Okay, there’s a lot of catching up to do. Well, maybe not that much. But definitely some. In no particular order:
Some of you with entirely-too-long attention spans might remember that back in 2007, I talked about a missed job opportunity at work, and how I was fine with the decision because I thought something else would open up eventually. As it turned out, another team member left shortly after I made that post, and I decided to give the process another shot. Long story short, that’s more or less what I’ve been doing for the last seventeen months or so. By the way, that new hire turned out pretty well, I dare say.
Unfortunately, I was right about the ramp-up; it was pretty difficult at first, and I made a lot of stupid mistakes along the way, although thankfully nothing serious enough to bring down the site or anything like that. (Okay, I did accidentally knock LoudounExtra.com off the air for about 15 minutes while moving a server at the offsite data center, but that’s another story.) Fortunately, I work with patient people and have managed to get to the point where I’m doing much more good than harm. I’m no guru, but at least I have a shot at it. I still hang out in Express’s newsroom from time to time, but happily we hired an extremely good Mac tech to take over for them, so they’re in excellent hands.
Of course, these days I’m frequently grateful just to have a job, let alone one I enjoy—not that I shouldn’t be a little nervous about it. As a result of the absolute beatdown that the media world suffered last year in the markets, my erstwhile employer is implementing a few changes for the coming year, one of which involves bringing the two editorial groups from Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive (which, by the way, became Washington Post Digital on Thursday) in Arlington, VA, and The Washington Post newspaper in downtown DC. As a result, we in the Technology department are also relocating, although at press time we still aren’t certain if we’re moving downtown (that’s the Post building at 15th and L in DC on the left there, the brownish building in the center of the pic) or to an offsite data center. Our chief poobah Katharine Weymouth and new executive editor Marcus “rhymes with the veggie” Brauchli have explained to us their plans for keeping the company sound over the next few years; they make sense and do sound promising. At least more so than, say, the Tribune’s plans, which mostly appear to involve grabbing as much copper wire and office supplies as you can before leaving the building.
Back when times were happier and bunnies and kittens roamed the market floors singing songs and showering traders with gumdrops—you know, October 2007 or so—I bought a car. There was nothing wrong with the (now fully paid off) WRX, mind you; in fact, it’s now Perri’s car, a substantial upgrade over her 1993 Subaru Loyale—90 hp and passive seat belts, talk about safety! I had just been longing for one of these for some time, and finally couldn’t resist any longer. That’s actually the color combo of mine in the picture on the Edmunds link. It was not all that pleasant an experience to actually purchase, at least not until I went to the same dealer family that sold us the WRX (that’s Fitzgerald, for the record) who were the complete opposite. Should have gone there first! It’s been an absolute joy to own, even in these cold and dark times, literally and figuratively. It’s fun to drive, handles like a dream, stops on a dime, and didn’t require selling a kidney to afford. As a side bonus, I regularly top 30+ MPG on the commute according to the ScanGauge I picked up for it, as shown. On that score, at least, life is damned near perfect. At least until Perri gets a job and I can somehow talk her into taking the Miata, keeping the WRX for a winter/practical car, and letting me take on a 370Z…
Oh yeah, did I mention that Perri left her job as a HR generalist at Georgetown University Medical Center? Not against her will, mind you, unlike so many others last year. In her case, it was simply giving her too much stress. How much? Bleeding-ulcer level as it turns out, something we only discovered while she was vacationing by herself in Vermont. She spend three-fifths of her time in the hospital, although thankfully she did not require anything more than some iron supplements, a transfusion or two, and for me to fly up to Albany to meet her and drive her home. Since her father also required a brief hospital visit earlier in the year (unrelated, and his turned out fine—at 82, he’s healthier than either of us), that left me as the only household member to escape. Well, there’s always this year, right? Anyway, she’s browsing around for work now, although oddly enough, a number of employers don’t seem to be in a hiring mood.
I think that’s the highlights, at least for now. Like I said, I’m hoping to do more this year than last as far as the site goes (I have a new WordPress theme in mind, among other things), so we’ll see how well that works out.
Sigh. Well, it’s been another questionable year, and as you can clearly see by the vast number of posts I’ve made here, something of a wasted one as well. Basically, from around June through pretty much today (and continuing into the new year), I’ve been extraordinarily busy with work between election stuff, helping to launch new sites, and now preparing for 2009’s planned move downtown (work, not me, and I’ll have plenty to say about that topic I’m sure).
On top of that, the world is all topsy-turvy with historic Presidential fodder and mind-blowingly bad economic decisions and the usual in-between stuff. Frankly, the whole thing can’t end soon enough for my tastes.
That said, I do plan to try and come back here again. I’ve really let my writing drop off (as in, to nothing) and managed to pretty much ignore the outside world for some time now. I’m honestly hoping I can change that in 2009. We’ll see.
Meanwhile, tell 2008 to get lost. I’m going to bed.
I do have an update in the works on what the hell I’ve been doing with my time of late, but first I feel obligated to link to this sad news for my employer from Iraq, where Salih Saif Aldin has earned the unfortunate distinction of becoming the first Washington Post correspondent killed during the ongoing war.
A divorced father of a 6-year-old daughter, he distinguished himself as one of the most fearless reporters in The Post’s Baghdad bureau. He began work for the paper in early 2004 as a stringer in his hometown of Tikrit, north of Baghdad.
In July 2005, he received a note threatening his life if he did not quit journalism and leave the city. He refused. “This is my city, and I’m a journalist,” he told colleagues.
Shortly after, he was attacked by two men, who beat him with their fists, a metal pipe and the butt of a pistol, leaving him with bruises all over his body and opening a gash in his head that required eight stitches. After he was released from the hospital, The Post implored him to leave Tikrit. When he refused, Omar Fekeiki, the newspaper’s former office manager and special correspondent, said he was told he would be fired if he didn’t leave.
Saif Aldin later moved to Baghdad, where he repeatedly braved the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods, often traveling alone.
Sadly, Saif Aldin is but one of over 100 journalists killed since the beginning of the war in Iraq, and well over 600 in the past ten years. The next time someone spouts off on how the media are all cowards and refusing to report the truth or driven solely by agenda, feel free to point them to the above as an example of how wrong they truly are.
With apologies to DMB, who despite what the Niblonians say, do occasionally rock. Yes, it has been a while indeed, but a few important things have happened since I wrote last, and one has been sucking up virtually all of my free time of late. It’s all good, though. Details to follow!
A few days ago, I came across a post from a fellow named Mitch Cohen talking about how he’d made some changes to his site’s CSS to make it a little more iPhone-friendly. Essentially, he created a special CSS template that reorders how the site loads when browsing via an iPhone as per Apple’s online documentation. This is all pretty standard stuff, except for the second comment in the posting.
While the implementation is neat, and it’s good to see you trying out new ideas, I personally think what you are doing is HORRIBLE. The best feature of the iphone is to see the web as it is intended. This means full pages, all graphics, just as it appears on a regular computer… not a watered down WAP version. You’ve just taken all the work apple did and then you’re forcing a watered down ‘WAP’ version down the throats of people who spent money on an iPhone ( we could have gotten this watered down version from a windows mobile device.)
I understand this is a personal blog of yours, but trends get set very easily.. Before you know it, more people will be doing this, and then all the features of the iphone are wasted… sigh…
At the very least, put a link at the top to give users a choice on how they’d like to view your page….
just my .02
It’s sort of the same argument that people make against spoofing your browser’s user agent; by conforming to the lowest common denominator, you’re slowing the adoption of better standards. And as an oldschool Mac user, I’m well aware of the dangers of such an approach. But as I noted in the comments myself, if there was a way to auto-detect whether an iPhone user was connecting over EDGE versus WiFi, it would provide the best of both worlds; a lightweight page for EDGE surfing and a full-featured one for WiFi browsing.
If the iPhone really takes off, this will hopefully become something of a non-issue within one to two years, especially if other cell providers come up with browsing solutions as elegant (by comparison) as Safari for iPhone. WAP sites by and large suck, but the principle of minimizing a site’s load time and maximizing its layout efficiency works just as well for a “real” browser as for a mobile one. So even Mitch’s minimal tweaking has already benefited his regular users. There’s a lesson here somewhere.
(And yes, I bought one. More on that part later, of course.)
Of course, these days I’m frequently grateful just to have a job, let alone one I enjoy—not that I shouldn’t be a little nervous about it. As a result of the absolute beatdown that the media world suffered last year in the markets, my erstwhile employer is implementing a few changes for the coming year, one of which involves bringing the two editorial groups from Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive (which, by the way, became Washington Post Digital on Thursday) in Arlington, VA, and The Washington Post newspaper in downtown DC. As a result, we in the Technology department are also relocating, although at press time we still aren’t certain if we’re moving downtown (that’s the Post building at 15th and L in DC on the left there, the brownish building in the center of the pic) or to an offsite data center. Our chief poobah Katharine Weymouth and new executive editor Marcus “rhymes with the veggie” Brauchli have explained to us their plans for keeping the company sound over the next few years; they make sense and do sound promising. At least more so than, say, the Tribune’s plans, which mostly appear to involve grabbing as much copper wire and office supplies as you can before leaving the building.
Back when times were happier and bunnies and kittens roamed the market floors singing songs and showering traders with gumdrops—you know, October 2007 or so—I bought a car. There was nothing wrong with the (now fully paid off) WRX, mind you; in fact, it’s now Perri’s car, a substantial upgrade over her 1993 Subaru Loyale—90 hp and passive seat belts, talk about safety! I had just been longing for one of these for some time, and finally couldn’t resist any longer. That’s actually the color combo of mine in the picture on the Edmunds link. It was not all that pleasant an experience to actually purchase, at least not until I went to the same dealer family that sold us the WRX (that’s Fitzgerald, for the record) who were the complete opposite. Should have gone there first! It’s been an absolute joy to own, even in these cold and dark times, literally and figuratively. It’s fun to drive, handles like a dream, stops on a dime, and didn’t require selling a kidney to afford. As a side bonus, I regularly top 30+ MPG on the commute according to the ScanGauge I picked up for it, as shown. On that score, at least, life is damned near perfect. At least until Perri gets a job and I can somehow talk her into taking the Miata, keeping the WRX for a winter/practical car, and letting me take on a 370Z…
