First Week Back, Already Gone…
I just got back from my walk to the coffee shop, and was thinking the whole way. Well, what else is there to do on a nine-ish block walk? I’m not really a Sudoku player, after all.
This week was a blur. I mean, really — I think back and it’s like the starship Enterprise jumping into warp speed or something. But instead of streaking stars, it’s streaking cubes and chairs and computers and office supplies. Kind of a disturbing mental image, now that I ponder it…
My boss as Captain Jean Luc Picard…
I think I gave myself a case of the jibblies.
Anyway, I know that on Monday I read and answered a whole lotta e-mails, and starting Tuesday on through midday Friday I re-wrote a number of procedures and worked on some of the guts of our intranet site, but ask me specifics and I can’t answer. I do remember that each day after work I really wanted to post sometime during the week, but every time I sat down to get to this website and log in, something grabbed my attention and soon afterwards it was sleepy-bye time.
But, it really was good to be back. I missed the nutjobs out there, and apparently some of them missed this nutjob too. I was mildly surprised by some people’s joyous reaction to me coming back. (I shall always be surprised by that, no matter how much naysaying I receive.)
My employees covered my cube and stuff with tin-foil. They avoided the computer and keyboard, but got my tissue box, my phone receiver, my stapler, a couple of my books, the little table I use… I’m going to leave it all covered for another week, I think. 
I did play a little game on Monday, however. I got really dressed up — starched white shirt, burgundy tie, navy vest, and a blue-green coat. It was fun even with all the “are you interviewing” comments, and it made up my mind to wear ties every workday. It helps promote my “supervisorness” to others and I tend to maintain a more professional attitude, I think.
I wish I had enough vests to wear throughout the week, (all them little pockets are fun to stash stuff in,) but that seems a little over the top.
In regards to updating procedures and our internal website, I’m beginning to get more comfortable in ASP, which is odd because I feel it’s kind of like Applescript’s bastard cousin.
Don’t get me wrong, Applescript is a great thing. So is ASP, for that matter. It’s just, well, weird. Like playing trumpet with a machine to blow air through it, instead of puckering up and doing it yourself.
I find myself looking at ASP and thinking PHP had a child with Windows 95, or something. And it looks like a cross between Prince Charles and Bill Gates.
Ooh, I really have to learn how to keep those thoughts locked away. I’m going to have a nightmare now, and the soundtrack will probably feature a banjo.
I think the part I do like about ASP is that you can specify if the script should run on the server or at the client, using the same language. If you use PHP, that’s server-side only. If you want the client to do something, you have to switch to Javascript. And I don’t want to learn two seperate languages to do that, that feels like too much work.
ASP server-side scripting is nice because then you can make something consistent across all visitor’s pages, but client-side is nice when you need something customized for the user, like a timezone specific thing. I plan on working more of that customization into the site, and to have a foundation that makes it easier is a nice thing.
I’ve got a long way to go before I can call myself a programmer, however. I still can’t figure out an e-mail script for nightly turnovers I’ve been working on for a month, and there’s this nifty trick I found that should e-mail the webmaster each bad page that was visited and then redirect to the proper page or even do a site-search search for the proper page, assuming I knew why it keeps breaking and giving me a generic error number.
Maybe I’m just going to have to break down and buy ASP for Dummies, or something.
Oh well. Enough of my babble, for the time being.
Have fun, readers.
Skåll!!!
