zutroy.net

I have started something kinda interesting. I’m not sure if this was a conscious decision or if it just happened but I have started noticing peoples’ faces more than I used to while I am driving to work. I’ve been driving to work for years and years now and I never seemed to notice before how most people have a desperately hopeless blank stare on their face in the morning. The people who I see dropping their kids off at school don’t have it for the most part. Some people who are obviously driving to work don’t have it. I wish I could tag every car with a hopeless looking person and track where they go and what they do. Then I could run the data through some cool graphing system and see what levels of hopelessness are associated with what types of jobs or even what companies. I suspect the data would prove to be quite revealing. Though I’m not sure how I could really get the data for less than $50000 but it’s a cool idea. I do see some people in the morning that appear to be in a relatively good mood. I find myself sitting there in my car imagining what kind of job this person must be driving to. Are they a business owner? Are they what they wanted to be when they were in kindergarten? Somehow, I have a hard time imagining that most of the jobs out there would make someone happy. I think it has to be their reason for working. I used to work so I could eat and pay the bills. I guess I still do, but somehow I enjoy coming to work in the morning. What I actually do day to day hasn’t changed too much. So what is so different?

First thing:
I won the ultimate weight loss challenge. Finally! Even though I had to pair up with my wife to be able to win, we still won. And that is what counts right? OK seriously, I actually did lose some weight. I haven’t weighed this little since I worked for PDC in 2000. So since we had the weigh-in last night, I thougt it would be good to remind myself what a full stomach feels like. Yeah, it wasn’t that great. I used to really like eating just a little more than my stomach wanted me to. But I actually felt slugish and grumpy afterward. Didn’t sleep well last night either, not til it was time to get up and go to the gym at least. So I got up late and decided that I might as well go so I could weigh myself. Didn’t gain as much as I expected though. That was nice. And it felt really good to get the ol’ heart rate up there for a while. Makes me want to get serious about this fitness stuff. Hmmm, yeah, I think I will.

Second thing:
I’ve about had it with all this CSS web 2.0 crap. Sure I can buy into the idea that it’s good to seperate the design from the content. And I can agree that CSS is the best thing to happen to the web since sliced bread. But I’ve heard way tooooo often that the <table> tag is not meant for layout and that it should only be used to display tabular data. And that using <div>’s and CSS to do it all for you is going to make your footprint smaller. WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP!!! Ok, just so everyone know I’m not just ranting for the sake of ranting, let’s take a look at an example. Let’s say you want to put nice rounded corners on a display box. And, not just rounded corners, but bordered rounded corners. It’s looks nice in Photoshop and the client likes it. Looks a bit more polished than all the rounded corner tutorials too. So how do you code it?
In order to avoid <table>’s you need a <div> tag with a background image in it for each corner. You need a CSS declaration to define the sizes of the div and the image placement etc. So that’s 4 <div>’s so far. Wait, how bout the border? border: 2px solid #444444; doesnt’ work? K, I’ll create 4 more <div>’s with background image aligned to the top, right, left, and bottom. Let’s give all our <div>’s a class so we only have to set the sizes once. Now, I need a div inside all 8 of those to define styles of the content of the box. So lets say that we don’t need any <div>’s outside of these 9 divs for the sake of simplicity (can we really call it simplicity?). K we actualy need another <div> to be able to place this whole thing whereever we want. (yes, I realize that we could actually just add more styles to the first <div> that sets the top border but I prefer to keep things organized. That is supposed to be the whole point of this right?) Here’s the code for what we have done so far. Now I wonder how much code we’ll end up with if we were to use the old school method with <table>’s. Perhaps CSS and <div> tags are not the best way to seperate the content from the design. Perhaps the buzz around all this 2.0 crap will go away soon. You know, I don’t think I’ve actually seen a definition of web 2.0. Is it social bookmarking and blogs? Is it that lame design style with bright colors, inner bevels, cheesey reflections, and starbursts? (80′s meets MLM) Or is it CSS and the <div> tag vs. the <table> tag? Whatever the case, there is a better way to seperate the design from the content. It’s called content management. And you can use a free web based CMS like Joomla or a highend, not free server based CMS like Vignette or Interwoven Teamsite or, there’s always the pretty good inexpensive and simple Macromedia (Adobe) Contribute. Come on world. Figure it out. Keep the goal in sight.