Fall quarter is finally over.  I now only have 3 quarters of school left!  Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself to get me through.

I am quite proud of the work I did this quarter and not entirely because I think it’s good - but because when I look at it, I can see how much I have learned.  I most definitely learned more this quarter than I have over the past two years (and yes, it has been two years come January).  The reasons?

The Internship - I started my internship back in June, but this was my first quarter of full time school doing both (since I took the summer off).  I’m just now starting to feel like I’m “getting it” at work, but I still feel like a tard most days.  What can I say, I aspire to be the least knowledgeable person in the room. (I are succeed)

The Mentors - I can’t even begin to tell you how lucky I am to have seriously seasoned professionals at a moments beck and call during my work/school day.  John, David and Anthony have all been a tremendous help and a wealth of knowledge (and entertainment).

The Cool People - At school I surround myself with people that are 100x more talented than I am, and thanks to them I am halfway decent by association.  I wish any of them were savvy on the internets like I am (because then I could give them the linkage), but I am one of the very few that aspire to be digital designers in my class.  The truly talented people I know are more into the graphic designer scheme of things.

So for those of you who want to know why you hardly get to talk to me anymore, you can click the links below to see (some of) what keeps me so busy.  Keep in mind, we don’t just design these projects - we conceptualize, research, design, critique, proof, print, critique, proof, print again, hate it and start all over, cut down with knives and t-squares, mount and turn in.

Only better.

I <3 learning new things - especially when they make my life so much easier.

I have this inherent problem of having many tools at my disposal with no clue as to how to use them properly. Ignorance is bliss they say, but I beg to differ.

One in particular is the firebug extension for firefox. I’ve been teaching myself the proper way to use this awesome tool for a few months now, but I still have a lot to learn. Just today I realized how to make the extension pop up in the bottom of my browser window like all the cool developers do when I’m asking them for help. You just click the little firebug icon down in the bottom right hand corner of your browser.

While I was down there (that’s what he said –lolz @ me) I noticed the firefox icon and thought to myself, “I wonder what a firefox icon is doing down there?”. So like any

good web designer (I say that with much sarcasm) I decided to hover over it and see…

Orly now? Switch rendering engines with one click?! You don’t say?! For those of you who might not think this is a big deal - when a web site is created we have to make sure it works, and we usually make sure it works in both firefox and IE (well for work anyway, I could give a you know what). I usually take a longer route to do the same thing when testing so I was rather please when I saw this little feature.

And to all of you who know more than me and feel like scoffing (no not zerb) – you know I could give a you know what about that too… so quit scoffing and tell me more tips!

IE sucks

I didn’t think it could ever happen, I thought my heart had hardened even to the THOUGHT of it

and then I googled “ie sucks”

and voila! - true love at first sight.

And for all of you retards challenged people STILL using IE - would you download Firefox already and make a whole lotta geeks lives so much happier.

kthxbai.

I wrote this post once already this morning, saved, previewed and all - but my fingers + my keyboard = post gone.

Anyhow - it went a little something like this…

I stole this from David, it’s a must watch (hence the stealing)

I’m excited to see what Barack is going to say tonight - I hope it’s good, he is spending an awful lot of our money to get this message through.  It has been rumored that it is the same speech he delivered in Canton, OH on Monday.  Unfortunately, I’ll be on an airplane and won’t be able to share in the excitement - but that is what youtube is good for!

I just finished a big push to get some major projects done for school - I had to have worked for 30 hours or so this weekend trying to get it all done.  Thanks to Bette and Scott for helping with the kids, and the rest of you that gave me input and advice.  Here is a little sample of my finished products…

Diagonal grid using pictograms and tag line for Design Applications class

Logo I designed for Design Principles class

I read a pretty good story today from the Huffington Post - but mostly I just liked this quote.

$150,000 for clothes and they apparently didn’t buy her a raincoat.

Oh. Snap.

A few random things people I like have thrown my way as of late…

Firstly - all you bloggers out there, this is a great little read that my BFF threw at me a few days ago.

Friday’s are my 10 hour day at work (for those of you playing along, that’s today) … some Friday’s I’m busy and some Friday’s I’m not.  On the ‘not’ days, I get to work on my blog.  (I <3 big companies that waste money on me)  So far, today is a ‘not’ day and I’ve started working on the 101 Ways to Become a Better Blogger.  (you can download it for yourself at that linky)

I’m not much for being a big-to-do blogger, but I know a lot of you are.  I am more interested in learning HOW to be a big-to-do blogger, so I can charge all you big-to-do bloggers for me to help you be one.  (Dolla dolla billz yo)

One of the first things the ultimate geek girl suggests in her free e-bookis to check your stats on popuri.us and take a screen shot to compare to later on.  Since I recently moved over to this new site (spotoft.com) I decided it would be an interesting experiment!  So, here goes…

Yes I know, IMPRESSIVE!  So, I’ve started a new category where I will be posting all the interesting blogging mumbo jumbo.  For those of you who don’t know, I actually have categories for separating the content on my blog now.  Over in the sidebar (that’s over there —–>), up under the big T’s Spot are three options: my spoT, The grind and uncategorized.  The uncategorized will disappear at some point when I get around to categorizing all my posts - but until then, play around with it and you’ll get the picture.

NEXT

The most badass firefox plug-in I’ve ever used.  Cooliris.  I use Google Image Searches every day, many times a day.  (that’s what designers do, we steal) So, this plug-in is one of the coolest finds ever for me.  A  friend of mine from school showed it to me last week, and I’ve been in love ever since.

Click, download, love.

You know Halloween is close when this pops up in your inbox -

Oh the tricks it makes me think of…

Suggestions?

When I started my new job back in June and walked down the sea of cubicles for the first time - I remember seeing these beautiful, red,  plastic water bottles on every one’s desks.

I remember wishing I had a beautiful red, plastic water bottle.

Every day I would come to work and catch glances of the shiny red from the openings of cubicles that weren’t mine.  Every day I would wonder where the molded plastic  had come from and what the owner had to do to receive said gem.

After awhile I had become used to the idea that I was the only one with out the thirst quenching device.  As I walked to my desk Thursday, I noticed the new admins ruby glimmering from the edge of her desk and made my way back to the last row and down to my cubicle.  When I pulled out my chair - there it was so unassuming in it’s thin plastic sack that kept it from touching all of its twins during shipping so that it would be fresh and new when it arrived in my chair.

The holy grail if you will…

I guess my first review on Wednesday went rather well after all….

HOLLER!

I am not an idiot.

That being said, I realize that wordpress is a superior product to other blogging platforms such as blogger.  But boys and girls, I have to say that in no way, shape or form is this more user friendly than the blogger platform.  And I also know that “user friendly” is a bad word to a lot of you geeks out there… but no matter what we are designing, programing or creating, isn’t USABILITY the most key of factors?

It took me the better part of TEN hours to get this page looking like it should and it still does not have all the functionality that I would prefer it to have.  I’m a WEB DESIGNER PEOPLE!  I’m not a good web designer, but this is BLOGGING SOFTWARE.

I realize that the functionality is there, waiting for me to find it… but why is it so hard to find?  I feel that the unlimited customization that you get through wordpress - is actually limiting.

Not all themes work on your version of wordpress

Not all themes can use widgets

Not all plug-ins can be used in themes

You have to find the perfect combination of themes, widgets and plug-ins that all work harmoniously to create a blog that you can actually read and use.

And you call that a Dashboard?  At least google (the owners of blogger) have a DESIGN team and does not expect a programmer to DESIGN a user interface.

So, I guess this is when I close my eyes and hope that all the geeks are right for once - that this software is going to change my life, make me happy, bring world peace once and for all and vibrate.

It damn well better.

I had promised details about my awesome job and never delivered. What can I say, I just liked the suspense.

I really love the job. For my career I see myself doing something much more creative than what I am required to do here. Everything we do has to conform to “standards”, but since I’ve never done anything like this, the structure is a perfect environment for learning the basics.

What I do like is the attention to detail and good web practices our department has insisted the company adopt as part of their standards. A LOT of the work I do is converting old sites into more current, clean and web friendly code.

For those of you who have NO idea what I’m talking about, I’ll give you a little example, I took this code

<.table align="center" width="100%" class="tableBorderLIGHT".>

<_tr>

<.td align="center" style="padding-left:10px;"><_a href="ME_CaseLaw.htm" target="mainFrame" class="pages">Case Law<_/a>

<_/td>

<_td align="center"><_a href="ME_statutes.htm" target="mainFrame" class="pages">Statutes<_/a>

<_td align="center"><_a href="ME_courtrules.htm" target="mainFrame" class="pages">Court Rules<_/a>

<_/td>

<_td align="center"><_a href="ME_Admin.htm" target="mainFrame" class="pages">Admin. Materials<_/a>

<_/td>

<_/tr>

<_/table>

Which is the code for the RED navigation in this picture:

And I changed that code to this:

<_table class="top_tablewidth">

<_tr>

<_td class="toplink"><_a href="ME_CaseLaw.htm" target="mainFrame" class="pages">Case Law<_/a><_/td>

<_td class="toplink"><_a href="ME_statutes.htm" target="mainFrame" class="pages">Statutes<_/a><_/td>

<_td class="toplink"><_a href="ME_courtrules.htm" target="mainFrame" class="pages">Court Rules<_/a><_/td>

<_td class="toplink"><_a href="ME_Admin.htm" target="mainFrame" class="pages">Admin. Materials<_/a><_/td>

<_/tr>

<_/table>

Which made it look like this visually

Not a lot of changes, but it looks better and fits into our web standards. This particular site had 25 pages I had to make changes to. I also made it all uniform, so the spaces between the forms were even on every page and lined up, and also made a welcome page (that you see here on the right) that logs the users by last name.

And that’s it! That is what I do all day, and I love it… for now.

I sit in a little cubical that is about 10×10 and grey.

<_offtopic>

SOMEONE JUST BROUGHT ME A PEANUT BUTTER RICE CRISPY TREAT THE SIZE OF TEXAS ON A BIG MAP.

<_/offtopic>

I have a dry erase board that I haven’t written on yet, two CSS books I checked out from the library we have on the first floor, and a little drawer I keep some files in. OOOOH and I have pushy pins, to hang random things up with. I <3 href="http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/berlinvideo/">watch this now. Mega stud’s that attract 200,000 Germans, here’s to hoping he doesn’t sell out to the man.

PS: 12 more wake ups till I leave for Atlantic City… watch out Jersey.