I’ve been busy at work lately - which is why I haven’t posted in a while. But I’m on vacation now and will post a few updates soon.
Monthly Archive for July, 2005
I promised my friend, Paul, that I would show up to the party he and his girlfriend hosted on Saturday. He let me know of these plans weeks ago and my fiance and I confirmed our appearance a week before the party when Jen and I invited the two of them to a Yankees game we snagged tickets to. But the two of us forgot all about it and made plans to see my parents back home and I feel really bad about missing the party.
From what I could tell, Paul was really excited about this party - the first since he moved in with Lynda a few about two months ago. And Jen and I were equally excited. Not only had Jen lived in that area for seven years before moving in with me, she really likes Lynda (as do I) and is very excited when a friend of mine finds a really good person for them. We even offered to bring games that would be good to play drunk and a few that are really cool to play in large groups - Cranium being our favorite.
But Jen and I have been very busy and distracted lately with both our jobs demanding more time than ever. Because we haven’t done much in the way of planning for our wedding, we’ve had to pick up the slack and do almost all of it at once. Plus, we hadn’t seen my parents in months - something very hard to do when you don’t have a car and very inconvenient mass transit the only way to get there. And even though we planned to be back Saturday night for the party, I made plans to see another friend of mine someone who I haven’t seen or talked to in over eight months (that’s another post I have to do) and wanted to see the new home he bought.
But even though I was busy and distracted, I still forgot about a promise that I had made to a friend and remembered how I felt yesterday when someone did that to me. I have to call or email Paul and tell him how sorry I feel for missing his party. I’m sure he’ll understand that we had things to do and forgot about things but still, I promised and I didn’t carry it out. I’ll invite him and Lynda over to dinner and home that we can go over to their place sometime soon.
A friend of mine broke a promise made to me a few months ago and now I’m a really bummed about it. The promise was important to me and, although my concerns about it were expressed many times, I was let down because my friend didn’t keep it. The promise didn’t have to be made but it was and now that it was broken, the trust in what my friend tells me will always be in question.
I can’t really go into what the promise was about but I can say it affected my pride and my self respect. If the promise was kept, I would have felt a great sense of pride in what the promise brang and my self respect would have been boosted a great deal as it would have helped reaffirm my belief in myself and what others believe about me. Instead, I will find it hard to be proud of myself. But worse, I will always question my worth to my friend and a lower worth to him makes me feel inadequate.
All this will affect my friendship with him a little and all this has made me question whether or not I really want to be involved with him. Not because he has done something so dramatic that I can never see or speak to him again… its not that. Its just that I can’t be enthusiastic about whatever I do with him or for him because I know that he didn’t come through for me. And I don’t know what to do about it.
I could simply not associate with him or anything related to this promise. But what was delivered in the promise’s wake isn’t necessarily a bad thing either - its just not what was promised. If I accept what was delivered, I still get something from my friend and I could enjoy it very much and yet I can’t help but think about the bad taste left in my mouth. I’m leaning towards the latter because something is better than nothing and although it still feels like nothing, I still have a friend in the end and something that I might have a lot of fun with.
I have some time to think about this and what to do about it. I don’t want to dwell on it though because I will focus on what I feel is a double cross and not on how good the alternatives are (even if they aren’t as great as they could have been). My mind is almost made up but my emotions are getting in the way of making that final decision. I’m sure that I’ll have it worked out but I will second guess myself every step of the way.
Sometimes I think I’m making a big deal about it and that there is still some good in what my friend did deliver on but I always seem to go back to what wasn’t given instead of what was. I can’t but feel a little negative about the whole thing. I don’t want that negativity to rule my future with my friend and I try to think of the bright side.
I still have faith that things in the long run will work out but I don’t know if that long term outcome involves my friend anymore. I guess I’ll have to wait and see.
Ever since I registered this domain name and started posting to this blog, I’ve become really interested in design templates for web sites. I found this free template from Blogger.com the closest thing that they offer that represents me and my style but it is rather boring. Plus, I’m sure there are hundreds of blogs out there that share the same template. So yesterday, I started looking for new templates and now I’m really interested in wed design.
I started out at an Indian site that makes unique templates and offers them for sale. Once its sold, they no longer offer it to the public. I thought it was a really great idea and a cool way to get a one-of-a-kind look for a web site. But I didn’t find anything I liked and I don’t know how often they update their portfolio; I’ll keep looking but I might just buy one anyway because they are inexpensive at 40 to 60 US dollars.
But this morning, I did a Google search and found a lot more sites that sell web templates and now I’m salivating at the opportunity to buy one and make it work. Most of them, however, are for businesses that engage in e-commerce or have products/services to sell. It would be hard to modify the templates to work as a personal page - you can forget about blogs, too. But while searching, I did find that people make Blogger.com compatible templates (or skins as some call them). The help section of Blogger also listed a few other sites where I could find alternate templates to the ones they had commissioned for their service. Most of the sites have the suckiest skins. In fact, they were the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever did suck! Mostly kids posting pictures of their favorite celebrities and adding the Blogger code to make them work. I mean, COME ON!!! At least, put some effort or thought into it.
Anyway, all this has gotten me excited about createing my own template. I’ve got Dreamweaver and I’m thinking of getting Flash Studio to spice up the site and to get me learning something new (I know, I know… Flash on sites are just cheap ways to impress people with animation to add sophistication and relevance to a site even though it only upsets people when it takes forever to load and does nothing of real value). But I am not very creative. I kinda know what I like from a style perspective but don’t know anything about the rules of design or color - and I could use some help.
So what I need to do is look at other websites that “professional” design firms have done to get a better sense of what I should do. I don’t want (and won’t) steal anyone’s design but I’m looking for influences that will guide my creative side and help me create a good template I can use for my web spaces. Does anyone have a link to a design firm that they like? Or what about a link to a site they have done you find visually appealing?
Oh, and I like clean, bright, modern web sites - if anyone wants to know.
…just like everybody else.
