May 31, 2007

Bee Line

Posted on May 31, 2007 12:44 PM | link to this entry

May 29, 2007

Head Count

Yeah, the Idiot is still here. The weekend was a blur of planting, digging, hauling, weeding, watering, and mulching. Today I hit the ground running, fixing both our office network and spending a good part of the day fixing someone else's network. There hasn't been a whole lot of time for pictures or words, unfortunately, but I'm going to try to shoot at least one thing a day if I can't write anything and post it here.

As of 11:50, Flickr is down for maintenance, so I'm off the hook for today.

Posted on May 29, 2007 11:48 PM | link to this entry

May 25, 2007

Slight Interruption of Service.

I made some minor changes to the templates around here that had major implications on the layout of the site, so if you see anything busted, please feel free to let me know.

(This is all in advance of a site redesign, which hasn't gotten off the ground due to paying work commitments.)

Posted on May 25, 2007 11:34 AM | link to this entry

May 24, 2007

Internet's Busted.

Yesterday, in a bit of cosmic irony, I spent seven hours onsite trying to untangle a client's backup system (Retrospect, you lovable, miserable bitch, you) while here at the house our seven-year-old DSL router, a SMC Barricade, decided to finally bite it and stop switching packets.

The "Backup Solution", a Belkin wireless router I got in trade somewhere, is servicable, but I'm now faced with the strange phenomena of downlink hubs that suddenly don't work anymore. All of this means that the Lockardugan Command Center is wireless until we can get a new router on the case--looks like I'm making a trip to the Office Depot this afternoon.

Posted on May 24, 2007 11:02 AM | link to this entry

May 23, 2007

Three Years

In 2003, I asked Jen to be my wife in a quiet, misty square in Georgia, and I was lucky enough to marry her a year later. We've had a hell of a trip since then, watching many things come to a close and enjoying many new beginnings together.

On Saturday we went to Sotto Sopra to celebrate our Savannahversary and enjoyed a wonderful dinner, then spent Sunday in the yard together planting our garden, cleaning out the beds, and trimming the hedges out front. While this doesn't seem like a very anniversary-ish way to spend a weekend, we were looking forward to the time together, away from the office, planting vegetables in our little plot of earth.

I have learned so many wonderful and amazing things from my wife, it would be impossible to list them all here. In many ways, when I met her, I was like those seedlings: full of promise, and ready to grow. We have carefully tended to our garden and made it stronger, taller, and hardy. For all the mistakes we may have made, we've learned how to make things better and help each other bloom. I still feel like I have miles to go, but the person I am today is a long way away from who I was four years ago, and I thank her for all the guidance and support she's given me.

Thank you, baby, for marrying me, and for the three great years we've had together.

(Of course, the Sky Pilot is laughing at us, because yesterday was a balmy 70° while our wedding day felt like the surface of the sun. With locusts.)

Posted on May 23, 2007 9:24 AM | link to this entry | Comments (2)

May 18, 2007

Oh, really.

Jen noticed this on the back of a hot sauce bottle as we were waiting for dinner last night. This is someone's attempt at a self-promotion that should have been properly thought out.

Posted on May 18, 2007 2:04 PM | link to this entry | Comments (3)

May 17, 2007

History Classes.

I got an email a few days ago from a friend who recommended me for a teaching job at a local college. I don't have a lot of the details yet, but the position involves teaching courses within Adobe's design suite, which is right up my alley. The idea of teaching got me excited, because I really enjoy it, and it's something I've been thinking about doing (without actually knowing how to go about it) for a long time.

I got a taste for it back in 1999 when I was working for a web development shop and we were finishing up a custom-built content management system for a local weekly magazine, which had no previous presence on the web. After I'd designed and built the front end for the website, I realized we were going to need to train the print-based staff how to move their workflow to the web. I spent a long week organizing, designing and building an interactive training course for the staff, including some of the first rudimentary programming I'd ever done.

After I got it finished, I showed it to my bosses and they nodded their heads blankly. I found out at that point there was no plan in place for setting up the training courses—they hadn't set aside a room, I had no provision for computers, and we didn't even have enough tables.

Working quickly, I scrounged up eight Macs (their production workflow was Mac-based), a conference room, a crateful of keyboards, mice, and network cables, and put together a networked classroom in one afternoon. My company hadn't made provisions for food, so I organized morning coffee and snacks, as well as lunch deliveries for the break.

The training course itself went off without a hitch—after all that preparation I was feeling very confident, and after jitters at the beginnning my delivery smoothed out and my breathing returned to normal. The staff was trained properly, and they still use the CMS we built to this day.

Fast forward eight (!?!!) years to this email: I knew I had a good copy of the training course archived somewhere, so I went back through my disc catalog to find the best copy and spent a half-hour cleaning up the pages and relinking the scripts on my webserver. I was, and still am, proud of that course, because I put the entire thing together myself, and used the experience to get over my fear of speaking and teaching in front of a group. I found, as the days went on, that I actually liked it, and that I had a talent for finding different ways to explain a concept until everyone understood it.

This experience made it easier to agree to teach a flex design class at MICA a few years ago, which went off pretty well as far as I could tell. While I had some problems feeling qualified to teach a design class while I was employed as an artist at a videogame developer, I felt good about the design problem I created and better about some of the solutions the students came up with.

I followed up with the contact yesterday, linking to the class pages and my resume, and crossed my fingers. This morning I got a very positive response and an invitation to the senior thesis opening where I'll be able to meet the contact face to face. While I'm told the money isn't huge (but, then, when did anyone ever get rich as a teacher?) I'm excited to dip my feet back in the water—I'm looking forward to widening my horizons.

Posted on May 17, 2007 9:04 AM | link to this entry

May 15, 2007

Tech Support.

Things I've learned as an (un)official tech support contractor:

There will never be any documentation. Usernames, passwords, machine specs, repair histories, netowrk diagrams...the list goes on and on.

The first 1/3 of my time at a new client's office is always spent trying to figure out just what the hell is going on.

I've followed a consultant who routinely recommends, purchases and installs software, and then leaves with every scrap of hard copy and media. No kidding. If I was advised to spend $1K on a piece of software, I'd better have every damned disc, manual, and box it came with sitting on my desk when the lights get turned off.

Clients are ridiculously grateful when I fix something and take the time to answer their questions politely. I think they are amazed that I am not a raging asshole like other IT people they may have worked with in the past.

Never be caught without one of every cord, widget, and utility. It beats a long round trip back home.

Clients are also grateful when I supply them with a list of things I've done-new passwords, updated software, repaired hardware, and recommendations for future work. It seems like a no-brainer to me, but apparently it's kind of a rarity.

I have seen some very sad computers in my brief career. Today I worked on a PowerBook that had the numbers worn off 3/4 of the keys. It made entering passwords very interesting. A corollary: Macs are tremendously resilient machines.

Most people don't have a backup solution. And if they do, there's something wrong with it.

As an outside contractor, I can leave whenever I want to, and I don't have to worry about being interrupted at my desk to go take care of something.

Given all that, I like working on Macs as a sideline job. It's a nice switch from sitting behind a desk, and it seems to stimulate the problem-solving part of my brain that likes to organize and fix things. It also means I'll be at a design or print shop, and that means the people are interesting and fun.

Posted on May 15, 2007 6:10 PM | link to this entry

May 14, 2007

Return From The Land of Cheese.

The Lockard Tour Van is back in town after a whirlwind three-night limited engagement to support Annie, who kind of got her diploma Saturday morning, and all I can say is that I'm still tired. Our first stop was Ashland, Ohio, to prepare for the graduation ceremony, and as we loaded up the van we were given our itinerary, typed neatly on a single sheet of paper. To the hour, our schedule was outlined in Times New Roman to keep the caravan on track, and even though it was handy to have, we used it to poke fun at Jen's dad good-naturedly throughout the trip.

Despite some last-minute drama, the graduation went off without a hitch, and even though the threat of rain loomed, it turned out to be a beautiful day. We shared a late lunch with Jen's aunt and then passed out back at the hotel to sleep off the carbohydrates. Before venturing out for a late dinner, we hijacked Jen's father into a visit to the CHEESEBARN, an inexplicably-named highway attraction up the road from our hotel. Unfortunately, the CHEESEBARN was closed and we weren't able to explore its wonders in detail.

However, we did stop for a picture out front.

Then we enjoyed a prolonged tour of the seedier side of Mansfield, OH, looking for somewhere other than a Perkins to eat dinner; the directions given were, shall we say, vague, and it took a while to get oriented until we found an Olive Garden to stop at.

Sunday morning we were under strict orders to be loaded and ready by 8:30, because the day was tightly planned: we were stopping in to visit with Jen's great aunt, who is in a retirement home, and then on to visit her mother's gravesite. Her great aunt is still sharp and funny, and we were presently joined by a group of cousins who helped us take over the entire front room of the facility.

Driving on to the gravesite, we passed fields that had been flooded in January of 2005 (we were some of the last cars allowed in before the state troopers shut the highway down that night), through the sleepy, worn-down town, and up the hill to where her marker sat in bright afternoon sunshine. The family had about ten minutes alone with her before a gaggle of extended family arrived, and then we stood around and caught up with folks we hadn't seen in two years.

And then, it was time to load up the van and get on the road. The trip back was uneventful, apart from everyone in the van (including driver) dozing off after lunch at the Sonic, and we were treated to a tour of the rolling hills of West Virginia and miles of empty countryside until we made it back to town last night. And I'll be damned if Jen's Dad didn't get us home a half-hour ahead of schedule.

Posted on May 14, 2007 9:28 AM | link to this entry

May 9, 2007

As far as my rental car can go.

We're back for a whirlwind couple of days before we leave again, this time to Ohio for a graduation which might not even happen. (More details on this as we get them.)

Getting upstate to see the family was great, and long overdue. My parents hosted my grandfather's birthday party at their house, and apart from a minor crisis involving aluminum foil, butter, and forty ovens worth of smoke, everything went off without a hitch. The weather even cooperated enough for us to get a few peaceful, warm hours on the front porch, something I always look forward to when we're up there. Grampy enjoyed the party and kept us laughing through the entire celebration, even though he hasn't changed the battery in his hearing aid this year and is as deaf as a post. Luckily he always had one of his children sitting with him and translating whenever anyone posed a question from across the room.

Back here in Maryland, we have finally picked up our new rug for either the blue room or our bedroom, whichever it looks best in. Choosing carpet is difficult at best in flourescent light, with small paint chips, and under the watchful, predatory eye of the carpet salesman, so we narrowed the possibilities down to two rooms. Unfortunately, the room it's most likely to go into is also one of the least used rooms in the main section of the house.

I've spent the last two days alternating between paying work and computer maintenance; the parts for Jen's Powerbook came in while we were away, so I stripped it down to the bare frame to replace the DC/power board and both display cables. I spent many nervous hours consulting various manuals and writing notes to myself while organizing tiny screws in yogurt containers. Strangely enough, what took me about six hours to disassemble took only two to reassemble, and it was with a deep breath and a long prayer to the Sky Pilot that I pushed the power button. I got the lovely startup chime, a few minutes of nothing, and then...the same two-thirds-black screen I had before I started.

Rooting around for answers, I'm hearing that it's the LCD itself from a parts vendor ($300), or could be the inverter board itself, the only part I didn't replace ($60) when I had the monitor assembly open. I'm now about $500 into this thing and the prospect of spending another $300 does not please me.

However, we did find a workaround for Jen to be able to run InDesign CS and CS3 on the same machine (to recap, CS3 takes control of all InDesign documents regardless of their creator version after it is installed and run for the first time, making it impossible to re-edit them in CS) by creating a second user on the same machine and using CS as that user. Not elegant or ideal, but it gets the job done for now. Adobe gets the big Middle Finger for that one.

Meanwhile, I have been afflicted with record-player disease for the past few weeks: this is when a snippet of one song repeats endlessly in the back of my head, all day long. Last week, it was Rental Car by Beck, which wasn't so bad, but this week I got the chorus to a Counting Crowes song stuck in my noggin when we heard it in the Korean grocery. I hated this band when they were big, and now I am cursed with the melody of their second-rate hit day and night. It got so bad yesterday that I stayed up until midnight to try and resuscitate our music server, which suddenly up and died a few weeks ago. From what I can tell, it stopped booting completely, so I transplanted the drive into a spare, only to be met with a flashing questionmark. This was too much to deal with at midnight, so I tested the third machine and realized it was my old work music server, the one with about 65% of my collection on board. Good enough! The main drive with all our music is fine, but it just won't boot in that particular machine. Strange.

Posted on May 9, 2007 10:05 AM | link to this entry

May 8, 2007

Parts is Parts

Posted on May 8, 2007 3:40 PM | link to this entry

May 6, 2007

Squid Sauce

Posted on May 6, 2007 5:21 PM | link to this entry

May 5, 2007

92 years young!

We're at my parents' place to celebrate my grandfather's 92nd birthday this weekend. He's almost a century old and still kicking.