Yellow

This one is for Sarah S-E:

Downloads complete and I *heart* Keith

I am the sort of gal who, in anticipation of certain events being much harder than I have the capacity to deal with, puts off doing certain things. Like calling tech support for my DSL, which has been sporadic since I called Verizon and accepted an offer to “bundle” my landline phone and DSL services together, saving myself some money. (Final tally? A measly $4/month. Savings FAIL.) Along with that savings bundle came two unexpected surprises: the twins Free Long Distance Calling and Upgraded Internet Speed.

Whoo hoo, right?! Wrong.

Ever since my new, faster, stronger and excessively handsome DSL popped into my life, my poor MacBook has been struggling to maintain a consistent, open connection to the World Wide Web while my PC roars down the webbie tracks in blissful ignorance that anything is amiss. And this distressed Jack the Mac so much that it rendered him almost speechless. All he was able to say was, through iTunes, “connection failed” and “error 3150.”

Not helpful. Especially since a visit to Google was rewarded with, “What are you looking for?! Are you sure you didn’t mean “gadget”?? ‘Cuz there ain’t no Google here!“

“Bitch, whatev. I saw his car ’round back, so bring him out.”

“Fine, but he ain’t gonna be happy!”

And such was the way of our daily interactions until, tonight, unable to download an album to my iTunes I finally, stoically, resolutely gathered myself to place a phone call to Verizon tech support. But first, I called Keith. I was sure that my super-duper friend Sarah’s tech-y husband would be able to help me figure out if the problem was my modem, or at least give me some cool tech-geek jargon to speak so I could try to sound intelligent about what was happening.

Based on my initial summarization of events, Keith wasn’t really sure what was going on, but offered to swing by with Sarah’s MacBook in tow to check to see if he would have the same issues with my WiFi. While he was preparing to make the two turns to my parking lot from his, I dialed my way into the cheery depths of the Verizon automated answering system.

That very kind sounding woman’s voice, trying to help me diagnose then direct my call? Yeah, she effing hung up on me.

Luckily, it only took a small handful of curse words and shredding one paper before I was put through to a representative during my second call. Keith entered the room and logged onto my WiFi network. “Slooooooowwwwww” he mouthed, pointing to his desktop. I was trying to figure out which cable the tech support guy wanted me to unhook from my PC desktop and plug into my MacBook, when all of a sudden I realized that there was no one on the line anymore.

Big, fat alligator tears welled up in my eyes and I turned to look at Keith, who encouraged me to “give him a second or two.” I was about to hang up and call back, demanding to speak to a manager and ready to initiate a congressional hearing on the effectiveness of tech support when Robert finally came back on the line. “I’m sorry ma’am, I didn’t mean to make you think I had gone. I had some trouble with my headset  — had to get a new one.”

(Boy, wasn’t I glad that the things I had been thinking, I kept as thoughts and didn’t say!)

What transpired next isn’t worth recounting — Robert (I wonder if, when he’s not working, he goes by Bob, or Bobby?) took control of my machine remotely and did a bunch of crap that I didn’t understand — repeatedly it seemed, as I watched with the morbid curiousity of someone who does not expect to come out unscathed from this experience — until all of a sudden he told me to unhook the ethernet cable from the MacBook.

Keith rebooted my WiFi on his computer, and BOY WAS IT FAST!!! After running the ethernet line back into my PC, Jack picked up my new-and-improved WiFi connection and uploaded iGoogle faster than a bad check bounces.

Google has dropped his mistress and is now happily living back under my roof. My iTunes purchases have been successfully downloaded and tucked in for their first night in a new place. And Keith, after correctly installing my new Oomphasis e-mail in Mail, sent me the following test message:

Subject: I hope…
Message: you feel better now !!

I do feel better Keith… not just better, but faster and prettier and smarter too. Zippy. Can a person feel zippy?! Thanks for coming to my tech-distress rescue, and for stopping me from saying things out loud that would’ve gotten me sued for slander. Your next glass of whiskey is on me.

Texas sights

Ah, Internet… how I haven’t missed you! I don’t say that to be mean, it’s just that for the first time in a long time I finally feel like I’m getting back to my life. And by my life I mean not being stuck on a couch, attached to my laptop and begging my body to start cooperating. Because finally — AT LAST — I’m not crippled over in sciatic pain, I’m not winded by walking from the living room to the kitchen and back, and I’ve found a pair of shoes that seems to be supportive enough to negate some of the plantar fascitiis pain in my right foot.

I’ve gotten up off of the couch, taken a shower, and have “got a move on” — and I’m not looking back. Which, unfortunately or fortunately (however you view it), means a lot less computer time in my not-at-work-hours.

So, I’m not timely. Get over it. Here are some moments caught on film from my recent trip to Austin, Texas:

Beautiful, vibrant and interesting flowers outside of St. Elias inspired both Sarah and I to take our cameras out for the first time. We ended up seeing these same blooms elsewhere in the city, but the backdrop was never quite as gorgeous as that of the stonework of the church.

Austin is the state capitol of Texas, and our hotel was two blocks from this most magnificent building. Instead of visiting during the day, we wandered about the campus at night and marvelled at how pretty it was, all lit up. My pictures came out more “true” once I adjusted my white balance (the white-white version is not what we saw with our eyes). As we were taking it all in, some random guy rode up on a bicycle, parked, took off his helmet and began to dance. People came up to pose and take pictures in front of the Capitol, but he kept going –his dedication to grooving was impressive.

One of my favorite photos from the city part of our trip — A shot of buildings and the setting sun reflected in one of Austin’s office buildings along Congress Avenue.

[Insert note: I'm having a bear of a time uploading photographs to WordPress and Facebook, and since I don't like to go to bed grumpy please consider this Austin Post 1. More pictures from my trip will follow, once I figure out why my Internet connection speed here at home has recently dropped like one of Michael Jackson's posthumous tribute CDs.]

A lover’s rumble

The sound of thunder closes my eyes
a lovesick fool in the sky
blindly stumbling over the treetops
roaring out in pain
the anguish of unspoken words
and others spoken too well
the heat of a passion stirred
an expanded state of knowing
all silence and sound at the exact same moment
and I hear an echo in my lonely heart

An ocular feast of written elements

Sarah and I were making our way to a room on the upper level of the convention center to attend a session and true-to-form I was rubbernecking the entire way, trying to take in anything and everything — mundane details mixed with people-watching and a general curiosity to see what there is to see. During one of my origami head-craning sessions, I glimpsed a tiny bit of black-on-white lines through an open door, a dash of color amongst the alphabet.

“Oh Sarah… we’re going to have to go in that room. YOU are going to have to go in that room.”

“Okay…?!?!”

“Trust me. That room will make you happy.”

An hour and fifteen minutes later, Sarah’s eyes widened and a smile graced her lips. TYPOGRAPHY. The art and technique of arranging type, type design and modifying type glyphs. In other words, verbal art.

Here are some of the alphabetic works that I wanted to remember from the showcase:

** Me too…

** This one makes me smile, though I don’t particularly know why.

** Pirates are cool, and beards are the new black.

** Amen.

** Dude… Seriously. “Who should?!”

** The Wonderful World of Typology (Alphabet Animals) was a personal favorite of mine, but I liked the idea behind the Judges poster as well. The artist asked each judge what their favorite letter was, and then “drew” their portrait using only that letter. Same with the animals — the Jaguar is made entirely of “J’s,” meanwhile the Elephant is shaped from “E’s” — uppercase and lowercase, regular and emboldened. Genius.

** I want this font; I think a student created it…

** In this piece, the part of the skate that had the grommets was actually 3-D, as was the laces. Fun!

** Campaign posters for 2012, anyone?!

HOW Austin

Austin, Texas. I’ve heard so much about it being a great place for art, music and design — a hub of creativity — that when Sarah and I got permission to go to the 2009 HOW Design Conference we were stoked. Then we stepped off the airplane and realized we’d have to be careful not to end up stroked.

Ausin, in June, is H-O-T. Like, 104+ degrees. Yowsas! (Did I mention that we had a 10 block walk from our hotel to the Austin Convention Center?!)

Luckily for us, we were given the big Texas welcome, the venue was air conditioned and we were treated to an array of PowerPoint presentations that weren’t put together by engineers. (One of the recurring topics discussed was how so many business people are unaware how great design can affect their successes — and failures. I wish that Sarah and I could run an instructional forum at our workplace to get people to understand that there’s really something substantial behind the time and effort put behind good design, and how a well-crafted presentation makes a world of difference to the viewers.)

We took our between-session breaks outside — a temporary baking of our bones before the chilly numbness of hour-plus presentations, barely padded seating and sometimes rambling, side-tracked speakers. Several of the sessions were as-expected; well-done with familiar scholastic information (Jenn & Ken Visocky O’Grady’s Information Design Dissected) or thoroughly littered with examples amidst a light explanation of why certain things worked and an emphasis on working with your client (DJ Stout’s Variations on a Rectangle: The Art of Magazine Design).

A few presentations were exceptional — Michael Osborne’s Design That Matters; Cameron Moll’s Good vs. Great Design. Von Glitschka’s Living a Creatively Curious Life may not have told me anything necessarily new… but his presentation was fun and interesting, threaded with great real-life examples and repeatedly encouraging all of us to investigate our curiosity to find inspiration (and even leading to an impromptu dance session at the end!).

Some, unfortunately, were crap. An explorative, explanatory review of the process behind logo design turned into a self-indulgent and ill-prepared portfolio review. One session on Open Type (fonts) didn’t even begin to live up to its program description, so we walked out and slipped into another session that was discussing how to market yourself (or your company) using social media. We weren’t being rude: session-hopping was encouraged so that all attendees would really feel like they got the most out of their three conference days.

Our last session on Friday was a bonus one — Germany’s Tobias Meyerhoff gave a presentation on his company’s software, Font Explorer X. Sarah and I were dutifully impressed — as only Type A, OCD organizers and perfectionists can be — with the cababilities of said software (currently only available for Mac, but coming soon for you PC users!). Basically, to steal Tobias’ line, if you use fonts on a regular basis, Font Explorer X is for you. The biggest draw is its ability to let you manage your entire font library in an iTunes-like window, and to activate/deactivate fonts based on the programs you’re using. (For any designer who has a decently large collection of fonts and who’s ever had to wait for FOREVER for Illustrator to load its font libraries, you know what this could mean for your productivity and system resources!) Basically, Sarah and I were impressed and I believe we’ll be downloading a free 30-day trial of the Pro version for home use within a week of returning home.*

Late Friday night we realized that Saturday’s single session was based off of an article in the last issue of HOW Magazine (subject: copywriting), which we’d both read… Looking back through the issue, provided to us in our conference goodie bag, we could practically envision the speaker’s presentation slides based on the bullets in the article. So, we made an executive decision to skip the session and spend the day checking out Austin.

This, as you will soon see, was a most excellent judgement call on our part.

* Jenn — Conference goodie package coming your way later on, with coupon(s) inside. *BUG*