Knowing What I Know Now

This itouch (or as the snobbier Mac purists insist on calling it, the iPod Touch - though it's clear they can't yet agree on capitalization) could grow on me -- however, it does have one flaw. The wi-fi. Well, the wi-fi works fine, no question. But considering that I work in a rural area where the Department of Energy has made significant investments in fiber optics, I have no wi-fi options for the three hours I use to commute to work every day. Of course, the itouch is more than Internet access, but for the other primary feature -- music -- I already have that trusty ipod that's already beat up enough for the bus. And the laptop, though heavier than this thing, is handier for text processing and movies. I'm not ungrateful for the itouch by any means, it's just that I'm typically a little slower than most to see the utility of such things.

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Soooper Geeenyussss

Wile E. Coyote, managing a publication.

Blogger's note: Yes, it's class time again. More obscure postings here, reflecting the musings I make in class -- this time, it's on publications management. Expect many pontifications.

My first reaction to this question was this: I have no publications management experience.

Then I realized, sitting here at my desk, surrounded by the fruits of my publications management labors, that I am grossly in error. The error of my thinking: Limiting what a “publication” is. Publications are more than books, magazines, artsy-fartsy catalogs, coffee table things and other folderol that get magically produced, printed and sold. The procedures I write and edit at work are publications – they’re published when the final product is posted to our internal document server, when they’re printed in the field, when they’re read by their intended audiences. The web sites I work on – uncharted.net, my own personal blog – are publications in their own right, and must be managed in a publications management sort of way. I want them, after all, to look good, to be useful, entertaining, inspiring, adequate, whatever adjective you may choose. My error in thinking about what a publication is hinged suddenly on the temporary, short-term nature of the publications I work with. A long-term thing like a book, with many pages, colors, photographs, and the like, felt more like a publication than the stuff I do every day. Wrong. Each thing I work on is a publication, I said to myself, thwacking my forehead in exasperation (figuratively; we try to avoid forehead-slapping where I work). So what if some of the things I work on have a shelf-life of a week, a month, or, in a few cases, hours, before the next iteration has to come out? Each one has to be managed with care to make sure it does what the client wants it to do. Even when the client is me.

But, there are aspects of publications management I know I can learn: Wrangling with those long-term projects. Budgeting.

So, publications management, to me, is this: Working with clients to find out what they want their publication to do, to say, to mean, and then delivering on that. Working with the people who will use the publication to find meaning the clients may not consider. Plus all that numbers stuff. Yeek.

First Itouch Blog Entry

Well, we'll have to see if this works.

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9 AM

For those of you unfamiliar with LDS Church doctrine, one of the church's truths is that every year the congregation you meet with changes its meeting time. This year, we've gone from meeting at 1 pm to meeting at 9 am, which has its benefits but also its various pitfalls.

First of all, when the alarm goes off at 7 am (alarms? On a Sunday morning?) it's still dark outside, this time of year. Reminds Michelle of waking our daughter for school a few months ago. Lexie was indignant that Mom was "waking her up at midnight!" to go to school. Michelle explained that it wasn't midnight, that it was, in fact, 7:30 am, and that it was time to go to school. Disbelieving her mother, Lexie looked out the window at the darkness still enveloping our little warty city and shrieked, "Then why is school starting at midnight?" That's how it was this morning. Dark as a black cat. Cold, too, five below zero, with the carbon monoxide alarm going off because the cold was driving the smoke DOWN the chimney, rather than up it.

(An aside: I used to laugh when Bill Cosby described, in one of his comedy routines, having to tell his children to use soap when they bathed. I don't see the humor in it now, as our oldest has now taken two baths this week without the benefit of soap.)

So the kids eat their breakfast while I go out to start up the van. Yes, it's only two blocks to church, but in this booger-freezing weather, walking to church simply isn't done.

But now we're home. Have been for nearly four hours. That means that, on our old schedule, we'd still be at church. I'm glad we're not.

Cul de Sac

When the local paper started running this comic strip, "Cul de Sac," I wasn't quite sure I liked it. I do now. While the strip doesn't quite take the puckish approach to childhood that "Peanuts" took, but the strip still does explore the odd little ins and outs of childhood through the eyes of the children. As with Charles Shulz' characters, these kids participate in the world adults have created without really understanding the whys of what they're doing, as in this sample strip here. I also appreciate that, like Schulz, Richard Thompson, the artist and author, allows his characters to be intelligent. They use big vocabularies. They think things through, logically, almost getting away from the life of adulthood towards which they're racing at light speed. Thompson has hit a good vibe with me here.

In reading Chuck Jones' autobiography Chuck Amuck, I've had a peek into what he considers comedy, and Richard Thompson certainly picks up on what he says. Comedy, Jones says, starts with sympathy with a character in any kind of situation. Since there are times even as an adult I don't understand the whys and wherefores of this adult world I'm supposed to be a part of, I can easily sympathize with a character who is obsessed with learning how to wink and whistle just for the fact of being able to do so, not because she understands why it's important. (And adults, watching her struggles, may not understand that in the kid's point of view that being able to whistle and wink are important as steps toward adulthood. This sentence is getting way convoluted.)

Sunrise over Ballerina

Originally, I had planned to use this drawing, "Sunrise over Ballerina," by Lexie, age 6, as either the last entry of 2008 or the first entry of 2009, but circumstances conspired against us and that entry did not take place in the timing I had hoped. So here it is now, Jan. 2nd. I still think it's a cute picture.

I have to make this entry a quick one. I've got a small bucket of grout curing upstairs as I type, and in about six minutes I have to head upstairs to apply it to the final joints in the bathroom. This morning, I completed installing the toilet and re-hung the doors. Neither needed an adjustment, which was my greatest fear, since I have no tools with which to adjust them. I'm thrilled with how the bathroom looks. It looks so much cleaner than with the old floor and cabinet.

I am fighting leaks, just like Richard Nixon, however. That's the trouble with plumbing, especially sink drains. Everything is all nice and happy with the old setup, but when you have to dismantle it to fix it or, as in this case, replace everything, there are always leaks. I hate them. I may have conquered them this morning, but I can't be sure. I go by the old Davidson Leak Test: Put a towel under the offending spots and tighten everything until the towel remains dry for at least six hours. Of course, with the nature of leaks, even this test is not foolproof, as I have had things look copacetic (damn James Michener for bringing that word back into my vocabulary) for a day or two and then suddenly it's Niagara Falls, Frankie Angel.

Well, the grout calls. Gotta go.

Happy New Year

For the curious, this is how the Davidsons spent their New Years Eve, right up to and past the point when midnight occurs and everyone is supposed to get so damned excited:

• Dad plays possum in bed up until shortly before 10 am as Mom and the kids make and prepare to eat breakfast. He emerges reluctantly but alertly from bed in time to eat two pancakes.
• Dad moutels (a Dutch word, forgive me on the spelling, I only know it phonetically, meaning putter or procrastinate) aobut the house before starting to grout the newly-laid bathroom tiles.
• The tiles get grouted. The family cleans up in preparation for a trip to Iona to celebrate the new year with two folks in their late sixties and early seventies. This is the kind of party family we are.
• We visit Lowe's to determine if they have a bathroom cabinet that will fit our needs. They do. We then go to Home Depot, return the defective carafe (cabinet, I mean) then go back to Lowe's to buy said cabinet.
• We then proceed to Wal-Mart where Michelle wanders around in desperation for fifteen minutes looking for the rest of us, while we drive aimlessly through the parking lot hoping she'll emerge from the store.
• We finally make it to Iona. We eat dinner.
• We watch the Spongebob Squarepants Movie.
• The kids go to bed, at approximately 10 pm.
• We watch something called "Speeders" on the television, while Michelle's parents go to bed.
• When fireworks begin exploding outside the living room window, we check our watches. It is indeed midnight. We yawn and go to bed.
  

Good News Despite Weak Economy

When Areva announced this summer that they would build a $2 billion uranium enrichment plant in Idaho, many in the area celebrated the good news. Then the economy went south, leaving many to wonder if the plant would be built at all. Today's announcement of the filing of building plans, however, is a good sign that the plant will go through, or, at least, has not been scuttled at this point.

There are a lot of nuclear nay-sayers out there. And they have good reason to say nay. We need to find solutions to the waste problems. But that's true with a lot of energy courses out there. So let's keep using nuclear, rather than shuttering it off beccause the solutions seem too difficult to reach. I'm willing to do the same with wind and solar power -- they have their weaknesses, thusfar in being able to produce massive amounts of power on the same size footprint as a nuclear power plant.

Tip No. 1: Don't Get Old

Spent a good portion of the day on my knees, either begging Michelle for forgiveness or laying tile in the bathroom. To relax when the tiling was done (grouting to be done tomorrow) I took the kids sledding. So if I'm feeling a bit tired and beat up tonight, it's justified.

Why Oh Why Oh Why Oh Why Oh Why?

Vacation was starting out so well. Then this week came.

Last night, Michelle idly asked, "So, were you planning on any home improvement projects while you're home this week?" The question caught me off guard, so all I could muster was a mumbled, "Yeah, sure," accompanied by my patent stunned bunny look. So today, we came home with about $500 worth of home improvement project materials -- tile, grout and a new cabinet for the upstairs bathroom. So my next few days are planned out for me.

Tonight, I've managed to get the old linoleum floor up, the toilet hauled out and the old sink and cabinet yanked out. I'm now surveying the expected water damage in a 30-year-old house owned by a series of people who weren't very handy with plumbing. I may just clean things up a bit and do some probing on the subfloor tomorrow just to make sure everything is peachy. Then, if I can manage it, I'll put down the Wonderboard and lay the tile tomorrow, leaving the grouting for Wednesday morning. I certainly hope that's how it works out, though we've already hit one project glitch -- we bought a 21-inch countertop but an 18-inch cabinet. So we've got to exchange the cabinet.

I did manage to accomplish what has become a rite of passage with any home improvement project -- I managed to find part of the debris -- in this case some trim wood -- that I could toss in the fireplace. I figure with the rest of the house watching as part of it goes up in a controlled flame that the house will decide to behave itself.