Here's the current WIP state of my last homework assignment before the final project. I finish up the class next week, and I think I've learned quite a bit. 

I spent most of yesterday on the phone. That wasn't what I had planned on doing, but it was worthwhile. I was mostly talking with my regular clients -- the people who have me on retainer.

One was my software developer. At one point in our conversation, he brought in some other guy. They had a conversation which sounded to me roughly like this:

"Can you put the squidling into the freemerbox?"
"Huh?"
"You've got the mistroblip in the 657g_l, and I'd like to see the haverfulger in the 3567xE."
"Oh, yeah, dude it would be less trouble to change the limonsquash ina llt he vexinks."
"Okay, that'll work. Bai."

We then continued with our discussion. After a bit, we had the following exchange:

"So you'll go in and do the tags?"
"Yes, but I thought you wanted me to put them in an Excel file."
"We just changed it."

I was all impressed that he had gotten his minions to do that while we were still on the phone, perhaps by IMing somebody. You know how long it usually takes to get computer guys to do anything.

Hours later, it struck me that putting the squidling into the freemerbox was what had been done. I must sound like an idiot sometimes to this guy. And, since we're talking about html here -- or some souped-up relative of it --  I must not have learned as much as I think I have.

Another of my conversations included a spell where the woman I deal with was saying that "the guys" thought she should go with one of those companies that promises to put you on the first page at Google. 

"Let's see where you are," I suggested.

There she was, all over the first page at Google.

Very satisfying.

My hydrangea is blooming. It's just a little shrub, and usually doesn't get more than one or two blooms, but they certainly are pretty.

I don't think it's a cut-and-come-again variety, so I'm not going to cut it for the house.

That may be what I miss most this garden-less year, since I can buy fresh produce but buying flowers would be an extravagance.

Yesterday was an all-blogging day. I have new assignments from an editor I've worked with before (today) and from The Computer Guy (next Tuesday), and I'm near beginning with The Chocolatier. I also have a new link-building assignment for #2 daughter, who doesn't work at the church in the summer and therefore is doing some work for me, bless her.

Last night after choir practice I came home and redid the stylesheet for my final project in Web Design class, putting in one thing at a time and checking it in both Firefox and IE before moving on.

Here's how it looks in IE, and you can see it in Firefox below.

It looked better in Firefox before I had to make it work in IE, and I have the most current IE browser, too. If I fix the margins in Firefox, it gets a gap between the divs in IE.

I'm afraid to make any more changes for fear of messing it up.

And I no longer have any compassion at all for people with old browsers.

Sorry.

It struck me that if I think of this as a craft project, even though it's a class, it's not much different from what I usually do at this time of year.

Last summer I made jewelry from the book French-Inspired Jewelry. Other years I've made soldered jewelry or lingerie or origami purses, and there was the year I tried to make a lawn chair out of old pallets, but I was completely unsuccessful with that.

Even so, it's just my usual summer mad whim, right?

The thing I'm not doing this summer is the Summer Reading Challenge. Usually in the summer I join this group, which asks us to read two books a week and blog about them, which used to be about the level of challenge I could handle during Back to School.

Now, apparently, I can't handle even that level of challenge.

I was writing a list for Flashlight Worthy Books yesterday (Book Club Books Worth Discussing) and looking back at what I'd written here about the books in question, and couldn't help but notice how little I'm reading and how little I mention what little I am reading. I have a lot of books hanging around waiting to be reviewed, too. Sigh.

The Strengthsfinder people advised me to give myself time to read and to think, since those are things that increase my value (and my superpowers), and I'm going to try to take that to heart.

Today I have a lot of linkbuilding to do, and a little more blogging, and the assignment from that editor, who needs a nickname.

Returning for a moment to the question of superpowers...

One of the claims of the Strengthsfinder people, and also of the Life@work people, and also of Marcus Buckingham, who is a member of both those groups, is that we should give up the idea of well-roundedness.

We focus, these guys say, on our areas of weakness. We try to get better at stuff we're not so good at, and ignore the things we are good at. If a child is good at math and weak on reading, we focus on reading with them. If we're skillful with ideas and not so good at clerical work, then we strive to improve in that area of weakness, figuring that we're already good at ideas so we don't need to worry about that.

Buckingham says that we should, instead, focus on our own strengths and partner with people who have strengths different from our own. This way, we'll complement them and they'll complement us, and we'll end up with a complete product of excellence.

CD and I were discussing this on Sunday. She said that my attempting to learn to play handbells (and I have gotten better over the years -- I just haven't actually gotten good) improved my ability to read music, which made me a better singer. Had I not been working on that area of weakness, I wouldn't have increased my area of strength.

She's quite right. I also have developed strengths in my work which I didn't have before. It is arguable that these things are merely skills, though, and not strengths. That is, when I learn more about tech stuff, then I am just using my superpowers of Input, Ideation, Learning, and Strategery (or gathering and disseminating information, as I used to put it) in a new context. It looks like I'm doing new stuff, but I'm really not.

What do you think? Do you try to be a well-rounded person, or try to lead your kids to be well-rounded people? or do you focus on your areas of strength?

See at left how nicely the homepage for my final project behaves in Firefox.

See below how badly it behaves in IE.

It looks good in Safari, too.

I am being graded in IE.

The people at the standards place say that correctly-written code will look good on all modern browsers, so the proper way to look at this would be gratitude to the IE browser for helping me to track down the flaws in my code.

I'm working on that.

Yesterday I got up and tidied my house, ate breakfast and dressed and went to the gym on time, took a lunch break and yet got everything on my to-do list done by 6:30, made Eggplant Parmagiana and a salad of mixed greens and raspberries for dinner, and relaxed in the evening, folding laundry while watching The Big Bang Theory and talking with my boys.

My husband's company is shut down for the week, so he hung around watching game shows and complaining.

He began asking what was for dinner around 5:00, stormed out of the house shortly before I quit working and made dinner, came back and complained loudly to the dogs about what I had made, and then complained about the kitchen until I -- the person who worked for 10 hours yesterday, not the person whose job it is to clean the kitchen -- went in and cleaned it.

The proper way to look at this would be to be sympathetic about my husband's frustration with being laid off for a week, and grateful for the reminder that the quality of my life isn't always entirely up to me.

You may guess how well I did with that one.

My new schedule worked, though, for one day.

The Computer Guy and I got a site launched, worked with one that's in progress, and had the start date for our new one pushed back a week by the client. Since I'm leaving for California in a week and a half, that's not great news for me, but -- see the lesson above. I don't have total control of these things. I think it'll be okay, too. I'm diligently not adding anything to my schedule till I get back. This could of course mean that I'll have no work at all when I get back, but I think I can take the chance.

I have to get my divs behaving before I leave, though. That's for sure.

My bank balance is very small right now.

This is because I've made #1 son's tuition payment. Now I have to gather up enough funds to make #2 son's tuition payment.

#2 son is worrying about these payments, and well he might. Between the two, the boys' monthly tuition payments almost equal my husband's entire income.

#2 son remembers when #2 daughter was at her expensive private college, and we all scrimped to get her through school.

"We live so lavishly now," he said sorrowfully, expressing his distress at requiring sacrifice of his family.

When he says we live lavishly, he means we can have pizza delivered every week if we want to, and fix our cars when they break down, and pay all our bills on time.

I never did amass the kind of fortune required to have my dental work done.

However, I have to admit that it has been nice, this little spell of affluence. I bought enough clothes to be able to teach every day if need be, and new tires for the car, and a good bicycle for #1 son. I paid off a couple of credit cards, and was able to cover the overhead for my business. I didn't have to worry about money at all, which is pleasant. We've always had a large family and a modest income, so worrying about money has been a recurring feature of my life. I'm happy to give it up.

I still owe my parents money, though, and I still need the dental work done, so I never got into any extravagant habits which I'd now have to give up. I tried to establish the habit of going out to Sunday lunch once a month, but my husband couldn't bear the thought, so that didn't happen. I never took up recreational shopping or golfing or anything.

The choirlet were talking about pedicures the other night. This is probably the most common extravagant habit in my set, apart from travel. My daughters go out for mani-pedis, and many of the women I know make a social event of it. I'm doing well to get to a hairdresser on a regular basis, and have never considered having my nails done.

All the ladies agreed that pedicures were wonderful and I should take up the habit, too. My impression is that you sit in a room full of noxious odors and some stranger fools around with your feet. But no, they say that it's wonderful.

A couple of them had taken their husbands along once, and the men had enjoyed it, but never been willing to return for a second visit. The young man who does her nails, one said, had told her that not very many men had it done.

"And most of them are, you know..." she began meaningfully. I suppose we all speculated on what "you know" might cover. She continued, "...bankers."

Whatever group of men I might have guessed would be in the mani-pedi crowd, I wouldn't have thought bankers.

"Bankers?" I said, rasing an eyebrow.

"You know," my friend explained, "when they have guests over to swim they want to look completely well-groomed."

I just didn't know this about bankers. You learn something every day.

I had a meeting about my pro-bono website yesterday afternoon, in the elegant home of one of the ladies. Her house looks as though Frank Lloyd Wright designed it, all wood and glass and native stone walls on the inside,which looks amazingly cool. Fountains and breathtaking views outside. She was quite well-groomed, wearing the sort of gear that you could do yoga in but which costs more for one thing like a sweatshirt than I spend on a suit.

This woman is the director of a museum, and I think she's wonderful. I don't remember her feet. She might have been wearing shoes. But I bet she has pedicures.

I think that #2 son's education will be a good investment. If I hadn't lost my job last year, we would never have been able to send him to this school; he didn't get the kind of scholarships #2 daughter did. He plans to continue working on scholarships, and to apply for an RA-ship at the college and for Governor's School next summer. I just have to keep working as much as I have been. #2 daughter has been entirely self-supporting since she left school and we don't have to worry about her at all. #2 son will be the same, I'm sure. And #1 son has a plan to live in #2 son's basement, so they'll all be taken care of.

We enjoyed our cookout yesterday, and I got some good stuff from the Farmers Market. There it is: vegetables, fruit, honey, croissants, and a CD from the gypsy fiddler who played with the choirlet at the charity gig last month.

Yes, we have a wonderful Farmers Market here, and I'm sorry for those of you who don't.

The boys played around with firecrackers a little bit, even though that's illegal in our town.

They just had little ones, though, while some neighbors were shooting off whole fireworks displays, so I let it go.

"That kind is terrifying," #1 son said at one point. "They chase you."

His brother agreed. Apparently, this particular type of firecracker is designed to turn around and home in on people as in Tom and Jerry cartoons.

No one got hurt.

In addition to actual food, I made a dessert bar of little lemon cakes, brownies, fruit, candies, ice cream, and toppings.

I spent much of the day lolling around reading Tim Dorsey, who has the most depraved imagination of anyone I actually read.

However, his psychopathic characters are also quite nice and appealing, apart from their unpleasant habits, so I can still enjoy his stuff. Between him and Hiassen  (and I'm too lazy to look up his name, so I may have him wrong. You know the guy I mean), Florida is being presented in modern fiction as a wild and crazy place.

It's probably not true.

I did small amounts of  what the girls and I are calling "strategery" for some reason.

#1 daughter went to a corporate training using Strengthsfinder, and I was impressed by a review book by Marcus Buckingham, so we're trying that out. My superpowers turned out to be Ideation (having ideas), Input (gathering infor  mation), Learning, Maximizing (taking things from good to excellent), and Strategizing.

I'm never fully convinced by these things -- there are after all two kinds of people in the world: those who believe there are two kinds of people, and those who don't.

But they had some good suggestions, I thought. Like choose a high-tech field to work in, because I'll enjoy the effort involved in keeping up to date. And give myself time to think, because that's part of what makes me valuable. And remember that not all my ideas are going to be equally good.

My final project is behaving really well.

I even feel like it looks pretty good. I need to make the navigation more obviously clickable, I guess, but considering my lack of talent and skill at design, I feel as though it's turning out pretty well.

I should be at church right now, and I'm not even dressed.

I worked out a schedule for myself, though, that involves a proper morning and evening routine and eight hours of sleep and going to the gym and stuff. I plan to put it into effect right away. I know you've heard this before. However, it seems to me that if I can learn to build web pages, I can learn to conduct my life well. It's just a matter of being like the whittler int he story -- how do you make a decoy? Just cut away all the parts that don't look like a duck.
  

That's a festive looking picture, isn't it?

Today is Independence Day, and I'm busy not going to parties. I often don't go to parties, and I feel lucky that people keep asking me anyway.

However, we are going to cook out today at home, and that'll be a party of sorts.

#2 daughter called me last night to say that we needed to do page 96 of The Creative Entrepreneur, the page where we are to make a portable strategic planner.

My two daughters and I are working through The Creative Entrepreneur. It is taking us a long time, because we keep stopping in between section.

Last weekend, we were supposed to make our strategic plan, but it didn't really happen. We set goals, but not SMART (specific,measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) objectives. Then we mixed up our strategies and our objectives, and never got to tactics at all.

So I think I'll do what #2 daughter suggests, and spend some time this holiday weekend setting up a strategic plan section in my planner.

Yesterday I received a CD from my college chum whom I'm going to visit this month, of her singing jug band blues with a banjo-playing friend. I drove around with the windows down listening to it -- well, not around, but to the bank and then to the bookstore. I had gotten a good bit of work done that morning and was trying to get a holiday feeling, or at least a sense of luxuriously wasting some time.

Didn't really happen. I picked up the latest copy of Practical Web Design (good articles on project management) and a bargain-table book on workspaces from The Pottery Barn which I'll use first for fodder for my Australian clients' blog and then for inspiration for turning #2 son's room into an office space after he leaves for college. Then I got back to work, getting my invoices out and responding to a client who didn't like the first draft of his website .

But it was definitely a pleasure.

I got my homework (a table-based webpage, which is just wrong) turned in last night, which is a relief, and spent a little time reading. I still have work to do -- a couple of hours for my Aussies -- but I'm really trying to make some progress on that goal of a normal life. Farmers market this morning, and Target before it gets too crowded, and our cookout fitted around #1 son's work schedule, and some time creating a "colorful and inspiring" Strategic Planner. Also lolling around. Sounds like a plan.

I woke up this morning to a wonderful thunder storm which I could enjoy more if I'd gotten more sleep last night. My husband's off today, so I could have slept longer if I hadn't been awake, but the crack of thunder that woke me was followed almost immediately by thoughts like "OMG I have so much work to do!" and I got up.

Shortly after midnight last night one of my fellow students  came up with a solution for my margin problem. See, you're not supposed to count the margin on the inside bit from its edge, but from the edge of the page. So I needed to say "margin-left: 235px" which is to say 235 pixels of margin, not 20. Weird.

I'm very happy now, though. With the margin issue settled, I can now focus on a whole bunch of little fussy details, like a real web designer.

Have you noticed how completely rose-beige my website is? I may not be able to find a fabric this shade, but in web design you can have any color you want. Although it clashes horribly with my xanga page.

Before the margin solution, I went to the rehearsal of the choirlet. The lady at whose house we hold these rehearsals had bought this enormous travel trailer. It sleeps eight, has TVs both indoors and out, and you can push this button and the sides fold in and out. Like something on Star Trek.

It was amazing.  

We sang a bit, and talked and ate fruit. It was fun.

There were a couple of weeks there when I had no rehearsals, and at the time I felt as though that was good, and sort of a break, but actually the weeks with no rehearsals were just more time to work.

Which is mostly what I did yesterday, that and doing the homework for the class.

I took on another regular client, making ten in all, which is too many. Maybe not. It's two a day on weekdays, which isn't bad. I have classes to teach and the various new projects that come in, but actually two a day could be perfect.

It's the Fourth of July weekend. I plan to take some time off. Hike, sew, read, something like that.

Did I tell you about the board meeting?

I think I may have gotten so excited about my barely-behaving divs that I skipped that.

As you know, if you always read my blog and have total recall, I always take the position that I'm happy to work, but I won't serve on boards. I was therefore a little surprised to be copied on an invitation to the AAUW board meeting. However, I'm working on their website, so I figured they wanted a presentation on the subject.

Imagine my surprise when I arrived and found that I was on the slate of officers for the new year as communications officer and co-chair of yearbook.

This is what happens when you miss a meeting.

The board meeting was held in a corporate conference room, with enormous padded swivel chairs and plates of fruit and chicken. I had traveled up with La Bella, who needed to leave after an hour, and I had been planning on just answering questions about the website and being out of there, so I missed most of the meeting.

That was okay. This is an exemplary organization, and their board meetings will I'm sure be tolerable, but an hour is plenty for me.

The cleaner came for her monthly visit yesterday, so my house is lovely and clean today. I walked over the choir practice last night in the cooling evening and walked back with the fireflies after an hour of singing, feeling that all was well with the world.

An hour of singing is not nearly as long as an hour of board meeting.

#2 son has been playing around with the accounting system and feels that he has it under control and can keep it up to date. Blessing went off to a rustic cabin in Branson, so I have no invoices to send out. I'm therefore hoping that it's true that he can do it.

I've also downloaded gotomypc, which allows remote access to all the files on a computer, assuming it's ont he internet. I asked my file replication software guy whether it was the same as his stuff and he ignored me (IT guys feel free to do this), but if so it gives me a better understanding of the point of his software. I'll be able to get to all my files and keep up on things a bit while I'm on vacation, this increasing my chances of being able to pay the enormous tuition bills.

Anyway, my house is clean, I've had some non-work experiences, I have people helping me, and my divs are behaving pretty well.

Life is good.

Look! I have well-behaved divs!

It took me about five hours to figure this out, and I don't feel completely sanguine about it even now.

However, I was able to whip the "Rumpelstiltskin" page into shape in about forty-five minutes this morning, so I guess I'm getting closer to an actual understanding of how it works.

The "Rumpelstiltskin" uses my inner page stylesheet, while the one at left uses the outer-page one, which I'll also use for the homepage. I had to put in two screen shots of the Rumpelstiltskin for you to see how the bottom lined up with the footer and stuff. I'm childishly excited about this.

I used exactly the same code for the margins on both stylesheets, and the outer page has proper margins while the inner page does not, so I obviously am not master of this stuff.

However, I feel pretty good about my chances of completing the assignment successfully, for what that's worth. I don't think we're going to be graded on how good it looks -- just on the quality of our code.
 
In addition to the margins, I need to get the edges of everything worked out to look better, or at least less flat.

I need to get the navigation buttons to look like buttons, not like a list, or else figure out how to get the raggedy edges of the "paper" they were on. I kind of liked them looking like a bit of ragged paper, but for that I either have to make the sidebar white or get a background behind the image of the paper. I trimmed off its ragged edges instead -- thus getting rid of the white border --
but in doing so I made it look less like a piece of old paper and more like some scrofulous patch of paint or something.

Not the effect I was after.
I printed out the stylesheet for my website (you don't usually have access, unless you built in yourself, but I'm lucky) so I can study it and see all the ways in which The Computer Guy's code is better than mine, and emulate him.

The first thing I noticed is that he specifies everything, even the optional stuff. My website has a special way the italics work, and special little images when there's a dot, and its own special quotation marks and stuff, and I feel fairly sure that this sort of thing has an effect.

I don't aspire to that level of artistry, at least not between now and the end of the class, but I am going to line up my code like his, so I can have that look of elegance to my style sheet and impress the teacher, who is the only person who will ever look at it.

I just can't tell you how thrilled I am to be able to float divs, though.

I would love to have your feedback on this project, by the way. It's due on the 17th, but I'm leaving town before that, so I plan to have it in on the 15th. I have a lot of work to do before then.

Lostarts asked whether this would be up on the web somewhere for people to look at.

I'm taking the content from Dextr's xanga, which you can reach via the button on the left, so it already is available.

However, I've been wanting to take that blog out of xanga for a while now, and if this actually turns out well, I'll probably ask The Computer Guy to spiff it up for me and put it on its own website, in which case I'll certainly let you know.

I'm writing a website for a retreat today, and doing a linkbuilding campaign, and getting this week's homework assignments (the stuff I'm showing you here is the final project) done. I also plan on the gym and choir practice.