January 31, 2000

It's been a while, huh? Hope you are all doing well. I don't have much time, but I thought I would update you on what I've been up to since clearly, it's not writing journal entries. One kind of strange thing -- since I stopped updating every day, I've been getting a lot more complimentary e-mails from readers and links in other journals. What's up with that?

Last week, I had a lot of work to do for my GAship. GA work seems to be largely loaded into the beginning and end of the semester, because you have to help the professors get ready for the course, and then you have to help them wrap things up. One of my professors has given me a weekly assignment (to send him a status report on which students have completed the weekly assignments) and I really like that. I like knowing ahead of time that each Wednesday, I have to go to the course website and do something. When I've worked for other professors, there were some weeks where they didn't give me anything to do, and I always felt a little guilty about that, as well as worried that the next week would bring an avalanche of work. So these weekly assignments help to assuage my guilt as well as keep me in weekly contact with my boss.

One of my professors checked out my website and sent me an e-mail saying he liked it. Thanks!

Friday night I went over to Molly's house. Her husband is an accountant, so this is his busy season, and he was out of town for the night. We ordered in pizza and kind of watched TV, but mostly just gabbed and gabbed about everything and nothing. We did watch Sixteen Candles. That is such a great movie. That moment at the end where Sam walks out of the church and sees Jake waiting for her -- perfect. I really wish we lived closer together so it would be easier to get together for dinner more often. As it stands, it's about a 40 minute drive from my house to hers. I shouldn't complain though, since it's better than when I lived in Michigan!

Saturday afternoon, we went over to Jim's parents house. His dad has been sick, so we haven't been spending as much time over there as in the past. He was feeling better though. We played cards, of course, and I did not win. I blame it on being rusty. Jim's sister, her husband and their two kids came out from Rochester for the weekend and it was good to see them. I gave Jim's brother a haircut, and it turned out pretty good if I do say so myself.

That night, Mary and I went to see Down To You. It was terrible. It was so bad, it's not even worth reviewing in my Media section. It started out really promising, but then it didn't even make sense. It felt like the script was originally written for an older audience, similar to something like About Last Night, but then teen movies became all the rage, so they tried to make it into a teen movie, but that took all semblance of continuity and plot right out of it. There were a few scenes that were enjoyable, but by the end, Mar and I were just looking at each other going, "Huh?" Ugh. Mar said it almost put her off teen movies forever. But not quite -- we saw a preview for a movie with Daniel from Freaks and Geeks that we are definitely going to see!

So that's it! I wanted to get one last January entry in before I have to change the color scheme for February. Hopefully once I get into the semester a little further, I will have more time for entries. I'm also starting my job search, so if anyone knows of any companies looking for a web designer, developer, manager or something else web related, let me know.

Warning: These links will open a new browser window. Previous days' links are archived.

Xeney pointed out a great article on what's wrong with ER, although it was clearly written before this season started.

See, Web Bugs piss me off. I have no problem with sites that run banner ads. I don't have a huge problem with cookies, since I know they are often necessary for things like e-commerce. But at least in those two instances, I know as soon as I see the page that if there's an ad being served, then the site knows I was there, or at least that someone was there. Web Bugs are invisible. To me, it's the difference between a store having a clearly visible security camera, and hiding a camera. [via Camworld]

This is an interesting study done on the use of white space in web design, and its impact on user satisfaction.

The Ad Critic has a Superbowl Ad Portal. We only watched the second half, and the game was more exciting than the ads for once.

I swear to God, EW reads my thoughts. Didn't I just post a few days ago about possible scenarios for the series finale of 90210?

As February approaches, prepare yourself for TV sweeps.

A character from the Simpsons will die.