Friday, July 7, 2000

2:30 a.m. I've only checked in on our little friends in the glass house a few times today. I'm trying to be very good. I'm also trying to diet, with varying degrees of success. I would like to be able to wake up with a feeling of accomplishment instead of guilt and dread. Thus: easy on the food, easy on the voyeurism ... dig into work and make something of myself. Something a little smaller, faster, smarter.

Because of a set of neat-o circumstances, I've had to download the Flash application and then start uploading it into my consciousness. Lengthy serial numbers have been copied and forms filled out and now I'm on my way to developer's heaven. I've been slowing working through the packaged lessons, squirming as much as any 8-year-old boy at the pace. But, I'm trying to be good.

I've always found it difficult to slowly and carefully go through a tutorial -- alone -- and on my honor. I am not a straight line, point A to point B person and I like to take side trips. I've been trying, however, to stay on the straight and narrow line from point to point this time because time is of the essence. I'm trying to get this program digested, with a finished shiny demo by Monday.

Should be interesting.

In the last two nights I've ordered and downloaded two different programs, each one eating away at my bank account. It's really interesting how much money you can spend without leaving your desk, without even putting on shoes. The completed download is sort of anti-climatic, with no shiny shrink-wrapped box, no one-way twist-ties, no carefully molded styrofoam, no clear plastic anywhere.

Also, no manual, which is tough. No matter how comprehensive the online and electronic documentation, I like a nice thick paper-and-glue book. I like directions, and plenty of them. I like to take the manual to bed with me and drift off to sleep dreaming of new possibilities, soothed by a new language and a new set of rules that remain rigid and inviolate. It's one of my favorite things to do.

In the case of Flash, the manual and CD will arrive in a week's time, long after I've gotten myself entangled in the program and its limitations. Already, I've hit one wall of the thing -- I've managed to blow it right off my screen, in a most dramatic way. I tried to move something from one library to another with the time-honored Mac drag and drop technique -- and ka boom. The bomb.

Yes, I was wandering off the lesson's strict walkway. Serves me right. Can't go around pushing red buttons and asking questions out of sequence.

Meanwhile, I've already got my award for my hard work -- now all I have to do is earn it.

Thanks, Bonnie!