, I'm going to bore my grandchildren with stories of the good old days when the web could bring you ice cream and cigarettes and intelligent, timely original content, instantly or almost-so, and for free, or for free*. [4:00 pm in tech/biz/found links]

June 11, 2001

The once-and-former Friends of Jezebel's Mirror has moved to a new home and a domain all its own at mirrorproject.com. Now featuring searchable goodness, which I promptly tested by looking up both of the photos featuring yours truly---found them here and here. Way cool: the site is even easier to get lost in now. [12:31 pm in found links]

it would seem I'm being billed for going over my storage quota. said storage quota is 100MB. time for some belated spring cleaning. [10:54 pm in girl meets web]

June 12, 2001

Overheard: "These are ColdFusion guys, so I'm sure they can do HTML." Stuff and nonsense! HTML is not a lowest common denominator of all Internet-related skills. Not good HTML, anyway. Most any trained monkey can stick <P> tags into a document and call it HTML, but talented HTML developers carry around exhaustive mental references of browser quirks, implementation bugs, standards recommendations, and useful tricks and hacks and fixes that are only learned by spending good time focusing on presentation of client-side content. Assuming an applications developer knows that stuff is like assuming that the engineer who designed your car's engine could also have designed its dashboard. Maybe it could happen (Two Guys in a Basement Auto Design?), but if the car's going to be something really great, you'll let the guts experts design the guts and the interface experts design the interface, with the crucial understanding that the two skillsets complement one another but are not the same. And if you do happen across the rare gem who can do both brilliantly, then smile, shake his hand and say as little as possible, because he's smarter than you are. [3:47 pm in tech/biz]

June 14, 2001

BrainDan is my current favorite person. Someone who will do pro bono copy-editing for you at midnight on a Wednesday is someone who deserves a little gratuitous link-love. [12:20 am in found links]

Today and yesterday, the air conditioning at my job/not-a-job has been out. Bad timing, as it's been in the upper eighties all week (that's "30 or so" for my vast international fanbase). It's crazy... people wandering the cubes barefoot or finding any excuse to ride the elevators to other cooler floors, rowdy shouts of "someone turn the heat up, it's chilly in here!" The staff was on the verge of a riot when suddenly, the Ice Cream Fairy slipped in, deposited gallons of ice cream and boxes of ice cream sandwiches and popsicles in the kitchen, and then departed unnoticed. Now, we're all still a little slap-happy, but somewhat placated. I don't even mind that there's chocolate ice cream on my white sweater. [1:33 pm in girl meets web]

June 19, 2001

Yesterday: no internet connection at my job/not-a-job all day. S'okay, I'm only a web developer. Today: a hair dryer exploding in my hand into flames and acrid melting-plastic smoke. Tomorrow: I refuse to come out from where I cower beneath the blankets. Just try to make me. [12:16 pm in girl meets web]

Found in my referer logs: a new weblog by some guy who reads a lot. Amusing collection of Chuck Palahniuk-bashing review snippets today. Or actually, tomorrow... those wacky Australians. (as far as "better than Invisible Monsters" goes: in my humble, that'd almost have to be true.) [12:18 pm in found links/dead trees]

A lit'ry footnote for the internet generation: "It's not the case that in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. In the future, everyone will be famous all the time---but only in their own minds. It is lookalike fame, karaoke fame. There's only one task it's equal to: it messes with the head."---Martin Amis, Experience [1:29 pm in dead trees]

It's People I Used To Work With Appreciation Day here at sapphireblue.com and so I present to you two new or newish weblogs or weblog-like substances by former co-workers of mine: The Mud Fence and LoriGoldberg.net. [3:27 pm in found links]

June 21, 2001

Happiness is bumbling into the lobby of your apartment building one evening and spotting, over on the ledge where people leave magazines (and sometimes mail, and sometimes stained-glass window hangings) that they're done with and others could perhaps get some use out of, several copies of Brill's Content, including the issue with the cover photo of MetaFilter's own benevolent dictator Matt Haughey. I snatched up the glossy stack and scuttled for the elevator and my apartment above... The incident gave me a smile, and a reminder that the web isn't quite dead, on a day when a both were desperately needed. [4:34 pm in girl meets web]

Newspoetry.com. That's really all there is to be said. [9:35 pm in found links]

June 22, 2001

Missing Pride Weekend in Atlanta makes me melancholy and nostalgic. While a resident there, I loved living in Midtown when Pride came around... it was better than Music Midtown, better than the Dogwood Festival, better than Montreux Atlanta, better even than the (late lamented?) Arts Festival. Funnel cakes and music and rainbow flags and t-shirts that say things like "Strong enough for a man, but pH balanced for a woman" and the drag show, don't forget the drag show... sigh. I missed DC's Pride Weekend entirely this year, but even if I hadn't I'd probably have still wished to be in Piedmont Park, laid out on the grass of Oak Hill and sweltering under the Southern summer sun, maybe with David and Phil and Jade, the boys in black mesh and Jade announcing to everyone and no one that she was REALLY a lesbian (REALLY) and hanging all over me in an effort to make the claim look authentic. But all that's past: Jade moved to Richmond three or four years ago, David and Phil to San Francisco a year later, and even Oak Hill itself has been the subject of violent "rehabilitation" more recently... what do you do with homesickness when home isn't how you remember it anymore? Get over it already, I guess. Places change, just like people do. [12:42 pm in girl meets web]

June 23, 2001

Almost.org is back with a brand new story. Go see! [2:36 pm in found links]

I've never been a pizza person, but there's this place in Atlanta near the Shoot-em-up Kroger that forever earned my loyalty several years back. Three things: 1.) they made the best four-cheese pizza money can buy, 2.) they also made "dessert pizzas", which are standard pizza crust that comes with not tomato sauce and meat, but cream cheese and fruit topping---I always got the cherry, and let me tell you, just the odor *alone* of one of these things steaming through your front door was enough to make you reckless with the delivery driver's tip, and 3.) once you'd made yourself memorable with a few of those generous tips, you could generally persuade your driver thereafter to bring you a pack of cigarettes too. Rumor had it beer was available if they knew you too but I never pushed my luck that far. That's what I call service---who needs Kozmo anyway? It's been years since I had pizza, dessert, or Marlboros from that place, but right now I have a *painful* hankering for a cherry dessert pizza. And a tall cold glass of whole milk. Mrm. [3:45 pm in girl meets web]

June 25, 2001

Have I ever, in all my life, been so exhausted, so weary, as I am right now? Maybe so, but I'm too tired to try to remember. I don't even have it in me to finish my tuna salad sandwich; given that tuna is my Lazy Food of choice (and that I haven't eaten in nine hours) that's really saying something. Now if only I could translate "beat" into "sleepy" I would be in business. [10:51 pm in girl meets web]

June 26, 2001

"---i was always running around shouting, gimmetheball, gimmetheball, gimmetheball, yeah!" [5:02 pm in girl meets web]

June 27, 2001

The webmail client I use is down. My bank's online banking application is down. I'm feeling awfully surly at the moment, and wondering again about that lucrative career in panda-poo cleanup... fully y2k compliant! A co-worker suggested that perhaps I could package dried panda poo as fire pellets, since the digestive system of a panda is not terribly efficient and as a result there's lots of whole bamboo content in panda poo. I could even sell my Panda Poo Fire Pellets online; PandaPoo.com is available for sale at the low low price of three hundred dollars. Sort of a clicks-and-patties business model. The future is now. [11:59 am in girl meets web]

When a site's navigation is so bad, *and* the site search is so bad, that you resort to going offsite to Google to locate the information you want, it's time to do a usability review. I'm just saying. [3:00 pm in tech/biz]

June 28, 2001

My old IRC cohort Tom has graduated to the ranks of the TLD-equipped with his new site at brokenchair.org. [12:52 am in found links]

June 29, 2001

This week has been one nightmare after another and it's only getting worse. I think I miss lying around moping and drawing severance pay. Sad but true. [11:59 am in girl meets web]