netWert
Ideapad
See also Webfolio, Whimsy, + I Art Wert


January 26, 2000

Well, the redesign is here, but the new format isn't. Not yet, at least -- once the reading materials take shape it'll kick in.

In the meantime, take a look around the rest of the site, or peruse the archives at your leisure.

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January 22, 2000

No more updates until the redesign takes hold. (See comment two paragraphs down.)

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I've had a wonderfully quiet week. Looking forward to my new job Monday, enjoying the freelance work I'm doing, having fun with my new DSL modem. My apartment is clean, my mind is clear, and life is good.

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The long-overdue redesign of netWert should be in place by Monday (because if it's not, I'll never get around to finishing it). The ol' Ideapad will be morphing, too, into a meatier, essay-based format. Jeffrey Zeldman recently pointed out the scarcity of meaningful content on the Web (thank you, Cam), capped with this finger-numbing comment on pages like mine: "What if, instead of actually MAKING Citizen Kane, Orson Welles had simply published a Web diary?"

Taking that to heart, you'll see a robust new Ideapad in the coming months. More prattle from me, of course, but in cohesive, 1000-word bursts, rather than the three-paragraph mumblings that have filled this space since 1997. The editorialist in me is returning.

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January 17, 2000

I have DSL!

whoosh

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Man, what a day. Put more than 200 miles on my car in 13 hours without ever being more than an hour away from my starting point. That's a lot of errands.

Good day, though. My teeth are pearly and white again, my cousin's confident he has a good resume, Michelle enjoyed having a visitor (I assume), I got my new 5-wood exchanged, the class I taught went well, my freelance meeting was satisfying and productive, and Bell Atlantic got my zippy new Internet access connected without any problems.

I am going to have a hearty, happy night's sleep tonight.

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January 16, 2000

No offense to him, of course, but Adam's birthday dinner at Golden Unicorn in Chinatown may well be the worst meal I eat all year.

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January 12, 2000

Hm. Today was my last full day of work at BPI. I ran around like a maniac all day, conducting seven job interviews and saving lots of files to Zip disks.

I'm headed back to the office Friday and early next week, so I get to wind down slowly. Which must be why I'm not very emotional about my departure. I was expecting to get all choked up when I left, after all the time I've spent there. But my work isn't finished until this whole hiring stint is done, so I haven't really gotten around to quitting, physically or psychologically. So long as the inflatable chair is there, I consider it my office.

We'll see how I do when I hand in the keys and say my goodbyes. In the meantime, I have tomorrow all to myself, and I can't wait.

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January 10, 2000

Am I getting ahead of myself? I updated my resume to reflect my new job at Economist.com, even though I don't start there for two weeks.

There's more to it than that, of course. I also added my cool side gig, which I'm starting to take pride in and which is almost ready to launch. Inserting the two new items allowed me to remove my college experience from my c.v.

That's the funny thing -- I've been a loyal employee of BPI for so long that it took me nearly five years of employment before I had enough real-world experience to stop showing off the fact that I was a librarian for my college radio station. It's about time.

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Ah, naps. Grab a little shuteye on the couch and what do I get? 12:51 a.m. and I am wide awake.

I wouldn't mind, what with my lame-duck status at work and all, but I am conducting job interviews tomorrow morning and teaching after work, which means I have a busy 13-hour day rapidly approaching. Stupid hot apartment.

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Signs you're finally winning the laziness battle:

I exited my local subway station this evening to find a crosstown bus pulling up to the curb. (I'm about a 10-minute walk from the subway.) I was ready to hop on and decided to hoof it instead.

Then I needed dinner, so I stopped in my local Subway (the sandwich shop, not the mass-transit vehicle). Was going to buy a foot-long meatball sub, but I stared at the low-fat combos for a minute and ordered the Sub Club instead -- oil and vinegar, thanks, hold the mayo -- and wound up with a rather lo-cal meal.

And tomorrow I join the gym again. Go me!

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January 9, 2000

My apartment is so damn warm in the wintertime.

I don't have a radiator or a heat vent -- I have steam pipes, which are currently 70% covered with pipe insulation to minimize the amount of heat that comes into my home. Still, on a sunny afternoon, the southern-facing exterior wall of my apartment soaks up the rays, and makes my home a stuffy 78 degrees.

I'm not one for much napping, but I have fallen asleep twice on my couch this weekend. I can't stand it. Tomorrow I'm buying a fan to mount in my window and circulate the winter air to cool the place down. Pneumonia, here I come.

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January 6, 2000

Lots of brief, random, unrelated thoughts and emotions are floating around my head today.

- I don't feel well, thanks to this stomachache that woke me up at 5 a.m.

- This is probably not the best way to say it, but I'm rather enjoying being a lame duck at work. Still involved, still helping out, but I feel weirdly stressless while I work.

- What a terrible foot-in-mouth moment I had yesterday. No, I don't want to talk about it.

- Man, my desk is cluttered.

- I reeeeally want to redesign this Web site. Gotta spend my free time on my cool side gig first, though.

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January 4, 2000

I went public with it today.

It is a new job: I am headed to the Economist to be design director for economist.com.

Been keeping quiet the last week or so because I hadn't officially resigned to my boss. I considered talking about it prematurely to be bad form. Heaven forbid someone else would talk to my boss and say, "Hey, d'ja hear about David?"

So I'm on borrowed time at BPI. I will miss it dearly. But I'm very excited for the new job. Should be a good thing.

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January 3, 2000

I got a reminder today that even though my mother knows what an Internet architect is and my father has started replying to my emails plenty of people don't understand the Internet at all.

"Hello, David Wertheimer."

[pause] "Yeah, ah, who am I speaking to?"

"David Wertheimer."

[slowly] "Do you you work for the Internet?"

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