optimism's flames

I am not big on New Year's resolutions. They tend to involve exercise and weight loss, two changes I've never been able to tie to an external event (although not for lack of trying). This year, though, I have a real resolution, one I actually started working on a few days before the 1st: Stay away from arguments - or, to be more specific, negativity - on the Internet.

No, I am not one of these people. I am fully aware that a) I am not right about everything; and b) some people are wrong and don't care to be argued out of it. I don't have a problem with either of these issues; I know how to avoid people I chronically disagree with. But sometimes...sometimes I get caught up. I was arguing a few weeks ago about, of all things, Apple's adoption of Blu-Ray (or lack thereof). The person I was arguing with not only disagreed with me, but did it in a way that ticked me off. Why? I can't really say. I felt belittled and not taken seriously - never fun - but it certainly wasn't the first time that has happened in a discussion. Eventually I just stopped reading the discussion, but I was irked for quite a while. And why? Because some total stranger whose real name I don't know and who I will never, ever meet disagreed with me? Was maybe a little rude? WHY is this worth my time and energy?

It's not.

As I get older, I start to notice more and more the effect of my mental attitude on my physical well-being. Headache, backache, even sore knees and feet can often be triggered by stress. I don't take my blood pressure regularly, but the last few times I've been to the doctor (albeit when I'm already sick), it has run a little higher than it used to. Now, of course, there is the weight loss and exercise I mentioned earlier - also critically important to good health - but for God's sake, am I really going to let arguing with virtual people screw up my health? Not to mention influence whether or not I have a nice day?

It's easier said than done to avoid such discussions, of course. Sometimes someone I like to read will get involved in a heated argument, and I read because I want to see points scored. (Doesn't say anything very nice about me, does it?) The trouble is, even when "my side" wins, I still get angry that the opposing side could hold the opinions they hold, and express them the way they have expressed them.

(In my defense, some of these people really are over the top. The Internet is a wonderfully egalitarian resource - everyone can express an opinion on an equal footing, and if someone's opinion is fringe, or based on fantasy, or even pathologically violent, they get the same platform as the rest of us. It's kind of creepy sometimes to realize that there really are people who believe, for example, that marriage exists solely as a vehicle for women to trick men into fathering children so the wife can then divorce the husband, keep him from his children, and steal all of his money for the rest of his life. And don't even get me started on the convoluted racist arguments that have grown out of people's fear of terrorism. This stuff really IS sad and frightening - but I still believe such people are in the minority in the real world.)

Some arguments are worth having. If you are having a civil discussion with someone, a disagreement can even be entertaining and useful - sometimes I find out I am wrong, at least partially, and in a productive discussion that discovery can be positive and worthwhile. But for people whose world-views are at such right-angles to my own - no, not worth it. Those who believe genocide is ever a legitimate answer for anything, for example, are not going to be interested in a word I have to say on the subject.

Folks like that are easy enough to unmask and avoid. But what do I do about benign guys like Mr. Blu-Ray? Do I avoid discussion boards entirely?

Maybe, yes. In some ways, I hate to, since I get a lot of news and analysis from links posted on discussion boards. (Maybe not a great way to get information, but I've certainly been hooked into a lot of useful links concerning, for example, swine flu this way.) But it's too easy to get snagged into a soul-chewing argument just noodling around on discussion boards. Mr. Blu-Ray is a regular on an Apple stock board, and is an (otherwise) intelligent and reflective person. If (otherwise) intelligent and reflective people are setting me off...then yes, I've spent too much time on discussion boards.

Maybe I can find some nice sites about kitties and puppies instead.

Today my stepdaughter came over to help me clean my daughter's room. This should not have been a major undertaking - but me being who I am, and Em having the kind of family that loves to buy her little bits of stuff, it was. Before today, there was a narrow corridor of floor visible, stretching from the doorway to the bed. Attempts to relegate toys to large plastic bins were successful only briefly - and I never seemed to have enough bins, or enough time to truly sort through things. The result was that when Em wanted to find something, she upended bins full of little bits of stuff all over the floor. Perhaps a real housekeeper could have kept up. Me? I have no clue.

Nor do I really have a clue how we organized her room. Or rather, I should say: Nor do I really have a clue how Meg organized her room. Mostly I took orders, made decisions, bossed Em around when necessary - but Meg directed. She decided what to go through first, and kept me on task when necessary. She did all of this while seeming to be perfectly relaxed, never losing her temper or raising her voice. When I looked around at the end of the day and saw a clean floor, a play area (delineated with a gorgeous purple rug), a dresser full of well-organized containers, and a few small bins stacked in a corner, I was stunned. It looked like an ordinary room - the kind of room where you could leave the door wide open, unconcerned, while friends were over. It looks beautiful.

My reaction to the whole thing has been odd. I am thrilled, and so grateful to Meg, and very much in awe of her organizational ability. I am blind to clutter, up to a point. I think after seven-and-a-half years of marriage, even my husband has come to accept that it's not so much that I am a slob - it's that I don't see. Piles that remain fairly stationary, but grow in size slowly over time, tend to skate under my radar. It isn't until things are tripping me or I need something that is desperately lost that it bothers me at all. I could not have done what Meg did today. I would not have had any idea how to do it on my own. I could happily follow instructions, and appreciate the result; but organizational strategy of that sort is simply not in me. At 45, I don't know if it's something I can acquire.

The odd part, though, is that I feel slightly melancholy. It's not that I miss all the stuff scattered all over her room - or is it? I really don't know. I am bothered, a little, by the idea that she has "too much" stuff, even though I know objectively that it's true. I feel almost like cleaning her room, giving everything a home, and helping her put things away (for real, not just "out of the way") at the end of the day is stifling her imagination. Which is rubbish, of course. (She spent the afternoon playing inside the newly accessible closet - the cleanliness represents, to her, new opportunities.) This is not about her, I am sure. It's about me, and I don't quite get it.

I have always had a somewhat unreasonable attachment to objects. I'm not sure why; when I was little I never wanted for anything. I may not have had buckets of cheap Burger King toys like Em does (even pitching the silly, pointless, unidentifiable ones, she still has an entire plastic container full of the things), but I don't ever remember feeling like I didn't have anything to play with, or that I wanted a toy that I did not get. Yet I was attached to silly things - a purple Matchbox car, a threadbare stuffed kitty, an enormous stuffed frog - and that has continued. When I buy a new computer, it takes a full week before I stop feeling sad about the old one (even if the old one has died). New cars are especially difficult. I do let go eventually - things are just things, after all - but it takes time, and I can't hurry myself up with logic.

I did not throw away anything today that I had a sentimental attachment to. I had a box in which I threw any old clothes of Em's that I remembered fondly; but none of the books we packed away (all very old picture books) were books I'd bonded with, and she did not give up any of her stuffed animals. (I was prepared to rescue a few, had it become necessary.) She still has her stuff, and now she also has room to spread out and play. We can even invite her friend Jessica, and I don't have to feel ashamed of the way the room looks. (Jessica's house is not obsessively neat; but Em's room was really over the top.)

All of this is good, and I'm still melancholy, thus proving that I am an idiot. Well, I suppose I'll get over it. It only took a week for me to get over giving up my last laptop, and this is a much more positive change.

On the holiday front, I have already spent a pile of my Christmas money. Much of it has gone to computer books. I bought, among others, Head First iPhone Development, despite the complaints in the reviews about poor copy editing. (I really like the Head First series.) I still harbor this small fantasy that I will be able to port my little matching game in time for Em to play it as we go down to Disney. She has two matching games on my iPod now, but neither is as fully featured as what I'd like to put together. No market for it, and of course I won't be able to charge if I officially list it at the app store - and it will cost me $99 just to be able to load it on my own personal iPod for testing. It would, however, be a very nice little pocket adjunct to my resume.

Now I am going to crawl into something comforting - maybe the P.D. James I bought yesterday - and lick my inexplicable wounds until I feel better about everything.

In spite of resisting Twitter with every fiber of my being, I have to admit one- or two-line bits of news are kind of fun to write.

• I survived my classes, and got two As again. My husband now laughs out loud when I tell him I am worried about grades. (For those who are interested: March 27, 2010 is my last day of classes.)
• The more I learn about backend web technologies, the more I realize that this World Wide Web thing is cobbled together with chewing gum and cobwebs.
• Of course, that fact opens up the possibility that a facility with chewing gum of any flavor might actually be a good professional skill to have.
• Kids can get used to anything. I am frequently freezing in the house (on non-wood-stove evenings), but Em runs around in short sleeves and bare feet, perfectly happy.
• Speaking of kids...this will be A Very Barbie Christmas. She is getting four that I know of so far (well, three Barbies and a Ken).
• Apropos of nothing - I am beginning to think I may have to switch to Firefox, just because there are so many more plugins available for it. Certainly Firebug is one of those things that every purveyor of chewing gum and cobwebs ought to know about.
• The iTunes App Store is dangerous. Credit-card death by a thousand 99 cent cuts. I have found some cool games for Em there, though - and I refuse to think about how much better she is at the memory games than I am.
• We put a deposit down on our Disney trip a few weeks ago, and made restaurant reservations (for those who are curious: Boma, Boma, Boma, Boma, Boma, and the Sci Fi Dine-In Theater). I am starting to get kind of excited.
• Oh, they have iPhone apps for Disney planning as well? Excellent! Where did I put my credit card?
• Speaking of modern media...in my E-Commerce class, we talked about social media as a marketing tool. Meaning you can go on Facebook or Twitter and "subscribe" to a company. In my mind, that changes it from social media to cable TV.
• Speaking of classes, I got some very nice compliments from my E-Commerce instructor on my final project. Always nice to hear. Not the first time I've been told I have a pretty decent understanding of business-type stuff...maybe I should have gone for an MBA instead of a B.S. in Interactive Media Design.
• My video class went MUCH BETTER than the last one, mostly because this one was more about the technical side of compressing something for streaming than actually composing Art™. I handle the technical stuff much better.
• I got to use Director again for that video class. In so many ways, it's a better authoring tool than Flash. It is certainly a thousand times easier to deal with video. Too bad the browser plugin appears to be rotting - I am guessing Adobe is letting it die on the vine.
• I still love Flash, but boy those security settings can be a pain in the backside. Note to self: next time I have to do a Flash project, upload an early version to the web and make sure it runs before spending time on the coding. Better to drop a feature and have something that people can actually view.
• I am so tired I can't even string two thoughts together.
• Almost done Christmas shopping...one more thing coming in the mail, and two more things I need to buy in the real world. I had a lot of fun shopping this year, although I think I may have gone a little overboard on a few things.
• If I had bought Emily everything she wanted for Christmas - and everything I saw that made me think of her - I would have bankrupted us.
• When did shopping become recreation?
• Teenaged previews from your 5-year-old are not fun. I am too thin-skinned to be a parent.
• I really, really hope the storm they are predicting for this weekend is not a repeat of last year's ice storm.
• Marmalade has been with us more than a year! She finally seems to be acclimating to the household. I figured we would wear her down eventually.
• No more updates until next year, I suspect - so Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

• I now officially know enough ActionScript to recognize that I don't know what I'm doing.
• Battlestar Galactica's ending was actually not as awful as I had been led to believe, but that may be because I knew what was going to happen and I had time to get used to the idea before watching it. And boy, it looks gorgeous in blu-ray.
• I have learned it is possible to be a stage mother without actually believing your child will ever be on stage.
• Being able to write well is a useful skill in many different situations. For instance, take my Advanced Communications class: beyond research, it's not taking up much of my time.
• I am beginning to get seriously burned out on school. Having said that, taking two classes at once is much more pleasant than taking three. Even my husband has noticed I'm more relaxed.
• I may be the only Mac person I know who is actually hoping that Windows 7 is a success. I still remember being excited when Windows 95 came out - I loved those animated screen savers. Had it not been for Windows, I never would have become interested in personal computing - even when a PC cost $3500, it was still dramatically less expensive than a Mac. (Not to mention the 90s kind of sucked for Apple.) So I owe a lot to Microsoft, and I guess I'm feeling like they have screwed up enough. I know they have a lot of good engineers working for them, and I hoped their marketing goons listened to the guys in the trenches this time.
• That said, I think we can all agree that Steve Ballmer says stupid stuff in public more often than Joe Biden.
• It is a hard thing, watching your kid get assimilated into the school system. On the other hand, she loves gym, so something must have changed a LOT since I was there.
• Speaking of Em, she has been completely fearless the last two weeks in gymnastics. I've never seen her fling herself over the equipment with such good cheer. I guess leaving her alone to decide what she does and doesn't want to do was the right thing to do.
• Also speaking of Em - she has become a total Barbie girl. Amazing since I never liked dolls as a child, much less Barbies. Her only parameters are: only grown-up Barbies (no little sisters), and no buttons. Beyond that, she seems just as happy with the $5 Barbies as she does with the $50 Barbies.
• And is this one not totally cool?
• Okay, I am grudgingly deciding that Twitter has its uses. It is nice keeping up with my folks on their vacation. I love my mom's photos and the longer blog entries, but a daily (or so) quick summary of what they've been doing is really nice.
• I would have nothing to say on Twitter, I think. Today's entry would be something like this. "Gymnastics with Em. Cute skeleton kitty at Target, then pumpkin painting at Hannaford. Afternoon of slugdom. Nice!" My family might be interested - a little - but boy, even summarizing it here seems like about as much effort as writing a real email. Maybe I'd get better with practice.
• Here is what I hope tomorrow's entry looks like: "Slept in. Waffles for breakfast. Got my DB access working. Nice walk with Em." I'm guessing it would sound more interesting in complete sentences.

I've been meaning to write about this for a while, and since I'm home sick with nothing to do but fret about my upcoming classes, I thought I'd take the opportunity.

About a year ago, I got called for jury duty. It was something of a joke at work: no less than four of us, in the same group, were called to jury duty in the fall (three of us were actually seated on juries). The second-line manager - a person of ill humor at the best of times - was overheard asking the first one, apparently seriously, "Can't you tell them you have a deadline?"

I did not expect to be seated. I think most people don't expect it. The last time I was called was 1987, and we were all dismissed at 9:30 in the morning. In addition to that, I had the "my mother is a lawyer" insurance, figuring at the very least that would get me out of it.

What I did not count on was the general makeup of the population. Worcester County, where I reported, has an excellent track record for people showing up for jury duty. That's a good thing; but I learned that "everybody" includes

• people who legitimately can't get out of work
• people who can't get alternative child care
• people who are insufficiently literate
• people who have medical conditions that keep them from being able to reason properly
• people who are just too drunk and/or ornery for any rational lawyer on either side to want to seat them

I held number 75 when the first 100 of us were called into a big room to go through jury selection for a trial. They needed 14 people. Guess who was number 14? And frankly, after watching the judge and the lawyers patiently asking polite questions of people who spoke little English, people who were clearly intoxicated, and people who were already feeling the lack of their anti-psychotic meds, I couldn't really blame them for jumping at the sober, recently-showered lawyer's daughter.

The case, the judge told us, was a wrongful death case. It was expected to last six days, with the last day possibly ending early. I examined the participants curiously. The plaintiff was a gentlemen perhaps fifteen or twenty years older than me, with neatly trimmed gray hair, a dark suit, and heavy-rimmed glasses. His lawyers were an older man dressed in a dark blue suit, and a younger man similarly dressed. The judge told us the town they were from - one of the wealthier towns around here. I found myself thinking they were stuffed-shirt bullies representing a rich client who wanted to push people around.

The defendant was different. She was a petite woman in her mid-thirties with blonde hair and an inexpensive suit. She seemed a bit disheveled, as if she had dressed in a hurry. Her attorney (she had only one) was tall - quite a bit taller than me, actually - and thin, wearing a suit that did not fit her very well and clunky-heeled shoes that made her legs look spiky. It was easy for me to cast them in the role of the bullied.

I was quite wrong about everybody, of course.

The case, nominally, was this: Seven years earlier, the plaintiff's sister had undergone a kidney transplant. Four days after she went home she was readmitted to the hospital where she died of sepsis. The plaintiff was trying to prove that the defendant, a transplant surgeon, had screwed up the surgery in a way that led to the woman's death.

The plaintiff, as it turned out, came across as a very nice man who had adored his sister. She had been in kidney failure for some time, and had been doing home dialysis; but it was seriously hindering her ability to work and to socialize. She doted on her nieces and nephews, and cared for their elderly mother. It sounds like a cliche, but she truly did sound like a genuinely sweet person. I felt awful for this man, and for his mother (who had originally brought the case but died some years before).

The defendant was less sympathetic as a human. She came across as brusque, but she answered questions clearly and directly. She came across as vaguely outraged that the case was even going on.

The plaintiff's lawyer floated a number of theories: that the kidney had died during surgery, leaving dead tissue that led to the septic infection that eventually killed the patient; or that the doctor had missed a clot in the woman's leg, which would have kept her from being discharged from the hospital and getting infected at home. (You will notice that these theories contradict each other.)

The defendant used the autopsy report to show that the kidney was recovering from surgery, and that the septic infection was recent enough to almost certainly have been acquired after the woman had left the hospital. The matter of the clot was cleared up by the brother: his sister had complained to him of severe pain, but every time a nurse or a doctor asked she told them she felt fine. She didn't want to bother people, and she wanted to go home.

There was also the fact that the plaintiff's lawyer kept getting the dead woman's name wrong, that he did not understand his medical charts, that he spent five minutes having the doctor reiterate and re-explain a point that hurt his case, and that he generally seemed to be throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what would stick. The doctor, for all her brittleness, was able to repeatedly explain details of the surgery in terms that 14 non-doctors were able to follow. While she wasn't the most sympathetic witness in the world, she came across as having paid attention to her patient, beginning to end.

I listened as closely as I could to everyone, including the paid experts on both sides, and I came to the conclusion that what had happened was cascading bad luck, not malpractice.

The thing about being on a jury is that you're not allowed to talk about the case to anyone, including each other. So when we all sat down to deliberate, nobody knew how anyone else was feeling. Our foreman (so elected because he had been chosen first), opened by saying "I don't know about you guys, but I don't think she's guilty of anything." After receiving a general murmur of agreement, he took a vote: unanimous.

And then we could talk.

Every one of us felt really awful for the brother, and agreed he seemed like a good guy. What surprised me was the amount of anger directed at his lawyer. Many of them felt that the brother had no real case, and that the lawyer had done him a serious disservice by taking his money. (Certainly I think he could have done a better job; I kept waiting for his moment of brilliance, and it never came.) Nobody felt particular warmth toward the doctor or her attorney (who, toward the end, was openly smirking when the plaintiff's lawyer got a name wrong or mispronounced a medical term), but nobody thought she'd done anything wrong.

Cascading bad luck.

About 20 years ago, a friend of mine was on a jury for a local criminal. He was something of a character, well-liked in his community, and in fact one of the guys in our department knew him. He was convicted after a two-week trial, and when my friend returned this guy, half-jokingly, moaned "Couldn't you have let him off?"

She responded "We tried to, but he screwed it up for us by being guilty."

I know lousy jury verdicts get a lot of press. But I'm betting more of them were like hers, and like mine: the right decision, no matter how likeable the other guy was.

I guess I could consider this the Twitter version of my life!

• As I mentioned briefly in my last entry, Illustrator rocks. When a non-artist like myself can put together something rather pleasing, you know it's good.
  
• Upon reflection, I have realized that I eat because I do not drink.
• Geek humor is a wonderful thing. So is geek art.
• I am starting to nurture this tiny little wish to start learning to build games for children. After all, I'm great at complaining about them - maybe I ought to try to spin a few of my own.
• I may be the only person crazy enough to let a 5-year-old near my iPod, but there is no doubt it makes a great hand-held gaming system.
• The older Em gets, the more I understand how kids grow up to be spoiled. It's amazing to me how little tolerance I have for her distress. It's a mess, because when I need to lay own the law it's usually over something pretty big, and she gets genuinely sad.
• Speaking of spoiling kids, what is Target thinking stocking not one, but two $50 Barbies? They'd end up naked and in the bathtub in less than a week, just like the $5 Barbies.
• I was not big on Barbies as a kid, but I have to say those two $50 Barbies are really, really nice.
• Would she tell me, I wonder, if kindergarten was miserable? And do I worry about this because it's hard to warm to her teacher?
• Speaking of kindergarten, why would the school do readings for the little ones during lunch? I can't be the only one with a kid who eats slower than anyone else in existence. Two days in a row she came home having eaten NONE of her lunch, because she wanted to be in on the stories. Two days in a row she had discipline issues. Maybe it's a coincidence - she is certainly bouncy enough that I'd believe the discipline issues in any case - but it can't help.
• When I get a new computer, it takes about a week for me to stop feeling disloyal to my old computer.
• Speaking of which, my new MacBook Pro is wonderful. And yes, Snow Leopard is an improvement over Leopard, in a few big ways and a zillion subtle ways that I appreciate daily.
• By the way, I have the world's greatest family.

Can I call it an era if it only lasted two quarters?

For the fall quarter, which starts in a week, I'm back to two classes at a time. I have seven courses left, which means I'd be into 2010 even if I stuck with three at a time, and it did not seem to make sense to keep making myself crazy to save 5-1/2 weeks. So my last day of classes will be March 27, 2010 - and as a bonus, I can get more sleep.

Yes, I am done with the summer quarter. Yesterday was the last day. I don't have any final grades yet, but unless I completely screwed something up (always a possibility) I should be okay. The classes themselves were an interesting combination.

Senior Research: The purpose of this class was to write a full set of design documents for the senior project to be completed in a later course. It required a set of documents I have produced before for other classes, but instead of having to do the writeup in the first couple of weeks, we had 5-1/2 weeks and a lot of feedback. I feel like I have a strong handle on what I will do for the project, which is a real pleasure. In theory, I will be taking the senior project class with the same people and the same instructor, which would be nice - I liked the instructor a lot, and my classmates asked really strong questions.

Web Imaging Techniques: This class covered image types, resolution, transparency, and image maps. Like many other classes of this type, all of the assignments were framed by building a complete web site. Some of this information was not new to me, but a lot of it was really interesting. My final project was not necessarily the prettiest web site I've ever put together, but damned if the images don't download really fast.

Digital Illustration: Intimidating, and also more fun than a barrel of monkeys. This was essentially an Illustrator class, although we had two larger projects to do throughout the term. In each of the first five weeks, we had to draw an apple, and although I was deeply intimidated when I did my first drawing, by the end I was really just loosening up and having a good time. I have said it before and I'll say it again: I love Illustrator. I know it's huge and expensive, and there are cheaper alternatives, and I've just drunk too much of the Adobe Kool-Aid - but I love Illustrator. I feel like I am just now a little tiny bit, starting to discover what I can do with it. Here's the PDF of my final project, a portfolio of all the work I did for class. (I'm not sure about the portfolio background - that was probably one of the hardest choices I had to make for the class - but you can get all the images in one not-that-huge document.)

Next I have Advanced Communications, which I am hoping doesn't involve uploading video-taped speeches, and Digital Illustration II, which at the very least has a totally cool textbook.

I was going to blog little bits of my latest news, but I think I'll do that in a separate entry.

No grades yet, but I'm finished. I think, in the end, I did OK. Certainly my grades were pretty good going into the final projects. Two web pages, and an ActionScript-driven Flash site. 4:00 am one morning.

I noticed this time, at the end of the classes, that I began to feel that my projects were "good enough" a bit before I might have in the past. For example, my Flash site had a calendar page, and what I really wanted was pop-ups for each date that would track the mouse movements. I settled for dynamic text at the bottom of the page that changed depending on what part of the calendar you were mousing over. The class was in ActionScript, but that kind of behavior (especially the sprite.x = mouseX kind of thing) was not covered, and was not required for the final project. When I take my senior portfolio class, I might try to add it then, assuming I'm not bogged down in figuring out a logo for myself like I was in the sophomore portfolio class.

What is my logo, anyway? It's supposed to be some kind of individual identity. I guess I feel like I'm still working out my identity, at least as an artist. This ActionScript stuff? Love it. Is it art? Well, to a coder, maybe; but in and of itself it's not a visual art. What kind of visual art do I make? Not enough to have settled into a style. My web sites are still not quite polished, but tend to be on the sedate site. My art? Geometric. Mostly symmetrical. Inexperienced. I do like balance - or almost-balance - but that's not a style. How do I come up with a logo when I don't have a style?

Anyway. Digital Illustration this time around, which will teach me some vector drawing stuff and allow me to show my fellow art students what a not-artist I am. Also Web Imaging Techniques, which sounds a lot like Advanced Image Manipulation, right down to having to shoot a panorama. (At least I know better this time: let Photoshop do the stitching for you!) Lastly, Senior Research, which should be interesting. I am trying to think of a project I can do based on Flash/ActionScript that I can later make pure Flex and turn into a project for work that Steve and I have been discussing. It occurs to me there may be some licensing reasons that my work would want to stay away from Flex; but putting something together would be an excellent exercise either way - and if I can put together something for work, they'll be able to see a bit where their investment has beein going.

The last four nights I have had about 20 hours of sleep, total, and I'm falling over. Also short-tempered and somewhat unpleasant, even to my lovely Em. Sigh. Well, tonight I don't have to care much. Tomorrow I have to write up three autobiographies, again. Just the thought of it makes me want to curl up and hide under the covers.

Today is the last day of Week 2, and I think I may survive this time.

This in spite of being up until 1:45 last night. Some of that was the Internet connection - around 11:30 it started to go south, and by midnight I was getting 50% packet loss. Uploads of my web site for my CSS class were hopeless. Responding to the discussions I needed to respond to was hopeless.

So I played I Spy Spooky Night for a while until it passed.

(A word about the I Spy games: I love them. Em enjoys them, too - they've designed them well, and you can click on a clue to have it read to you, so her lack of reading hasn't hurt her - but I don't think she likes them as much as I do! Add the fact that they are all built with Director, and I am smitten. They use mostly beautiful still images and small animations, but they are proof that photorealistic video with warriors and blood and gore are not required to build a good game.)

I must remember not to get so far behind, though. It really cripples me when I get caught like that. If I get hit with something unforeseen, like having to redo another assignment or answer a complex query from an instructor, I am screwed.

And oh, yeah, if the Internet decides to suck (or crash) at the wrong time, I am doomed. I can't even use it as an excuse - it happens too often, and I should be prepared. Realistically, though, I'm not going to either wake up my in-laws or drive 15 minutes to Burger King at midnight just to avoid getting dinged for a late assignment.

So! On to the classes.

Web Site Development II: This class is tying together PHP and MySQL. Based on what I've read, a few of us are a tad frustrated with how simple we are supposed to make our final database. That said, I trust the instructor's judgment - the class IS primarily supposed to be about PHP, so it makes sense not to get too ambitious from the database end of things. Still, I've written my design so I can add a few extras at the end if I have the time. (And I won't have the time, I suspect.)

Advanced Web Scripting: This is a CSS course. So far, anyway, most of the material is a rehash, although I realize all of the other web design courses I have taken have only touched tangentially on CSS. In this class, it is the focus. So far we are mostly learning about standards, cascades, and inheritance - all good things. What I'd really like to learn are some cool ways of using some of the available properties. I still remember when I discovered that padding and margin could be given negative values - that really opens up the possibilities.

That said, this was the class I was up late for. We had to upload a first draft of our project, and I basically did not start it until Friday night. I realized after I uploaded it that I had forgotten to add a "submit" button to my form, but at 1:00 in the morning I did not care. I care slightly more today - she'll ding me for that, and rightly so - but only slightly. I'm doing well enough, as long as I don't get sloppy again.

Interactive Telecommunications: I have no idea why they chose this name for the class, but it is actually a true, genuine, introduction to programming class (using ActionScript). They really need to find a way to offer this earlier in the curriculum, at least to web and digital animation students. (I understand, though, why they don't - you really do need to have had some practice with Flash before working with ActionScript.) The only hard thing about this is that I've been doing really well so far. The instructor has held up my work to my classmates as an example several times. We did a small exercise last week, and today she asked if she could show it to her other class as an "exemplary" example. (I said yes, of course.)

On the one hand, it's flattering. I do love ActionScript, and I'm enjoying getting a solid foundation in the basics (instead of picking it up off the street like I do with everything else!). On the other hand...good Lord, woman, I've been programming professionally for two decades. If I can't figure out how to write a function using an "if," you should drum me out of town.

There are two things going on. One is the ingrained embarrassment of the kid who is good in school. When I was in high school, being smart and doing well was not valued, and the last thing you wanted was your teachers calling you out in front of the whole class. The other thing is the awareness that I had BETTER be doing well in this class, because of my background. I have fellow students who are total newbies at programming. They are working MUCH harder than I am, and many of them are doing extremely well. If they figure out an event listener on their own, or a big switch statement, or remember to add error checking - that means they are working and learning. For me it means I should not be fired from my job. It's just not an apples-to-apples comparison.

Well, they will all blow me away with their artwork. They always do. That's where I fall short, so I suppose I should be glad to get a couple of weeks of showing off. Now I need to figure out how to add a motion layer so I can make a butterfly whiz across the screen. Once I draw the actual butterfly, of course. (How to Cheat in Flash CS4 has a section on this - I am counting on it to save me.)

All in all, I think I may survive this term. Next term is a little scarier. I have Senior Research, among other things. I'd like to work with Flex, but we will see what is allowed (and what I can realistically accomplish in that timeframe).

July 3, 2009
Food

So we are planning this trip to Disney World in 2010, and as part of my "break" activities I have been doing budgets, proposing itineraries, and leafing through numerous guidebooks.

(As an aside: I love this part. In some ways, planning is the most fun of all of it.)

In these guidebooks are photographs, all of families of various makeups (singles, couples of all kinds, kids and no kids), and people of various sizes. The pictures are all well-composed, and the people all look happy and well-rested, regardless of their size or age.

And I realized: when we are there, someone is going to be taking pictures. And it probably won't be me. Which means...I'll be in them.

There are so many ways in which I am lucky. For one thing, I am tall with a naturally curvy figure. This means that even overweight I have a waist (although less of one than I had before Em was born). For another, I am not obese. I've never been obese. I am in that limbo of "overweight" that happens when your BMI is higher than it ought to be, but not so high that your doctors start explaining to you how many years you are taking off of your life. I also have a husband who loves me, supports me, and treats me like a beauty even when I feel like a dumpy old woman.

But here's the thing: I don't want to look like this in our vacation pictures. I don't want to see pictures of me next to our gorgeous, energetic, tall, thin little girl looking like one of those moms who has let herself go. Even though I am one of those moms who has let herself go. And I really hate that.

Some days I think it doesn't matter; I think I ought to just give in to doughiness and focus on being happy instead of on losing weight. But then I remember a few things:

1. I actually feel pretty yucky when I eat too much food, especially if it is junk.
2. I don't much care for working out - but I do feel really good, physically, when I am finished.
3. I have more than enough time to lose all the weight I want to lose - about 30 pounds - before we go to Disney.

I no longer aspire to be Cindy Crawford (or whoever the latest skinny supermodel is). You may laugh, but I used to. Not her face or her fame - just her figure. (Anyone who says the media doesn't affect our perception of "normal" probably isn't exposed to much media.) Here is what I would like to be:

1. Healthy. (Yes, I know - weight is not the sole measure of health, lots of overweight people are healthy, lots of skinny people are unhealthy - I KNOW. I'm not talking about the rest of the world, I'm talking about me, and for me being healthy means weighing less than this.)
2. More comfortable in my clothes. Nothing I own looks good on me anymore, and that's not the fault of the clothing.
3. Not horrified at the idea of buying a new bathing suit.
4. Unashamed to be in pictures with Em, even videos.
5. Maybe even, occasionally, a bit cute, at least for a lady of my age.
6. Able to tromp all over Disney World without having to tell my daughter I'm too tired to do what she wants to do.

All but the last are achievable (I don't even think a professional athlete could keep up with a five-year-old!). We are going next May, which gives me ten months. That's only three pounds a month - but let's get real; I'll need to be on a more rigorous regimen than that, or I'll just blow it off. I think I could realistically lose 4-8 pounds a month - more if I get back to Weight Watchers. (I have been wondering if the on-line program is any good; it would certainly be easier!) If I set a goal of 5 pounds a month - possibly ambitious, but not out of the question - I could be down where I want to be by the end of the year.

The first thing I need to do is the worst: weigh myself. That accountability is the only thing that has ever worked for me where weight loss is concerned, and I've been avoiding it like the plague. But seeing that initial number might be the shock I need. If the best my doctor can do is "yeah, it wouldn't hurt you to lose a little weight," I need something else to scare me.

And it will - and depress me at the same time. Sigh. But if I never face reality, I'll never deal with it.

How about this: If I can lose just 20 pounds by Christmas, I'll buy myself that video camera I want for Disney.

"Never whisper what you cannot shout."

I got that on a fortune cookie a while back, and for various reasons I've decided to take it to heart where this site is concerned. On the theory that my real-world identity is not all that secret, I've removed from this blog any entries that I wouldn't be comfortable having anyone in my acquaintance read.

This means less snark, and probably less politics - neither of which, I think, could be construed as a bad thing!

Someday, when I have all the time in the universe (and less Objective-C to learn), I will password-protect pieces of this page, and folks can subscribe if they like. But in the meantime...welcome to the Expurgated Blog.

• Movies watched recently: Little Miss Sunshine (A), The Straight Story (C-), Bolt (B+), Up (B+). Also a bunch of Barbie movies. (Some are definitely better than others; Thumbellina, the most recent, is really lacking in imagination, and bores Em a bit.)
• Good God I have to fix the JavaScript on this site. It's way too hard to update as it is.
• I am tired. Not "a good kind of tired," but "dear God please let me go to bed before 1:00 am before my brain cells quit in protest" tired.
• I still can't draw, but damned if I can't knock out a Web site pretty quickly.
• ActionScript is really, really, really, really, really, really fun.
• I have not had a single system crash since I started running the temperature monitor on my laptop. This makes me think the monitor probably tweaks something that kicks the fan in appropriately. If the crash had been caused by the motherboard dying, it would have happened again...right?
• I have enough money for a new laptop, but I'm not ready to give this one up yet. I have, however, started reading my email on the iMac, and will back up my iPhoto library any day now.
• I like more of Steve's music than he does of mine. Most of what I listen to now I got from him. One exception is Aes Dana (the ambient group, not the Irish folks), who do very nice air pudding. Great for work (real work as well as homework).
• I may get straight As again. The big difference: this time I really fought for them.
• Why I might not get straight As: This is the last official day of class. I have one more piece to do for one class, and I DO NOT CARE. I really don't. Except I must, or I'd be in bed already, instead of waiting for other people to post stuff I'm depending on. This is one of those times when being on EST does not help.
• Team projects can be a real pleasure when you have a team that takes it seriously. My teammate in my Photoshop class was talented, nice, AND attentive to deadlines. I guess there is something to this team stuff after all.
• I am still a snob. Occasional lateness I get. (I am sometimes late, especially if I have an instructor who does not mark down for late work.) Chronic lateness irks me. Chronic lateness plus sloppy work makes me wonder why people are bothering to go to school at all.
• Having said that: some of this stuff is hard. Some of the people who don't turn work in on time do absolutely phenomenal, gorgeous, professional work that makes me want to go back to an Etch-a-Sketch. I wonder if they know how much chronic lateness will burn them in the real world?
• What I want to do with the three week break: Flex and ActionScript. What I will do with the three week break: PHP and MySQL (better for the resume).
• Anybody know where to buy clothes for super-skinny kids?
• I love my family, and that includes my parents. Whatever our foibles, we are a nice bunch, and I have received such amazing support from all of them. This includes Em, who dutifully tested my Flash matching game over and over again. (She didn't like letting me fix bugs, though.)
• I wish I were religious, because then I could be assured my husband would have a place reserved in heaven just for putting up with me during my classes. He knows when to be encouraging, when to tease me, and when to just shut up and let me rant. I don't know if there is anything so valuable in this world as having a mate who knows just how to keep you going when things are tough.
• Grilled meat rocks.
• The I Spy computer games may be a bit old-fashioned, but they are marvelous. Em plays them (often without help), but I admit I enjoy them all by myself as well. I'm glad we still have old Macs that can run Classic mode so I won't have to let her have my work laptop all the time.
• Flash CS4 has some nice new features, but boy it crashes a lot. Then again, maybe I should stop running it on an out-of-spec system.
• I don't see anything in the iPhone 3.0 software that I need for my iPod Touch, so i'll probably let it sit until I fall in love with some game that requires it.
• Myst on the iPod is pretty darn cool.
• What I would tell the management at my job if I thought it would help: Everyone is tired, everyone is afraid, and everyone thinks that they are being judged every time they cough. If you can't fix that problem, what hope do we have? If you don't think that's a problem that needs fixing - well, you share a lot with the gang you just replaced. We are good people, and we do not suck, and we don't deserve management that tries to motivate through fear. Fight for us, and we will fight for you.
• Kindergarten dilemma: When we went to the orientation for Em's kindergarten, one of the things that they told us was that we should be discouraging our kids from singing in the bathroom. The kindergarden bathrooms are between classrooms, and if the kids sing EVERYBODY can hear them. Em knows everybody can hear her when she sings in the bathroom, and right now she doesn't care. She sings loudly and tunelessly, and butchers the words to songs from her Barbie movies. (I haven't told her that it's "Believe" and not "Aleve" - maybe someday she will sing commercial jingles!) She takes such unabashed pleasure in it, it seems downright cruel to try to stomp that out of her. Of course, I know what kids are like - SOMEONE will stomp it out of her. Or maybe she'll just be the kid who always sings in the bathroom and doesn't care what anybody else thinks.
• I need to get her swimming lessons before we go to Disney.
• I need to stop talking about Disney. In her world of today and tomorrow, "after Kindergarten" sounds like some kind of deliberate parental torture.
• Tasks for the school break:
  
  • Get my mom's old iBook set up to import photos from Em's camera, and to play all her I Spys
  • Go through Em's non-stuffed-animal crap and throw some stuff away
  • Set up a tentative Disney itinerary
  • Bonus: Make actual reservations at Animal Kingdom
  • Sleep, and freak out mildly at impending kindergarten
• What do you suppose the odds are that my husband will go to bed early enough for me to wrap his Father's Day present?

I can't decide whether to title this post Art History Did Not Kill Me, or I Am A Crazy Person. How about both?

Part One: Art History Did Not Kill Me.

It came close, though. Each week, in addition to some more incidental assignments, we had to put together a "virtual tour" of artwork from whichever era we were studying. We were supposed to cover at least eight separate geographical locations. I interpreted this directive to mean eight separate cities, which sometimes caused some problems; depending on the era, most of the art that has survived is hanging in museums. The tour had to include images or links to images, and was to be at least 400 words long; I don't think I wrote one under 1000. The earliest I finished was about midnight. One took me until 3:00 am.

Director movies didn't keep me up until 3:00 am. Sheesh.

In the end, despite the exhaustion, I liked the class better than I figured I would. I discovered that paintings are OK and sculpture can be kind of interesting, but architecture really fascinates me. I love the squat little Greek Cross churches, and the weird octagonal and hexagonal things designed to minimize the need for internal walls. Representations of people and landscapes are nice, but buildings? Wonderful.

My other class, Media Law and Ethics, was much more fun; and although there was a lot of work it didn't keep me up until all hours of the night. I found out that the law, at least at the level I was studying it here, is not unlike software engineering. You have an end goal (usually: stay within the law, or don't violate your professional ethics), and a group of tools you can use to achieve that goal. There is more than one way to reach the goal, and an awful lot of ways to do it wrong; but in the end, the process is more of a synthesis of many elements than a single, well-defined path to The Right Answer.

I should get grades by the end of the week.

Part Two: I Am A Crazy Person

Starting next quarter, I am going to take three classes at a time. Yes, I am insane. Yes, I have my reasons. Yes, my family knows (well, my husband knows; Em just smiles and nods and keeps singing songs about alligators and monkeys). I am nervous, but hopeful. If I can pull it off, I may finish by the end of this year instead of next year. However - Art History may not have killed me, but three classes at once might do the job.

There are a lot of things I should write about: my new classes, my complete lack of academic confidence, anxieties about work. Instead, I am going to write about The Closer.

On the surface, this is an ordinary, even formulaic, television show. Brenda Leigh Johnson, late of Atlanta, Georgia, has just been hired to head up the LAPD's Priority Murder Squad, thanks to her reputation as a "closer" - someone who gets confessions that stick in court. Add a group of detectives who resent a stranger being put in charge, a boss with whom she had a relationship years ago (while he was married), and a handsome and good-natured old friend with the FBI, and you have the makings of a Lifetime movie of the week.

Except it isn't, not really. The show (at least in the first season, which is all I've seen so far) walks a fine line between comedy and drama, and does a remarkably consistent job of it. Brenda is impolitic at work and uncompromising about doing what she feels is right to close a case; but at the same time she manages to be entirely human and often charmingly inept about her personal life. Fritz, her FBI boyfriend, is unimaginably nice and patient with her, which Brenda handles by tripping over herself, fearing both commitment and chasing him off in a way that most of us who have ever dated someone we really care for will probably recognize. Brenda manages to be both completely adorable, and someone you would work really, really hard not to piss off. Because Brenda might fumble through her personal life, but professionally? She will get you.

After the pilot, I thought there would be things I wouldn't like. Her past relationship with Pope, for example: what a cliché, falling for her married boss. And yet, the show handles it in a way that is fascinating to watch, if not necessarily believable. Brenda is clearly over him, and unconcerned with the fact that they had a personal past; but she makes no secret of the fact that she is well aware of his personal weaknesses. Pope - doing his best to behave with a different wife than the one he'd been cheating on before - clearly still harbors feelings for Brenda, but seems to want her to be something different than what she actually is. Pope and Fritz posture shamelessly around each other without ever becoming unprofessional, and Brenda handles it by ignoring the whole issue.

And the resentful squad of detectives? Well, of course she wins them over. But as with all things on this show, it's the journey that's the pleasure. Each of them resents her for a slightly different reason, and so each conversion is unique. I think Detective Provenza is my favorite secondary character - shamelessly sexist, racist, and homophobic, he is also unfailingly cheerful, and is the first to voluntarily help Brenda with an investigation. Each of the detectives develops a sense of loyalty toward Brenda - even Flynn, whose unlikely change of heart is entirely realistic. It takes a whole season, but the payoff is really satisfying.

One must credit the writers, of course. Although the cases themselves last only for a single episode (at least in the first season), the personal relationships between the characters grow and change slowly and consistently. Brenda may be insanely lucky as a detective, and her evidence the type that would get thrown out of court in real life; but the relationships are complex, realistic, and really fun to watch.

The cast is uniformly wonderful, although this is definitely Kyra Sedgwick's show. She makes Brenda human, and very likable, which goes a long way toward selling the more soap-operaish aspects of the story. Her boyfriend Fritz is impossibly nice, patient, handsome, and amenable to commitment - but because we love Brenda, we want her to have a wonderful, fairy-tale romance. We want her squad to get past their resentment and like her as much as we do, even if it's unrealistic. We love that Pope is still hung up on her, even as we yell at him for lacking a spine at important moments and want him to get over it and leave her alone.

I really enjoy the balance. I enjoy the cases, even if justice is not always completely served - the cases are always taken seriously. I enjoy the personal interactions of the characters. They are not angst-ridden, like the plots on NYPD Blue or even House - they are ordinary, just like the personal relationships of people who are not off solving complex murders every other day.

Maybe that's what does it for me. Cop shows tend to make cops heroes, or villains, or somehow larger than life. These are the people I work with; they just happen to solve crimes for a living instead of writing software. Some of them I like, some of them I dislike - but they all seem real, and not larger than anything.

I ordered Season 2 tonight. My biggest problem is going to be staying away from it and getting my homework done properly. Here's hoping the quality stays the same.

Dear Politicians, Economists, and Other Smart Folks who seem confused about why nobody is spending any money,

If you find a way to give me some job security, I promise I will pour more cash into the economy.

Love,
Liz

Here are the apps I've currently got loaded on my iPod Touch:

• Air Sharing
• Enigmo
• I Can Has Cheezburger
• Koi Pond
• Moo
• Scribble
• Shanghai Mahjong
• Shopper
• Spore™ Origins
• Things

I've actually used a few of them, too, although not so much the really useful ones. I may end up replacing Shopper, a shopping list program, since it seems a bit cumbersome; I've got a friend at work who has one he likes, and I'll ask him next Monday when I go back to work (sniff). Things is a raved-about to-do list application; so far it's easy to use, but I don't really notice anything exceptional about it. Too bad, since it was the most expensive on the list. Ease of use is a nice thing, though.

Air Sharing was the key app for me in deciding to get the iPod Touch at all. I wanted to be able to transfer my school lectures onto the iPod and read them there, which meant I needed a way to transfer pdfs to the iPod without using the Internet. Air Sharing basically sets up the iPod as a wireless hard drive; it gives you an http address to enter into the "Connect to Server" Finder window, and presto! Instant access. It is phenomenally easy, and gives me exactly what I needed.

Anyway, it's been fun. I've been wasting the rest of my vacation watching House, and getting acquainted with Flex. Flex is basically an XML interface to Action Script (Flash's scripting language), plus a command-line Flash compiler. The whole thing is designed to make the development of Web applications easier, and it accomplishes that. I do have to say it's genius on the part of Adobe to open-source this part of Flash - it will give them more penetration into the web design market, I think - but I do have to wonder what it really has over Ajax. Easier to learn, maybe, and probably faster to design for certain applications; but I haven't really researched the down sides yet. I think the search engine issue will probably be a big one, although if this is used to write an application wrapped in ordinary HTML the designer can do some work around that. Security, though...I don't claim to know enough about Flash security to have any idea if it could possibly be an issue. If Flex is used purely for the UI, I can't imagine it would matter (since the security would be handled by whatever you used to throw the data over the wire).

Well, anyway, it makes for a fun vacation diversion. Next week marks our official return to the ordinary. Here's hoping for an uneventful 2009.

Fair warning: I am going to write about Barbie movies.

My daughter now has three Barbie movies. This trend was started by her best friend Jaiden, who gave her one for her birthday last May (along with a Barbie doll who has remained largely ignored). She now has three, thanks to my folks who noticed how much she liked the first one. They are all pretty similar in terms of theme and lessons learned; and yes, for the adults sitting and watching with her, they are sugary, overoptimistic, and painfully stiff.

However, I am going to cheerfully defend Barbie movies for two reasons:

1) They know their audience. These movies are targetted at young girls; I'd be surprised if any child over the age of 10 would remain interested, and even that may be a stretch. But the violence is minimal, the colors are bright, and everyone is pretty. They have even toned down Barbie's famous hourglass figure - she's still thin, certainly, and feminine; but she doesn't have the ridiculous corsetted porportions of the doll.

2) The message is uniformly positive. Barbie movies are about the power of friendship and teamwork. The girls, while always pretty and feminine, are smart, resourceful, and brave. They take no guff when it comes to the bad guys (or girls) wanting to hurt their family and friends, either. They push through the tough parts and keep believing in the power of hope and determination. In the end, the victory is always a collaborative effort. Barbie may be the one to rescue her friends and family from the bad guys (or girls), but she always does it with help and support. Speaking of which, I like the portrayal of boys in these movies, too. The boys are always cute and smart, and always a little shy talking to the pretty girls. They are strong and supportive - but they are not really rescuers. They help and support the girls in their quests, but they don't swoop in and save the day at the last second. Somehow, these movies manage to portray boys and girls in a way that makes the girls look strong without making the boys look weak - and that's a pretty neat trick.

Don't get me wrong. These movies are not "The Little Mermaid," and they never will be. But I will note that "The Little Mermaid," while a beautiful, timeless, remarkable film, stars a teenaged girl who mouths off to her dad, disobeys him, and puts him in a position of having to sell his soul in order to save her - and she never apologizes. Not only that, she is rewarded with both her father's forgiveness and the hand of her One True Love. Beautiful, poetic movie (with some fabulous music). Lousy message for the four-year-old crowd.

So three cheers for Barbie movies. They may give me cavities, but my rivited little girl is hearing some pretty nice messages.

First of all, a clarification. I got a B+ on my video, not an A. The instructor changed the grade after I looked at it, but before they were due. Damn. An A- for the class in the end, which, okay, is not half bad, especially since I don't particularly feel talented in the video sphere. And as my husband and my brother both tell me, a B+ is a good grade. However, I am still grumpy about it. I have one more video class before I graduate, and with any luck I will get through it as well. But my perfect GPA is blown now, and I reserve the right to be just a little tiny bit of a baby about this. At least until the new year.

Second: Christmas was wonderful. Em got way too many gifts from all of her kind relatives, including too many little bits of stuff from Mommy and Daddy. I got some fabulous stuff, including an iPod Touch from my lovely family. Oh, and my brother gave me the first season of "House," which I've beeen watching compulsively for days. It's uneven in the first season - hints that House might be redeemable, which I really hope he isn't, since his predictable antagonism is one of the real pleasures of the show. There is also not nearly enough of Lisa Edelstein's Cuddy in the first season; apparently it took them a while to figure out that she and House arguing was far more entertaining than sweet little Cameron mooning over him. (I am curious about what the actors playing Chase and Cameron did to get shuffled into the background in later seasons, though. If I still read rec.arts.tv, maybe I'd have heard.)

Third: I am realizing I don't quite trust my home anymore. We had a windy night a few nights ago, and I jumped every time the wind blew. I drive through town, and I see all the scars on the trees - newly exposed wood stands out like blood against the black-and-white landscape of winter - and it hurts, like I've got a huge horrible scar on my face that won't ever go away. And indeed, it'll be years before the scarring disappears. It will never, ever look the same around here. Too many old trees are gone forever.

I feel a little like a beloved old cat has bit me, which is silly. It's not like I would have been saved by living somewhere else. Fitchburg was out of electricity for longer than we were, and Fitchburg is a city. But I look at our beautiful woods, and our long driveway, and suddenly it's not an entirely friendly landscape. Mother Nature doesn't pull any punches just because I like where I live.

Steve reads a lot of peak oil forums, where people discuss (among other things) what would happen if the lights went out and never came back on again. I've realized I wouldn't cope all that well, should it come to that. I would miss hot showers most of all, and then the Internet. And then the little things that make life more comfortable every day: electric lights, electric heat, toilets that flush without having to dump a bucket of water in them. And oh, yeah - running water. We have water that is pretty close to running very close to the house - there is an outlet for our perimiter drain about 100 feet off our doorstep. The water is clear, pretty clean, and runs like a faucet 365 days a year. It's not really that onerous walking down there to fill a bucket, or even two; it'd even get me in better shape in just a few weeks, I expect. But having grown up with running water? Fetching buckets SUCKS. A small inconvenience, with a high irritation factor.

I am a total wimp. In Neanderthal days, they'd have left me out for the tigers to snack on.

It's a sobering revelation for someone who's always considered herself resourceful. The thing is, though, I'm resourceful when there are resources. I'm good at contingency planning, because I can think of more than one way to solve a problem. That's why I'm pretty good at software; when one path doesn't work, I can come up with other ways of skinning the same cat. (I think it mostly works because I'm stubborn; I'll reach even for answers that seem ludicrous, and generally I happen on something workable.) But take away my creature comforts? Oh, then I'm a basket case. I'm anxious, irritable - and I cry.

I will get over all of this. By spring, I will remember the trauma only in theory; my emotional memory will have wiped it all out. But for now...I'm a little jumpy, and a little sad.

Here's a picture of our driveway, taken Friday, December 12:

Pretty, huh? Our whole town was pretty much flattened by an ice storm on the evening of the 11th. We just got power back last night (for those of you counting, that's nine days). It took my husband until midday Saturday to get the driveway clear enough so we could go anywhere. He elected to stay at the house, running the wood stove and looking after the cats. Em and I stayed with my parents in Boston - I needed an Internet connection (it was my last week of class), and I didn't relish trying to keep Em entertained for God knows how long without a television. (Yes, I know that makes me a bad mommy.)

The whole experience has been pretty awful, in spite of the incredible kindness and helpfulness of both our families. When the power didn't come back on the next day, I began to feel anxious. We had no telephone, and nothing but a cell phone with half a charge on a cheap battery in case of emergency. I was worried, I was exhausted, and I was uncomfortable. Emily was cheerful, but required pretty much constant attention. (Yes, I know that means I use the TV as a babysitter sometimes. Yes, I know that makes me a bad mommy.) When my in-laws came by on Saturday to help us get out, they told us they figured we'd be without power for at least a week. I cried for a while, then started to plan: we could stay with my parents in Boston until the power came back on. I brought in some water from our perimeter drain to flush toilets and clean a few things, and began packing. When my husband told me he wanted to stay with the house, I cried again. In six and a half years of marriage, we hadn't been apart more than a few days. It was the right thing to do, of course - both him staying here, and Em and I going into the city - but it still sucked. I felt useless, like I was a failure because I needed civilization.

We survived. Steve and I bought a generator on Tuesday, so he was able to get lights and hot water into the house. Yesterday Em and I came home, and last night the power came back on. I am so, so happy to be home - but I recognize that I'm still a bit traumatized by the whole thing. We took a walk in the snow this afternoon, and I didn't see one tree (apart from a few pines) that wasn't shattered. I feel shaken, and still a bit insecure. Big bits of trees fell on our house. The woods sounded like fireworks - or gunfire. It wasn't a war zone, and we are all safe - even our house is safe, and the cars we had parked outside - but one feels a bit wounded nonetheless.

We had Internet for a while last night and today, but we've lost it again. I can ping the central system, which means it's external to our network. I am not going to call and ask about it. The Internet in our town is run by the same folks who run the electric company. There are still people without power - the last thing I am going to do is complain because I can't read The Motley Fool for a couple of days. Odds are tomorrow morning someone somewhere will reboot the offending system, and all will be well; but even if not: IT'S JUST NOT IMPORTANT.

Speaking of unimportant...I got another two As. I'm kind of amazed this time. I started my Video class getting Bs. Initially I was quite offended by this, especially since the instructor didn't really give an explanation - but by the time I finished the class, I came to believe he was an extremely easy grader. I do not have the Video gene. I am probably capable of learning - I feel like I learned quite a bit from this class - but it's just not the kind of artist I am. So I was fighting for a B when this storm hit, and I had to completely abandon the project I had been working on (it starred my cats, who were not coming to Boston with me). My instructor told me I could do something else, and that he'd take the circumstances into account when grading; so in a sense, I suppose the storm got me an A.

Here's my final project. It's not Sundance material, but I'm reasonably happy with it.

My Web class was also a little frustrating. More than once the instructor gave me generic "good job" feedback in the classroom, but dinged my grade. I asked her once, and she clarified, and actually changed the grade when I changed my work. I didn't like having to guess, however; and when she took a few points off of my final project (after saying nothing more than it was clear I'd worked hard on it), I didn't bother protesting. Besides, since when did simply fulfilling an assignment's requirements mean an automatic A? She's entitled to some subjectivitiy in her grading, especially where art is concerned. I ended up with an A overall for the course, so I'm happy enough - I learned a fair amount from this class, too, although both classes leave me realizing I still have so much to learn.

I'm on vacation until the beginning of next year. One week later, school starts up again. I am SO GLAD TO HAVE SOME TIME OFF, even though a lot of it will undoubtedly be spent cleaning up the yard. I haven't had two solid weeks off work since maternity leave, and that doesn't really count as vacation.

Here's a picture I took of Em as part of an assignment for my video class. I was sort of randomly pointing and shooting; I had some luck with this one, I think!

Okay. I am TIRED.

Classes ended yesterday. As always, they were both more eventful and more entertaining than I would have expected. In the end, everything worked out - but the situation was not without hiccups. My Web Scripting instructor accused me of using templates for my table layout, which I had not done - and even when I corrected her, my lousy grade stood. (In fairness, I don't know if she CAN change them after she puts them in the gradebook - but boy, that was aggravating.) However, for every other assignment she has been effusive with her compliments - so if she thought I was trying to pull one over on her, she seems to be over that.

My Computer Animation class (which was basically a Flash class) was tremendously fun. As always, with a new bit of software, I was terrified at first - but Flash, as it turns out, is a good deal more intuitive than Director. Even scripting for it made sense - hopefully it will help me when I go back to Director next week. I understand a lot better why there is so much abuse of Flash on the Web - it's easy, and it's fun. Fortunately, I have classes in which I can abuse Flash. In the real world, my use of it will be more judicious.

Of course, the neatest thing I got introduced to in my animation class was not really part of the curriculum: we had to do a brief report on 3D animation and the software available for it. I stumbled across an open-source GPL program called Blender, which apparently has some market penetration (at least in the freelance market). The interface is dreadful - un-Mac-like, for one thing; but difficult for anyone to decipher, in my opinion - but there is a pretty vibrant user community out there, and a few actual books. I ordered an introductory Blender book from Amazon, and will try to learn it in my spare time.

I think I could more easily fall in love with Maya, though. I downloaded the Personal Learning Edition from Autodesk (freeware, but watermarked all over the place). The interface is much easier to understand. It's also an industry-standard tool. However, since I am not going into this industry, and the single-user price for the program is $2000, I am going to leave it alone. If I turn out to be some 3D animation savant, I can go work for a company that will buy me a copy on their dime. (Note: I do not expect to become a 3D animation savant - another reason not to cough up so much cash for the program.)

I would say, though, that outside of my little squabble with my Web Scripting instructor, the biggest problem this term was the wildly out-of-date content of my Web class. The lectures spoke of Netscape as a going concern, mentioned Internet Explorer 5.5, and talked of table layouts as the best way to lay out a web site. Additionally, they insisted that only CSS1 was well supported - and at this point any current browser has a pretty thorough grasp of CSS2, and even 2.1. It would not have bothered me so much had so much weight not been given to table layouts. Yes, it's important to learn how to lay out with tables - one of my other classes pointed out that we may be called on someday to redesign a site that is currentlly using tables for layout - but it's the linchpin of this course. Unconscionable, really - these classes are not cheap, and they are teaching us stuff that is not only out-of-date, but wrong. I put it in the survey feedback; but we'll see if it makes any difference.

Next term I have Interactive Authoring II, which is Director again - up-to-date courseware won't make a difference here, since Director is languishing somewhat in Adobe's hands (for good or ill). My other class is Composition and Language II - one of those "filler" courses I did not place out of. (I suspect I could have tested out of it if I'd pursued it; but I didn't.) But if the outdated course material persists - well, what can I do? I am one student out of hundreds. (I don't know how many online students they have, actually.) But I may speak with my advisor and ask to whom I ought to address a letter. I want my degree, but I don't want it to be useless.

Speaking of which, someone in one of the classes asked me if my employer would be using my acquired knowledge. I said I honestly didn't know; but that the place was big, and I'm sure there would be something.

So my site is still kind of a mess, although I added a little bit of sidebar content here. After having spent a term producing a small but functional web site, I think the biggest problem I have here is the CSS. It's hopelessly disorganized, and tends to be repetitive. I think it's hard NOT to do that when using Dreamweaver - something else I will have to practice.

Well, so much for my web site. Classes start on Monday, so it'll likely be 11 weeks before I get anything more done on this.

Not that I'm entirely displeased. My rollover buttons seem to work OK, although sometimes they don't seem to download properly. I need to clean up my JavaScript, and I've got some design stuff I still want to do (like color-coding my blog entries, and adding useful sidebar stuff to each page); but it's operational for now.

My Project Management class doesn't look too bad - it's helpful I've been through a PM class (albeit a three-day one), which makes the terminology familiar. My biggest problem is going to be resisting the temptation to recount every BAD project I've ever worked on. Um, bad for the professional life, Liz! But if they trot out that old chestnut of engineers padding their schedules, I will have to say something. In my experience, that just doesn't happen. The only engineers I've met who pad their schedules - really pad them, beyond what they need - don't really know what they are doing. (Case in point: When I started in this industry back in 1990, a woman on my team told me to go into a meeting and tell everyone that our part of the task would take five days. Everyone looked irritated, and someone asked me why. I believe I said "I just started here, and I was told it would take five days." In fact, by the time I had been there a few months I was able to complete the tasks in two days - and it would have been one if I hadn't had to run something overnight. She padded schedules because it made her feel important to make people wait - and because it made it far less likely that people would notice she was completely incompetent.) After you've been on a project for a while - a year or so - it's easier to give an accurate assessment; but I don't know anyone (whom I respect) who pads their schedules.

The opposite phenomenon, though, is quite common: wild optimism. Oddly enough, it tends to happen more with super-bright people: they get excited about a project, they get a clear picture of what needs doing, and they imagine themselves banging away at the keyboard 24 hours a day for three or four months. But life doesn't work that way; even super-bright people have lives, and occasionally other things to do with their time.

I got pretty good at estimating on my last project. I would look at the task, and try to figure out with complete honesty how many work days it would take me to complete. Then I would double that number, and that's what I'd put on the schedule - and the vast majority of the time, I pretty much hit it on the head. I underestimate how much time meetings, random interruptions, tool failures, network outages, and occasional illnesses actually steal from my schedule; I also tend to underestimate development time when I understand something well. (This is something art school is teaching me: there is a certain amount of time spent churning out material, and no amount of knowledge, skill, or talent is going to get that stuff produced any faster.)

So I think the PM class will be OK, and maybe kind of fun. I do enjoy that kind of obsessive organization. I will write this here, though, so I don't end up writing it in class: NOBODY DOES PROPER PM. Every company I've worked for (okay, it's a short list; and I haven't seen every project at every company) will take short cuts in process. Ironically, when things are going badly - when they need PM the most - they tend to panic and throw everything out the window. It's frustrating - because PM makes sense. It jives with my own experiences; it values the right things; it's simple and easy to understand. I think there would be more successful companies if people wouldn't throw it out the window at the slightest provocation.

The Director class is still scaring the hell out of me; but I am trying to remind myself that it is a BEGINNER'S class, and I'm not expected to know that much. If I keep up with the work, and concentrate, and stay a day ahead, I will be fine. I also try to remind myself that the world will not come to an end if I get a B - but it sure will annoy me!

Sickness in the household is finally abating. I've still got a bit of a dodgy stomach, and Steve still feels a bit fuzzy-headed; but I think we're all on the mend. Good timing, I guess.

(WARNING: Big, honkin' spoilers for the fourth-season finale of Doctor Who.)

THOSE BASTARDS. I actually thought I was going to get through the whole thing without crying - and then there was Donna. I did OK, really, until the Doctor was talking to her mom and her granddad. Good for her mom for insisting Donna is still the most important person in the universe - and good for the Doctor for telling her to mention that to Donna once in a while. And how wonderful is Wilfred? Loves Donna, and totally gets what the Doctor is going through. He gave him a wonderful gift there at the end, promising to look out for him.

I figured I would hate this episode, given that the on-line folks seemed to either love it or hate it. I think, though, that I'd have to give it a middle-of-the-road rating. The story itself was just plain silly - rife with technobabble, filled with artificial suspense (did anyone really think either Martha or Jack was going to blow up the world?) - basically just a big fanwank to get everybody back in the picture and give them all futures. That said - what a fun fanwank it was! Love Sarah Jane (a huge relief, since I really despised "School Reunion" from Season 2), and love that Davros recognizes her. Love seeing Jackie and Mickey again. Love that Martha disobeyed orders to give the Daleks - the perpetually irredeemable Daleks - a chance to surrender. I even love that Martha and Mickey look Torchwood-bound. (Speaking of which, the Gwen/Gwenyth thing was a nice touch.) As for Rose getting her own mortal, human Doctor - well, okay, I can live with that. Let the fan-fiction commence. It was a nice way of resolving their romance without corrupting the character of "our" Doctor.

It was Donna, though, who made me cry. Who would have thought that irritating woman from "The Runaway Bride" would become my favorite companion? And the Doctor did not even get to say goodbye. Sigh. Here I was hoping she could at least run into the guy from "Forest of the Dead" again. Still - this ending works, storyline-wise. I can still watch and enjoy the others, even knowing her fate.

So, season four. Yow. Most consistent so far, I think, with the possible exception of season one. The only real dud, in my opinion, was "Voyage of the Damned," and even that wasn't that bad. I bought season three on DVD mostly out of duty (I always buy what I BitTorrent, if I can); but this one I'm really looking forward to having.

Thank you, Russell T. Davies. Good luck, Mr. Moffat, and please don't screw it up.

God, I need a vacation.

Oh, all the things I could say about work if the Internet were not such a non-anonymous place. Some good things have happened - I got a raise, much to my surprise; and I may be able to switch to a team I would like better. On the other hand, it's stressful, and sometimes really discouraging. I really want the work to last long enough to get me through school; I would be unhappy if I had to drop out. Past a certain point we can swing the rest of it - but right now, it's much better having someone else foot the bill.

And then there is school. New classes start on the 14th. On the one hand, woo-hoo! 11 days! On the other hand - Adobe Director. Yikes. I've been fiddling with it, and going through some of the early chapters in the book, and it is very much NOT an intuitive tool for me. (I am suspecting it would feel more familiar if I'd worked more with Flash.) I remind myself that Illustrator was scary and intimidating when I first played with it, and now I love it - it's my preferred composition tool. I just don't think tweening and cast members and tiles are ever going to feel easy. Someday I know I will break my "A" streak; this class may be it.

The other class is project management, which I've had before. So, maybe not too hard - but likely a lot of writing. And then BOOM! Right into web scripting and computer animation.

I need a break.

I just finished reading Head First Javascript, which was a damn good book and a lot of fun. What I would really like to do is take a week or so to just play with this stuff. I'm becoming acclimated to Dreamweaver (although I still do a lot of work in Code view), and I'd like to peruse some of the Dreamweaver/Ajax books I've got. I also have a couple of books on Dojo lying around; I'd love to see what I can make it do.

So often when I take vacation days it's when Em's day care is closed, or it's her birthday, or I have family in from out of town and she stays home with me. I could use some time to myself, with someone else minding the munchkin, to just play a little bit. I don't get to play much anymore. Mornings I get up (sometimes several times), make lunch, pack Em up, drop her at day care, go to work, pick her up, come home, have dinner, and put her to bed. It's usually at least 9:00 by the time she goes out - not a lot of time left for other stuff. Add homework to the equation and I'm doomed! Without my husband to carry some of the weight, I would really be nuts.

Of course, then there's the Weird Mommy Thing: I worry about Em when she is not with me. Hell, I worry when she is not visible. Yes, that means I worry about her at night. If I wake up for any reason, I will generally stick my head in her room to make sure she is still OK. When she is at day care, I feel this slight unease. It's quiet enough that I don't think about it most of the time; but when we pick her up, there is a part of me that relaxes. I will have to get over that one day; but I'm not sure I will. I feel this connection to her that is weird, wonderful - and sometimes crippling. How much of it is affecting her I can't say yet. I don't want her to be fearful or afraid of trying things; yet I fear for her for all kinds of unlikely, irrational reasons.

I love being a mother, and sometimes I wish for more children. But I think if I had them I'd go quite mad - too much to worry about. It would paralyze me.

Random Child Observation #1: My God, this kid can scream.

Big, massive spoiler alert for those of you who have not seen the fourth season of Doctor Who.

This show is a funny thing. "The Stolen Earth" is an episode in which a lot happens, but the plot doesn't get very far. It's busy, and kind of overwrought, and seriously manipulative (you know, if Rose's fancy teleport could have landed her a little closer to the TARDIS, nobody would have been shot). But they got me. Sarah Jane hugging her son in tears and saying "You're still so young!" Harriet Jones, steady as a rock, giving her life purely on faith that the Doctor would show up and save the world. Donna - with whom I beleive I would fall madly in love, were I inclined that way - who has seen life and death on a monumental scale, coming unspooled at the thought of her grandfather and her awful, nagging mother. Even Martha ending up at home brought a tear to my eye.

I think I hate them.

Season Four has pretty much rocked, as it happens. It had an inauspicious beginning with "Voyage of the Damned," which could not decide whether it was a comedy, a drama, or a lame Poseidon Adventure rip-off. "Partners in Crime" was better, mostly because I really like how they've drawn Donna; but as a whole it was kind of silly (and not in a fun way). But from "The Fires of Pompeii" on out, it's been terrific. I am already expecting Mr. Davies to screw it up with the season finale - he does have a tendancy to go over the top. (My complaints about "The Last of the Time Lords" are legion.) If he does not somehow back out of the regeneration issue, they will have pulled off the best-kept secret since the location of Jimmy Hoffa. (doctorwhoforum.com has made much of the closeup of the Doctor's hand.) As for the rest of it - how to deal with his reunion with Rose? How to deal with Sarah Jane and the Torchwood crew? (Was Torchwood renewed? I gather everybody else got killed off already.) What about Martha and her mom? What about the Earth, and the Daleks?

I smell a big "Bring back the Time Lords" retcon, and that would be a shame. Isolating the Doctor was an inspiration; undoing that suggests nothing more than storyline laziness.

The only thing I know is that even if it sucks, it will make me cry. Then again - are you listening, Mr. Davies? - making me cry is not a huge challenge. I cry at cat chow commercials; I can't read Emily The Velveteen Rabbit. Weeping over fictional characters doesn't even take a decent storyline. I would, though, appreciate it if they gave it a shot.