Juniorbird.com

Today was my last day as Marketing Account Manager at Casden Properties. I was going to write something clever to honor this moment, but that wasn’t in the stars.
First, I was going to do a “Goodnight Moon”-style entry (“goodnight cubicle, goodnight networked laser printer, goodnight HR Manager…”), but when your entire office is gray felt cubicle walls and fluorescent lighting, there’s not that many heartwarming pictures you can take with the camera in your cell phone.
Then I was going to write a story about how the last crap I took in the Casden Properties LLC restroom was a microcosm of my experience at the company, well, frankly, my time on the can was spent mostly expelling gaseous substances, which was in no way as satisfying as my marketing job.
So I have no clever entry. Future entries will hopefully be more entertaining; certainly they will concern my seven weeks of sweet sweet vacation upcoming.

Like many in todays modern fabric wall-oriented culture, I work in a small cubicle. My cube is along a main aisle, and there’s a lot of traffic past my desk during the day. Sadly, all the desk surfaces in my cube face *away* from the entrance. So my work often includes looking over my shoulder to see who’s watching me do obscene things in Quark or, God forbid, visiting espn.com to see if Baltimore’s finally found somebody to catch the ball.
So I bought a rear-view mirror from Target and stuck it above my computer monitor. Now I can watch people walk by in complete secrecy.

At this new job I have I make tons of phone calls, which is fine, but I have to dial 9 to get an outside line, and I’m not used to that. I keep on dialing numbers without dialing 9 first, and fortunately haven’t yet been connected to any of my cow-orkers.
In college, I lived in the dorms (as did almost everyone), and you could dial other dorm rooms with a 5-digit extension or dial 9 for an outside line. Our local pizza deliverer was Round Table; one of the dorm room lines had the same number as the first 5 digits of the Round Table number. So, every year (particularly for the first few weeks), the unlucky posessor of this number would be inundated with calls for delivery. More than one resident cursed with this number took to answering the phone “Round Table, can I take your order please.” Of course they didn’t pass the order on or anything; they just took all the information, hung up and forgot about it. Most often, the person ordering pizza remembered do dial 9 when they called Round Table an hour later to bitch them out.
Even worse was the older brother of my friend David from elementary school. David’s house was one digit off from Chuck E. Cheese, and, if somebody accidentally called their house to make a party reservation for their kids, David’s brother would take the reservation. Of course, weeks later, the party would show up and the restaurant would not be booked! Even as a small child, feared the bad karma that must have built up from that.

“Eric Sink”:http://software.ericsink.com/Career_Calculus.html writes a great entry about the value of constant learning in one’s career. Now, he’s talking specifically about finding value in going to a very expensive conference, but his fundamental point is correct — it’s important for individuals to take responsibility for learning about their chosen profession and assigned tasks throughout their career.
Of course one’s employer should help one out in doing this, by financing conferences, books and other learning materials, and giving one the time to network (on-line or in the real world) with other people carrying out similar tasks and pursuing similar careers. But it’s important for individuals to take responsibility for learning above and beyond that absolutely required by one’s manager. Remember, it’s your manager’s job to maximize your ability to do jobs required of you now and in the amount of time they expect you to remain in your job; it’s your job to maximize the skills that will help you now and in your career beyond your current job. There’s a lot of overlap between the two, but enough difference that learning needs to be your responsibility as well as your boss’s.
I do a lot of learning in my daily life. One of the things that I’ve benefitted the most from during the past 5 years (a period during which I’ve been almost exclusively involved in Web design) is e-mail listservs. These beasts allow people from all around the world (I’m on listservs with people from Singapore and Pakistan and Belgium and Germany and, yes, even Pennsylvania) to ask each other questions and learn from each others’ experiences. I receive about 300 e-mails every day from these listservs (in the past, I’ve been on more listservs and have gotten upwards of 600 e-mails), and I read about 85% of them and respond to at least 3 or 4 every day. By reading so many posts, I learn a great deal about things I’m not worrying about today but will have to in the future. Right now, I’m on 7 lists that I consider the most high-value for what I do of all those I’ve been on in the past (over 20, at one time or another):
* “Web405″:http://www.web405.org/, a listserv for Los Angeles-area Web developers. I’ve met a bunch of folks from this list in real life and it’s a useful resource for tech tips, business advice and networking.
* “Evolt’s thelist”:http://lists.evolt.org/mailman/listinfo/thelist. This listserv is one of the more international ones I’m on and has great developers from around the world. Sure answers to all your Web design questions, as well as related topics like server management, databases, copyright, etc.
* “Webdesign-L”:http://www.webdesign-l.com/ is the grandaddy of them all. One of the oldest Web design lists (Web405 may actually be a few months older), it’s had all the big names on it since time immemorial. The quality has gone down lately since the listmom stopped moderating so firmly and since a whole new set of people has joined, but still a valuable resource.
* “ActiveServerPages”:http://www.15seconds.com/listserver.htm is another multinational list, this one dedicated only to Microsoft’s “Active Server Pages”:http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp/ server-side programming environment. That’s what I use to build dynamic Web pages, and I’ve learned countless invaluable tips from this listserv.
* The similarly-named “active-server-pages”:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/active-server-pages/ has pretty much the same focus, just with a different cast of characters. Each of these two lists has some real heavyweights on it, and different questions are best asked in one or the other environment.
* “Mac-Mgrs”:http://mac-mgrs.org/ is your decisive source for information on how to fix whatever’s wrong with your Mac or make it bend to your will in whatever way makes business sense. Ruthlessly moderated, this group has the highest signal-to-noise ratio out there (that is, 0% noise).
* “BBEdit-Talk”:http://www.barebones.com/support/lists/bbedit_talk.shtml is a litserv for the users of “BBEdit”:http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/index.shtml, my Web development tool of choice. Hanging out here I learn how to work more productively.
Plus, there’s a ton of Web sites that I try to read every day or every week. They’re too numerous to mention here, but some are in my Links sidebar. Now, this takes a bunch of time (oh, about 3 hours/day), but the payoff is really there — I find I use stuff I learn through these methods several times a week.
At the same time, I see a lot of my colleagues *not* using these resources. These colleagues’ work is stagnant and they’re unable to solve key problems and rise to certain challenges. These are the folks who say “It can’t be done” or “It doesn’t work that way” all the time, and, the worst part of it is, they’re wrong. They’re stuck doing the same old thing, and they will be for a while.
It’s both sad and frustrating to work with these people. Not only does their lack of knowledge hurt the planning process, their decision not to learn harms execution, and the mere fact that they’re not often exposed to different ideas (as I am, about 250 times a day, on the above listservs) makes them more rigid. Or maybe it goes the other way, that people who want to learn and who want to contribute to planning and execution and who are prepared to change their mind seek out opportunities to do so independently. I don’t frankly know, and I’d be surprised if it’s possible to test such a thing (maybe a really long longitudinal study).
Anyway, this is a long post. The important part is this: folks, take time out from your day to learn how to do whatever it is that you do better. It’s rewarding, fun, and, best of all, it means that you’re actually doing work when it just feels like you’re interacting with your colleagues.

Vendors vendors vendors. Why do they vex me so?
So, when you’re discussing pricing with a potential customer, and you give him a price over the phone, then discover it’s wrong and add the new price to an e-mail filled with marketing material, well, you should call out that new price, lest the potential customer think that the number from the phone conversation is canonical.
And when a customer repeatedly mentions one specific need in multiple conversations, and you have two products with very similar names, and only one of those products offers the feature that fulfills that very specific need, well, make sure you sell the customer that product. Especially when that product costs more!
I hate vendors.

Somehow, 1500 folders destined for one of our clients ended up at our office/apartment instead. That’s a lot of folders. We lack a recieving dock, but at least we have a big ‘ol driveway for the FedEx man to park his truck in. Here’s our full palette of folders, outside and in:

One of the many fun jobs do here at Runstrong is that of Admin Guy. One of my tasks is to work with Paychex to handle payroll. I love me Paychex’s phone tree! They have the greatest phone tree voice guy. I like to think of him as Vito, the Mafia Hit Man Phone Tree Guy. Their greeting goes something like this: “Tank you for calling Paychex. If ya know da numba of da person you’se tryin to reach, you may dial it now. For payroll, press 1. For New Accounts, press 2. To speak wit a represendadiv, press da star key.”
Maybe it’s just me, but it makes my day. 310.338.7960.

We’re doing a Web site for an environmental nonprofit right now. Another nonprofit in the same space is Oceana, an organization with a really great Web site.
Now, we’ve discovered that the biggest problem in building a Web site is not making it easy to update – coding ASP is time-consuming but not always rocket science – or making it great – ’cause we’re just so talented – but getting the client to update the site with worthwhile content.
Oceana seems to have run into a little bit of trouble with that with their latest Member Profile.