Thoughts From Eric Archive

Every time I look at the image currently topping that topped zeldman.com for the past two weeks, I see Ruth lying in a West Palm Beach hospital room.  Outside the sun shines brutally hot (by our pallid northern standards) in the last weekend of October and we know that we’ll never see her again.  My brother-in-law and I each promise her a dance at the next family gathering, and the lie doesn’t even seem cruel to me.  We are all certain that she’ll be dead soon, but the stubborn spark of hope and the thought that we can offer her a pleasant illusion to obscure the looming end seems like a blessing.

Atop her 10 November entry, Molly has a quote from Frank Lloyd Wright: “The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes.”  I wonder if Ruth would have agreed.  I wonder if I’ll agree, decades from now.  For now, I keep hearing the last line from the movie Seven: “Ernest Hemingway once wrote, ‘The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.’ I agree with the second part.”

• Imagery was published on Friday, November 15th, 2002.
• It was assigned to the Personal category.
• There have been no replies.

Kat and I are no longer sick, and I’d like to thank everyone who wrote with notes of concern.  Last Thursday, shortly after I wrote the previous entry, we got a call informing us that Kat’s grandmother Ruth had passed away.  This was not an unexpected event, but that doesn’t make the loss easier to bear.  So last Friday afternoon, still sick, we boarded a plane to New York City and were there until last night.  Fortunately we got over our illnesses before the memorial service.

Obviously, e-mail was one of the last things on my mind while we were away, so now that I’m back and it’s foremost again I’ll be trying to catch up before next week’s trip to Boston for Web Design World.  If I don’t, and you wrote me, at least now you know why I seem to be blowing you off.

On a lighter note, I’d like to share one of the best literary interpretations I’ve seen in quite some time.

• A Space Between Silences was published on Thursday, November 14th, 2002.
• It was assigned to the Humor, Personal, and Travel categories.
• There have been no replies.

I’m back from a 26-hour foray to New York City and Meet The Makers, and I’m sick.  So is Kat.  I could feel my temperature going up on the flight home, and my throat is doing its best sandpaper impression.  Of course, we’re both working today, but at reduced capacity.  A bit of a crisis over at css-discuss, and followup mail from yesterday’s event, isn’t helping me get away from the keyboard.  Please do keep sending e-mail, but expect delays in reply.

It’s traditional for me to curl up on the couch and watch The Stand when I get sick, so I think I’ll go do that.  Unless I decide to watch something else.  Whatever.

• «sniffle snork wheeze» was published on Thursday, November 7th, 2002.
• It was assigned to the Travel category.
• There have been no replies.

Kat and I just spent the last five days at Walt Disney World with my parents, sister, and her guy.  The family time—a first, really, as it had very little in common with the family road trips of decades past—was a much-needed break in all the craziness (by substituting for it a different sort of craziness, I suppose) of our recent life.  I got to be a personal bodyguard to the goddess Babylonia, at least for a few minutes, while at the Adventurers’ Club, so that was fun.  We also got to attend Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party on Halloween night itself, and the Imagineers really outdid themselves.  The train station at Main Street USA looked spooky enough that someone asked if it was the Haunted Mansion.

While we were at Disney, we all went to see La Nouba for the first time, and Kat and I saw Quidam last month during its stop in Cleveland.  Both productions were deeply, inexpressibly moving; the artists of Cirque du Soleil have created forms of beauty for which no words exist, and perhaps never should.

• Beauty Without Words was published on Tuesday, November 5th, 2002.
• It was assigned to the Travel category.
• There have been no replies.

Meryl Evans has recreated the missing WebNouveau list of tableless CSS site on her own Web site, and is looking for other CSS resources.

Security through obscurity never really works; when I use it, I at least know what I’m doing, and that it could bite me.  I had thought any halfway informed administrator knew that same thing.  Apparently, some folks still don’t get it.  Let’s see… a company puts a file on its Web site that isn’t in any way protected except in the sense that there are no links to the file, and someone else figures out the URL, which leads to advance publication of the information.  That’s not breaking into your site, it’s being smarter than you.  From Intentia’s own press release: “The incident has severely damaged confidence in us as individuals and in Intentia as a company,’ says Björn Algkvist, CEO of Intentia International AB.”  That’s almost certainly true.  I know I wouldn’t trust my company’s data to a firm that made so obvious a mistake.

• A Rescued Resource was published on Wednesday, October 30th, 2002.
• It was assigned to the CSS and Standards categories.
• There have been no replies.

As I write this, the first snow of the season is lightly falling from an overcast sky.  It probably won’t last more than a few minutes, and the flakes are melting as soon as they hit the ground, but it’s still a welcome sight.  The seasonal cycle is one reason I settled down in Cleveland; it gives the year a rhythm and variety I would sorely miss in warmer climes.

• Let It Snow… was published on Tuesday, October 29th, 2002.
• It was assigned to the Personal category.
• There have been no replies.

Hey, By Designers For Designers (BD4D) is coming to Cleveland on November 15th!  The featured speaker is Derek Hess, a local guy with national exposure, and the co-sponsor of the series is New Riders, the people who published my latest book.  Assuming no major upheavals in my schedule, I’ll be there—how about you?

Speaking of Eric Meyer on CSS, it appears to have sold out its initial print run of almost 7,000 copies, and a sizeable second print run should be done within a few weeks.  So if you’re on back-order waiting for a copy, your patience should soon be rewarded.

• BD4D Comes To Town was published on Friday, October 25th, 2002.
• It was assigned to the Books and Writing categories.
• There have been no replies.

I’ve spent the last week balanced on a number of knives, it seems like, and I don’t expect it to end any time soon.  People dear to both Kat and me are in poor health, and we can’t help but worry about them.  The worry does them no good and does us harm, but what choice do we have?  We steel ourselves for possible bad news and furtively hope that it will turn out all right in the end.  In the deepest corners of our hearts, we wishfully imagine a future time when the sun is shining warmly, all our loved ones are sitting with us in an idealized communal space, and we shake our heads over that time when things were bad for a little while.  And we realize that no matter how hard we wish, the actual future will probably turn out to be a lot less bright and comfortable than we’d like.

Refinancing a home involves a lot of paperwork, as I was reminded yesterday.  Hopefully this is the last time I’ll do it, because frankly, if interest rates drop far enough to make another refinance worthwhile, I’ll be very concerned about state of the global economy.

For those of you thinking about syndicating my entries here, the RSS feed has moved from its old location.  You can get the new feed in either RSS 0.91 or RSS 2.0, as well as access the archives, on the new Eric’s Archived Thoughts page.  Those of you who already syndicated me should have seen a note about the move.

• Changes Afoot was published on Thursday, October 24th, 2002.
• It was assigned to the Personal category.
• There have been no replies.