Wednesday, August 26, 2009

A Day in the Life: Illustrated and Incomplete

I remember when I was in college and we were just beginning to have electric typewriters that offered more than one font type AND size. That meant that if I had a paper to write and the prof had given page number parameters, I could cram in more words with a smaller font.

As a designer I've also known for a long time that if you don't have much to say (or nothing at all to say) you can do that more engagingly by illustrating it.

If I have not yet convinced you to click to the next blog or return to Facebook or even go back outside for one last romp through the sprinklers, then I will simply say that you are reading (and viewing) at your own risk.

My day began (well, after I left the house, anyhow) with a visit to Dr. Gabor's office for a blood draw. The first tech "missed" and the second one had to go for my other arm before striking a productive vein. Still, I was out of there quickly and on my way to the office.

I am honestly fascinated by all that they can tell from testing the blood. As one who has a family history that includes all sorts of things (including diabetes) that are often diagnoses by blood tests, doctors seem to be happy to test mine annually and I am happy for them to do so.

My day at the office was relatively routine. I'm not complaining about that at all and that should not be taken to mean that I didn't do anything interesting or important. I did spend a good bit of time interacting with people through email. I'm starting to forget how we functioned before we had it.

My INBOX has been a little out of control for the past week or two. I was pleased to get it down to a manageable level between yesterday and today's focused attention on doing just that. And no, I didn't just DELETE things randomly, though I admit to having threatened that on occasion.

On project I'm working on this week involved the production of a draft document (using WORD) which then needed to be shared with a colleague who works in Dallas with Wycliffe's primary strategic partner organization, SIL for his input and additions before we jointly share it more broadly. For various reasons that are even more irrelevant to this story than what I've already included, email was the chosen method of sharing. Problem is, somewhere between my OUTBOX and his INBOX, the file was converted into something that was useless (and huge). After a couple attempts, we resorted to other technology -- and I transfered the document to him through SKYPE. Click, zoom, done.

Just before 5 pm, I gathered up my belongings and headed down to the computer training lab where I met with some of my colleagues with whom I am playing Fantasy Football this year for our player DRAFT. The process of ten teams/owners selecting fifteen players each took around two hours. It was fun -- at least I know I had fun.

Sometime later in the season I'll share my team logo and my drafted team. I will potentially blog about that again before the season is over -- but doubt it will be even as frequently as weekly. But then again, who knows.






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Finally, I thought I'd give you a glimpse into my tomorrow-but-actually-Friday: the shuttle has been rescheduled to go just after midnight tomorrow night (making it technically Friday morning) and I plan to join a few other colleagues for the trip out to the coast to watch it up close. Not from the Cape itself -- we aren't fortunate enough to have tickets for that. But from the river. I've not seen a night launch from up close and fear there won't be many more opportunities. You will hear about that from me sometime before the weekend passes.

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