August 25th, 2008
Today started slow. Got in at 8:30 a.m., started patching up bits of the site I didn’t get to on the weekend. Kept on patching and building — adding stuff like the the most-commented politics articles in the past hour / three hours to the site, hacking the AP DNC live video stream so it shows on our site without the AP cruft, sending more than 60 emails, yeah, stuff. Was looking like I was going to get out by 7 p.m. when those protesters started ruckusing it up outside the building, which turned into a little breaking-news party, complete with a live video stream of the action, a bunch of twitter action, and a late night working…. sleep good.
Joe, Work, Denver, DNC2008
August 25th, 2008
No more fail, just more work. Work Saturday. Work Sunday. Work-people Saturday night at the media party. Wake up Sunday and go to the Green Frontier Fest. Van Jones talks about making the green movement relevant to not just the folk who can afford to be fancy-green. Gosh if news organizations had someone as charismatic, talking about making newspaper web sites more relevant, more affordable (to those without high-speed (I took a look at the Other Denver Newspaper’s homepage — it was 2.4 MB huge, which is 100% ridiculous)).
We’ve got a bunch of journalists in from other newspapers, which means more people, which means the newsroom is sounding more alive than ever. Woop.
Joe, Work, World, Denver, Colorado, DNC2008
August 23rd, 2008
I still subscribe to the dead-tree Denver Post. The delivery this summer has been consistently bad — a paper on the porch is now a thing of Spring 2008. This morning I left my place and found the paper not on the porch, the steps, or the sidewalk — it was in the grass on the parking strip, and the delivery person’s most significant fail yet.
At noon, when working on putting together the special-DNC layout for the Post’s web site’s home page, I accidentally pushed the development draft of the site live. This meant the dummy photo I was using, of the cute miniature hippo-looking thing, cameo’d on our site’s homepage for a good two minutes. It was funny, in a bad, bad way, and it brought my coworker Becky to tears she was laughing so hard.
At that point in the day I’d already had a couple more fails under my belt, and it all made sense. The newspaper, the hippo — I was marching in the Fail Parade. FailHippo was the FailMascot, and I was nowhere near the end. I took a quick screenshot of the homepage fail — screenshots were my lens on this parade, and I was going to document every fail from here on out.
This is how it breaks down:
9:00 a.m.: Newspaper Fail.
9:15 a.m.: In a call with our corporate parent, I get frustrated and mean with the guy on the phone about a mistake I think they made. Personal Fail.
9:30 a.m.: I forget my camera at my apartment. I needed my camera because it’s broken, and I took the long way to work to walk by and drop it off at the camera-repair place. Mental Fail.
9:45 a.m.: I show up to work late. Fail.
10:00 a.m.: I do some internet sleuthing, and I realize the mistake I thought our corporate parent made was actually a mistake that I made. Total Fail.
10:30 a.m.: When fixing the javascript that loads a chunk of video on our homepage, I had our site CMS open. I needed to edit two files in the CMS to make this fix, so I had each file open in a separate tab. I made the fixes, and saved both files right after each other. The CMS messed up and swapped the files I was saving, breaking the video again. Fail.
11 a.m.: I leave my cube to hit the 10th floor for a soda, and forget my employee pass on my desk. Have to go to the lobby and have the security guards buzz me up. Fail.
Noon: FailHippo graces the Denver Post’s homepage.
2:00 p.m.: Our CMS buckles under the weight of something, and starts returning “503 - Server Too Busy” errors. CMS Fail.
3:00 p.m. - 4:15 p.m.: RSS delivery on the Denver Post’s site ceases, due to a “ISAPI Extension Error- 1″ error. CMS Fail.
3:30 p.m.: CSS delivery to the Denver Post site becomes erratic, making the homepage look like jumbled junk. Server Fail.
4:00 p.m.: While explaining the FailParade to a co-worker, the co-worker replies “Fail Parade 2007!”, forgetting that this is 2008. Brain Fail.
5:00 p.m.: I hadn’t eaten yet, but I had brought a nectarine with me to work. I took a bite of that tangerine, and instead of tasty delicious I tasted underripe fail. Food Fail. Consistency Fail: Luschek noted that I typed “tangerine” there, when I meant to write “Nectarine”
5:30 p.m.: The DNC-headline list on the homepage I was working on gets pushed to the homepage, creating an out-of-place large blue block there. Fail.
6:00 p.m.: Overheard Fail in the newsroom:
Editor: “You misspelled Barack Obama’s name!”
Reporter: “I did?”
Editor: “Yes. You can’t do that.”
I got out of work at 7:30 p.m., and walked down to get my bike. I thought that the parade would end when I left the building. I get downstairs and outside, and no bike. My bike’s not there. Gone. I had locked it to this gate thing that the building Starbucks has around its outdoor seating — and that gate thing was gone too. So I go back inside, and the security folk know where they put everything, including my bike. Fail Averted.
Joe, Work, DNC2008
August 23rd, 2008
The Green Frontier Fest won’t tell you this, but there is plenty of free booze (10 kegs of green-friendly beer and 6 cases of the organic vodka) to be had tomorrow. Sarah, my girlfriend, is producing this gig with the City of Denver and her employer, the Denver / Portland / Salt Lake City ReDirect Guide … and she’s probably going to hate me for leading with that free-alcohol bit. Oh well.
It happens tomorrow, starting at 10 a.m. and going ’til 6 p.m. … the speakers go on at noon, and it’s on the grass by the tall skinny bendy white-people statues by the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Bill Ritter’s going to speak, Mayor Hickenlooper, some fancy green guy Van Jones, and Daryl Hannah. Also, from the web site:
- Sustainable Wine and Beer Tastings
- Freshly Baked Goods from Solar Ovens
- Organic and Local Foods and Market
- Kid Powered Train Rides and Play Area
- Take Home Tips to Save Money and Live Green
- Experience the Xcel Energy Smart Grid Trailer
- Explore Exhibits and Booths from Local and Green Businesses
Joe, Friends, World, Denver, DNC2008
August 21st, 2008
At the start of the pep rally management told us “We’ve got McCain cookies and Obama cookies, but if you eat them you’ll have to take one of each [to maintain journalistic objectivity].” Yeah, there was a pep rally. And, yeah, there were cookies at that rally. I haven’t been to a pep rally since high school. This one traded pom-poms for cookies and chants for speeches and plans. We got Denver Post DNC commemorative pins at the end. The cookies has something about surviving the DNC on them …
Otherwise, on today’s stage I had sexy server stuff, super-sexy CSS stuff, 40 sent emails, another warranty-scam phone call, a bowl of jelly beans, a kitten photo, an attempt to explain why twitter matters to the newsroom during this DNC, and … the Denver Post Pep Rally.
Lunch I met up with Ricardo and John, music and theater reporters. We ate cheeseburgers. On the walk back John nailed the awesome part of covering the DNC: “The best part of the DNC is there aren’t any editors saying, ‘oh, well, we did it this way before,’ because nobody here has done this before.”
Joe, Work, DNC2008
August 20th, 2008
It’s gettin hectic in the day-job newsroom land. The DNC’s a few days away, and my to-do and get-this-done-right-now lists started exploding as of yesterday. Same goes for everyone, and it’s exciting. I got my Colorado Press Association press pass yesterday — the first press pass I’ve has since interning at the Kenosha News in 1997.
Today the Denver Post’s home-page got a HTML nip-and-tuck treatment — it now loads lot faster, and for those who know why this matters, we exchanged about 50% of the tables on the site for CSS. Then there’s the Akamai caching of our apps servers, another app server transfer, twitter and feed scrapers, this online quiz app I gotta get out the door … it goes on. I sent 42 emails today, had four meetings, and worked overtime. Answered four phone calls, and made another three. I hardly ever talk on the phone at my job. Talked with the guy from the Weather Channel about the Denver Weather-O-Meter — the Weather Channel had been the worst at forecasting Denver weather … until this week, when they somehow turned it around and got out of the cellar.
Sixteen months ago, when Denver got notice it would be the location of the DNC, I was skeptical about all the effort and attention the Post was putting into this one-off event. I’m still slightly skeptical, but man this is going to be fun.
Oh yeah, and also, I converted my mom’s resume from a Claris Works document (.cwk) into an .rtf today. For those who don’t remember, Claris Works was acquired by Filemaker back in 1998. I’m a champ.
Joe, Work, World, Denver, Colorado, DNC2008
August 17th, 2008
Holy shit this is a good strawberry.
Joe, Internet
August 13th, 2008
It’s 2008, and I don’t love Okkervil River in the way I loved them five years ago. But, still, this band. When I first read their lyrics, posted in plain text, I went from infatuation to love. Their words look like stories, not like songs crafted to fit some sort of A A B A structure. They put the story before the song, they tackle complicated emotions … so, yeah, I dig ‘em. They’ve got a new album coming out September 9th, and here’s a link to the first single from that album, Lost Coastlines.
Here’s a blurb about the song from their record label, Jagjaguwar:
The album features 11 songs and includes the track “Lost Coastlines,” on which Sheff and recently departed Jonathan Meiburg of Shearwater share a duet on the joys and hardships of trying to keep the band together. Of the process Will Sheff explains, “We had so many songs we were excited about that we briefly threw around the idea of just putting out a double record. Instead, we decided to take a group of songs that fit with each other and turn that into The Stage Names, setting the rest aside for a future release, a The Stage Names sequel.”
And if you’re interested in ordering / pre-ordering the album, you can do that here.
The sad thing here for me is that while their tour dates include Lawrence Kansas, Omaha Nebraska, Fargo North Dakota and Arizona, they don’t include Colorado. I blame gas prices, and dumb bastard band managers.
U.S. tour dates:
- 09/12/08 Lawrence, KS - The Bottleneck
- 09/13/08 Omaha, NE - Slowdown
- 09/14/08 Madison, WI - Barrymore Theater
- 09/15/08 Fargo, ND - Aquarium
- 09/17/08 Seattle, WA - The Showbox
- 09/18/08 Vancouver, BC - Richards on Richards
- 09/19/08 Portland, OR - Crystal Ballroom
- 09/20/08 Eugene, OR - McDonald Theater w/ Sea Wolf + Zykos
- 09/21/08 San Francisco, CA - Treasure Island Music Festival
- 09/23/08 Los Angeles, CA - Henry Fonda Theatre
- 09/24/08 Solana Beach, CA - Belly Up Tavern
- 09/25/08 Tempe, AZ - The Clubhouse w/ Sea Wolf + Zykos
- 09/26/08 Tucson, AZ - Club Congress w/ Sea Wolf + Zykos
- 09/28/08 Austin, TX - Austin City Limits Festival
- 09/30/08 New Orleans, LA - The Republic
- 10/01/08 Birmingham, AL - Workplay Theater
- 10/02/08 Athens, GA - 40 Watt Club
- 10/03/08 Athens, GA - The Soapbox Laundro Lounge
- 10/04/08 Richmond, VA - The National
- 10/06/08 New York, NY - Webster Hall
- 10/07/08 New York, NY - Webster Hall
- 10/08/08 Northampton, MA - Pearl Street Nightclub
- 10/09/08 Millvale, PA - Mr. Smalls Theatre
- 10/10/08 Buffalo, NY - Tralf Music Hall
Music, Rock
August 7th, 2008
@ DAM, 5 p.m. — I’ve got a bunch of extra artillery if you don’t have a squirt gun of your own. By “extra artillery” I mean some brand-new super-soaker style machines. Hit me if you want to borrow one, and get more info / updates at http://denversquirts.com/blog/.
There’s a 30% chance of rain — if there’s a cancel due to storm I’ll update Denver Squirts.
Joe, Denver
