Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing

The post title is alluding to a quote by William Shakespeare. You've probably heard it before.

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Another one I thought about using was by Mark Twain.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

An asteroid indeed. I'm not sure where I'm going with this one for the moment. But I just have this feeling lately that I've been posting a lot of little things here and there but not making much besides a bunch of pointless noise.

I'm not feeling low about the quality of what I've been writing. I feel like I haven't been writing enough, and what I have been posting is akin to the usefulness of static. Signal-to-noise ratio?

This isn't even the real problem. It's a matter of a thousand noisy ideas in my head. I'm reading a lot of stuff all over the place and absorbing a huge amount. It goes through my mental filter and I'm very inspired to write about it all. But that's the rub of it, I can't write about it ALL. At times, I've been very good at this, but right now it's all important to me and I can't prioritize. So here is a list of stuff I'm thinking about right now in completely undetermined order.

• Sammy is great. He learned to start climbing the gate into the kitchen this week. He's only a few inches off the floor, but still.. That's not good as there's no way he can get really high without falling forward over the gate OR just knocking the whole thing over. He is much more active than any of our other kids.
• I'm very excited about some job news that ... I'm sitting on at the moment. I can't post too many details other than to say that I had TWO very good interviews at the same company and I've very excited about this likely opportunity.
• Been working on two things at the same time for music. That's right, MUSIC!
  • I'm going to be recording a Trombone solo on a song for a local band my friends and I all knew back in high school. I've been practicing along to a CD for what I'll need to play over and it's going to be hard but a lot of fun.
  • At church, we are working on some special music for youth Sunday (October 31^st) and I've been in charge of this a bit with myself and two boys who play Trumpet and Reese on recorder, and anyone else we can get together.
  It feels like forever since I did anything of substance musically, so this is really refreshing for me.
• Wait, my oldest daughter has a blog now? How did that happen? (Ask me if you want to be added to her subscribers. I'd link to it, but it's set to private.) Next, she'll want Twitter. At least she stopped asking for MySpace.
• My online portfolio is coming along. Visit ArcoJedi.com. I've got more text to write and some images to add and the home page will be done. Even with the possible job news I mentioned above, this doesn't change the need for this site.
• I mentioned here that I was going to run a Dungeons & Dragons adventure for my daughters and their friend. Well the first session went well and if I can manage to keep their attention, we will keep going. The feedback I got was that there needs to be more fighting and less talking. That can be arranged.
• I finished reading the Lord of the Rings books to my girls. Olivia has been in love with these stories since I started reading The Hobbit back last year. Reese is much more into the Rick Riordan stuff. We are still reading from the Percy Jackson series (out of order) and also some R. A. Salvatore. I try and read to them every night.

Each one of these things could be a huge blog post on their own if I had an infinite amount of time for them. Derek Brink is a buddy whose blog I read somewhat regularly. He's a good writer and musician. He also does these "random" blog posts that contain not just one thread or theme but a bunch of short bulleted ideas that he wants to post, but that don't get a full post on their own (for a variety of reasons that probably includes time alloted).

That's good enough for him and he pulls it off well, but I've always shied away from that for my own stuff. To me, if something is worth posting, I want to write a lot about it. Being concise is not one of my stronger skills. So I end up posting the 'short' stuff in microblogging; Facebook and/or Twitter, but that again makes it feel more like noise than stuff I'd file as "Important"...

But I thought this post was better than nothing.

Portfolio, Mine

Template for 960.egg on Aviary.

In case you were wondering what I've been up to lately, this is what I've been working on. It has come to my attention that I am long overdue to have an online portfolio of my work. This all started from some very good advice I got from a friend. If you are reading this, you know who you are, so thanks a lot!

The site is not online yet. This is just the final draft of the design. I can write more about this composition later. And once the site is online I'll obviously link to it. But I'm looking for honest constructive feedback on the design, layout, colors and themes. Please use the comment box below OR the comment space on Aviary if you have an account there. Clicking the thumbnail you see here will take you there and you can see a much larger version of this image. Anything you could share would be helpful. Thanks in advance!

I Am A Ninja?

My career as a freelance webmaster now has a foundation. I've been working for the past few weeks as a part-time HTML E-mail Designer/Coder for American Optometric Association. I'm helping them with their email newsletters. In summary, I take document files that are sent to me and an existing HTML template that was used for the previous month's newsletter and I integrate the new articles into the newsletter for the current month. The result looks something like this example. This is a great opportunity for me and all I need now is to get a few more jobs just like it. Eventually, I'll have a rotating list of jobs and projects that will help me develop my skills and interests. That's the dream anyway.

Before I continue typing about this, let me take a moment to state emphatically that I don't like the term "webmaster" for the purpose of describing what I want to do. I don't want anyone to use the word in this industry any more. It's klunky. It can variably cover any and all of the following roles -

• Web designer: CSS, graphics, logos
• Web developer: PHP, ASP, SQL, databases
• Web administrator: Server administration, Linux, IIS
• Web marketing: SEO, PPC, SEM, Social Media, Email

But when someone says "webmaster" this sounds too much like "dungeon master" and I picture the dice rolling and a purple robe with stars embroidered on it. We need a new encompassing title for what we do when what we do is some combination of the above.

It's a little bit funny that there are no real standard conventions for these roles or a way for people outside the industry to have a decent frame of reference. From outside, it can seem like magic. From inside, it can too often seem like technical support.

DO NOT WANT!!

My fellow web-workers, I sometimes think we need a new job title. But I get the feeling that the connection with our nerd heritage means that this -master thing is going to stick around.

Wouldn't Webninja be more appropriate?

See this Video at WSJ.com.

I guess we could all be Ninjas. There's even a theme song for this.

Well, I. M. Ninja!
He is Ninja!
She is Ninja, too!
I. M. Ninja!
We are Ninja!
And I believe that you are Ninja, too!

I'm good with that. Just call me Webninja!

Update: Thanks for reading! Tune in next week when I reconsider this "ninja" business and instead go for WebJedi!

Causation and Correlation

In my Retrospective 2009 post I mentioned that I was let go from Network Solutions but I went on to say that in the long run this may end up being a very good thing for me personally, professionally and financially. This seems a bit backwards, but so far it has been true. First off, we got reconsidered for the "Obama" mortgage modification plan and this knocked about $400 a month off our bill. Then I applied for temporary unemployment from Illinois and this has filled the gaps a bit.

However, when this happened it was pretty rough. Besides the obvious worries about money, there was a really strong sense of déjà vu regarding the situation. In fall of 2006, I was working for the Ferguson-Florissant School District but unfortunately was let go from that job.

This happened while Lisa was pregnant and due in early May of the next year. Additionally, I had Bronchitis (correction: Sinusitis) pretty bad and then later I got Cellulitis in my ankles. I vowed to get a new position very quickly come hell or high water, but these infections pretty much knocked me on my butt for weeks. The job market in fall of 2006 and into 2007 was not great anyway, but this just made it worse.

Of course I did get better. Before the baby was born, I gladly went back to work for my old friends at NetSol at my old position. I started catching up on those bills that had piled up. My son Lucas was born in late April instead of early May, but otherwise everything was great. It was arguably the best Summer of my life so far. Then Lucas died at the age of four months and seven days. That was 2007.

Fast forward to this last September when I was let go from Network Solutions. And again, I'd been nursing a pretty bad sinus infection. And again, an infection manifested in my ankles, this time diagnosed as Erythema nodosum. Lisa was also pregnant, but this time the baby would be born in December and not the following Spring!

That certainly felt like too much of a coincidence. You can spout off about the difference between causation and correlation if you'd like, but you are wasting your breath. My brain says that just because the pattern seemed to be repeating itself doesn't mean that it would continue. I get it logically, and so does Lisa. But the alarm bells in our hearts went off anyhow. Logic does not cure panic. Lisa was pregnant, I was pretty sick but got better, I lost my job and found a new one and then we lost our son. It happened before, it can happen again. Clouds of impending doom seemed to be gathering around us without much we could do about it.

At least, that's the way we felt initially. Further discussion with my current doctor revealed something my other doctor from 2006 didn't mention. It turns out that a severe infection in your sinuses and/or bronchii can enter the bloodstream and land somewhere else like your ankles as Cellulitis or Erythema nodosum. So what seemed like a weird cosmic coincidence was actually a likely cause and effect. I had a respiratory infection and as it wained, it found a new home in my ankles. I should have thought of it before.

More importantly, from the moment that Sammy was born, it has been strangely clear to us that he is not Lucas. He is different in many ways and this give us hope. I don't know how to explain this opinion, how we know this or what specific detail there is to let us know that.

So, what can we do? Not much but be vigilant and wait. That's about it.