On Hotel Living

One more thing to cross off my list of things to do in life: Live in a hotel.



Living in this hotel has turned me into such an old lady. I'm a major grandma up in here. I get home from work, I watch the local news, I watch NBC nightly news, and then I watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!. By the time Jeopardy! is over, I am at a nodding-off point. I get up, putter around, and then fall asleep with the TV on. Watching TV in bed is a HUGE luxury for me. Having a TV in the bedroom is something I've always been fiercely against but am often tempted by, so I am enjoying it while it lasts.

That said, I'll be glad when it's over. The movers will have my stuff up here on Friday or Saturday and I'll get settled into my new dwelling. At the same time, though, it's been pretty cool to be here. It's forced me to unwind during my off hours. Having someone bring me clean towels and wash my dishes never gets old. I have a dedicated housekeeper here, and she is a living doll. She leaves Banjo! little treats and leaves me neatly-stacked pyramids of Hershey's chocolates. One day she even left a toy for Banjo! accompanied by a very sweet hand-written note.



And, yes, Banjo! totally loves it. Housekeeper Terry will be getting a huge tip.



The downside to the hotel lifestyle is that every so often there are guests who are loud all night long making for a night with little to no sleep. Also, it's expensive. In case anyone was wondering, it's around $2,500 to stay at a Residence Inn for a month. Considering the circumstances, though, it's been worth it. I had time to find a cool place to rent in a neighborhood I'll be happy in, and I've been able to get some rest after months of craziness. I think the hotel is cheaper than the hospital for "tired people", which is where I was inevitably headed.

Come to think of it, I'm really going to miss this place...

Beware the BAD DOINS KREW

This highly menacing message is brought to you by the BAD DOINS KREW (representing Chucktown, West Virginia).

I don't even want to think about how much blood was spilled and how many families were destroyed during the printing of such an ominous message on these Avery® 5167 return address labels (likely purchased from Office Max, or lifted from someone's mom's desk at work).

BAD DOINS KREW want everyone to know that they are lurking around every corner, surreptitiously applying their little stickers to the window of the Charleston city parking garage, ready to make widows of your wives and orphans of your children if you so much as glance in their direction. Why, merely debating whether to typeset their communique of doom using Copperplate or Comic Sans resulted in torturous bloodbaths of Spanish Inquisition proportions.

Look over your shoulder all you want... but you've gotta sleep sometime, old man. And when you do, BAD DOINS KREW will be looming overhead when you wake up.

I guess Firefall were busy.

Shoulda Listened to the Soothsayer

Happy Ides of March!



To honor this grave and fateful day, let's all listen to one of my favorite 70s songs. I give you Vehicle by The Ides of March. I LOVE this song. I love its soulful vocals and the brassy, aggressive, come hither energy it has. The lyrics start off by crossing the line of what's creepy, but I think that adds to the gravelly feel this song has. I have a confession to make, though: for years I thought this song was by Blood, Sweat and Tears. Imagine my surprise to learn that it was actually by the band whose ashes Survivor-- yep, Eye of the Tiger, that Survivor-- rose from. Cover me with sugar and call me a jelly donut... who knew?

Enjoy!

Vehicle - The Ides of March* **

*The file is approx. 4mb, just look for the 'Download Link' option near the bottom of the page. You don't have to register for anything.

**Shared MP3s are for evaluation purposes only and are available for a limited amount of time.

Don't Block Web 2.0 Access

This is cool.. After my last post about the wonderful world of "Web 2.0" (I am still having a hard time using that term; it seems so buzz jockey-esque), this article about Web 2.0's potential to boost creativity and productivity in the workplace crossed my desk. Timely!

From Government Technology:

Don't Block Web 2.0 Access, Says Gartner

Government Technology | 03.10.08
URL: http://www.govtech.com/gt/articles/271948

Businesses need to resist the temptation to exclude their employees' access to Web 2.0 technologies and services if they are to benefit from the considerable creativity that Web 2.0 can unleash, according to Gartner.

Business demands will increasingly require security organizations to secure, rather than block enterprise access to the Web 2.0 global ecosystem. Many IT organizations are responding to the demand for Web 2.0 technologies. According to a Gartner Executive Programs survey of 1,500 CIOs worldwide, half of the respondents said they plan to invest in Web 2.0 technologies for the first time in 2008.

"Rather than just stopping the use of Web 2.0 technologies, IT groups should be providing secure means of developing and deploying such applications," said Joseph Feiman, vice president and Gartner fellow. "The business application movement toward Web 2.0 and other related-trends, such as increased use of open-source software and wider deployment of service-oriented architectures, are combining to change how applications are developed with significant implications for security."

"Web 2.0 enables masses of individuals to become application and content developers and deploy Web 2.0 applications that implement their own versions of established business rules and practices. Although this entails risks, it can also unlock huge business value," Feiman said. "By mapping the business gain against the potential risk, organizations can determine the most effective constraints and controls for enterprise use of Web 2.0."

According to Gartner, with mashups, Ajax and other Web 2.0 technologies already in widespread use, saying "no" to the Web 2.0 ecosystem will generally not be an option. Instead, enterprises should take tactical and strategic steps to increase the odds that business use of Web 2.0 will increase the bottom line rather than have a negative business impact through security incidents.

"Organizations need to extend their security processes to enable safe use of Web 2.0 technologies" said John Pescatore, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. "Strategies to contain and protect the use of new technologies will always be more effective in the long run than security approaches that rely solely on blocking."

Pescatore advised organizations to expand their definition of vulnerability assessment to include the detection of external use of corporate content through mashups and internal exposure of sensitive data through Web 2.0 technologies. He also said that service-level agreements with content and service providers for mashups and other collaborative technologies would help to avoid or at least minimize discontinuities of the service. Organizations should not accept applications developed by external service providers, open-source-software communities or business partners unless they are tested for security vulnerabilities.


Image taken from Strange Maps, one of my favorite sites out there. Check out the Ludacris' Rap Map of US Area Codes. Brilliant.

Design and the Elastic Mind

Note: Many of the external links in this post go to a Flash-authored site. Completely annoying, yes, but the content is worth checking out. I promise.

Wow. I desperately, desperately want to check out this exhibition at MoMA.

Design and the Elastic Mind

It runs until May 12th. I've never been to New York City, much less the Museum of Modern Art. But I am going to try to make this happen. Especially after reading this review of the exhibit over at Core 77.

Where my New York people at?!

Despite my enthusiasm, some of the works featured in this exhibition freak me out. There are some prototypes of concepts that just don't sit well with me, but that I'd love to see nonetheless. Granted, the imaginings that make me nervous are merely that-- imaginings. If there is one thing I appreciate in life, it's imagination. However, were something like RFID tagging on human beings ever to become a mandated reality, I'd be one of the first people heading off to the hills to live in a cave. Nonetheless, I love that someone has the type gray matter in his or her head to envision and translate into something tangible such an idea.

That said, I fear visualizing an (even more) Orwellian future. Although not a tinfoil hat kind of girl, I am very private. Despite this public-facing blog, despite my varied online activity, I am reluctant to reveal too much of myself to anyone other than people whom I feel close to and have a strong sense of. Which is such a contradiction, given that I can be found on Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, here, my personal website (if I ever get around to re-designing and re-launching it) but these accounts aren't so much a social thing for me as they are my attempt to keep ahead of the curve as it applies to my career. Yes, there is an interpersonal aspect of social networking and folksonomy-driven sites that I enjoy... I have friends and family all over the country that I love to keep in touch with. I like to know what people I care about are up to. But what I really get from these various accounts and interactions is simple: Knowledge. Ideas. Collaboration. The banter I engage in and follow with co-workers and other webby-type people on Twitter goes much further than a welcome diversion on a stressful work day. My profile on Colour Lovers isn't to make color buddies, but to stay abreast of color trends and to store and create palettes for future use in my designs. The Internet is an amazing resource, and as I gradually overcome my reluctance to make myself present "out there" the more I benefit professionally.

Because of these things, the Harvesting the Internet segment of the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition is what interests me most. The exhibition's website shows several Google Earth mashups, which thrills me to no end. About two years ago I was working on the fourth redesign of alabama.gov. During this time, I teamed up with our very talented and motivated lead developer, Robert. The goal was to create an interactive mapping segment of the portal with limited resources available to us. We didn't have a dedicated GIS or mapping agency to work with, so we had to be creative. Robert found a way to work with Google's API (before they openly made such an API publicly available) to sort of reverse-engineer Google's mapping features to fit our needs. I then skinned it and incorporated it into the overall site design. If I am not mistaken, alabama.gov was the first state government web portal to integrate Google maps into the site. Technically not a mashup in that whole Web 2.0 sense of the word, it's something we needed to innovate for ourselves and I am very proud of that. alabama.gov's mapping feature allows visitors to the site to locate everything from libraries to blood donation centers to locations of Alabama's 'moon trees' in one spot. To see similar and more sophisticated web applications being showcased in an exhibition at MoMA thrills me to no end.

But, I'm a design geek like that.

A design geek who shudders at the thought of paper as we know it being phased out for digital versions, but who (in her dreams) would absolutely love a 3-D printer so that she can design and print out her own custom fruit bowl, for the real!

Wanna go, wanna go, wanna go...

One Week

I've been in Charleston for a week now. I miss Alabama.



I miss my little cottage in Montgomery. Saying good bye to those empty rooms brought up all sorts of feelings that'll probably take me a while to work through. I'm such a sentimental fool.







I hope the dollhouse is making its new inhabitant as happy as it made me.

I miss my friends. I miss my sense of security and stability.

But, I love an adventure. And Charleston has been a good experience thus far. Last Saturday, we got some serious snow. Banjo! had never been in snow like this:



He was all over it. It's been a while for me (save for visits to SLC at Christmas time), so I went for a drive. Downtown Charleston is beautiful when dusted with snow.



I was pleased that it was the light, powdery, sparkly snow similar to the snow out in Utah. I wasn't expecting it to be much more than glorified sleet, but the snow that fell on Saturday was just lovely. It glittered, flake by flake, as it fell slowly and deliberately out of the black night sky. Forgive me for waxing poetic about snow, but like I said earlier, it had been a while. I experience a strong wave of nostalgia when it comes to quiet, snowy weekends.

Also pleasing is what I believe to be the MOST AWESOME MAILBOX IN THE ENTIRE WORLD, FREE OR OTHERWISE, right here in Chucktown. I spotted this glorious monstrosity on a Sunday afternoon drive, while in search of a new domicile.



World-class tack. Not bad for a week's worth of sights, yes? Yes. And, as always, there are more to come.

Country Roads

I made it.