3-31-01

Where did all this rainy weather come from? I suppose I should have known it was coming. April showers bring May flowers and all that jazz. Still, I got used to drawing down at the park in the sun every other day on my lunch break and spending the weekends outside. Today it really doesn't matter, I need to work on my taxes for most of the day. I spent 8 months in school last year, working reduced hours and spending lots of money on tuition, books and software. The year before I got $1800 back on 3 months of school, this year it might be enough to buy a used car to replace my old rust bucket. I know that using the IRS is a terrible way to save money, but I hate wading through W4 forms figuring out exactly what my paycheck deduction should be. Several jobs ago I got together with the payroll person and dialed in my withholding. For several years after that, I came up even or within $200 either way. Then I changed jobs and had a far less cooperative payroll person. I waded through the forms and came up with a number that looked right. At tax time, I found out I was $900 dollars wrong. It's hard to come up with that much cash in a hurry. Far better to err on the side of money back.
     I've been getting emails from one or two of my fellow students. They are unemployed still, 6 months after graduation and have convinced the college that they should be allowed additional schooling without paying tuition, since the education they received didn't get them jobs. I think it's nice of the college to do this for them, especially since I hear that the college was lying about it's placement rate. One of the students said in an email that she called the college and asked what the placement rate was for our class of 14 students. She was told we all had jobs. It was a surprise for her to learn that she was employed when in fact she was unemployed. Several of the former students met with the college and worked out an arrangement where we could come back for a free 80 additional hours.
     I personally am too busy working and studying at home on my own schedule to consider going back, besides working everyday with a room full of people who know more than any instructor the college could hire. Still, I am happy for my fellow students, perhaps the additional instruction will give them the edge they need.
     I was the button king last week, making around 80 mouseover buttons for a new navigation structure on a large site. It's complicated work. They are 3 stage buttons and I think I may have made some of them in the wrong color. I got on a roll and forgot that the different sections have different color buttons. Fortunately most of them are ok, and I may be able to edit the bad gifs rather than going back to the 80 layer button.psd.
     Clint is doing remarkably well in track for only being in the 9th grade. He made varsity in javelin and discus and came in 3rd in discus against a tough school at last weeks track meet. And that is competing against seniors. I am not terribly surprised. He is bigger and stronger than I have ever been and has been lifting serious free weights for several years with 4 years of karate before that. He's filled up the garage with the detritus of a serious lifter: benches, dumbbells, 4 different bar thingies for putting weights on and a big weight holder tower where all his extra weights hang when they aren't covering the floor. I guess I am proud of him for taking body building so seriously, although I sometimes wish he were a little more interested in the introspective side of life, like learning a musical instrument or developing his phenomenal drawing abilities. Still, I'm not complaining, he has a lot more on the ball than I did at his age. I had better get started on my taxes. It is so easy to sit here and dawdle away the hours writing into the ether.

3-28-01

As I suspected, I've been doing a lot more Photoshop work. Yesterday and today I made my first interface and navigation system in 2 months. Thanks to the practice at home over the last week, I was able to design a three dimensional, tab based, sub navigation interface. I was pretty proud of the professional, businesslike appearance and the way it fit into the existing interface. I also got some ideas from my boss on a second design based on red rollover buttons beside the text, without the tabs behind. This was more in keeping with the existing navigation system, and the client chose it over my concept. I enjoyed developing the two ideas in Photoshop. I switched to this career from printing in hopes that my creative mind would be an asset instead of a handicap. It's fun to flex it a little.
      Yesterday I met my old friend T for lunch. I met T. in the 5th grade in 1965. We grew up together down in Olympia. He knows all my secrets and owns several of my paintings. We walked the hills of Tacoma together in the pouring rain, returning to the office with water dripping off our soaked raincoats. T commented on how much he enjoyed walking in the rain. He has always been a true blue optimist, no matter the odds, which is probably why I like him so much. Due to my artistic nature, I can easily slide into pessimism, but T can, and has lifted me out, especially before I had Sue to lean on. I guess that's what friends are for. We promised to get together again soon, as we always do, but the "soon" seems to be measured in years over the last couple decades. Before I met Sue, we used to get together and jam. He plays electric base at the professional level and I can keep up on my blues harp. Back in the early seventies, we were part of a group of friends who would get together over illegally purchased beer and other foolish substances on Friday night in T's apartment for all night jam sessions. T and I were the least talented of the group, and yet we've had the most success in life. It's sad how creative talent doesn't always accompany common sense.

3-24-01

We've had some changes in the office. One of our graphics people got let go. I'm not sure why, they said it was just a difference of opinion and not to worry, we weren't running out of money or anything. Regardless, I will miss him. He had almost a year of experience building interfaces and most of a two year education from a prestigious digital art institue in Seattle. His designs had a feeling of refinement that, even taking into account the group nature of our interface design, only comes from experience combined with a good eye for color. There is however, still lots of talent in the office. My boss has even more experience making interfaces and one of the other partners used to teach 3d animation at the college level, not to mention our resident Flash master and Graphic Designer. We've also hired 2 new people in the last 2 weeks and are interviewing for a second Graphic Designer of the high end pre-press variety. I am a little out of the loop here, so I probably shouldn't speculate...but I think the new people are of the programming variety and might be helping out on the voice XML project.
     I had my first *one on one* meeting with T. from the advertising agency who represents our largest client yesterday. We sat out by the open street window where the reception is good for the little Visor handheld PDA. He surfed the 70 page site I built and made some good recommendations for improvement. It was fun watching him genuinely enjoy the little miniature web site I had converted from a site aimed at the 1024x768 market to something that will reasonably display and download to a handheld PDA. Every night at home I have been working the exercises in my Photoshop books, bringing my skills up in preparation for the inevitable request for interface design, now that one of our interface people is gone.
     My recent focus on Digital design doesn't mean I have given up on my statue drawing. We had several sunny lunch hours this week and I have come far enough with the drawing that I am beginning to work on the background. The statue stands on an elevated green lawn, with an ugly railroad tie fence behind. I've taken a tree that is actually out of the frame, and moved it behind him (artistic license) so he doesn't look quite so pasted on the page. Surprisingly, only one person has stopped to look at my drawing, despite the fact that I sit in a prime lunchtime park next to the largest office buildings in town. I saw a man in his sixties stop to take some careful photos of the statue. After capturing his images, he noticed me sitting nearby, sketching. He walked over and inquired cautiously, as strangers always do (people seem to think artists are volatile creatures, capable of going bezerk at the least provocation):
 
"You must be drawing the statue, do you mind if I look?"
 
"No, I don't mind," I said, holding up the sketch pad.
 
"Ah, professional artist?" he asked, impressed.
 
"No, actually I am a web designer, I draw for pleasure." I said.
 
""Well, your handling of the light and shadows is very good. Did you see the John Singer Sargent exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum?"
 
"No, I missed it,"I said.
 
He had a very engaging manner, and I didn't mind at all when he propped his leg up on my bench and told me he was taking a photography class and had been told that seeing how Sargent handled light would help him to take better photographs. I had wanted to drive up to see Sargent, but my family hates museums and I'd my hands full with car repairs most of that month. It was nice to talk to someone with a little class and surprising how fast one can make friends when there are common interests involved.

3-21-01

My wife has a nose like a bloodhound and I don't mean the shape, I mean the acuity of her sense of smell. She keeps two cats outside the kitchen door who get more attention than I do, but she constantly complains about the cat pee smell. Clint and I can't smell it at all due to our allergies. Sue smells it on the cars out in front, on the side of the house and definitely where they live by the door. Sometimes though, I wonder if two small cats could pee enough to smell as much as she smells it. Tonight, meeting her in the hallway I gave her a quick squeeze and heard her sniff me suspiciously.
 
"Ah, don't tell me I smell like cat pee," I said.
 
"Well, I was going to say that," she said with a big grin, throwing her arms around my neck and laughing. She is such a lovely woman. I have no idea how I got so lucky. I talked tonight on the phone with my oldest friend T. We met in the 5th grade in Olympia and have stayed in touch, give or take a few years, ever since. I am looking forward to meeting him for lunch next week. It's far too easy to drift out of touch with ones friends, especially when one has children.
     I had some trouble making the company web site display correctly. They had designed it with the notion that the sliced up interface would expand with the browser window and screen resolution. It's a 3d interface that runs along the bottom and right side of the browser window. I had told the table to be 100% high and wide. The right hand bottom side of the sliced up interface was defined in absolute pixels. One of the left hand columns was defined as 100%. It expanded nicely, but the background tile in the data cell was not displaying in Netscape. My boss got it to work by remaking the slice without any transparency. But that still left the two expander cells in the right hand vertical part of the interface. I could make it fit a screen resolution, but as soon as I stretched out the window, cracks opened up in the interface no matter how many tricks I wrote into the table. My boss fixed it using Javascript and layers. We plan to have the page display without scroll bars no matter the size of the window. Scrolling will be done with a custom made slider using DHTML. The script looks at the screen browser window width and dynamically writes to the page, adjusting the layer position. Our Javascript wizards have gotten pretty good at this technique, having honed it on several of our customers sites. My boss has it working already in IE and it's a pretty snazzy effect. I've been studying my Photoshop textbooks since my still life died. I think we will be needing some design work and want to be ready.

3-19-01

We drove down to the old family home in Olympia to see my folks yesterday. Two of Clint's BMX buddies rode along and all three boys disappeared on their bicycles for the afternoon, exploring the city and it's underground parking garages. Sue, Lisa and I walked around downtown, looking at the earthquake damage. The worst damage was to the 80 year old 4th avenue bridge. The railing blew off on both sides over the tallest arch. But even that is not the most serious damage. I walked up to the cyclone fence blocking access to the bridge and looked carefully out across the span. Out in the middle of the bridge, in the thirty foot section where the railing is gone, there is a noticeable dip in the road where there used to be a slight upward crown. The old stone and cement arch settled about 3 inches during the quaking. It served honorably for almost eighty years, but died in 30 seconds. I have many memories of walking, bicycle riding and driving over and under that old bridge.
     I was surprised to hear from my dad that my grandfather survived the great San Francisco quake in 1906. He woke up thinking that one of his brothers was shaking his bed. Because their house survived the quake, and bordered the big park downtown, they ran a small soup kitchen for the newly homeless quake survivors living in tent cities out in the park. He died in 1974, but grandma lived until around 1992 when her heart gave out after 99 years of good service. We all used to love to hear her stories of life before the automobile. Her body tired over the years, but she remained in her home, living with her old poodle, and taking her daily walks. During the holidays, her crystal clear mind would draw the family together from all over the state. I was on vacation when she died, and refused to come back for the funeral, preferring to do my grieving in private, something my dad resented at the time. I've never been to see her grave either...I'd like to do that sometime.

3-16-01

Finally Friday. I realize it doesn't make much sense to talk about days of the week when this could be read at any point in the future, but I do have the TGIF feeling. Early in the week I spent some time with Flash 5, the first time I've touched it in a month. The program is reasonably intuitive, as long as one can remember what all the menus do. It bears a superficial resemblance to Photoshop, which I use everyday. But the fact that it is vector based causes some initial confusion. For example, one can't merge layers, and the action happens within the program, rather than after the slices are exported and programmed with Javascript. Today I worked on slicing up the PSD file that will become our new company web site. It was an honour to be asked to work on it considering all the talented people we have working there. The design is pretty high tech. It will use DHTML (Javascript plus Cascading Style Sheets) to control the wrap around interface display across all 4.0 and up browsers and all screen resolutions. Whether we can get it to work on IE5 on the Mac is another story.
     I also converted 5 pages of one of our existing web sites to Spanish. We had them translated and saved as Word documents. I set the English Word printout next to the Spanish Word printout and made educated guesses. When I came across a word or link that had not been translated, I used an online translator website in Russia to get instant conversions. Everyone thinks it's cool, but then, none of us can read it, so we really don't know if it's right until someone who speaks the language can proofread it.
     The weather turned rainy and I wasn't able to work on my statue drawing much this week. I worked on it once on an overcast day, but the light was totally wrong. I got so frustrated with my still life drawing out in the garage that I ripped it off the easel and crumpled it into a tiny ball. I usually try to avoid destroying paintings, but after a week of rescue attempts I gave up. I've started another simpler version already, this time in pencil.

3-14-01

Finally saw my palm pilot web site online today. After a month of failing to connect, my boss reinstalled the omnisky software and the little Visor hand held surfs like a dream. I even saw my images for the first time. Up until now, I have only been able to check my work by installing the site like an application during hot sync. Now, I can edit the code, walk over to the window for better reception, log on and see my work online. It's pretty cool. I sketched again down at the park on my lunch hour. The wind was up and the sun played peek a boo, but I managed to get the statue roughed out all the way down to the shoes. Drawing the teeth on the buck saw is the one remaining major task. After that, I need a few more days of sun to fill out the shadows and it will be done. I've been looking around for my next scene...some of the old buildings nearby look like good candidates.
      Clint had a track meet scheduled yesterday, but the bus only got as far as the on ramp before they turned around. A mobile home had blown off it's trailer and shut down the bridge. I've spent far too much time working on cars lately. Brake jobs on both cars and replacing the cooling system hoses on the van have sucked up both of the last two weekends. Last night Clint and I waded through his algebra homework together. It's kind of fun as long as it doesn't get too technical. They tend to use words my college trig teacher didn't use, and I find myself pawing back through the book to figure out what the terms mean before I can work with the numbers. Clint, like his dad, has a good head for math.

3-11-01

Peering up through the maze of hoses, electrical cables and transmission supports, I realized I would have to take off my coat to get my arm through the access space to release the heater hose clamp. I wasn't about to crawl out from underneath the car to do it. I was lying completely under the van, my feet pointing toward the rear bumper. This minivan is designed to be easy to step into for the fine ladies in skirts. Translated for the backyard mechanic this means you better not have a beer gut if you want to get under the car. I do have a slight beer gut due to my new sit down job and my bad eating habits. I was also wearing my warm coat to protect against the chilly March wind. I could clearly see the hose clamp...I began working my hand out of the jacket. It stuck and I paused under the car, pinned as if in a straight jacket and pondered hollering for my wife to get another jack to free me. But the thought of our neighbor coming over to help, with his weight lifter pecs and a corvette in the garage was too frightful to consider. I lifted my shoulders until my body was pressed up against the bottom of the car and inched my coat off my shoulders. It stuck in the mud and pine needles that masquerades as our front yard. I tried walking my fingers up the sleeve, but the removable lining made my efforts laughable. This is too painful to write about. I got it off, released both heater clamps and called a lunch break.
     Yesterday I spent 8 hours replacing the front brake rotors on the van. The dealer had test driven it and pronounced warped rotors. His solution was a $400 visit to the service department. I replaced them for $66. I was a little doubtful the rotors were bad, but after test driving it this morning I realized he was right. It stopped very smoothly with no vibration at all. I am trying to catch up on all the chores I neglected while working my way though college. My climbing buddy Dave just called from San Diego. He got a job offer down their. Looks like I'll be looking for a new partner this summer.
     Yesterday I stopped by a new gallery called 1art.com where a friend of mine has a show. Her paintings were nice, but I was quite taken with the work of the Russian painter who owns the gallery. He paints in the manner of the old masters and has quite a large web site as well. We had an interesting talk about art and the internet. He is one of the most talented realist painters I have ever met. The colors in his still lifes are breathtaking. Photography pales in comparison to art of this caliber.

3-9-01

My quiet little lunchtime spot is getting busier. As luck would have it, I am sitting beside the path where my co-workers do their lunch hour run. Yesterday, two programers ran by and waved. Today, a programmer ran by with one of my bosses. They didn't see me on the way out, but came back through and stopped to check on my progress. My boss hadn't seen the drawing yet and seemed to like it. He had some funny things to say about how we ought to animate it in Flash. He apologized later for "getting in my space" as he put it, but I honestly didn't mind, as it was time to head back anyway. It's always a bit awkward, mixing art that I do for pleasure with work. Or at least, it used to be in printing, where there was no room for art amongst the greasy presses. Now that I'm in the Design industry, I'll have to get used to putting my ideas out there. I would like to think that the drawing I do for pleasure on my lunch hour and at home could escape public scrutiny, but I'm probably dreaming. People inevitably are drawn to artists. We are the picture makers in a species that has always cherished them although cherished might be too strong a word. While painting on location, I have noticed that out of 20 people, 19 will walk right on by. The 20th person will stop, and if the piece is going well, they pause and stare in amazement. It's as if I had pulled a white rabbit out of my ear. They can feel the magic of something bigger than ourselves happening on my little piece of paper.
     I have to work on cars again this weekend. They cooling system hoses on our 4 year old van have served honorably for a hundred thousand miles. I plan to put on a complete set of new hoses tomorrow as well as new front rotors. Ford wanted $400 dollars to replace the warped rotors. I can do it for $66. Ideally I should put on rebuilt calipers while I am in there, but I'll have to wait and see how bad they look. That'll be another $100 in parts if I need them.

3-6-01

Sketched again on my lunch hour. There is a quiet little park right downtown built out over the top of the freeway overlooking Puget Sound and the Tacoma Tideflats. I can walk there in 5 minutes to a sunny little corner where the city has erected a statue of an early logger. It is slightly more than life size and quite charming. At first, I was intimidated to draw it, rusty as I was at figures. But I convinced myself that it would be good practice, win or lose...and what did I have to lose anyway? As I draw, I can see people working in the buildings adjoining the park. No one has noticed me yet, and I hope it stays that way. I don't draw worth beans when I get a crowd. Off in the distance I could see Mt. Rainier standing proudly with its thin mantle of winter snow. This unseasonably warm weather makes me consider heading up there to paint. I am also working every night on a new still life featuring some white objects. I'm about 3 hours into it and still wondering whether to tear it up and start from scratch.
     I've been doing a lot of work on the PDA web site. Now, our customer is asking us to expand on the earlier 30 page site I built for a Palm Pilot. I have pretty much abandoned the earlier site in favor of building a completely new version, with another waiting in the wings. It's simple enough that I can work pretty fast, and I'll need to...this one is getting big.

3-3-01

Talked to dad in Olympia yesterday on my cell phone while inching through the homeward bound traffic over the Narrows bridge. They waited out the earthquake upstairs in the old family home on the East Side of Olympia. They are only 10 miles from the epic center which was at Nisqually Wildlife Refuge-scene of many of my landscape paintings. After the shaking stopped, they went downstairs and found a few small knickknacks had fallen off shelves and broken, but nothing valuable lost. They have quite a lot of family heirloom china on shelves and in cabinets that survived without damage. Some of it is over a hundred years old and has doubtless been though many earthquakes. Grandmas' father was a banker who started a glass company in Oakland, California and became quite wealthy. Whatever money is still in the family is thanks to him. Something far more valuable that came down though the family is the love and common sense, although I could have done without the allergies and the bow legs, but I guess one has to take the good with the bad. Several miles south of our house, toward the epic center in Nisqually, some of Lisa's school friends had their chimneys fall over. Here at the house, our only casualty was a wooden statue dad brought back from Germany. I am gluing the head back on as I type this.
     I've been hearing a grinding, scraping noise from my old beater when I brake. Yesterday, I finally realized it was the front brakes. My "let everything slide until I finish college" attitude has carried over into everyday life. Now that I'm making a little more money I get to spend it all on fixing things that wore out. Today I will be outside slapping $20 new pads on the badly scored rotors. The '82 Toyota Tercel requires the rotors to be turned on the vehicle and if they have to be replaced, the bearings go also and that rings in at around $500 dollars. The job is beyond the capabilities of a back yard mechanic. That car is only worth a few hundred but needs over a thousand dollars worth of work:

• front brakes, done right-$500
• New exhaust system, engine to bumper-$300
• Rebuilt carburetor-$350
• Rear axle spring supports-$400 or several days searching junkyards
• new engine?...230,000 on the original but still water tight

I was talking to one of our programmers about holding on to old cars. He felt pretty much as I did...hang on as long as you can with the minor bills, and save the big money for something better. I must have cabin fever. My life seems like nothing more than going to work and paying bills. Clint said he might want to try a little rockclimbing at a practice rock in Tacoma tomorrow.