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Glad it's Friday
Aug. 5th, 2005 05:03 pmI've been learning all this fabulous stuff about Cascading Style Sheets out of books, and I finally get to rewrite all my code in my pages at work to be sleek, elegant, and efficient. Oh so easy to update! And it even looks (almost) just like the way our designer does it, without having to use infinite nesting tables. And I'm all happy about how great I'm doing. Then I go to open my pages in actual browsers, and it doesn't work at all. It looks terrible, and it looks terrible in exactly the same way on all browsers. Why did my little page-writing software make me think it was going to work?
Now, I understand that state-of-the-art stuff doesn't always work on browsers, and you have to wait for the browsers to catch up. Which is why I have been reading five-year-old books. And then making sure the information is still true today, by checking online.
So then I try a few changes, uploading the whole mess each time. I say, "hey, stay over on the right," and it thinks I mean "become infinitely wide." So I say, "never mind, have a bigger left margin." And it thinks I mean, "cover up everything else so you can't even see it." There really is nothing much to Cascading Style Sheets, I don't see how it can seem so foreign. Now I'm--what's that word for how people felt after "the war to end all wars"? Not disenchanted exactly. Not disillusioned. Not demoralized quite. Well, where you think something's really going to be good and then all your hopes are smashed into bits.
Because that was the fun thing I've been dying to do but had to put off doing until I finished the horrible documentation, which I had to set aside while I was doing the extension course updates, which take forever because the tools I have are like tying shoes with one hand. Sure, it's possible, unlike tying them psychically, which is why I haven't quit. But wouldn't it be so much nicer if someone could find a way let me use both hands?
And these are the skills I am supposed to be learning so that I can get a much funner job so that I don't mind so much that I still have (at least) 9 years, 6 months, and 3 days before I can retire. (It could have been one year sooner, but they already changed the rules on me.)
I realize that Monday I could find the magic command that makes everything work. But meanwhile, let me just say, I'm so glad it's Friday.
Now, I understand that state-of-the-art stuff doesn't always work on browsers, and you have to wait for the browsers to catch up. Which is why I have been reading five-year-old books. And then making sure the information is still true today, by checking online.
So then I try a few changes, uploading the whole mess each time. I say, "hey, stay over on the right," and it thinks I mean "become infinitely wide." So I say, "never mind, have a bigger left margin." And it thinks I mean, "cover up everything else so you can't even see it." There really is nothing much to Cascading Style Sheets, I don't see how it can seem so foreign. Now I'm--what's that word for how people felt after "the war to end all wars"? Not disenchanted exactly. Not disillusioned. Not demoralized quite. Well, where you think something's really going to be good and then all your hopes are smashed into bits.
Because that was the fun thing I've been dying to do but had to put off doing until I finished the horrible documentation, which I had to set aside while I was doing the extension course updates, which take forever because the tools I have are like tying shoes with one hand. Sure, it's possible, unlike tying them psychically, which is why I haven't quit. But wouldn't it be so much nicer if someone could find a way let me use both hands?
And these are the skills I am supposed to be learning so that I can get a much funner job so that I don't mind so much that I still have (at least) 9 years, 6 months, and 3 days before I can retire. (It could have been one year sooner, but they already changed the rules on me.)
I realize that Monday I could find the magic command that makes everything work. But meanwhile, let me just say, I'm so glad it's Friday.