ride the waves and don't ask where they go.

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dateline: university of hawai`i-antarctica

18 july 1996 9:06 a.m.

I'm again a member of the productive segment of society. Of course today, when I'm hiding under a sweater in an underground meat locker, it's sunny out. I took all of yesterday off on pure indugence, trying to give my brain a breather from the zillions of things it tries to worry about. When headaches last for days instead of hours, it's time for a break. My original hit list was to sleep in, take a walk around the Ala Wai (its a lot less icky since they redid the bikeway), a swim, and a lot of lounging around with my new book and some variety of fast food. Wouldn't you know it, my militant, card-carrying membership in the Pro-Rain Party came back to haunt me. It already looked gray when I headed up to the canal, and from there I could see it was dark and gray and pouring way up in the mountains. I figured the clouds would stay up there... and of course I was wrong. By the time I reached McCully, I was totally soaked and gave up on my "day in the sun" fantasy. I ran back home and changed into a jacket and pants. Armed with an umbrella, I headed to the mall (I was going to be useless if it killed me). To make a long story short, I ended up spending the rest of the day pulling my hair out over web-page design. For someone else. To make the short story a little longer, I ran into Greg at the food court (we both picked Chinese). At first we talked about his guy, Stan. Turns out they're in the midst of some spat -- it's so cute. The usual variety of tiff, mixed signals on degrees of committment. I sided with Greg. There's nothing worse than romantic smothering, no matter how cute the guy is. There's nothing cooler than checking out guys at Ala Moana with another guy. His tastes are a bit like mine. Best quote of the day: "He wasn't looking at you, he was looking at me!" I mentioned Derek offhand, and in his distinctly delicate style, he immediately asked loud enough for the old folks next to us to hear, "Did you fuck him?" A piece of char siu on his white T-shirt was his answer. Anyway, as I've found is the trend whenever I'm with kindred circuit-heads, the subject shifted to computer stuff, and Greg started going off. He said he was pounding the table over tables (so to speak), and... well, if you're not an HTML crafter, it's hard to explain. I swear to god, sitting right there at a little table being strafed by suicidally hungry birds, we started penning code down on napkins. It took a minute before we stopped and laughed at ourselves. Then we went to his office at UH and went at it the right way. Time flies when you're doing this stuff. He was redoing all of his pages, and blamed me for getting him thinking about it again. His mission? A page with both text and tables aligned against the right side, one under the other, without it getting all ugly. We tried all sorts of things. Typing, switching, hittiing "Reload," watching, swearing, then returning to step one. We figured it out by -- as usual -- stealing the idea from someone else. Three hours of squinting at a screen for the basic effect you see here, and all we were missing was one weird tag (instead of the elaborate spit-and-gum tricks we were trying to engineer). I'm not complaining. It was fun. After having to learn a disgusting, quirky language called COBOL at a summer job with the city, this stuff is child's play. By the way, don't think twice about writing him if you happen to notice some mysteriously familiar design ideas on his pages (the little copycat -- "sincerest form of flattery" my ass!). After our triumph, we made a two-car convoy to the McDonald's on Waialae (we both got McNuggets), then down to Tower. I just like to harass Jen, He'd just gotten paid. Still, I broke down and got that Primitive Radio Gods disc, mostly because it was $8.99 and I couldn't remember the last time I could get a new CD for under $10. I even turned down her employee discount -- how ethical of me. When I got home, Derek (surprise!) called. Even by myself, I blushed thinking about Greg's remark. "Howzit," I asked, and another four hours of my life disappeared. We listened to my new CD together (well, I guess the clarity isn't so hot on a telephone, but he didn't complain), and gave it a "B-minus." Maybe two strong tracks, a very Brit sound, but kinda tiresome. By the way, in that song "Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth With Money in My Hand," the guy in the background is saying, "I've been downhearted lately," and not "I've been down in Harlem baby." (I'm never going to let Derek live that one down.) He asked if I was an Olympic girl, and I had completely forgotten it started tomorrow. I haven't sat down and watched the games since 1984 in L.A., but I might get into it. Besides, the U.S. women's team wins in basketball, I get a free Big Mac. Hmm. This is getting long and bosslady looks cranky tonight. Gonna close here.