12-30-00

Let me say right at the start: I love dogs. I grew up with dogs and even bought one for our family several years ago. I researched breeds in the library and settled on a Corgi. My big mistake was buying one from a large, well known breeder. The woman didn't have small children around her house and the dog discovered immediately that my 4 year old daughter was easily intimidated. I returned the dog to the breeder the morning I woke up to find Lisa on the kitchen table with the dog barking below. We still wanted a good pet and somehow I ended up with Birdy, a cockatiel with an attitude. But nothing beats a well raised dog for a good long term pet. Both my brother and my sister have small variations on sheep herding dogs, I can't remember the breed. They don't bark and are extremely good around a house with small children. Sue was raised with cats and doesn't want a dog, especially after the trouble with the Corgi.
    Where I run into trouble with dogs is when people buy large guard dogs and raise them with excessive violence, then let them run free. Because of their size and strength, they easily intimidate most of the children and retired walkers in the neighborhood. Within 6 months, they are out on the road, prowling their "territory" most of the day. That's all fine and good, except when their territory happens to be part of my aerobic bicycling circuit. I seem to be the only person exercising on this road who cares enough to train these large german shepards and rottweilers to stay within their property lines. The owners are seldom seen, probably working long hours, commuting to the big bucks in Seattle. I've tried a wide array of dog control methods. I started with rocks, but once I missed with all the rocks I could carry, I had to do some fast retreating. Next I bought a 15 dollar can of pepper spray designed for grizzly bears. What they don't tell you in the sporting goods stores is that the stuff is only good at ranges under 5 feet. It also only lasts for about 6 bursts. If you happen to be circling around and around on a bicycle, waiting for the animal to bite your leg as you aim the pepper spray, you may loose track of the wind direction like I did and get a nice whiff of grizzly deterrent.
    Next I bought a little plastic bb gun (see dog wars ) for twenty dollars. This amazing little battery powered air soft bb gun shoots plastic bb's on full auto. I got some reasonably good control of the animals with this gun until they realized that the plastic bb's didn't hurt. For my Christmas present to myself I bought a semi automatic Gamo P-23 bb pistol. This cool little gun uses Co2 canisters for propellant and shoots 10 bb's as fast as you can pull the trigger. Several years ago I bought a similar Co2 pistol from a different manufacturer that died in a month. We were not aware that one cannot leave the air cannister in the gun overnight. When we returned the gun, the clerk told us, as he exchanged it for a bb pump rifle, that the constant pressure destroys the rubber seals. We taught Clint gun safety with that air rifle. But a rifle is not practical bicycle accessory. Today I took the new Gamo bb pistol with a full magazine and a fresh air cartridge. When I saw the german shepard prowling the road up ahead, I stopped, screwed in the air cannister, flipped the safety to off and pedaled into battle. The dog didn't like the looks of my right hand. He could tell I was holding something he wasn't going to like as I pedaled up the steep hill towards his "territory". He backed off, barking furiously until he was standing just inside his property line. His buddy, the rottweiler came up to join the fun. As usual, no humans were in sight on this sparsely populated country road. Just me and the dogs, the way I like it. I circled around a bit, hoping to irritate them enough to come out into the road where they would be fair game. They were very cautious, I think some of the other exercisers have been assisting me in the education of these two brutes. They stepped out into the road briefly, almost tentatively to see if they could scare me off. I immediately shot off a couple bb's and they hightaled it back to the far end of the property. They definitely knew what a bb gun sounded like. On the way back, I was hoping for more action, but alas, the were both cowering a hundred feet away down the long driveway by the house, barking half-heartedly. A couple more trips and I won't even need to carry the gun.

12-27-00

Christmas is over already and I was just getting the spirit. I was pretty much broke this month until I sold a painting to a new friend the day before Christmas. He had purchased my paintings in the past and wondered why I wasn't in the galleries this season. Fortunately I put my business card on the back of every painting I sell. He called me, picked a painting off this web site and paid me in person when we met Christmas eve. Now, I have a little cash to spend and Christmas is over.
    Monday at work was a little rough, but Tuesday, today (actually Wednesday) was cool. I and the other web designer wrapped up a huge rework of a site designed by a different firm. The people who did the site built it for 1024 x 768 screen resolution using all font tags without any CSS. To make it even more difficult, they have 3 different colors on the link text, in 3 different font sizes with the links showing generally as white, even after they've been visited, unless they are yellow, or bold....yeah, a real head scratcher. After we finished reworking that site I sliced up another .psd (Photoshop interface) and built a lovely index page with mouseovers. Dreamweaver and I are getting along a lot better after a month of practice. It's a pretty awesome wysiwyg html editor. I still spend a lot of time in code, but Dreamweaver even makes that easier. You highlight the part of the page that has the problem, press f10 to bring up the html and bingo, there is the html highlighted at the problem. It's pretty cool to have a job I look forward to getting up for.

12-25-00

Christmas day is here. We made the usual trip to Sue's parents across town on Christmas eve. I've never really gotten all that comfortable with her family. I suppose that isn't too unusual given all the stories told about in laws. Her mom and dad are wonderful people...but her brother and my nephews....they don't seem to have an awful lot going on. This time they sat in front of the TV and watched a stupid adult cartoon, Bart Simpson or King of the Hill. My idea of a holiday gathering is the family gathering around to talk about the year. I sat over in the kitchen with Sue, her mom and her sister-in-law. Over at the TV, they were having a grand time, guffawing and shouting. Do I seem a little stiff here? I'm sorry, I thought it was tasteless.
    Today, down in Olympia at my dads, the TV was upstairs in the TV room where it belongs. We stayed downstairs, classical music on the stereo, talking about whatever came to mind. I've always respected my parents for the way they put family first and TV last, or not at all. I can remember begging my parents for a TV. They wouldn't buy us one until we were in 5th grade and even then our watching time was severely restricted. We had to create our entertainment from scratch. It's one of the reasons I turned out artistic. Our kids beg us for more TV time now. A common source of argument around our house is how much TV time is too much. Sue doesn't really care. Like her brother, she will happily veg out for hours on the couch with the kids. Now that I am home in the evenings, I am trying to ween them off the tube before their minds turn completely to jello.
    Clint drove all the way to Olympia and back in the van. He did pretty well for his first trip on I-5. He drives very much like we do. I asked Sue later why he drives so well. She explained what I already knew, but hadn't really thought about. He has had excellent role models to watch and learn from. We are both accident free...knock on wood. He allows generous stopping distance at all times and looks carefully before he changes lanes or enters a road. Far too many drivers choose to get their thrills behind the wheel. We all need a little adrenaline rush now and then. I've always thought it made more sense to get my thrills away from cars. Car insurance is expensive. Adrenaline sports like rock climbing, skiing and rollerblading on hills are great tension relievers. Even regular exercise can get the gland pumping. Getting your ya ya's in a car is dangerous and expensive.

12-23-00

The snow was lousy today up at Paradise on Mt. Rainier. The four of us plus Lisa's friend Andrea went cross country skiing. It was our first trip of the year and we forgot some important things, like waxing the gliding portions of the skis so they wouldn't ice up in freezing rain conditions. On the down hills I could keep them clean. But anytime I stopped for longer than a minute they iced up and stopped sliding. Sue had lost track of where the mountaineering clothes were and let Lisa wear a cotton sweater under a school coat. Lisa got wet immediately and couldn't get her feet warm. All the rest of us were toasty while Lisa dropped about 8 years and began to whimper about her frozen feet. She wouldn't put on the warm balaclava I offered her, preferring instead to stand in the middle of the trail and cry.
    I eventually cottoned to the idea that she might be suffering from hypothermia. She was still resisting any assistance so I yanked off her wet coat and forced her into my thick down jacket, followed by my goretex parka. It has an excellent hood which I zipped up over her wet head to keep some warmth around her face. Teenagers are extremely fashion concious but it's a habit that can kill in the mountains. Sue gave Lisa her boot warmers and we headed back down the trail. In 15 minutes she had begun to warm up but we decided to make sure and climbed a half a mile toward Mazama ridge until she was roasting. When she had to take off the extra coats we knew we were out of trouble. Skiing back up the road was terrible. My skis would not stop icing up. I need to dig out our wax kit and give them the treatment.

12-22-00

Woke up from a dream at 1 AM. I was doing my usual nightmare routine of climbing something impossible. This time I had been climbing along the power lines strung underneath my old hometown bridge in Olympia. I don't remember why I was climbing the lines underneath, or why the bridge was as high as the Tacoma narrows. Regardless, I remember the satisfaction of successfully climbing the long span of wires between bridge towers. It got pretty tricky at the wire interchange where the spans intersected with the supports at the towers of the bridge. I had to switch between the wire approaching the tower and the wire leaving the tower. This involved hanging by one arm temporarily as I reached across with the other arm for the wire leading down from the tower intersection to the next long arc of the wire heading toward the following tower. My legs swung precariously as my arm muscles strained to make the transition, 500 feet above the water.
    I must have had some sort of contraption on a wheeled roller attached to a chair that coasted down the wire arcs, similar to the river crossing affair I used on the Icicle river years ago. But the wire intersection problem was passed using brute strength. In the dream I remember wishing I had worn clothes that blended better into the cement color of the bridge. The drivers on the bridge were gawking at me during the transitions and I heard a siren start up in the distance. As I reached the end of the bridge, aid cars were gathering above and I could see I was in for a spanking. I reached across to the safety of the last bridge support and stepped onto solid ground. The authorities were were racing down the steps toward me. I rushed over to the Temple of Justice and tried to lose myself in the long government corridors. The cops kept me in sight for quite a while as I raced down hallway after hallway, weaving in and out among the expensively dressed government workers thronging the hallways. Finally I reached the quickprint shop in the basement where I had a couple friends. They beckoned me toward a hidden loading dock door and promised to play dumb.
    The next part of the dream had one of the other designers at work making the same bridge crossing. His technique was a little different. He attached himself to the wires using a bungy cord and a curious automatic device that made the tower transition without manual assistance. The drawback to his method was the long stretch cycles in the bungy cord. I was down on the ground this time, watching him make the span. As he neared the safety of the far side the elastic in the bungy cord was springing him up and down in long, scary loops. I asked him what he wanted me to do. He shouted down at me to cut him loose, if I could reach him. The next time he came swooping down, I reached out, pulled him to the safety of the ledge and cut him free of the bungy with an old knife.

     At that point I woke up from the dream with heartburn. It never pays to go to bed at 9. As tired as I was, it seemed like the right thing to do. But here I am, 2 in the morning, sitting at the keyboard. We had another interface design session at work. (An interface design is a digital painting, usually created in Photoshop, that represents a possible look for a customers web site) Initially I did one design and the other more experienced designer did two. I had mixed feelings when I called the project manager over to look at my interface. On the one hand, I knew I needed an experienced eye for constructive criticism. On the other hand, this was my creation, how dare he tell me to change it. But as he studied my work, I reflected that this wasn't a lovely landscape I had whimsically interpreted with pastels. This interface represented a customers best hopes for reaching his target audience. My interpretation of his branding needs and existing advertising images could be entirely misguided. As it happened, our project manager came up with some excellent ideas. I worked on it for another few hours and changed it so much I had to create a version 2.
    Over the next couple days, in between working on other projects I continued to refine both of them, using my ideas, his ideas and the ideas of the other people in the shop who came to look over my shoulder. Even my boss, and the project manager decided to create their own interfaces, building on the earlier concepts to creat new looks, searching for an idea that would fit the clients needs. I know it sounds trite, but the room sizzled with creativity. By the time of the conference call to the client we had 5 interfaces for him to choose from. We sent him an email with the link to the secret site where they were posted on the web.
    The four of us, my boss, the project manager, myself and the other designer all leaned toward the speaker phone, listening intently for his reaction to reach us over the thousands of miles of phone wire. Had we done good? Had we screwed up? Had we completely missed the boat....it was friendly but tense. It took a while for the large interface images to download into his monitor. His reactions were positive, but guarded. When we asked him which one he initially preferred, my heart lifted as he named mine. He preferred one of the variations of my design done by the project manager for the slightly different positioning of his logos. But he preferred the colors and overall look of my second version. I was very pleased. I still have serious doubts about my ability to think creatively in the digital realm. It was reassuring to hear a customer pick my piece out of a group of five and say " That's the one I like ".

12-20-00

Here's a little script I wrote for my boss. We were slow one morning and I asked him what to work on. He knows I like JavaScript and asked me to see if I could make images act like radio buttons. I made it work on a short page, but a bigger page broke it after the first refresh. Today D., one of our programmers, showed me how to rewrite it using a javascript command in the place of the number sign in the link. It seems to work perfectly now. I am getting better and better at building CSS files. Today I wrote a .css file for an existing web site that currently uses font tags to color 4 different link styles in four different colors and sizes. The tough part was making it work in both browsers.

12-18-00

Paul died. I just found out yesterday. I had known his stomach cancer had returned from a long remission, but I had no idea he died. I actually have been wondering why he hadn't replied to a couple emails. Yesterday, I ran into one of my old printing bosses from the 1970s while shopping at Safeway. I hadn't seen my old boss in 14 years. In the course of catching up, I asked S.S. if he had heard anything from Paul, saying that he hadn't replied to a couple emails.

"Hadn't you heard?" he asked as I shook my head in disbelief, "He died about a year and a half ago. "

I met Paul in the Tacoma Mountaineers in 1976. Sue and I had met in the Mountaineers Scramble course the year before. We'd hiked all summer and winter and realized we needed to learn how to use climbing ropes. Paul signed up for Basic Climbing for the same reasons and the three of us soon became regular climbing partners. We climbed every weekend spring, summer and fall for 3 years before he suffered a head injury on a construction site. After that, he climbed only rarely, always worrying about re-opening his skull fracture. But we stayed in touch, seeing him frequently at the cabin he built in Leavenworth where we would stay when the campgrounds in Leavenworth filled up. He brought over a succession of wives and girlfriends to join us in the old cabin on the hill. He was at our wedding in '79 and watched my kids grow up on as we joined him, winter and summer at his cabin. We met accidentally about 4 years ago in a camera store downtown and enjoyed a latte together, talking about old times. Seeing him around Tacoma was difficult since he lived on Vashon Island and a casual visit involved a ferry ride both ways.

A couple years ago I called him to get his advice on changing careers. He had secured a plum of a job at Boeing, using his contracting background and CAD design skills on large installation projects for the huge airplane company. He was very supportive, and came up with some excellent suggestions tailored to my situation. He suggested I get into a field that used my printings skills, my growing computer skills and my art background. He suggested I build on what I knew already rather than re-career in a field that was entirely new to me. It was excellent advice that I took to heart. A year later I was still mulling over whether to go to college or not when he sent me a disturbing email saying that he had stomach cancer. There followed a flurry of emails during which he described the treatments he was receiving and his eventual remission. He got better and got a job in Tacoma. We talked on the phone a few times. He promised to drop by work on his way home, but somehow never got around to it. Then I got another bad email. The cancer had returned, this time manifesting itself as a grapefruit sized tumor in his stomach.

Here is his last email to me, dated summer of '99:

I didn't know how to respond to his email. His problems were so far beyond any place I had ever been...I suggested he might want to try one of those cancer survivor groups in the hopes of getting more intelligent support than I could provide. I invited him again to stop by the print shop where we could talk, since he was still working just downtown. That was the last I ever heard from him. I started school that fall and had my hands full with working and going to school. I sent him a couple emails but got no reply. I was too poor to call him, and apparently too poor a friend to care. Now he's gone.

There will never be another friendly visit out on the deck of his cabin, sharing a beer and swapping climbing stories. My old dream about getting him back into climbing is definitely over. He was so vital, so full of life. He was the best climbing partner I ever had. Sue and he used to sit down on the ledge together as I labored up routes that were far over my head and heckle me. I'd be stuck in a crack, sweating tears of blood as one or the other of them patiently belayed me an hour or more. To fight off the boredom they'd invent long convoluted stories about a bald headed climber in town we called the martian. Periodically they'd holler up bits and peices of the story to me, exploding into great gales of laughter over their sick jokes. And then there was the time that all three of us went swimming in the icicle river and Sue's bikini top got lost in the current. Several times while Sue was working, Paul and I took road trips to Smith Rocks, once for a 9 days, learning the craft of hand jamming. We shared the common bond of climbing and a careful eye for the refined female form. I could go on and on with memories. Those were some of the best, most uncomplicated years of our lives. I can't believe he's gone.

12-17-00

Woke up with a headache this cold and wet Sunday morning. I think it was from spending my Saturday at the computer instead of out getting exercise. Sue and I'd planned a walk but the first storm of the year was whipping the trees around and pouring down rain. I spent the day working some Javascript tutorials. Later I wrote a script that made images act like radio buttons. It works great in a short html page, but when I put it on this page it doesn't work after the first click. I finally gave up on the Logitech trackball. It worked just fine, but the action was uncomfortable compared to the Kensington Expert Mouse I use at work. The Expert Mouse rolls on 3 stainless steel bearings with an ease of use and precision that is simply unmatched. So now I am the proud owner of 2 Expert mouses, one at work and one at home. Sue has been calling around searching for a good price on Clint's Christmas present, a personal minidisc player recorder. At $200 it is too expensive for a present, but he plans to pay for over half of it with his own money earned doing yardwork for one of Sues friends. The rest he will fund with the cash he gets from us and his grandparents. I am kind of leery about spending my first paycheck on high priced gifts. We are still digging out from underneath the mountain of debt we incurred while I worked my way through technical college. If the cars hold out, we should be able to pay off the Visa cards by summer.

On Thursday and Friday at work they showed me the procedure for converting a signed off Photoshop design to html. A lot of it was stuff I'd done before, but not necessarily in that order. It was fun to put it all together, bouncing back and forth between Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Netscape and IE5. They want their designs to look good on any screen resolution which means we have to define most of the tables and data cells using percents. It gets tricky when there are horizontal graduated tints involved with stretching data cells. I must have it pretty bad. Here it is Sunday and I am still thinking about work. The sun is peeking out, time for some exercise.

12-13-00

Went on my first professional photo shoot yesterday. One of our graphic artists is designing a print piece for one of our customers. The client needed 4x5 transparencies of business people gathered around a table surrounded by the clients products. 4 of us from the office, plus one of the clients people, dressed up in suits and posed around the table while the shots were taken over a 3 hour period. The artist, working with the professional photographer and the client had constructed a lovely stage lit by at least 10 flash triggered lights. They built the 50 foot square set in the bottom floor of an old building undergoing restoration downtown. When I first walked in, wearing my borrowed suit, I couldn't figure out where the shoot was. All I could see was bare concrete floors. Up above, the ceiling had been stripped to the beams. And what beams they were. Back when old growth trees were plentiful builders were able to use solid timbers for beams, as thick as needed. Some of them were over 18 inches thick.

Walking deeper into the frigid unlit room, I saw lights at the far end, 50 feet away. The lights got brighter as I walked and soon I stepped between a couple carpeted office dividers into a lit stage. They had done a cunning job of constructing a complete beautifully lit, elegant conference room in the middle of the unheated, empty floor. The photographer had a 4x5 camera up at the top of a tall cherry picker ladder. We proceeded to slowly freeze in our thin suits while the photographers crew, the artist and the client carefully arranged the stage, shooting polaroid after polaroid before finally getting the right look. After all the preparation shooting the 6 or 7 transparencies was an anticlimax. I was glad to get back to the warmth of the office. That night, I tried to study up on a CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) problem we have been dealing with. I got so wrapped up in research and testing I didn't get to bed until midnight. I paid the price today, barely surviving my 8 hour shift. Tomorrow I have to get up an hour and a half earlier for a dental exam. Not looking forward to that.

12-9-00

It is very cold out on this foggy Saturday morning. Only 3 of us are here this morning. Birdy doesn't really count so actually there are only 2 1/8 of us here. Clint is doing homework and I have been working through some basic tutorials in Illustrator. My second week on the job as a web designer went about as well as my first. There is still a ton of room for improvement, but I am getting faster at everything. Dreamweaver is no longer an obstacle for me. It has some annoying tendencies to think too hard that I am still adapting to. I spent about a full day working on my first interface in Photoshop. That was very challenging and fun at the same time. I think I will spend most of the rest of my spare time this weekend working some tutorials in Photoshop. We have at least 2 Photoshop wizards at work, and maybe more. Clint and I will have to do some driving today. He needs more hours at the wheel for his drivers education class. Sue and Lisa are out shopping again as usual. I have been searching for a decent mouse to replace the Kensington Expert track ball mouse I took to work. It has a very large (almost tennis ball sized) ball that rolls on steel bearings with a precision that is unmatched on the market. A week ago I bought a logitech track ball with a ball one half the size for $30. Because the ball was so small, I couldn't make it draw a straight line by marching my fingers along it's surface. On Wednesday I returned the Logitech and bought a Kensington Turbo Ball for $49. Instead of rolling on three stainless steel bearings, the large ball rolls on tiny plastic points. It gets its directional control from two rubber rollers that stay in contact with the ball using safety pin like springs. I could not draw circles with it. I am still not sure if the springs had lost their tension due to the way the ball was packaged for shipping or if it was simply a software conflict due to the USB hookup. The drivers on the touch pad for this laptop seem to get overwritten in a heartbeat by any new mouse software I install.

I took the Kensington Turboball back on Friday, planning to exchange it for the Kensington Expert Mouse that I know works on any computer. Instead, I took a chance on Logitechs $60 top of the line track ball, the "Trackman Marble FX." Initially it wouldn't draw a circle either. It appears that most of my problem has been driver and software related. I completely uninstalled the Logitech, then reinstalled it for the Serial port. I had brought my Kensington Expert Mouse home from work for the weekend. I plugged them both into the laptop together, one in the mouse port and one in the serial port for side by side comparisons. By tinkering with the acceleration speed in the Logitech software I was able to make it work almost as well as the Kensington for $20 less. One advantage to the Logitech is that it's programmable 4 button software package functions on my laptop through the serial port letting me plug in an exterior keyboard. Another plus is the lack of rollers on the trackball itself. It rolls on three hard plastic points. The red ball is covered with tiny black spots that are read by some sort of infrared beam behind a plastic window. In other words, it is very low maintenance. You never have to pull the ball out to scrape dirt off the rollers. The software package lets me adjust the motion speed and acceleration as well as assigning function to the buttons like lock scroll, lock drag, minimize, browser forward and back, etc.

In rereading this entry, it sounds like my life revolves around computers. It's kind of hard to do anything else except get exercise without any money. I spent all the money from my last paycheck on my old job on bills. I just missed payday starting my new one. By the time I get my first paycheck on my new job this coming Friday, I will have gone three weeks without a check. We have been wanting to go cross country skiing, but Clint outgrew his gear for about the 5th time and there is no money to replace it until I get paid. I need a break from computers. Think I'll change the oil in the cars.

12-7-00

Interface Design took up most of my day today. It was a welcome change from the html work I've been wallowing in. After the first thirty minutes I spent the entire day in Photoshop. The first hour and a half I spent surfing around, checking out the web sites done for other businesses in his field, borrowing images temporarily to show the customer how we could make his site look, since he hasn't gotten his images to us yet. Actually he did give us a few, but not the inner page images. As I have said before, I plan to be very vague about what I am working on, and for whom, in order to protect the confidentiality of our clients. This particular subject matter bothered me a bit at first, since I would never buy the product. However, it has become quite mainstream in the nineties and is actually rather artistic in nature.

I worked my ideas for quite a while before looking at the interfaces from the other designer working on the project. I wanted mine to be as original as possible compared to his to give the client a range of styles to pick from. It reminded me a lot of painting in traditional media. I had the same feelings of "Oh, I can never do this..." that I get whenever I start a new painting at my easel. But, just like I do there, I plowed right through the self doubt and started throwing pixels. My initial design was bright but almost garishly tacky. I went out for a long walk on my lunch hour through the hilly downtown area. Even though the fog never lifted all day, I ended up walking in my shirt from climbing up and down the hills. When I got back, a couple guys gathered around to see what I had come up with. They were very supportive and had some excellent suggestions. Over the afternoon I toned it down some and tightened up the details. It is one of the best interfaces I have done yet. What is really cool is, I was getting paid to be creative. It looks like this could be an awesome job!

12-3-00

"Look down there", the kid said, pointing at a dark stain on the concrete a foot in diameter; "that's where his face landed". The skatepark was rapidly changing from dusk to night as a harsh winter wind swept through the clearing where the $250,000 concrete park had been built. But I could distinctly make out the brown stain near the small tabletop jump where my sons riding buddy had injured himself. I pulled my thin coat closer to fight off the chill and looked around for my son, Clint. He had left a couple disturbing messages an hour earlier on my machine as I slumbered through an afternoon nap. Sue was off being miss soccer mom with Lisa. He didn't know how to reach her at the soccer facility and I wasn't answering the phone. His friend had just been carted off in an ambulance with a broken nose, his lip ripped open from his teeth to his nose and a tooth broken out at the root with blood everywhere. I could tell from his messages that he was in over his head. His young mans voice, ordinarily so cavalier, sounded a trifle shakey.

When I got to the bike shop where he said he would be in the message, he was gone. The mechanics knew about the accident as did the crowd of bikers around the front door. Two of the little pierced and tatooed criminals rode off to scout around for me. I wandered around as well, eventually ending up at the skate park where they pointed out the blood patch. I kept thinking that it could just as easily have been my son who was at Mary Bridge Hospital. Clint might not have gotten hurt as badly since he wears knee pads, gloves and a helmet. Still, it's a dangerous sport, no doubt about it. Clints buddy has always been a daredevil, even more so since his parents divorce last year. Getting him to wear a helmet is like pulling teeth. Before Sue drove them to the skatepark he had called Clint, asking him if he knew where his helmet was. They fine riders at the park without helmets. He never found it and was riding without one when he crashed. Later on in the evening Sue put on Clint's helmet and lay face down on the floor, banging her head up and down to see if the helmet would have prevented the accident. Because the helmets brim sticks out in front of the face, it looks like it could have minimized some of the damage. Although a bad rugburn on the chin would be inevitable. I asked Clint if he would wear a face guard style helmet if we bought him one. Naw dad, that wouldn't be cool...We should be happy he wears one at all he says.

12-1-00

Sue and I drove to work together this morning. For many people, that is an everyday kind of thing. I haven't done it in 8 years. It was fun sharing my morning commute with my favorite person. It's the little things like that I have missed over the last decade of working nights or swing. My first week of web design went a lot better than I had expected. First weeks in printing tend to be fairly harrowing. Over the last decade of printing, each new job I took was a step up the ladder to a larger, more complex press where all the controls were new and foreign. On my last day on the job printing I counted all the adjustable knobs, levers,buttons and screws that I had to understand and use everyday. At 180 and counting I lost interest. And that was on a small single color press compared to some of the presses I have stepped onto where there were up to four printing units. Machines like that cost upwards of $250,000 dollars. Waiting for a new guy to figure out what all the controls do is a frightening thing for management to bear.

Anyway, all my worrying about changing careers was a big waste of time. This week I have mostly been trouble shooting bad links and font display problems on an existing site. Next week I may get to do some Photoshop interface design work. It's hard to believe we don't have a president yet. If those guys were real men, they would flip a coin.

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