um. diablo ii arrived this morning. don't expect much activity here. in fact, don't even expect that i'll answer any email promptly either. check back monday. i might be done with it by then. 07:02 pm

i haven't been doing much surfing or writing lately. i'm in the middle of creating an auto-edit/update system for the portal. learning mysql & php. maybe it'll be done by the end of the week. maybe not. 09:58 am

it's so easy to forget that somewhere that is very far away physically is in fact very close on the web. someone emailed me from south africa. a friend had sent her to my site because of the same last name thing. not unusual. the odd part is that he discovered my site through a magazine called sa city life. i was number one on their list of must view sites. things like that weird me out. until i realize that really, they're just around the corner. 09:56 am

yay. my monitor is finally fixed. jason is picking it up right now. now if the dsl would get hooked up, i'd be a really happy camper. 01:09 pm

occasionally, i forget how energizing learning new stuff can be. learning mysql and php makes me work too much. even if it is on personal stuff. 09:22 am

in other exciting news, i've moved the portal into a database. if you're lucky and i'm feeling inspired enough to code it, you'll be able to edit your own entries. 09:20 am

at this moment, i think that there is nothing worse than a client ruining your design because they're too cheap to come back to you to make changes. i feel so deflated going to their newly launched site and discovering that they've taken a simple, elegant design and made it cheesy, tacky and disjointed. sigh. at least i've got the original files. 09:17 am

i resisted reading this article: this man can save your website until i'd seen it linked from about 5 different places. mostly because i thought it would be another designer talking about how shitty most websites are (yes, we know) and how he can make sites that aren't shitty. while there is a little of that on the first page of the article, the second page actually has useful tips on making good sites. things like "give the people what they're looking for", "if everything is important, then nothing is important", and "don't imprison your users". it's scary how obvious these things are, yet so overlooked. 03:34 pm

because of the hard plastic seat edges, aeron chairs are not exceptionally comfortable when you try to sit with legs crossed underneath. 02:38 pm

ned has been kind enough to save my sanity. PPPshar allows you to share a phone line. i've got access again! 11:08 am

another day of no updates and no net access. i'm alternating between blaming jason because he's doing work and taking up the phone line, and blaming dsl.net because they're taking so long to put in the dsl line. if it doesn't get put in soon, i think i'm going to go insane. 3 weeks on a shared dialup is driving me crazy, i'm being forced to find things to do that don't involve being online. digging out old computer games is my latest distraction. anybody remember stonekeep? 09:09 pm

after having very limited net access today, i finally get online for an hour, and jason is forcing me to go home. so, if you're irritated by the fact that there are no posts today, i'm sure he'd appreciate hearing your complaints. 09:09 pm

Your Customer Isn't An Idiot: Retail on the Web also from glish. you'd think that major e-commerce sites would have figured out these basics themselves. 06:48 pm

glish has collected quite an assortment of links on the second coming manifesto. if you're interested. 06:37 pm

i was right, a good night's sleep thoroughly restored my sense of complete godhood. now i have to wonder if i'll ever be able to reign in the out of control ego. 06:28 pm

at times like this, i wonder whether being totally disconnected from television and large media news sources is a bad thing. until i read taylor's site, i had no idea there were riots in la. is not knowing about something that noteworthy necessarily a bad thing? i've come to the conclusion that it's probably not a bad thing, since i don't even care enough to actually go to a news site and read the story. when i'm sitting at dinner and listening to people discuss television shows that i've never heard of, let alone seen, i'm not so sure. 06:25 pm

today has been stressful. not in the "i've got so much work to do, so i'm stressed" way, since i have no *work* per se to do, just fun little projects. but, in a "i have severe doubts about whether i am being remotely accurate in this estimate" way. it's for an exceptionally large site, which puts it at the high end of the range of what we can realistically handle. thus, i'm now in a "did i estimate too few hours? did i estimate too many hours? can we really get this all done by their deadline?" loop. hopefully, by tomorrow i will have recovered my feelings of godhood and be able to finalize the bid without any fears or doubts. at least that's the plan anyway. 07:55 pm

yes, i have just added a search to the site. yes, it is an atomz.com search engine. yes, i followed the handy blogger instructions. yes, i'm too lazy to write/hunt down a search script. no, i'm not doing this for any of you, i'm doing it so i can stop grepping through my server for that long forgotten link. 01:58 pm

like taylor, i'm a sucker for papers on the future of computers. and, also like taylor, edge: the second coming makes me wonder why no one is building these new interfaces, and why i can't do it myself. 12:54 pm

there is now a site who's sole purpose is rating others' popularity. i found Webs Most Linked at ideapad and it occurred to me to do a comparison between the sacred beebo ratings and this one. just to show how ephemeral popularity truly is. that and i had nothing better to do, and i've already rendered today's entry utterly boring by talking about weblogs, so i might as well get it out of my system.

despite just sending an email to Bugger Blogger telling him i'd ridicule him if he didn't change his mission statement or remove me from his list, i've decided to ridicule anyway. being hungover i'm feeling a little nasty.

bugger blogger's mission statement is "This site is here with *the sole purpose* of ridiculing those who *think* they have something *of interest* to say to the rest of humanity." i'm honored to be deserving of first mention. trouble is, i've always claimed that i was boring and can't figure out why anyone reads me. i would think that this would immediately disqualify me from inclusion.

if you're going to devote a site to nasty commentary, you could at least do your research. this kind of thing makes me pine for the good ole days of bloat. at least sally knew her targets well enough to come up with some really *good* biting commentary. 12:10 pm

surprise party, guest of honor 2.5 hours late == way too much red wine == hangover. 10:37 am

there's a commonality beginning to develop among all the people who received cnet's invitation to speak at builder.com. we all seem to have signed the cluetrain manifesto. it seems that someone may have harvested emails from there. can anyone support or contradict this theory? 02:36 pm

an interesting interview with David Carson. via xblog. 01:22 pm

oh. and when i linked to e-fluentials earlier, i forgot to mention that their logo not only has a swoosh, it incorporates the "new swoosh" the arrow *and* the color scheme is green and blue with a little stylish orange thrown in. 01:07 pm

this tool may just give me enough incentive to dig out my wacom tablet from the discarded computer equipment pile. denim lets you draw all those site maps on the computer instead of in notebooks or on napkins. with this, you can be saved from the pit of hell that is visio. via nadav. 01:04 pm

wow. look at all the links today! all stolen from other blogs. which is probably a sign that you should be reading them for quality content rather than me. 12:58 pm

if you've never learned the basic principles of graphic design, or you need a refresher, andrew mundi's principles is wonderfully done. via mersault. 12:55 pm

this article, Lost in the Web may accurately describe the problem, but it doesn't give any solutions, just statements about what the web *should* be like. gee that helps, i'll get right out there and implement it. besides i can't help but discount any writer who calls jakob nielsen "an authority on information architecture and Web-site design". design? please. via mersault. 12:36 pm

Delegating the Details is an article that describes how freemytime is going to let you pay people to do all those tedious tasks like laundry. an attractive idea, but we'll see if it actually works. what i find most amusing, is their logo uses a stock ripple photo that i used on a manual cover 6 years ago. 11:43 am

with so many marketing budgets slashed drastically, The Value of Word of Mouth is again being realized. a new term has been introduced, at least it's new to me, e-fluentials. are you an e-fluential? this survey will let you know. at a guess, i'd say a high proportion of bloggers are e-fluentials. i apparently have the honor of that title. maybe i should change my title "brigitte eaton, e-fluential". 11:24 am

i wish it was easy to convince marketing people of the lack of value in Hocus Focus Groups. via webword. 11:12 am

John Thackara's Design Vision paints a future where products are designed for and by the people who use them. it would be nice if it came to pass.

"You bring a 'user experience' to life by designing with people, not for them. Users create knowledge, but only if we let them."

when i update the portal, i actually go and visit each blog that's been submitted. both to make sure they're something vaguely resembling a weblog, and to make sure they're still around. since it's tedious, i rarely actually read them. too many to go through. but, on several occasions today, i found myself looking at a weblog and thinking "hey, there's still people out there that find interesting links every day". sadly, i'd begun to think they were a lost breed. you don't see them around very often anymore, not even here. 11:00 pm

instead of surfing, i mean working, this afternoon, i finished up silver wolf, black falcon. mckiernan did a really good job of wrapping up all the trailing story lines that he'd left hanging with his other books. it was certainly a fitting conclusion to the mithgar series.

as i was driving home, i felt a little guilty that i'd been reading all afternoon. 7 years ago, when i had a really boring job, i used to secretly read instead of work and felt terrible after, not that it stopped me. anyway, i realized that i didn't need to feel guilty, i can choose to spend my time however i want, i only have myself to answer to. that felt good. 10:55 pm

Salary.com has a "salary wizard" which actually seems like it's realistic. one of the few that i've seen that aren't extremely low. 10:50 pm

why is it that such simple concepts are so blindly ignored by most companies? thanks john. 10:32 pm

yes. i have finally updated the portal. it has not been abandoned. i'm exhausted now. 06:02 pm

i got dennis mckiernan's latest silver wolf, black falcon last night. he says that it's probably his last mithgar book, that he's done with the series. so far, the book is, as usual, something i'm unable to put down. 01:32 pm

well, i've finally done it, i've taken 45 minutes of my precious time to implement perma-links. in case you were thinking that it was really easy, just follow the blogger help text, i would like to point out that i'm using ssi for my blogger file which completely screws up the perma-link process. not that i'm claiming that it was actually hard to do, it just took a little bit of effort. i had to think and i try not to do that too often. anyway, for the one or two people who actually care they now exist. 02:06 pm

i have always wondered what the process was for getting invited to speak at conferences. purely from a theoretical standpoint, since i've never had the desire to do any form of public speaking, but i was still curious. tonight, i discovered the answer, for some unfathomable reason, i've been invited to submit a speaker proposal for builder.com live. i can only assume that this goes out to a huge list of people which they then drastically pare down. since they're "sending this to people who have shown an interest in speaking at either CNET's conferences in the past" and i don't recall ever expressing such an interest, they really must be desperate. either that, or i had a severe fit of insanity some time in the long forgotten past.

what i find particularly disturbing, is that i actually considered it for about 2 seconds. something along the lines of "hey, that would be great for job leads, maybe i should do it. oh my god, i think i've been completely corrupted, what am i thinking?!?". it's sad what working for yourself can do to you. 11:34 pm

there's nothing like a good infection of everyone's mean, everything is boring, there's no quality content etc. to kill any incentive to blog. i mean, what if i criticized someone, or gave an offensive opinion, or god forbid linked to another blog? it's made me powerless to blog. ok, that's just a poor excuse for being incredibly hot and lethargic and having no incentive to surf at all and having nothing to really say anyway. if you don't know what i'm talking about, don't worry, you'll be happier not knowing. 07:06 pm

finished my first project today. when i get the check, i'll really celebrate. (it might actually cover rent this month.) 07:01 pm

i finally got around to reading How Corporates Poison their Own Web Efforts. it's like re-living the past, but it's not only corporates that do this, it's startups too, the one's who hit 50-100 people and bring in "real executives" who don't get it. via michelle. 12:09 pm

for the last year, ever since we decided to sell our house in may and move to a bigger one, we'd been able to drop all those home-improvement schemes designed to improve the quality of living at our house. today, i realized that we now have to think about them again. things like what to do about having no garage, no real garden (unless you could call the arid wasteland of our backyard a garden), a tiny cramped shower, no bedroom to put a guest in (assuming we ever wanted to have one), and on and on and on. i was quite happy not thinking about all those things, especially since they all require money to solve. sigh. 11:56 pm

very cool. even aside from all the gibson-esque speculation about where this could lead, The Mind That Moves Objects is a truly helpful tool for stroke victims. via metafilter. 11:38 pm

dave has some interesting thoughts on What the Web Wants in the microsoft breakup. 11:26 pm

just being alive
    it can really hurt
these moments given
    are a gift from time... 02:00 pm

in the interests of furthering my own egotism, i've written about this morning's dream. sometimes i wonder what possesses me to tell the world about a highly emotional experience which i would never dream of discussing with the people who are close to me. egotism i guess. 11:47 am

i bought p.d. james' autobiography the other day. she decided to keep a diary "to record just one year that otherwise might be lost". the first paragraph reads:

"A diary, if intended for publication, is the most egotistical form of writing. The assumption is inevitably that what the writer thinks, does, sees, eats and drinks on a daily basis is as interesting to others as it is to himself or herself. And what motive could possibly induce people to undertake the tedium of this daily task--for surely at times it must be tedious--not just for one year, which seems formidable enough, but sometimes for a lifetime?"

what motive indeed? 11:42 am

today is the first day in a week that i've actually read more than one or two blogs (or even sites for that matter). i almost made it through my whole daily blog list, but now my eyes hurt because in the afternoon sunlight streams through the office windows and the cheap white fabric blinds we put up only diffuse the light they don't block it, so i can barely read my screen, my tiny 17" screen. (i wish jason would read my blog, then i could get satisfaction out of whinging about my monitor and how selfish he is for not giving me his.) anyway, i finally feel connected, complete, fulfilled. i've surfed the web today. 07:20 pm

well, we got our first contract, signed and in our hands. i won't get an real money out of it, since it's in exchange for the extra vacation time i owed my last job, but it's a contract and it gives me something to do. life is good. well, except for my broken 21" monitor. 03:24 pm

a pretty good on scheduling. who would have thought that excel programmers optimized the features so that they could easily use it for scheduling. 02:19 pm

my new sony 21" monitor died yesterday. i've only had it for a week. working along quite happily, the screen went blank and squiggly and then shut down. now i'm forced to do graphics on a cheap 17" brought from home, while jason selfishly uses his 21" for a linux box. life is not fair. 10:23 am

when looking up the link for the graham joyce book, i discovered that amazon has changed their search results page. they've moved the left bar over to the right, it is much easier to read, the search results are constrained by a right margin, and the right bar is easier to ignore. nice. 10:21 am

i got home at 7:30pm last night. i don't think i've ever gotten home that early before. i even had time to read a *whole* book before i went to bed, instead of the usual chapter. i bought graham joyce's latest dreamside a few days ago and i finally sat down with it last night. like his other books, it was something i couldn't put down until i finished. eerie, intriguing, frightening, exciting and somehow believable. 10:17 am

this is all such a learning experience, i'm discovering something new every day. like today, other than discovering i hate contracts, i've also learned that i suck at providing time estimates. they vary widely depending on what kind of mood i'm in. i have a feeling that the first few contracts will be less than accurate as far as estimated hours. quickbooks has this handy timetracking tool, which i'm hoping will be as useful as it sounds, but, since i haven't even opened it yet, i won't get my hopes up. 09:43 pm

i hate contracts. here i was hoping that our lawyer would whip one out for us and we'd never have to worry about it again. after struggling with verbiage all day today, i've come to appreciate why he said "i hate doing contracts, you don't want to pay me to write your contract, just send it to me and i'll read through it for you". ugh. hopefully, [fingers crossed], it won't need to be modified *that* much. i've come to appreciate the usefulness of ms word templates. now that's a scary thing. 09:39 pm

aeron chairs arrived just now. finally comfortable seating. 01:41 pm

the activity on the poll seems to have slowed considerably so i've moved it inline so it'll shove off the page. 09:40 am

my email *may* be fixed. i'm not entirely sure tho. since all my mailing lists unsubscribed me due to so many bounced messages, it's hard to tell if everything's getting through now. i'm keeping my fingers crossed. although, it did just occur to me that my pair email address is probably working just fine. so, if anyone is still getting bounces, do me a favor and email brig at pair.com, that way i can yell at them again. 10:19 pm

i was wondering this afternoon if i was blogging less because i was so busy setting up the business. but, i feel like i'm on vacation, so it didn't sound like that was the reason. then it occurred to me that i don't have constant highspeed connectivity. that puts a huge damper on surfing and therefore blogging. posts will probably be sporadic until we get dsl in.

speaking of dsl, i'd feel remiss if i didn't talk about how hard it is to get from pacbell. our order with them is indefinitely on hold until they have some new ports open up. today we called tycho. they can get us sdsl installed within 30 days or less. if want adsl, we'll still have to wait for a port. we're paying more a month, but it'll be worth it if it cuts short this torture. 10:11 pm

well, i've just learned that you shouldn't count on a verbal contract, you need to have the written one in hand before you celebrate. it's really frustrating to have someone accept your rate and tell you they have a really tight deadline, but then turn around a couple of days later and say that they've called around and your rate is kind of high, and by the way, they can't get an advance payment check cut that quickly. luckily, i've already been told how to deal with this kind of situation. "well, it's not a problem about the check, i just can't get started until i have it, so it'll effect your due date. and my rate is based on the quality of my work, i totally understand if you need to go with someone else." still annoying tho. oh well, we've got another meeting with a potential client tomorrow. 11:53 am

tonight we went to dinner with a friend who we haven't seen in a year. not because she wasn't nearby, but because she and her husband had split up and it was an awkard situation. giving her space to put her life in order seemed like the right thing to do. but doing that creates a closed door that you wait for them to open, not realizing how much you're losing by not sharing their lives. 10:29 pm

today, i realized just what people mean when they say "when you work for yourself there is no such thing as weekends". i always thought it just meant you worked constantly and gave up your weekends like when you work for a startup. this morning i realized that there's no longer a need to "live for the weekend". working a couple hours a day just doesn't seem like work. it's like doing errands or something. 10:24 pm

i just got my pcmcia card today, so i've finally put my new york photos up. 06:36 pm

good news. the water pump is fixed so we have water again. and, i got my first contract. woohoo. 06:35 pm

the results of my survey are interesting, even tho probably only a quarter to a third of the bloggers out there have responded, it's stayed pretty close to 40% female, 55% male. i had no idea it was so even or close to even. 11:04 am

our water pump is broken. i got home yesterday, made myself a sandwich, grabbed a glass, turned on the tap and nothing happened. i wiggled it, i turned it off and on again, several times. i gave up. i went downstairs to the bathroom, turned on that tap, and got a trickle of water. so, we called a plumber who couldn't come out until this afternoon. packed a bag, and went to spend the night at a hotel. it's really sad when you pay money just to use a shower and be able to brush your teeth. i really hope it doesn't take a week to fix. 11:02 am

i always find goodbyes to be really difficult. when i left work yesterday, i had no idea what to say or how to react. even writing a goodbye email was difficult. i suppose it's hard for everyone. i just never know how to deal with it, and never feel like i've dealt with it well. 01:02 pm

i'm sittng on the floor of our new office because we don't have chairs yet. the desks aren't screwed to the legs, so they're unusable, and we don't have blinds, so we can't set up any of the computer stuff without inviting someone to steal it. the good news is we now have a phone. the bad news being that pacbell doesn't have any dsl ports right now so our order is on hold. that and i've been on hold for 10 minutes waiting for pacbell customer service to give me a password to my voice mail. it's all good tho. i'm finally free. we've got 2 meetings set up with potential clients, and we should have the office set up this weekend. 12:54 pm

apparently, my email is occasionally getting bounced. it's not happening all the time, and i don't think it's happening on all my accounts. anyway, until if you sent me something in the last couple of days and it bounced, send it to brig@brig.nu or brig@jungawunga.com. 12:48 pm