Category: Personal (Page 23 of 25)

Career-wise, I am happily moving beyond the realm of “web designer” this year. My ambitions have my mind elsewhere: usability assessments, strategy analysis and planning, an MBA.

As a result, the actual build-out of my new corporate site (which should go live any day now) took a while to get started. As I work on it, I feel like a teenager getting back on a bicycle after receiving a driver’s license: I know how it’s done, and I’m good at it, but I’d so rather be in the new ride.

Of course, the need to know HTML, CSS and browser compatibility are far from irrelevant to my career, so it’s good to regain my proverbial sea legs. After the launch I shall dive headfirst back into RSS and XML feeds.

But that bicycle only gets me so far. And I can’t wait to start driving every day.

Scene: The Pahu i’a Restaurant at the Four Seasons Hualalai on the Big Island of Hawai’i, six nights into the honeymoon. David is wearing a green linen shirt and light-colored linen pants. Amy is wearing a black sundress with small red and yellow flowers.

The new Mr. and Mrs. Wertheimer are seated at an ocean-view table just before sundown. The maitre d’ gets the newlyweds comfortable and places menus and a wine list on the table. He then addresses Amy:

“Mrs. Wertheimer, I see you are wearing a black dress this evening. Would you like a black napkin this evening so you don’t get any lint from our white napkins on your dress?”

—

Needless to say, we had a terrific vacation. Our wedding was just about perfect. More tales in the coming days.

Consulting project: done.

Other consulting project: done.

Dance lessons: done.

Dog-sitting: arranged.

Newspaper: stopped.

Apartment: cleaned.

Pre-event massage: ahhhh.

Homework assignments: some done, some packed (sigh).

Clothes, music, reading, and personal effects: packed.

Car service: ordered.

Table assignments: finalized.

Rehearsal and breakfast: organized.

Speech: written.

Tuxedo: tailored.

Tuxedo shirt: pressed.

Tuxedo shoes: tied.

Hand-tied bow tie: getting there.

And away we go. See you in September.

The clock–if I had a running clock–would read 11:15 p.m. The passage of time is one of the only normal things this evening; that and the dog’s desire to throw his bone around for awhile are about the only constants.

Interestingly, very little emotion followed this afternoon’s blackout (as the following details will reveal). The air conditioner made funny noises at 4:10. I glanced from my computer to the sofa and asked the dog, “What are those noises, pup?” Next thing we knew there was no power. My fiancee, Amy, was stuck in midtown, but Charley and I were safe and sound, so we hunkered down and waited.

Amy showed up close to six, not long after my phone briefly allowed for a few incoming calls, from her and from a friend in Chicago. Amy and I trekked down 11 flights of stairs to walk the dog, and I retrieved my car from the parking lot under the building. We quickly found a parking spot and returned upstairs to monitor the evening’s events.

Around 8 p.m. we decided not to bother driving anywhere, since traffic was so overwhelming, and at 9:30 we made a trip back downstairs (22!) to walk the dog. Not much else to tell. We had half a dozen candles and two flashlights to light the apartment, and we discovered the NYU Palladium dorm across 14th Street has massively bright emergency lighting in its glassed-in upstairs hallways, so our blinds are wide open and providing a fairly normal overnight glow.

On our first trip downstairs we bought bananas and water and haven’t really consumed either. Amy made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner. I didn’t eat. I read the paper–too weird a night to do classwork and too impossible to access my consulting files. Amy went to bed at 10:30 and I snuffed the candles at 11.

If you’re wondering, I’m on a laptop using a dialup account. One of the major gaffes of our day is not having a phone that runs without electrical power; the telephone system is working fine, if you can get to it.

Authorities hope to have power by morning. If we get up (with the sun around 6 a.m., since the blinds are wide open) and we are still shut down, we’ll be reverse commuting to our parents for a shower. And that’s that.

Oh, and Amy’s cell phone has worked most of the evening on her Verizon network while my AT&T GSM phone crapped out as usual. I am so ready for number portability.

And air conditioning.

This week I begin part-time contract work for Creative Good, where I will immerse myself in usability and brainstorm with some of the best minds in the business. Tomorrow I will get server access, an email account, and other goodies from their tech whiz.

This morning I logged into my Economist email account—I keep getting evites there—and discovered that all my messages have been wiped off the server.

This makes today my first (and perhaps only) day of limbo: for the first time since 1995, I have no business-designated email address and no Web site to which I am commercially bound. It’s just me, netwert.com, and assorted Yahoo email accounts.

The freedom is bewildering.

Things I have learned since losing my job.

~ Running around town during the day when I used to be at work is every bit as fun as you’d expect it to be.

~ I like sleeping from 2 a.m. to 9 a.m. instead of midnight to seven, but I must be waking up too early, because I keep taking naps.

~ You would think the apartment would get cleaner faster, but you’d be wrong.

~ Theoretically, the longer I go without a new job, the more opportunities I will have to play golf.

~ After scheduling two weeks’ worth of networking, friends, and catch-up medical appointments, I have no time to hang out with my dog.

Let’s skip the flowery prose on this one. The Economist Group made me redundant last week. I haven’t signed the official severance papers yet, but I haven’t worked for them since, either.

As a result, a talented, bright, experienced, devastatingly handsome, and surprisingly humble content delivery specialist is now available and looking for full-time employment. Do spread the word.

In which the author tries in vain to brave the elements in waterproof pants.

The phone call came at 6:50 Sunday morning, which would have been horrific had I not arisen half an hour earlier in its anticipation. Yes, confirmed the far end of the call, the rain isn’t as bad there, and the drainage system is excellent, and the golf outing is a go, despite the heavy rains outside my apartment. Besides, we had made the forced error of paying for the day in advance, sealing our fate.

I left home shortly after, golf clubs on one side, umbrella on the other, trudging four wet minutes to my car, driving around the corner to an ATM, picking up a friend and heading for Colts Neck, N.J., home of sprawling estates and horse stables and the site of my apparently wet sporting event.

We arrived in light rain, which quickly became a heavy downfall as we signed in and hit practice balls on the range. Doubling back to the clubhouse before teeing off, we begged for towels and layered up clothes; I purchased all-weather pants to keep myself from catching cold.

I was in the third group of the day. By the time we got to the first hole, standing water had accumulated on the tee box, almost as high as the grass itself. I was in a threesome. The first man teed off and nearly lost the club out of his hand. I hit what happened to be a beautiful drive, but did so through rainfall so thick that my playing partners said I looked like I “hit out of a puddle.” Our third player refused to get out of his cart, told us we were fools if we stayed out, and headed for the clubhouse. After a moment of dejection, we did the same.

The starter—who insisted the course was playable—agreed without much argument to give us a group rain check. A fast, greasy meal at the local Perkins ended the affair. We were back in Manhattan before noon, still soggy from the morning’s activities, but more than a bit relieved we didn’t put ourselves through 18 holes of misery on a rain forest of a golf course.

Golfers are a rather stupid lot, but even we have our limits.

My fiancee and I love being engaged. I loved buying a ring and proposing in a romantic vacation setting. She loves the ring and the weekend was fantastic. We’re looking forward to our fancy-pants wedding, too. We are enjoying the planning and the anticipation that goes with it, even amongst the assorted stresses. We love our band, we dig our photographer, we like the idea of gussying up and throwing a big fucking party for everyone we know; we even like the rehearsal dinner we have planned for the night before.

In certain corners of the progressive-minded Web communities in which I participate, I am a traditional bore, I suppose. But I’m a happy one with a happy mate. And I wouldn’t change a thing.

(cross-posted from another site)

Mac OS X: Missing Manual

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