The Perfectionist

I thought tonight I would feel like I can do whatever I want to. There is nothing pressing, but it's just too bad there are so many things I want to do. Then I read Kurt Easterwood's web site today, and it made me fell self-conscious about my own, so now I have to try to fix it up. It's nothing he says in particular, just the whole concept about paying attention to what you write. This site started as a replacement for personal email... and I never spell check or even re-read personal email. I never worry about making it look nice or formatting it. That is what happened to my site too.

At first I planned to make constant "improvements" as I went along. What actually happened though was that I made lots of changes, but more for fun than to improve it. It became tech sketchbook. I never took the time to make sure everything was perfect, because who the frick has time for that? I'm sure there are a ton of broken links, and some of the pages are even still in the old design. When you leave a comment, the little comment window refreshes into the regular web page design, which is obviously too big for the window. I could go on and on.

I'm a big believer in the quick prototype. Put it out as soon as possible, because if you wait for it to be perfect... well, my web site was in the production phase for a year and a half before I finally just said "Screw it!" and put it live while still imperfect. The problem with that, as I'm sure you all know, is that I never have the time budget to go back and fix things, because there is always something new coming along

Anyway, I just re-read my post from yesterday, and noticed all the bad grammar and spelling mistakes. There where about eight places where it probably only makes sense to me... if your a reader your screwed.

Should I dare to make a promise to myself that from now on I will re-read each post, edit spelling and grammar, and make sure it has a coherent thought before I post? It's a tough order to fill since I usually post late at night when such matters seem trivial compared to knocking off one more to-do before going to bed. I'm not going to promise, but from now on don't be surprised if you see better writing on the site.