the ongoing saga of my job 4 Comments

Snow Day!

In the nearly five years I’ve worked for Sky, I don’t think I have ever had a snow day. An official one, anyway.

Last night, I called work to let them know that I would be under a two-hour delay, and would be in at 10am, barring any further weather developments. This morning, my supervisor called to let me know that Lucas County is under a Level 3 snow advisory, and that Sky is closed — for the morning, anyway. I’m supposed to confirm with our Status Line between now and noon to see whether things have changed, although it looks like we’re still under a Level 3.

I haven’t seen drifts like this in years. A plow came down our street yesterday evening; this morning, you wouldn’t even be able to tell there was a road there if you didn’t know (and if the mailboxes didn’t tip you off). The mail didn’t show up yesterday until 5:30pm, and the substitute mail chick nearly got her mail truck stuck two houses down from us.

If the Status Line says we’re opening for the afternoon, I’m going to call in and use a half day of personal time. Screw that. I don’t even know if the snow emergency will have abated by the time Aaron has to go in to work tonight. I’m glad he stayed home last night; I wasn’t comfortable with letting him go out with the roads the way they were yesterday.

Being that I’m officially allowed to be home from work… this isn’t bad. Once I have to start driving in it again, though, I’m going to lose my Talcott-ish love for the snow and go back to being my typical, winter-hating self.

memories 9 Comments

Dr. Timothy D. King, 1949-2007

Timothy D. King 57, of Bowling Green, Ohio died Friday (February 9, 2007) at Wood County Hospital. He was born July 3, 1949 in Cheverly, Maryland to Thomas & Annie (Kilburn) King. He was married to Patricia (Brown) on December 19, 1970; they were married for thirty years.

He is survived by his sons, David (Hillary) of Chicago and Brian of Denver; daughter, Ellen King of Bowling Green; former wife and close friend Patricia; brother, William (Patty) of Piedmont, Ca.; and special friend Carol Berman of Orchard Park, N.Y.

Mr. King was the Associate Director of Residence Life at B.G.S.U. He received his BA from Macalester College, Master’s (1973) & PHD (1978) from the University of Minnesota. He was a leader with Cub Scout pack #358 and a member of the Maumee Valley Unitarian Universalist Congregation. He was an avid cook, a loving father and was known throughout the community for his generosity and witty humor.

(read the full obituary at Dunn Funeral Homes)

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geekspeak 2 Comments

A Productive Morning

This morning’s accomplishment: the majority of a CSS layout for my new portfolio. It still needs navigation, which will be in the lower left of the screen, and my logotype in the lower right. For the most part, though, the basic framework is up.

Just thought I’d share. OK, back to work. Maybe I’ll get the dynamic display thingie working before I tackle the navigation, as it’s been a while since I coded pop-up layers/divs for menus.

Update, 6:15pm: I got my PHP/SQL displaying everything but the “keywords” I plugged in. I have a table that lists all the technologies and/or software used for a project; for instance, the LSM site has as keywords PHP, MySQL, HTML/XHTML, and CSS. Once I threw that keywords table into the mix, it totally screwed up all of my logic. I think I have some more ideas up my sleeve before I go calling for help (to Sheryl and Dan and whoever else knows and cares), but this has really been harshing my mellow this afternoon.

Apart from that, though, it works! Holy shit.

Update, 7pm: After a 30-minute, unrelated phone chat with Dan, I implemented one of my brainstorms, and it appears to work. Yay for arrays! Now, I just need to figure out how to put commas between the array elements… later. Details come later. For now, making the damn thing work in the first place is top priority.

geekspeak

Today’s Coding Accomplishment

Today’s accomplishment: making the beginnings of a photo gallery on the LSM site. Compares a table of events to a table of photos, lists the events where there are photos, links to a page of thumbnails and descriptions for said event, and those links open pop-up windows with larger versions of each photo.

For seasoned codeheads, this is no big whoop. For me, it’s applying what I’ve learned in Visual Basic for Applications and Microsoft Access at work to PHP and SQL at home. And there are still things I need to learn and investigate, like the imagecopyresampled() function that could automatically make the thumbnails from the full-sized images. Hmm.

This weekend? E-mailing the owners of the broken Frontpage site and offering my services for a pittance. I need the experience, and I’m actually kind of excited about taking on a new project. As long as they understand that it won’t be done super-quick; I have other things that take precedence, like my portfolio and prior commitments to LSM and my contracting job (if it ever gets started). I’ll let you know how it all pans out.

the ongoing saga of my job

Personal Improvement

I’m glad that I’ve finally reached a point in my life where I can summon some anger and determination to excel, where in years past I would have sunk into depression and given up for the time being. This is a step in the right direction.

I’m going to go start working on this now, while I have candles brewing upstairs, preparing to earn a big ol’ twelve bucks for me tomorrow at work. Yee-haw.

When I’m not working on either of those things, I’ll be visiting Cameron Moll‘s site for sources of inspiration influence.

I’m still so fucking fragile. At least I’m dealing with it in the proper manner now.

Update, 8:45pm: The SQL database backend of my new portfolio site is complete, apart from detailed descriptions of my work. I will now use all of my willpower to make it work *before* I make it pretty.

Update, 9:30pm: I’ve got a nice While loop happening now, and I’ve managed to make a dynamic (but unlovely) list of the work I plan to showcase in my updated portfolio. Unfortunately, I completely forgot about my candle wax melting upstairs; fortunately, it wasn’t at a critical point where forgetting about it was a Bad Thing™.