stuff is cool

My 3 coworkers and I spent 5 hours last night painting our new office, and then a full 10 hours today putting together 4 desks (2 with complicated hutches), 3 cabinets, 2 bookshelves, 11 chairs (5 office chairs, 6 conference table chairs), 1 conference table, and 1 printer stand. Ikea much? But our office looks GREAT. I love my little corner with my huge desk and my pink and black accessories. It looks very productive. I’ll have to take pictures.

I used a power drill today. It was as big as my head. Holly took a picture to prove I really did it. Holly also took a good portion of the top if her foot off when she dropped a hutch on her foot. There was actual skin on the hutch. Good thing it wasn’t mine. I would obsess about there having been skin on my desk.

My boss Wintress and I have matching desks. Danny’s friends (such as Brett, who is really my friend as well) will be interested in my choice of desks. Here is the desk part:

And here is the hutch:

I have a very large black leather desk pad. That large white space is a magnetic white board. Holly and Julianna picked out different matching desks and they accidentally got the smaller size than the one they wanted. I can’t find a picture of it. They are smaller than mine with glass tops and metal stands and no hutch. Very sleek. My boss and I kind of look more “important” with our bigger desks and the position of them in the room. It’s one big room. I have a whole corner, and so does my boss. But I have been there the longest so I say that’s fine. We all have equal responsibility, though.

We have 3 rooms: the work room, the conference room, and the reception room. There is the option of getting the two empty offices across the hall but nobody wants to be in there alone cuz it’s not as fun.

Oh, here is my chair:

Can you tell how excited I am? I have NEVER had an office or a real office desk before. Next week I start my “new” job. I no longer work from home. It’s the end of an era. I was totally spoiled for two and a half years. Ah well, I only have to go in 3 days a week. It’s not a real job yet. But remember, jealous people, I make much less money than you! It all evens out in the end. I am a poor freelance writer.

Here is our website, in case you have never seen it:
The Writers for Hire, Inc.

The office is on the Katy Freeway near Piney Point.

My dad came and spent about an hour helping us this evening. He is so awesome. He is just as excited as I am. I think he’s proud of me for growing up a little more.

3 day weeks are actually going to be tough to get used to. I am still totally spoiled. And giddy with anticipation!

Ever since Google’s GMail public beta made such a huge splash, it seems that every Web2.0 product to come out these days decided to follow suit, releasing their product while in the “beta” stages.

Now, a quick recap for those of you who don’t know about the terminology. The first three letters of the Greek alpha bet are alpha, beta, and gamma (in that order). In software development, there’s a convention that something that’s mostly-functional, but not quite tested enough or feature-complete enough to be ready to release is considered “beta” software. Consequently, something that shades more towards “production-ready” is considered “gamma” — that would mean that it mostly just needs more testing and sprucing up, most functionality is already in place and tested fairly well. Likewise, something leaning towards the opposite side is “alpha” — something you probably don’t want the general public banging on as it’s not really well tested and may not even be very representative of what you envision the final product to be. I’ve never seen anything (publicly) labeled “delta”, because putting together a “gamma” release is rare enough; at that point, it’s done.

Now, the idea of having public betas isn’t something Google spearheaded, but they certainly did add a new responsibility-dodging wrinkle to it. Releasing beta software may have been old hat, because most software up to now was just something you either purchased or downloaded, so your copy didn’t change. However, now with online services like GMail, things change without the user doing anything. That means that, ostensibly, things are getting fixed and that they are polishing things up a bit more … you know, heading from beta to gamma to “finished”. But therein lies the wrinkle. GMail’s more than a year older, and hundreds of thousands of users stronger now since it’s initial public beta release in early 2005. But what do we still see up in the top left corner?

This:

And it’s not like they’ve forgotten that it said beta in the logo, because that “+ talk” feature was added just a few months ago, and the actual mail functionality hasn’t changed much since then. So, at this rate it seems like it’ll be stuck in perpetual beta.

Now, here’s a quick rundown of some other Web2.0 applications that are following suit (mostly stolen from this list):

- purchased by Yahoo! in March of 2005, up until recently Flickr was just “beta” but it was “upgraded” on May 16th according to the Wikipedia article on it.

- one of the many web calendar options out there, 30boxes has been around only since about February of this year, so I won’t harp on them just yet about remaining beta

- Writely was actually purchased by Google though there’s no telling whether or not the “beta” label was there before-hand, since I never use it

- Google’s social networking site was actually developed in the spare time of one of their developers … back in January 2004. It was in beta then, and it’s apparently in beta now. I haven’t been back there in a long time (probably about two years!) so I can’t say how much has changed, but I don’t hear Orkut making huge waves in the social networking space.

- EditGrid does one thing that none of the others in this list do (that I can tell) — they actually have a release plan. Not only that they have a Roadmap/Future Plan.

- now here’s one case that having the “beta” in your logo is probably a Bad Thing(tm). You expect people to give you their credit card information even though your product is admittedly not ready for general release yet? I’ll wait a while, thanks.

- I don’t quite get how Jellyfish works, but it’s something like an exclusive cashback club plus price search engine. I couldn’t successfully sign up, (”Application Error (Rails)”), so it definitely is still beta!

- Zillow’s fun to play with (when it’s working, duhh beta), check out how much houses in your area sell for

- lastly we have an “alpha” entry! This one’s a bit more understandable, since it’s still quite new and it’s a pretty complex product. If you’ve ever wanted to roll your AIM/ICQ/MSN accounts together into one interface without having to deal with Trillian, Miranda, or Gaim, try this

My roommate just got home from proposing to his girlfriend, who happens to be a friend of mine from high school. She showed me the ring right when she walked in. He teaches at Episcopal, she at St. John’s. Here’s the thing: they met on SUPERBOWL SUNDAY of THIS YEAR. Um hello, that beats the MRTs. WHAT IS GOING ON WITH MY FRIENDS!?

Chubbers Corgi is!

I am hanging around at Danny’s and just can’t seem to get off my ass and leave. I want to go out to my parents’ house but I really don’t wanna get in a car and drive. I have been saying “I’ll leave in half an hour” since 2. It is now almost 4 and Friday afternoon traffic will begin soon. I screwed myself over on this one.

I did go to CVS for sunblock and Gatorade for Danny, who has an ultimate tournament in Galveston tomorrow. I do not want him to get sunburned again. I look out for him. I get genuine joy from buying him sunblock, I really do.

I’ll leave in half an hour.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is pretty freaking funny, in spite of having a fairly hackneyed premise (some guys own a bar), and a horribly blah title. I had never heard of the show, but the SomethingAwful forums pointed it out and I grabbed a few episodes and … well, it was funny enough that I had to watch all 7 episodes that exist. You might not have heard of it either. It is, after all, on the FX network, and apparently it’s not one of the shows they promote a whole lot. But, Season Two is approaching so watch out for it — I think it starts next month (July).

For never turning my own TV on (the last time I turned it on before the one episode of 24 I watched at home this season? the 2005 NLCS back in October), I sure watch a lot of TV.

Frankly I think you guys should be asking Strike what names HE likes because I don’t even really know that. Watch him say “Strike”.

Attention Danny’s friends:

Danny bought me a HUGE book of baby names a few months into our relationship. I submit to you that my weird name preferences are due to his influence. He bought the book because I find “collecting” names and name origins interesting as a hobby of sorts, not because he wanted me to start having babies. Very cute gesture, though.

One of my babies will be named Stobie, no ifs, ands, or buts. It is my father’s name and will be my child’s name, girl or boy. *I* was going to be Stobie until my parents decided they didn’t want to have to say “Big Stobie” and “Little Stobie”, so my brother got it as a middle name, but I came very close to being Stobie myself. Also, Stobie the man is AWESOME and he deserves a child named after him. It is not short for anything, it’s just “Stobie”. I call him by his first name as often as I call him “dad”.

My 6 year old cousin Christopher randomly named one of his Webkins Stobie. SO CUTE.

Also of note, Danny keeps eating my candy when I leave it at his apartment. And he says I eat too much candy. Jerk.

Speaking of Circe, I knew a girl in college named Searcy and she was very pretty so I guess I think of pretty girls when I hear it, but I prefer the classic spelling. But no matter because the name is off our list anyhow. I don’t mind much. It wasn’t a Top Ten or anything.

Avoid all sleep meds. They give you more trouble than they are worth.

Also, I love Golden Girls.

Also, Danny has nixed the name Circe off our Someday Maybe Children’s Baby Name List, but I still suggest it to Chris and Petie. I fear Calliope will become Callie at school and, really, that’s just not pretty enough for her. I do like Gustav for a boy.

I used Ambien last night. Nothing happened. I don’t think it even helped me fall asleep because I was still mildly awake when Danny kissed me goodnight. Ambien sucks.