theme song (400K mp3)
"I work really hard but it doesn't feel like a sweatshop, I love it," I told a co-worker the other day. Just recording that as a barometer reading so I can look back on it.
posted 9:36:18 PM
Sunday, February 27, 2000
Just tried to upgrade the memory in my step-father's Performa and he only had one SIMM slot. One. I realize it's a consumer machine and people don't expand them much, but only one slot? I wonder if they reasoned that, when it came time to upgrade, memory prices would have fallen and it wouldn't cost that much to replace the stock memory instead of adding to it, or at least less than the extra engineering cost of squeezing another slot in there.
Let's see, checking CDW the 8MB of his we'll have to toss is worth $40 now and the 32MB I recommended is about $70, making a net cost of $30, if he has someone like me install it for free. Not too bad I guess. I wonder if, at those prices, anyone bothers with 8MB modules anymore?
posted 9:37:37 PM
Friday, February 25, 2000
Descending the stairs to the subway last night I heard ethereal sounds from a tenor sax, beautiful slow lines from familiar, unnamed jazz standards. The subway platform perfectly compliments the sax, adding long, gentle reverberation. As I leaned over to drop some money in his hat there was a split second in between phrases when he quickly pulled his mouth away to inhale and took the time to say, "thank you." Amazed me that he could play so well and fit a thank you in there.
posted 10:53:08 AM
Thursday, February 24, 2000
Hmmmm, we just received a message from our COO, but it was sent from his assistant's email account and titled, "Announcement from [COO's name]". Is this guy too busy to type his own emails, even the once-in-a-blue-moon emails to the entire company?
posted 9:34:58 PM
Mark at Creative Good sent me $25 worth of Flooz (thanks Mark!) and I spent it all on Godiva Chocolate for myself. I even sent myself a gift card:
Because you work
so fucking hard
eat some damn
chocolate!
posted 9:31:09 PM
Tuesday, February 22, 2000
Last Christmas my girlfriend and I gave my grandmother a jar of homemade grape jam. My grandmother recently celebrated a birthday, she's about 88 years old now. She said, "I've never liked peanut butter and jelly, but these days sometimes I make myself half a sandwich to have with my medicine." This makes me very happy to think of her eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the first time.
posted 11:06:56 PM
Michael "Lance" Newby writes regarding my comment on Austria below:
>>We pull our guys from Austria in a show of unsupport for a very "far rightFunny, I've never thought of our foreign policy as really being a policy, because it's never been consistent in my eyes. Rather, it seems like a bunch of tiny, unrelated agreements. I guess it was around the time other countries demonstrated nuclear arms capabilities that America started treating countries on a case by case basis.
>>wing", yet freely elected govt, then we coddle, schmooze, and placate an
>>authoritarian, communistic, oppressive (enough adjectives), and THREATENING
>>China?
>>
>>99% of the United States has absolutely no idea of how incompetent our
>>foreign policy has become.
posted 3:04:45 PM
Monday, February 21, 2000
I was in a meeting recently with just people on my project team. We were talking about the redesign of a client's homepage. There were 12 of us. 12, to talk about one page. Granted, it's the one people see most and the client is huge, but 12 people? That's just way too many.
posted 11:52:32 AM
Date:
Sun, 20 Feb 2000 20:59:29 -0800 (PST)
From:
Victor Lombardi
Subject:
great ad!
To:
feedback@match.com
I had to laugh at (and I mean at) your ad (enclosed).
It seems to imply (by using a pull-down menu and not
check boxes) that people who want children are neither
intelligent nor financially secure. Are you trying to
tell us something ;-)
posted 12:06:18 AM
Saturday, February 19, 2000
Cool - web-based way to test for open ports on your computer.
posted 6:26:07 PM
Working like a madman the past couple weeks, and just managing to keep the stress in check - no time to take time off. Note to self to expect proper compensation come review time!
posted 5:19:50 PM
Wow, I was in a meeting with a client recently going over the usual tactical stuff, when their senior manager came in to observe. At one point someone asked his opinion on the big picture, and he talked for about 15 minutes, blowing our minds. The coolest idea was doing for employees what Epinions does for products, compensating the best work and raising it to the top of the heap.
posted 5:15:16 PM
Thursday, February 10, 2000
We used to bitch when our company was called a "web design shop," since we're much more than that. But it's scarier to be called a management consultancy. Our struggle is to take Anderson Consulting's business without becoming Anderson, which of course would be yuckie.
posted 10:21:52 AM
Tuesday, February 08, 2000
Whew, just when I thought I'd never make it to the end.
posted 9:10:04 AM
Monday, February 07, 2000
The Word of the Day for February 5 is:
susurrous \soo-SURR-uss\ (adjective)
: full of whispering sounds
posted 11:32:32 AM
Saturday, February 05, 2000
A topic we talked about with Peter on his recent visit (see below) and I want to make note of...He criticized how companies like Schwab would contract companies like Razorfish to create their web UI. His main point was that it's ridiculously inefficient to draw this line between server-side programmers, project managers, et al at Schwab and the project managers, info architects, designers et al at RF, which could be located 3000 miles away, instead of hiring those people at Schwab at keeping them a few cubicles away.
I countered that constructing web UIs is not Schwab's core business, and that we at RF can leverage experience from building many web sites. Peter said it _is_ their core business now, since the interface is now so important to their business model. Others pointed out that finding talent in the web design field is hard even for fun, hip, profitable companies, and not many folks would leap at a job working at Schwab alongside those wild and crazy Mutual Fund managers.
It's an interesting question - where a company draws the line between building internal competencies and outsourcing. In this case, I think the issue is not just competencies, it's culture. Company policies and atmosphere designed to please that 45 yr old fund manger with a Lexus and two kids in the suburbs are not the same policies and atmosphere that please the 22 yr old designer with a love for the club scene and her first apt.
I just now connected this idea with the internal situation at Razorfish. We started off a badass creative firm that didn't bother with anything more technically sophisticated than the occasional database-backed site or the accompanying strategy. Now we've buffed out both those strengths pretty well, and in the process we've grown up and acquired some of those 45 yr olds with kids and Lexi. So far so good, but it'll be interesting to see what happens over time. I think we'll have to make a more concerted effort to keep pushing the creative envelope.
posted 11:58:53 PM
Remember back when the Net was young and everyone was publishing lots of great stuff for free? Now the web seems to mirror the off-line world more and more, where lot of us have the power to publish but, feeling overwhelmed by mass media, we don't anymore. I think forums such as epinions give the common folk the opportunity to publish again and, in this phase of commercial web publishing, be rewarded for sharing their experience.
posted 11:35:11 PM
Friday, February 04, 2000
I think when a friend is in need of help, you don't run away (Austrian Govt Sworn In, U.S. Recalls Envoy), you stay and offer support, because it's then that they need you most. Austria is the Prodigal Country.
posted 3:25:28 PM
finally met peterme in person. he stopped by razorfish for lunch and discussion with the info architect group. spirited discussion about epinions, internal development vs. agency work, syndication, and more. good time, must do that more.
posted 3:14:48 PM