Thursday, October 03, 2002
I got another chapter of the book finished: the one dealing with color values. Most of it is new material, dealing with new CSS3 properties and what I think can only be described as "good intentions". I also like the fact that for some things, I've described the intended effects far better that what's in the existing draft specification. ;-)
I'll admit that I'm jazzed about knowing that I'm near the end of this one. With this chapter done, I've only got another 4 to go, and there appears to be little totally fresh material that these chapters need. Okay okay, there's at least 3 appendices I have to include as well, and then there's the 10 or so chapters I have get back from the technical reviewer -- who is very good at what she does. But I can at least send the end of this project within sight.
I had a talk with my editorial contact yesterday, and he's keen to get the book at the printers before Xmas. It's ambitious, though I think more from Dave T.'s end -- the friend from my KL Group days who doing the layout for the book in FrameMaker -- than mine at this point.
I do want to get this book finished and out of the way. If only so I can think about the next one. ;-)
It seems funny to me, but after all these years I finally broke down and bought a copy of PKWare's WinZip utility.
I had been using a "Pro" version of it or some such thing when I noticed it's preview time had expired.
Now I've been using of version of the PKzip utility over the years, beginning with the old DOS version -- I think I may have even used it back in my BBS-ing days, which is truly ancient computing history. But I had always used the shareware version. After all these years of use, PKWare had never received a cent from me.
That changed last night. I thought about looking for a crack or license key for the version I was using. Then I reflected on how much use I've had out of the program over the years, and dragged out my credit card to do the online ordering.
$29 US struck me as being a bit steep for a single user license, but I've had a free ride for a long time.
Yesterday I had an enjoyable, though unfortunately rushed, lunch with an old friend of mine who I used to work with at Delrina about a decade ago. I was supposed to met him at Reuben's Deli on King at 12:30pm. Insanely bad traffic due to construction in front of City Hall and my panicked mistaking of Adelaide for King meant I was almost half an hour late for my appointment. Ugh.
It was good to see him. At one time we were both doing front line tech support for a legion of beleaguered users of WinFax software, back in the days when faxes were much more prevalent than email.
I hadn't seen him for years, and I had a similar experience to first seeing my friend Bryce again last year after a long absence. Realizing the years had passed, mentally comparing the face in front of me to the much younger man I last remembered seeing. This is how one sees the years passing before you.
What I had realized about Ian R., despite our email correspondence is the oddly parallel career paths we've taken. I didn't know that he'd been part of Symantec Web team after I had left Delrina/Symantec, and that he is now a Webmaster/Web maintainer for Nesbitt Burns. He too has a personal Web site where he dabbles in experimental code and self-expression. Cool. We talked shop for a while of course, though I found his experiences as a Dad of two young children (gee, that sounds familiar) more interesting.
Due to time constraints on the both us, we only had a half hour's chat together, but we vowed to meet again soon.
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