7-30-00

What is the meaning of life? It's a trite question but one I often wonder about. I recently finished listening to a talking book called "Welcome to the world baby girl" by Fanny somebody. It was about a famous TV personality who dropped out of the business at the height of her career. She began to question the morality of digging up dirt on celebrities in the course of earning a living. I woke up wondering what the meaning of my life was. The character in the book was seeing a shrink. She was asked to answer the question "Who are you?" with no more than three short answers. I woke up from a dream trying to answer. This was what I came up with:

1. father
2. husband
3. artist

Crashing computers is no fun. Now that I have a laptop, I have the mistaken notion that I can take risks with my old computer. Yesterday, I decided to add an extra hard drive. I had heard it was "simple". Not so. Menu after menu in dos and bios that had as much meaning to my untrained mind as nuclear science. I called my friend A. this morning and he discovered, with me reading the bios displays to him over the phone that I had accidentally pulled the cable connector out of the mother board. This was after I had unplugged the unwilling extra hard drive and was trying to get back to normal with the old main hard drive. After several screens of nuclear science and a safe mode reboot, I am up and running again. Oddly, I am unable to connect to my main server and have to use my fathers server, but that's ok since he is some where in the midwest, driving mom and his motorhome to a family reunion in Virginia.

I am feeling run down from my 86 hour week. Sunday is my day for homework but I feel like playing hooky. Maybe exercise will help, I am out of here.

7-26-00

Applying for jobs is a wearying business. Most web companies of the size I would like to work for require potential candidates to apply via email. I have sent out about 7 emails to local firms. I am starting to have some doubts about the market for people with my skill levels. I heard that one of the big dot com companies went belly up in Seattle recently and released over a hundred web designers onto the market. This stroke of bad luck won't prevent me from looking for a job, but it does raise some doubts. If I am unable to find a job right away on graduation, I will continue working swing in printing and spend my mornings developing my skills. It will be wonderful working on projects of my choosing instead of this continual pushing to learn new programs. This quarter we are spending a lot of time learning Dreamweaver. The only thing that compares to tackling Dreamweaver would be learning Word from scratch. It's whizzywig interface is extremely complex and fussy. Things that I could do in an hour using notepad or Homesite take 8 hours in Dreamweaver. Part of that is learning to use the confusing combinations of menus that supposedly make Dreamweaver useful to the non-html writer. We are finding, and I speak for some of the most dedicated students in our class, that Dreamweaver quickly becomes a hindrance to good design. Today, I became so frustrated with meeting a deadline that I switched to notepad to complete what was supposed to be a Dreamweaver project.

I am toying with pulling this site down. There is a slim chance that this much personal information could negatively impact my job search. I really doubt if it matters whether I have this site. What I could do is remove the links between this site and my business site. That way employers could see my work without being able to easily access this much personal information. Not that I have anything to hide...I am one of the most stable, honest, hardworking people I know. I know smarter, quicker people, but that may be more due to their normal lifestyle than anything else. This working my way through college has been a trial. I am hoping that my limited ability to be creative has been due to fatigue. I can write accurate code and get a 4.0 gpa just fine. But my creative inspiration has been flat. Once in a while when I get enough rest I get some clear pictures of web site designs I would like to build. But as soon as I get back to work, they burn away like fog in the morning. 4 weeks until it's all over...I can make it that long. I've spent 90 minutes writing here when I should have been doing homework. This must be my relaxation.

7-24-00

I got out and pounded the pavement for a while today, seeking another internship. While I have enjoyed the 9 day break since my last internship ended, my teacher was right in prodding me to get out and find another one. Other than updating my paper resume, I was almost ready anyway. So this afternoon I took some resumes and made some cold calls. It's funny how the anticipation is worse than the doing. Once I was walking the busy streets of downtown Tacoma with my list of Web Design firms, I felt just fine. I actually enjoy selling myself, but then it helps to have a good product to sell. My laptop performed splendidly on the drive home from the ocean. I was a little worried that working in a moving car would be impractical. To my surprise, I was able to get some quality work done while Sue drove the 4 hours home from the coast. I was so involved in designing a new interface concept that I lost all concept of location or time passing. We could have stayed out at the coast longer, but in the rain, what's the point? Now I am back to the school grind. I was dissappointed to hear that our teacher is putting DHTML on hold. Some of the students are complaining about being overloaded. I personally love DHTML and can't wait for the next lesson. She was using the time allocated for web site resume. This will at least give me time to design the next interface for my sites.

7-22pm-00

My head keeps trying to fall into the keyboard. I am sitting in the front seat of the car at a campground on the Ocean called Kalaloch. I had planned to be working on homework today while the family frolicked in the surf. My printing boss told me I could have Saturday off if I finished both Friday and Saturdays work in one long session Friday afternoon. Things went wrong, as they commonly do when one needs them to go flawlessly and I worked 22 hours yesterday between school, printing and commuting. What a surprise, I am quite useless today for getting any production done.

On a more positive note, I had some great insights on a new web design for my companys web page. While standing by the cruising Komori last night, enjoying a brief respite from the 13 hours of constant loading, unloading and feeder troubleshooting, I got a cool idea for an interface. I envisioned a top and side navigation slash interface bar that would feature printing specific images embedded into a warmish background color. I think I could fan out a PMS book of printers colors and lay it directly on the scanner. I could doctor that in Photoshop to suit my needs. I already have several drawings of printing presses, magnifying glasses and ink knives. Combined with a couple linked PhotoShop, Fugi, Quarkx and Pagemaker Icons feathered into a composite cut up table side and top nav bar it could look very attractive.

After dozing off at the keyboard earlier, I crawled into the back seat and slept soundly for a couple hours while Mom, Dad, Sue, Clint and Lisa explored the beach. Before dinner we all took a barefoot walk in the sand together. The sun wasn't out but at least it was still very nice. Lots of kids were swimming in the surf and building sand castles. Back at the campground we lit a fire and barbecued chicken. I was trying to read a "Home Networking for Dummies" book by the fire but the rain, which had been very sparse gradually turned into a steady shower. I am back in the car now listening to the rain drop off the trees onto the minivans roof. The fire is burning merrily in front of the car. Our tent is looking wetter all the time. It's a good thing I wasn't planning any landscape painting this trip. I have been frustrated by foggy weather more times than I care to remember out here. With the laptop and homework to do, the rain is a non issue.

7-22-00

At 6 AM this morning I got up to go to school. It is 3:20 AM now and I have been up for around 22 hours. I could have gone in on Saturday to finish the printing but I had promised my family a free weekend. We had too much printing for one guy to finish in a shift. I ran 42,000 impressions of two color on the Komori. That wasn't the hard part. The worst part was having to burn my own plates. It took 10 burns to get 4 plates. And I couldn't even find the plates at first. They all skate out of there on Friday and leave me to sort out the chaos. I was running 100 pound text with a curl. Eventually I got it running smooth...after I had wasted a hour or two trying the wrong things. My mind is grinding to a halt.

7-16-00

Wearing nothing but a towel, I am dutifully making my late journal update. Bronchitis has prevented me from writing for four days. I love this feeling of wearing almost nothing. Someday I would like to do the nudist thing again. The last time I remember being nude in public was 1974 at a festival in Colorado. I had hitchhiked for 3 or 4 days to reach a lake three miles up a hiking trail near Colorado springs where 60,000 people were gathered for a Rainbow family festival of life. I can vividly recall walking down a trail between the lake and my sleeping area under a fallen tree. I was stark naked, barefoot, following several other naked hippies when we saw 4 mounted cowboys come out of the trees ahead. They had bedrolls, revolvers and Winchesters and appeared to be both fascinated and repulsed by the, throngs of unwashed hippies flooding their mountain fishing lake. What was really amusing was the feeling of superiority we felt as we stood facing them, naked and helpless on the trail. Looking back, I can, of course, see we were living in a dream. The cowboys were far more in touch with reality than we were. But at the time, it was cool.

Funny how my mind wanders back in time like that. Those were 3 of the most wasteful years of my life, and yet they are are always in my thoughts, like a room in the house with the door always open, gentle beams of dusty sunlight streaming out into the hall, enticing me to wander in and remember.

My friend A. helped me set up a network between my two computers yesterday but it has already crashed. I was planning on installing an extra used hard drive this weekend after I got the network running. I'll have to put that off. Mountain bike riding was exhilarating today. I am burned out on rollerblading. I took my son's 18 speed mountain bike on a half hour ride down the dusty pole line rode behind our development. It follows a compass straight path across the spine of the Key Peninsula between bodies of Puget Sound. Up and down for as many miles as you want to go, rocky, sandy and strewn with the garbage of low brows who can't afford to haul their unwanted belongings to the dump. We have been hiking it since we moved out here in 1983. I love the feeling of pounding down the rough track in the treacherous gravel, my biceps flopping up and down with the motion. When I got back the sweat was pouring down my face under my helmet. Aerobics are awesome. Time for homework.

7-12-00

I showed up for my web job this afternoon at 1 only to be told I had been laid off. They were all very kind, appologizing for bringing me on in the first place. He said they jumped the gun in hiring me. Now that we are having a seasonal slowdown, they can't afford me. I thanked him for the experience. I learned a ton of new html skills working there. That gave me 3 free hours before my printing job started. I drove down to the North End where Sue and I met 24 years ago at the Mountaineers Clubhouse. I parked and hiked the hills West and North. Since I had so much time I walked past our old appartment where we lived from '77 to '83 before buying this house out in the country. I love walking down memory lane. I strolled casually by the old appartment building, my mind overflowing with memories of how young and firm and in love we were back then. I was obsessed with climbing, though I tempered it with playing my guitar. I can remember taking my guitar on climbing trips. But that is all water under the bridge. For now, I will take a couple weeks off before looking for another internship. I need the free time to catch up on homework.

7-11-00

Life has gotten interesting. I was laid off the last two days at my internship. On Monday, when I found out I had the day off, I drove down to the waterfront and took a lovely 3 hour nap under the shade of a bridge. It felt like heaven to have that much free time. That morning I got a bunch of medicine for this bronchitis/Asthma sickness. The Prednisone gives me a euphoric high. Interesting...My cough is slowly going away. I was off work again today and was able to spend some quality time with my teacher. Everyone was gone in the afternoon but me on the advanced side of the classroom. We sat and trouble shooted a cut up image/table problem for a couple hours. Her patience is extraordinary. She kept working it and working it, long after I would have given up. Then, when we couldn't get it, we took it over to her terminal where she has Homesite loaded and worked it some more. The problem was extra space at the bottom of the data cell below an image. She discoverd that the unwanted space resulted from my having the start data cell tag and the stop data tag on different lines. I was taught by me web boss to tab a lot in my tables for an easily readable table code. Those extra tabs created confusion for the browsers and put unwanted space in my table data cells.

I am sorry this is all so technical. Sue and I have been getting along quite well lately. I am one hell of a lucky guy.

7-9-00

Today has been one long homework session. Actually I have been working on an assignment in DHTML since I got home from work yesterday until now, 8 PM on Sunday. And I doubt if I will finish it until midnight. On top of this little project has been the bronchitis my body acquired over the 4th of July holiday, last weekend. Last night, after throwing my hands up in despair over my DHTML assignment, I crashed on the couch. Sue kicked me out of the bedroom until I stop coughing. I should have called the doctor Friday afternoon, but didn't think of it until ten to five. I could have called her over the weekend, but it doesn't really feel like an emergency. I like to think I have the constitution to outlast this kind of thing. I am getting a bit alarmed at the gurgling sound in my chest when I exhale. Sounds like watery mud in there. Back to the homework.

7-6-00

Something tells me I shouldn't drink Nyquil and write html at the same time. I had a much longer entry and just deleted it. I've been sleeping poorly for 3 nights. Missed school this AM but managed to drag my but through both swing jobs. Life can be a bit overwhelming at times like these. The weekend is almost here...

7-3-00

Sometimes I see my self with x-ray vision. I am spending the last two days of this wonderful 4 day, 4th of July weekend doing homework. My mind rebel's against the toil. As I sat here massaging my brow, the computer waiting patiently for my input, my fingers explored the bone and tissue of my skull. I could see my head in 3d, the quivering brain, the bony skull...This strange x-ray vision of mine strikes at random moments. I will be admiring a splendid female form, delighting in the voluptuous curves, when suddenly my vision will switch to x-ray vision. They become transparent, as seen in a full color cat scan. It's not so much that I physically see it, but that I know the stuff is under there, making everything work. My overly inquisitive mind gets carried away. When troubleshooting machinery this x-ray vision can be helpful. Used on people it's ridiculous.

Climbing was great! Clint brought his friend, J. They have been buddies since about the first grade. Over the last few years they have ridden BMX together. They both love the adrenaline rush they get flying through the air on their bicycles. Together with some of the other local kids they have built some huge jumps. They built one jump in the woods behind our house that was 5 feet high at the lip. That is, when they launched into air off the lip, they traveled up another 4 feet then flew horizontally 10 feet before landing on the ramp.

I have known for several years that Clint had the character for climbing. Before yesterday he had always shown caution bordering on paranoia as soon as he tied into a rope. But with his buddy there yesterday, to challenge him, he was much bolder. They both wanted to do hard stuff. I warmed up on an easy 5.7 and then took them over to an overhanging 5.9 where they could show off their pull up strength. His friend J. appears to be a natural climber, showing a complete lack of fear of heights. He took a fall early on, grinning foolishly as he dangled from the rope in space. After that, he was fearless, swarming up everything I could lead. Clint was more cautious but equally successful. It was fun watching them get into the spirit of climbing, challenging each other to conquer the hard moves. I was almost too tired from working late the night before to enjoy myself. I slept on the drive up, the drive back and during a lunch break, flat on the gravel road below the cliff. By five o'clock, I was toast but Clint was raring to go, pacing up and down the cliff begging me to lead him up all the routes. It's ironic that the one summer I am unable to climb with him is the first summer in 15 years of dragging his complaining butt to the cliffs that he gets excited about the sport.

7-2-00

Tomorrow morning we are going rockclimbing. It will be our first trip of the year. And my first trip since college started in September. Clint is bringing one of his ballsy BMX riding buddies. It will be interesting to see if a little competition will get him higher up the cliff. He has had a 40 foot top limit until now. I will be lucky to stay out of trouble myself. I haven't done any pull ups this year. Developing my mind has taken preference over my body. There may be enough of the climbing season left in September for me to get warmed up a little. I have to get up in 6 hours to climb, more later.