obligatory

• home
• mfop2

archives

• December 2004
• November 2004
• October 2004
• September 2004
• August 2004
• July 2004
• June 2004
• May 2004
• April 2004
• March 2004
• February 2004
• January 2004
• December 2003
• November 2003
• October 2003
• September 2003
• August 2003
• July 2003
• June 2003
• May 2003
• April 2003
• March 2003
• February 2003
• January 2003
• December 2002
• November 2002
• October 2002
• September 2002
• August 2002
• July 2002
• June 2002
• May 2002
• April 2002
• February 2000

recent

• Backed-up
• First Snow
• Bus Window
• Farm & Ski
• Color
• Body of Evidence
• Bridge
• More Stupidity
• Leading vs. Convincing
• Economy is to serve people

Too much really to write about so I am overwhelmed and will write nothing. Actually, I have that problem often. I have too much to do on my to do list, and I wind up not knowing where to start so I just sit there. It's time to pull out coach Dietrich's wisdom.

The problem with you seminary guys is that your too dang smart! When you don't know what to do you don't want to look stupid and do the wrong thing, so you don't do anything. Goldangit! Just hit someone! That's why your all so good at track. The only thing you have to know is run fast and turn left!

It's a little different in that I am not "not hitting" any of my projects because I don't know what to do, but that advice still comes to mind.

I may have found the fix to this little problem of not knowing what to do. I have been unusually un-busy the last too days at work. Sure I have a million little things to take care of, but when I get this much time between deadlines, I like to just surf and learn. I spend a lot of time checking out other peoples programs and seeing how they do what they do, downloading new modules that look interesting and solve some of the problems I have had in the last few months, and checking out sourceforge.net/ for any nifty open source stuff I can use. This time I found zentrack, a web-based project management software in php. It's pretty basic in most ways, but it is a great find for me, since for the past two years, I have been making most of the functionality in this software from scratch, for use in our office, on a "do it when you have free time" but "by Friday" type of schedule. As a result, all the different "systems" are all separate and very un-useful.

The system is obviously made for web-application savvy users, and I have some real doubts about being able to implement it in our office, but at least three of us will be able to handle it. If I think it is too complex for "regular" users, it must really be too complex. In a recent big application I made, I built in all the cool functions I would need, and then before presenting it to the client, we went through and cut about 60% of them from the interface, to make it as simple as possible, thinking there is really no way to not understand what was left. The schedule had absolutely no time for user testing, so we agreed to make the client the user test, and that we would make adjustments as the need became apparent. It still amazed me what a lot of people can't do even with extremely clear simplified directions (written by our own village non-net savvy person after hours of one on one training). One of the major problems of course is that the client thought there would be zero learning curve. They expected it to be as easy to use as excel. In fact it is much easier as far as I'm concerned, but they seem to have forgotten that they also had to read a book to learn excel.

Anyway, It only took about an hour to install and configure (it took a while to realize I had to upgrade php on our server), and now hopefully we can do what doesn't really get done, and keep track of everything that is going on. The company doesn't have a project manager, and everyone is basically supposed to manage everything that comes to them. This usually results in a lot falling through the cracks as you can imagine. I rather enjoy the project management aspect of web projects, and would love to move to that role, but as always happens, there comes a time when we need to make money, and (like the last two months) I am filled above capacity with only programming / server work. No time to make sure everyone is in sync.

I know adding a new system like this wont really help that, but hopefully it will help speed up the clean-up process that takes place once the deadlines are done, and I get a chance to figure out what is going on in all the other neglected areas, smoothing all the little goofs that happened because no one was really paying attention at the time. At least maybe all the projects notes and history of who did what will be in one place.

Maybe.

I have also installed that system into my own provide little space to help me keep track of my own to-dos. The paper list in a daily planner has never really worked for me, because it is not flexible enough to edit and insert. Now I will never forget those important things i have to do each week like clean my bathroom (the deadline is Feb 23) and feed the birds (deadline March 4).

I have been simplifying my aspirations for what I will submit to the exhibition next month. I always seem to get these crazy ideas to make something cool, and then reality hits. I was going to make a nice little painting based on Chicken Truck, only it would be "Guri Truck". The original sketch turned out great. In order to push myself to the limit, I included a great looking old time pick-up truck, driving across a beautiful mountain landscape bathed in early morning sunshine, with a huge "Guri" riding in the back. When I started painting though, I remembered that I'm not really so good at painting landscapes yet. Add to that a truck, and then a giant parakeet on top of that, and I don't stand a chance.

Instead I am going to do a nude portrait of myself with a well-placed semi-giant parakeet to keep the rating down around PG-13.

galleries