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So I'm writing this on my Monday lunch break, at Olive Garden. This is a very new restaurant, using OG's recent "Tuscan farmhouse" design, and it's alarmingly pretty for a chain restaurant. I was here once before with a group from work and the menu was slightly different than other OGs--trying to be more real Italian than Italian-American--but they seem to have stopped that.
Last Friday everyone at NetPoodles was given a new photo ID. These look like something you'd make at Kinko's with the color printer and laminating machine: the graphic design's nice enough but it's too colorful and busy to seem quite real, the feel is flimsy, and the badges have Trekkesque "Clearance Sector" boxes. I'm in Sector A. Sector? Sectors correspond to departments, and my department's also listed. This makes the Clearance Sector designation what we engineers call "goofy woo woo shit." Of course, there's only 54 people in the company--it's not like we don't all recognize one another to start with.
My boss again repeated that he'd been told NetPoodles has the $7M we're theoretically getting from somebody somewhere. I again repeated that I'll believe it when I see the press release. (Given our last press release trumpeted that someone had almost placed an order with us--seriously--I can't imagine they'd let new funding happen unannounced. I expect them to announce it three or four times with different adjectives.) The badges are clearly being produced only to impress potential visitors. ("Hey," the visitors will say, "did you get these done at Kinko's?")
I spent virtually all of Sunday redesigning the Kumquat Communications front page in Fireworks and Dreamweaver MX. Kumquat is the fictitious telecom company I've used for two sites in my web design portfolio; they originally appeared to substitute for Intermedia's name when I reconstructed a version of the intranet I designed there. Like the old page, this one is just a design piece--the links are in place and the drop-down menus drop down, but none of the links go anywhere. The new page is perhaps a little boring but with any luck it's corporately boring. This still leaves me with the Blue Coyote Salsa web site to redesign, and the promised Flash introduction to the design portfolio. And probably a snazzier index page for the portfolio, too. Redoing the Salsa site "correctly" will involve adding a shopping cart, so that may be the last thing I get to.
What creative energy I've had recently is going into this stuff and will probably keep going into it for the next few weeks. Hopefully it'll pay off in some useful way soon.
Well, I've finished lunch and the follow-up cappuccino, so it's time to head back to the office. This was a nice break from fast food lunches and ramen cups, but was perhaps more expensive than someone concerned about continued employment should indulge in very often.
Last Friday everyone at NetPoodles was given a new photo ID. These look like something you'd make at Kinko's with the color printer and laminating machine: the graphic design's nice enough but it's too colorful and busy to seem quite real, the feel is flimsy, and the badges have Trekkesque "Clearance Sector" boxes. I'm in Sector A. Sector? Sectors correspond to departments, and my department's also listed. This makes the Clearance Sector designation what we engineers call "goofy woo woo shit." Of course, there's only 54 people in the company--it's not like we don't all recognize one another to start with.
My boss again repeated that he'd been told NetPoodles has the $7M we're theoretically getting from somebody somewhere. I again repeated that I'll believe it when I see the press release. (Given our last press release trumpeted that someone had almost placed an order with us--seriously--I can't imagine they'd let new funding happen unannounced. I expect them to announce it three or four times with different adjectives.) The badges are clearly being produced only to impress potential visitors. ("Hey," the visitors will say, "did you get these done at Kinko's?")
I spent virtually all of Sunday redesigning the Kumquat Communications front page in Fireworks and Dreamweaver MX. Kumquat is the fictitious telecom company I've used for two sites in my web design portfolio; they originally appeared to substitute for Intermedia's name when I reconstructed a version of the intranet I designed there. Like the old page, this one is just a design piece--the links are in place and the drop-down menus drop down, but none of the links go anywhere. The new page is perhaps a little boring but with any luck it's corporately boring. This still leaves me with the Blue Coyote Salsa web site to redesign, and the promised Flash introduction to the design portfolio. And probably a snazzier index page for the portfolio, too. Redoing the Salsa site "correctly" will involve adding a shopping cart, so that may be the last thing I get to.
What creative energy I've had recently is going into this stuff and will probably keep going into it for the next few weeks. Hopefully it'll pay off in some useful way soon.
Well, I've finished lunch and the follow-up cappuccino, so it's time to head back to the office. This was a nice break from fast food lunches and ramen cups, but was perhaps more expensive than someone concerned about continued employment should indulge in very often.
