Getting Ready
Originally uploaded by Amber Dawn.
See the result here.



Sometime after I was born my dad went out and bought a football and put it in my crib hoping it'd have some sort of effect on who I'd become. The story goes that the next day they checked in on me and the football was deflated and had been pushed into the corner of the crib.

Growing up that football was always in the toybox or closet, still devoid of air and never used. I always remember moving it out of the way to get to some other thing I wanted to play with.

My dad had high hopes for me playing football, but by high-school his genes had barely produced a 105lb. 5'8" pitcher with an OK fast-ball and curve ball that fooled very few (if any). It wasn't exactly what he had hoped for, but I know he was as pleased as hell that I had discovered I liked baseball, and he encouraged me to keep at it and get better.

My parents are those typical good parents. I noticed over the years how they adjusted their desires of what they wanted us to be or do, and celebrated and accepted who we became and wanted to do. I've never had one of them say, "Why can't you be a doctor like so-and-so's son?" or "Why are you wasting your life on the computer?" Instead, they encouraged anything we attempted and supported us like it was their own endeavor. I have memories of my dad leaving work early to be there for the first inning of every game I played, or my mom sewing patches on my sister's "punk rock" denim jacket.

What I'm trying to say is, when Apple did this:

They were not this:

I feel like however our logo turns out today, it's just some desires and wishes about what we'd like our creation to become tomorrow. If we're mindful of who we are, and who we become, our brand will reflect it. And our logo will most definitely change. It has to change. If it doesn't I think we will have become those bad parents who cling to dreams of their kids being something they're not.



I know I don't talk about work here very much, mainly because I'm so busy*. All my personal projects have been completely abandoned. I don't even feed my cat anymore, I just leave plates in the sink...

Ok, not really, we didn't bring the cat because our new apartment didn't allow them. My loss is my sister's, uh, gain(?).

I see the stupid light at the stupid end of the tunnel on this not stupid project. My fingers hurt**. I have written a lot of code. I'm not going to go into too many details but the phrase that's been in my mind since I started this was "This is going to be the finest stretch of code I've ever written in my life." So far, so good. Unfortunately the rule of fast/good/cheap is proving to be a pain in the ass. Not having a team (including a producer) has been the biggest problem. Days can get completely lost when you're the only HTML Production/Ad-Server guy in the office and you're needed for the day.

I'm also not used to not hitting deadlines, at least not missing them by such a wide margin. I pretty much almost*** teared up in our weekly meeting when I realized I was going to be off about two weeks. And it wasn't just a simple two weeks but a very difficult slog of getting things done while new stuff was coming in. It was just one of those moments where you feel like, "Wow, I have a lot to do."

Also, and this is not to slag my friends at IM, but it's been an incredible amount of fun to work with smart, really smart, people who are good at what they do. These people impress me to no end.

I am quite happy with what we've come up with, although for a few months now I've felt like I was trying to push start a locomotive, I now feel like everything is moving far faster than I can keep a handle on. This weekend is going to be fun because it's one of my favorite parts of programming, the run-through and clean things up phase. Those annoying little functions you want to visit again because they could make more sense. Also, commenting and repairing bugs you come across, or expect to happen. I love finding ambiguities in code and clarifying what's being done for whoever should come across it next.

God, I sure did ramble, didn't I? The point of this post was to point to our logo. At least, a direction we're considering. Federated Media Publishing Inc.: New Logo: Your Input Wanted.....

I really need to post more often and release pressure of that posting hose I just let loose. Sorry!

*I used to tell people I was "busy" before. I have to laugh now at what I used to think was busy. :)
** They really do. It's depressing me.
*** Fine! I did. There were witnesses, I can't lie.