I’ve been working the past few days on my first (and probably last) hired web design project. All I can say is - excuse, but - web design sucks dirty balls.¹ Even if browsers had some sort of standard to adhere to (ha!) that standard (might they call it CSS 2.1?) would be woefully inadequate anyway. Vertical centering, anyone? What? Didn’t think of that when you designed the standard? Of course not, who cares about the heights of things in design. Clearly no one.

I’m going to confess, right here for the world to see, a sin I have committed while coding this site. I used PHP to generate CSS depending on the contents of the page. Egads!²

Even if everything were perfectly easy and wonderful, if CSS were great and browsers supported it and Microsoft weren’t evil,³ the people you design for are horrendous. I spent at least an hour on the phone with my client while she had me change the header font color to various different things over and over until she eventually decided that the color I had originally used would be best after all. I had the entire site built the way we had at first discussed, and then when she saw it, she decided that wasn’t what she wanted at all.

She also likes to ask for things that would take such work - oh, I could do it, no question, but do you realize how much work it would take for that fancy little feature you want? No. Of course she doesn’t, but explaining that is difficult because the feature is so simple. At least, as far as the person using it can see.

Add all this to the fact that I have to fight against my every instinct when building the site, because if I am to follow her wishes, then I have to break some pretty fundamental web design rules… What’s a nice way to say, “No. That font is terrible. It does not make you look professional. This is not MySpace.” Or, to make it simpler (and I like simplicity), how can one politely say, “Your ideas are all terrible, and you should just tell me what you want the site to do rather than how you think it should be done, or how you would like it to look.”

All this has been a very enlightening experience. I will continue to learn about web design, but that’s only because I can use it personally, and hiring a person to build and maintain a site can cost thousands of dollars. But by Jesus’ mother, I will not be building any more sites as a job. All of you professional web designers out there are better men than I. Mad, mad props to you all.

1. Rubber ones, people. Like the kind you bounce. [↩]
2. Not the proper use of that word. No. [↩]
3. because corporations have souls [↩]

Just finished two days of working ceaselessly on the Wordpress theme for this site. Learned a few Photoshop tricks and more CSS inanities. Then around 9:00, I collapse on the floor and literally¹ crawl to the bed in my room due to sudden, inexplicable upper back pain. Oh, for happy, happy drugs. It’s not as bad now. I’ll deal with the cause later. Like tomorrow, after “sleeping it off” has failed.

1. No really, literally. Not like “literally but actually just metaphorically, because I fail at English!” [↩]

Today is the one-week anniversary of the day I began actually following the schedule I’ve written for myself. I have slept appropriately, woken up on time (5:30, 8:00 today was “sleeping in”), exercised, gone on walks, and eaten at least three meals a day for an entire week. One step closer to “normal”. Forum quote for today:

“The Democrat is always a pansy and the Republican is always a man’s man. Obama is ego-obsessed [...] while 50 years ago McCain was valiant. He’s SOLID. He will physically pummel every American enemy Chuck Norris-style. Then he will swim home across the Atlantic, pausing only briefly to throw John Kerry off his windsurfing board.” - Tim B, Dallas TX

… They said it was for the black man, they said it was for the Mexican, and not for the white man, but if you look at the street, it wasn’t about Rodney King, it’s this fucked up situation and these fucked up police - it’s about comin’ up, and stayin’ on top, and screamin’ one-eight-seven on a motherfuckin’ cop …