or is he still a surfer? I don’t know. I saw this on my bro’s blog and liked it…

Green Deets: Jack Johnson 12 from George Spyros on Vimeo.

Wednesday I was asked to look at a simple JavaScript conundrum. A .Net developer had written a script to add input fields to a page when the user clicks on a little plus sign.

No big deal really, but the knucklehead only checked it in Internet Explorer. Furthermore, in his infinite wisdom, he pre-filled each new field with an asterisk. He used this to “test” each field if the user then decided to remove the field. Kind of like spray painting a giant blaze orange arrow on the hood of your car when you go to the mall so you can easily find it when leaving.

The client didn’t like the mysterious asterisks, and it caused form validation problems.

I conversed with another .Net developer who was called in the consult on the problem. I thought we had settled on using what is called a “post back” so that the application could keep track of the IDs of each new field as they were added to the page. A post back is quick call to the server, very similar if not the same as AJAX.

Yesterday, I got an email asking for help. I reviewed the errant JavaScript and decided that it was better to start from scratch and manipulate the DOM — a current best practice in the world of web design. I spent several hours rewriting and testing. It was harder than I thought it would be.

This morning, the developer I conversed with earlier in the week was brought in to integrate what I had done. He agreed that my approach was a good one, but that it might take some time to re-integrate. I tried to be helpful by pointing him to the JQuery javascript library that I used to simplify things.  He seemed to think it wouldn’t be too hard.

An hour later I stopped by his cubicle and found out that using my script would take too long to adapt and that he reverted to the post back solution.

What is particularly frustrating about this is that my whole day was wasted yesterday. I had heartburn because I was under the gun and feeling stressed out trying to fix a problem that should have never existed in the first place.

Planning, communication, brainstorming. Those are the kinds of activities that may take away a bit of time from development’s budget, but can save wheel-spinning exercises that result in wasted hours.

Now I’m behind schedule on another project. Yay.

Wally caught me dashing to the cold in the 27 degree cold this morning after dropping Olivia off at “school” (grandma’s house) and said “What’re ya doin’ with that beard?”

I was, of course, in my black Carhartt and orange North Face cap.

— “Oh, it’s just an experiment…”

— “You look like a terrorist.”

— “Uh oh!”

Like, wtf do you say at a moment like that? “I hate the fact that you chain smoke cigars in your backyard and it wafts into my mother’s house if she has the windows open.” ?

Perhaps I should have just replied, “Thank you.”

Em had an idear and we’re moving forward with it at lightning speed.

I designed this logo last night after the kiddies finally fell asleep and bought the domain today. DNS may still be propagating, but feel free to have a peak.

the beard continues to grow… unfortunately, the built-in camera on my laptop takes poopy pictures. I think the hairs are an inch or more in length. what’s crazy is it’s getting wavy.

I’m getting attached to it. people keep saying, “you’ll shave when it gets warm, won’t you?”

we’ll see, but I’m not sure…