Not-So New Year

So, how's that whole New Year thing working out for you?

Mine hasn't been so good.

I'm preparing a series of training videos that explain how to use the new Content Management System we are going to be rolling out, soon. I've got a couple dozen done so far, showing how to log in and how to log out. How to create a page and how to delete one. How to edit your page navigation and the various page elements like footers and related links and so on.

The thing is, in order to explain how any of this works, I have to know, myself. So, I'm busy learning the In's and Out's of this new beast, while at the same time keeping an eye on how to distill some of this new-found knowledge in two- and three-minute chunks.

I haven't done anything like this, before. The closest was my radio career, when, after my air shift was done I had to report to Production, and spend however much time was needed to create any new commercials that needed to be done. But even then, I never had to synchronize my audio with anyone's video, before. Play a few records, put them away, walk down the hall and speak glowingly for thirty seconds exactly about Johnson Lawn and Garden. Boom-boom... Boom!

This has been a whole lot of fun, and I think it will eventually be a really good way to pick up how this all works. Instead of having to juggle your schedule to find two hours to come and listen to me talk about it, you can get started right away, catching the how to log on/how to log off series and working your way from there. Later on, if you can't remember how to edit page footers, you don't need to schedule another two-hour session and wait for a week or two... you can just revisit the little movie about page footers and get on with things. Over time, I expect our initial two dozen or thirty movies to expand into three-dozen, or four-dozen or even more. Each one devoted to just a single, molecular aspect of how the greater system works.

I'm learning all kinds of things, this semester. I'm learning a lot about home ownership. This morning, I took the garbage out. Three steps from the garage, I was just hanging on, until the giant receptacle made it down hill to the sidewalk. I wrestled it over into the grassy/snowy area between the curb and the sidewalk and turned around. Two steps later, I was doing one of those cartoon motions where I'm okay from the belt up, but from there down everything is just a blur. I fell onto (mostly) my left hand and wrist. I spent a few minutes there on the ice, in front of maybe thirty cars, trucks and minivans and at least one StarTran bus, when an older gentleman approached on the sidewalk coming from the west.

He had seen me fall and immediately turned north on 38th Street and parked, got out and walked back to make sure I was alright! By the time he got to my house, I was up in a newborn-colt sort of way and making my way up the yard, walking on the traction-rich front lawn. He escorted me back up to the little sidewalk connecting the driveway to the front door. There, he turned, bade me farewell and encouraged me to be more careful.

This old man stopped on his way to work to help me get up and make sure I wasn't hurt. What a sweetheart, right?

I spent about an hour worrying if I'd ever play guitar again, the left hand being rather important in that endeavor, and wondering I'd broken anything. The whole thing took about as long and felt about as bad as when I'd broken my foot, on Hallowe'en. Everything's fine. Everything's fine. Hmm... that's going to be—Boom! There I am, flat on the ground, and in front of traffic again, too.

At work, I've spent most of the last week restarting my computer. I can maintain a network connection for only between three and twenty minutes. It's like a giant arm goes across the entire network every, say, twenty minutes, pulling errant networkers offline. If I happen to come on right after it passes, I can get fifteen or twenty minutes of work done, and saved and uploaded. If not, well, so far today alone I have restarted sixteen times, and it's only 2:30pm.

How's your New Year, so far?