I Miss the EA Toolbox.

| July 2, 2008 | 7:48 pm |

The Executive Assistant’s Toolbox, formerly located at EAToolbox.com, was a kick-ass resource for seasoned admins. The author focused on the things that really mattered (more “how to manage up” than “how to file”), and tried her damndest to foster a sense of community on the site.

Chrissy’s info was so good, and so useful, that she landed a deal, and EA Toolbox merged with Office Arrow. I’m quite happy for her - she has a lot to offer, and a full-time writing gig seems like a good thing for her. Unfortunately, Office Arrow is cumbersome, requires a (free) login to access any of its content, and doesn’t provide full feeds. It’s a deal-breaker for me; I read work-related feeds at work, when I’m on hold or have a random moment of downtime. Having to click through, and then log in is just too much for this maelstrom. I unsubscribed.

I am posting this here, and now, because I think I’ve decided to pick up where Chrissy left off. I think that Zen Maelstrom is the perfect way to describe not only what I am, but what an executive assistant does and is.

Because I needed another project, you know?

So. I do this jewelry thing, you see…

| May 31, 2008 | 7:46 pm |

Eyes Up Here Necklace by Sweet Tarragon

It started as a stress-relieving hobby, a break from the tedium that is studying and writing exams. It’s grown into something much bigger, but that’s another story for another time.

What it is time for, however, is a plea for your gracious fandom.

The piece above, “Eyes Up Here”, was entered into Stringing Magazine’s Cinderella Challenge.

Especially when there’s magic in the air, a girl needs more than a fabulous pair of shoes to look her best. And, let’s face it, who wants their toes to be directly addressed?

Voting is open at the Stringing Magazine Challenge site through June 30. Click here to view all of the entries, or click here to go directly to the voting…my project is number 15.

Thanks, and I promise - more on the jewelry thing soon!

No, I haven’t been gone for six months. It’s an illusion. Really. A time warp.

| April 15, 2008 | 9:11 pm |

I turned thirty on Saturday. I could have cried, or dyed my hair, but I opted instead to have a big mucking party. (Besides, I’m not due for a re-dye for another three weeks.) I don’t know how many people actually showed up, but it felt like my whole social circle times ten. My aunt arrived around 1:30 in the afternoon, and the Bunny von Bykerchick Germans, as Mer lovingly refers to them, were the last to leave around 1:15 AM. That’s a kick-ass party. We had pizza from my favorite pizza joint, awesomely good sheet cake from I dunno where, and takeout from my favorite Chinese place (they not only make excellent crab rangoon, they regularly make me pork lo mein with no veggies, which is enough to secure my undying devotion) for dinner. There was drinking and merriment and silliness and laughter and Wii Karaoke. It was brilliant, and everything I could have wanted, excepting a few no-shows I really would have loved to have seen.

Out of a 100% chance of rain forecast, we got a 70 degrees and sunny day, which was spent on the brand spanking new patio before the wind blew us inside. Both sides of my family came together and the world did not implode. I got friends and family and singing and merriment, all in my own house, and someone to clean up afterward once she can walk (our cleaning lady has a broken toe.)

I’m repeating this, because it seems there may be some value here: Out of a 100% chance of rain forecast, we got a 70 degrees and sunny day. Well, the grammar is awful, but the lesson is the same. There was a whole lot out of my control for this party (torn ankle tendons=crutches=ack!), but I let go as much as I could, and the universe, she did provide. I need to remember that.

On that note, here’s a moment of (somewhat literal) zen.

I could go on gushing for another hour or so, but I should probably refocus - I’m in class right now, pretending to watch a documentary on Sparta. To sum up? Best birthday evar.

I’m counting on the adrenaline of the awesome to carry me through to the end of the semester. I’ve finished all of my business law assignments, and should be able to take the final next week. I still have another week of Henry, two weeks of Shrew, and a final in my Shakespeare class, and another three classes + final paper in History (swords and sandals this time around.) May 9 cannot come soon enough. I have dreams of craft fairs, side jobs, and Sunday afternoon naps. Here’s hoping.

Fangirl Squeeeeeeeeeeee!

| October 15, 2007 | 8:39 pm |

We have front-row seats to see Jonathan Coulton on Friday. I am quite giddy about the whole affair. I bounce when I remember. (Remember that I’m going, that is, not remember to bounce.)

If only Seanan McGuire would come back to the east coast (since I missed her recent visit due to familial obligations), my world would be a beautiful place.

Of course, Seanan is having some awful back issues right now, and I hope she gets better quickly in a minimally-invasive sort of way, not because of my eastern location, but because back pain sucks in a way that should not be allowed, and she seems to have been hit with some pretty wicked suckage.

Oh, look. If I had a point, I would have left it somewhere back there.

Friday fangirl squeee!

If this wasn’t about to become a trend…

| September 15, 2007 | 12:41 pm |

I would so go out and get one of these.

A return to web 0.1

| September 6, 2007 | 10:53 pm |

Vernacular Web 2 discusses the history of home pages and web design, how we’ve moved from “under construction” banners and glitter text to sleek web 2.0 buttons and back again with the tiled images and countdown clocks of social networking sites.

I was inspired to search for my old home pages, but the only one I can remember (dinerwaitress’ guitar tab on geocities) is gone. I do remember learning to hand-code HTML on Angelfire in the mid-90s by changing little sections of the indecipherable text onscreen to see what it did, and the little tiny notebook where I wrote hex color codes, frequently-used tags, and where to find my favorite clip art. And yes, I had an “under construction” sign, although if memory serves me correctly, I actually had rotating barber-striped black and yellow bar gifs.

I remember chatting online with strangers (Keri, if you’re reading this, do you remember SugarMagnolia?) and trying to figure out something about them via their home page. Things really haven’t changed, have they?

Like everything else, this has come back around to my age. I’m coming to terms with the metal bands I grew up with playing on the classic rock stations, but I somehow wasn’t ready for the original, tacky web designs of my youth to come back into vogue. I know now how my mom felt when my classmates were wearing bell bottoms.

In a bigger sense, what does this mean for the technology age gap? If fashion trends resurface every other generation, is the lifespan of the internet generation as short as 5 years?

And what of elements outside of design? What about content? In the old days (when I walked uphill barefoot both ways to a computer with internet access, I know), you typed in a site and surfed the web from there by clicking a link, from there another link, and so on. Surfing gave way to googling, but that trend seems to be reversing also. Blogrolls abound, as do link pages, and a good portion of traffic in the blogosphere is from pingbacks and trackbacks. Once separated by a common search engine, we appear to be coming back together into a tighter-knit web. Even the dreaded web directories appear to be returning, although in a much better form.

We’ll probably never know whether the return to web 1.0 is due to the influx of amateurs on myspace, the overwhelming lack of quality search engine content*, or the nostalgia of a bunch of washed-up 0.1 hackers. I’m fairly certain we’ll be witness to a bunch of office-chair philosophers blogging about it, though.

*Let’s face it, if I want to find a new [insert random string of words here] to read on a regular basis, I’m going to check with sites/blogs I already read to see what they’re reading before I spend the time sifting through search results.

Yet another scary memory revisited

| July 30, 2007 | 9:56 pm |

The scary thing here isn’t that some guy bought all of the animatrons from Showbiz Pizza Place, set them up in his basement, and reprogrammed them to rap music. No. What bothers me is how damn creepy these things are! How did this not give my younger self nightmares?

It’s not quite a moment of zen…

| July 28, 2007 | 9:27 am |

…but I’m honestly not sure what to say about it. Allow me to quote from the original article:

“If you only watch one YouTube movie today featuring dancing country farmer’s daughters contortionists singing about potato salad, it should be this one.

Starts a little slow, then all hell breaks loose around 1:15, combining Hee Haw with Cirque.”

Go. Watch. Marvel.

You’re welcome.

Caution: grammar rant ahead

| July 26, 2007 | 12:14 pm |

The job I’m about to leave is in the world-wide headquarters for a pharma company, where people have fancy letters behind their names, like PhD and MBA. I see things published for intraoffice use on a regular basis that are sorely in need of proofreading. Of course, my job is/was in the IT Department, not Corporate Communications, so what the hell do I know?

Any questions, just ask.
A shorthand version of “If you have any questions, please let me know”, I often see this used as the closing line of an email. I can imagine this being used in a casual email between friends (Let’s meet at the bar on Roosevelt at 3. Any questions, just ask.), but in a business email? Really? I read somewhere once that when composing a business email, you should imagine it printed out on corporate letterhead and posted on a notice board. I don’t know that I’d go that far, but please try to use complete sentences.

If you have any question, please call…
This is part of a template used for service outages or downtime. I’m not sure whether they’re trying to say “any questions” or “a question”; either would be appropriate. What kills me is that this template has been in use for over a year, is used on a regular basis, and no one has fixed it. (Update: Due to corporate politics, I didn’t feel it was my position to say anything. It appears that someone finally did, however, because it appears to have been fixed in the time between the writing of this post and its actual posting.)

There are more examples, I know, but they got lost in my head since I started this post a few weeks ago. I feel like I should have a disclaimer here that I wrote this post before I knew I would be leaving this company, and this is not intended in a nasty “look what my ex-co-workers did” sense. It’s simply my frustration with the lack of proofreading in the corporate world. I’m certain this will come back to bite me in the ass, because one of the duties of my new position will be proofing and standardizing communications (as it is now, but only for my team.) Watch this space for tales of my first major editing snafu, as soon as it happens.

Harry Potter’s Legacy: Update

| July 25, 2007 | 10:56 am |

It turns out that in addition to changing the way people feel about reading, Harry Potter (specifically the latest installment) may be changing the way publishers think about book-printing: Deathly Hallows is reportedly the greenest book ever; its initial run was comprised of mostly sustainable resources. While this is unquestionably a great move by Scholastic, I have to wonder: why 65% sustainable, and not 100%?

everything zen? i don’t think so.

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