Give Until It...

... Doesn't really hurt at all?

I went in today to my local Red Cross chapter to give blood. I do this, now, about every eight to ten weeks or so. I've been donating like this off and on for about 5 years. The last time I gave, back in May, I even received my 2 gallon pin. I was pretty proud of that, until I chatted with the guy sitting next to me who had given over 20 gallons since he was 19 years old!

Now the reason I bring this up is not to toot my own horn, but rather to let those of you who've never given before know that it really isn't that bad. Oh, sure, I'd rather be eating ice cream, but in the big scheme of building up some good karma (and keeping my girlish figure!) this is probably a lot better in the long run. The process goes like this:

You show up (preferably with an appointment). You read an information packet which tells you about what to expect and informs you of a number of possible factors which might disqualify you from donating. Then you visit with a nurse for a while. She gets basic information from you to verify that you are eligible to donate and takes your temperature and blood pressure.

Then comes the first terrifying part: She pricks your finger.

OK, someone splash some water on that guy in the third row. Obviously, he's a bit squeamish. Seriously, though, this hurts less than when I cut myself shaving (and I am a big baby). They do this to test the iron content of your blood.

Then you head off to the donation room. Our local chapter recently moved to a new location complete with comfy recliners. They sit you down in one of these, swab your arm a couple of times, just to make sure everything is clean, and then say "You'll feel a little pinch". Between five and ten minutes later, you are done. They put a bandage on your arm and tell you to drink lots of liquids and no heavy lifting (I keep trying to convince my wife that this means I should just sit around and watch TV for the rest of the evening), and out the door you go.

Oh, did I mention that you get all the cookies and juice that you can eat? My favorite part!

Listen. The nurse who was working on me today told me that they recently ran out of type O blood in the southeast Michigan region. Ran out?! What kind of craziness is that? What do they tell the poor schlub on the operating table who's down a quart? "Gee, could you hold on while we call around to find some more?" I know a lot of people can't give blood for one reason or another, but a lot of us can and don't. I was in that group for a large part of my life because I was terrified of what would happen. I hope my story helps you get past that faster than I did.

The Red Cross is a great organization and I hope you'll take an hour or so to go and visit. Maybe you'll even make a donation. They always seem to need it. Maybe the next time I'm there, we'll even strike up a conversation over some of those tasty cookies!

When was the last time you gave blood?

TLA Tutorial: CSS, Part 1

Time for another in my attempts to make the obscure jargon of the tech world just a little more understandable. Today's topic? CSS.

CSS, which should not be confused with "CSI", has nothing to do with the forensic examination of a crime scene in order to discover who committed the dastardly deed. It stands for "Cascading Style Sheet" and, as its middle name implies, it is all about style.

In our last TLA tutorial, we talked about HTML tags. If you look at the source for a web page (under the "View" -> "Source" menu item), you will see a lot of things that look like <b>, <h2>, and <div class="sidebar">. Please remain calm. There is nothing to fear. Just relax and close the source window. Now as we learned in the first TLA tutorial, <b> just turns text that follows it bold, which stops as soon as you see </b>.

The next tag is a little trickier. <h2> says to treat the text following as a header (level 2). There are header levels one through six. The lower the number, the bigger and bolder the text. That last tag <div class="sidebar">, just says that everything after this mark is of this new type called "div", and further, we have given it an optional class name of "sidebar". You can think of it as having a particular group of objects called "people" and a particular class of "people" called "teachers".

Now your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla, Safari, etc) has a default way of showing these different objects to you. For example, <h2> might show up as bold, 24-point, Times Roman font that is centered on the page.

Now, for the big secret. Are you ready for it? Make sure no one is looking over your shoulder, because we don't want this to get out.

CSS can change this to whatever you want. Scary, huh?

I'm not going to go into all the details of how to set up the CSS file, there are a number of good tutorials on how to do this (you can even see how to do this by just looking at the source, like we did above -- just search for the line that has "css" in it). Many HTML editors also generate their own CSS file, so you don't even need to look at it if you don't want to.

That's pretty much it. CSS just allows the web page designer to break out of the limitations of how the browser presents HTML. If you want your <h1> text (usually the title of the page) to be in 79-point (wow, that would be big), bold, blinking, purple Arial font, with a yellow and pink polka-dot background, you can do it. You should't, but you can. Remember Spider-man's motto, "With great power comes great responsibility".

Now, I can hear you thinking: "Hey! Wait a minute! That's the 'style' part. What about the 'cascading' part?", "Why did he tell us about <div> and 'classes'?", "Is he trying to rip us off?", and "I can put the red three on the black four." Don't fret. I will address the "cascading" issue in an upcoming post. For now, sit back and relax. Now you know that CSS is all about style and no one could accuse you of lacking style -- though you may want to reconsider the yellow and green paisley-print slacks. I'm just sayin'.

So, who was your favorite super-hero when you were growing up?

Building Walls...

... brings us closer together.

Over Memorial Day weekend, my wife (Lisa), my mom (Debby), and her husband (Steve), all got together for that most traditional of all family activities -- building a retaining wall. What? Your family doesn't follow this tradition? I feel so sorry for you. It's amazing that you turned out so normal coming from such a dysfunctional family. Don't worry. Your embarrassing secret is safe with me.

Seriously, though, my wife and I decided to build this retaining wall in our side yard. Ok, she decided to, and I went along for the ride. We made our plans and took the measurements and before you know it, we were the proud owner of a pile of bricks, gravel, and topsoil. Now all we had to do was turn it into something structural. Fortunately, I did a quick search and found detailed instructions on how to build a retaining wall. What did we ever do without Google?

We started the project early. We had heard that it was going to be hot that day. It was work. I have a new respect for those who make their livings by the sweat of their brow. Each of those bricks weighs about 25 lbs. This isn't much when you are just lifting one, but if you continue lifting it over the course of, say, four to six hours, it begins to feel a trifle heavier -- about on par with a pickup truck -- one of those big Ford F350 models like my brother has.

Still for all the hard work and sweat (and even a certain amount of bloodshed), we had the sense, at the end of the day, of a job well done -- and done together. There's nothing like a shared project to bring groups and families closer together. In years to come, I won't remember the sore muscles and the unpleasant heat. I'll see the beautiful garden and remember the joy of working beside those I love.

What projects have you done with friends and/or family that brought you all closer together?

TLA Tutorial: HTML

One of the most common complaints I hear from clients regarding dealing with my fellow technology workers (other than the smell, the funny clothes, and our complete inability to understand that no one is interested in the intricacies of the latest "Star Trek" episode) is the language we use. It is so full of jargon and technical shorthand, that we might as well be speaking Swahili. The average techie spews forth Three-Letter Acronyms (TLAs) as if his very life and livelihood depended upon it.

In my efforts to "clear up the confusion", I've decided to start a semi-regular offering where I will make an effort to describe some of these technologies in a way that is more approachable to the non-techie. Tonight we'll start with an easy one -- HTML. It's actually an FLA (four-letter acronym), but who's really counting, right?

Not that it is really important, but HTML stands for "Hyper Text Markup Language". It is the language which is the basis of every single web page you see. Of course, it is a computer language. Outside of the world of web-heads, I don't know anyone who actually tries to communicate with other humans using this language.

If you look at the source of any webpage, you can see that HTML can actually look extremely complex. If you'd like, just use the menu on your browser and select "View" -> "Page Source" if you use the FireFox browser or "View" -> "Source" under Internet Explorer. If you glance at the window that pops up, you will immediately be turned to stone. No, not really. Still it can just look like a big mess if you don't know what you are seeing. Quickly close that window before you go blind.

The thing is, if you look at the very basics of HTML, it truly isn't very complex. You can see an "open tag", some text, and then a "close tag". For example, if I want to make a piece of text bold, I would do something like this:

This text is <b>bold</b>

And it would look like this on screen:

This text is bold

As you can see, the open tag is "<b>" and the close tag is "</b>" and the text in between is what gets "bolded". Depending on which word processor you use, this is just like clicking on the "Bold" button in the toolbar to turn on the bold face, typing some text, and then hitting the button again, to turn it back off.

There are tons of other tags: <i> for italics, <u> for underline, etc. There are some which are more complex, like those for lists and tables. You can even put one set of tags inside another (for those frequent occasions when you need text which is bold, italic, underlined and blinking), but it all comes back to this basic concept -- open tag, text, end tag.

Congratulations! You survived the description of a technical concept! Now, when someone starts blathering on about HTML you won't have to feign a migraine headache just to get out of the conversation. You might still want to, but I will leave that to your personal choice. If you'd like to satisfy your morbid curiosity and see a list of all the tags that are available, I recommend the Bare Bones Guide to HTML.

What other TLA's would you like to know more about?

The Experts

I have a confession to make. I am a do-it-yourselfer -- or rather I think I am. I have this grand illusion that I not only can do anything, but that I should do everything.

My wife and I have been considering remodeling our basement for a couple of years now. She has been gently trying to convince me to hire someone to do the job for us. No, not me! I will do it myself! (imagine me standing with chin and chest outthrust pretending that I am wearing a cape billowing in the wind) Do I know the first thing about installing an electrical system to code? It has something to do with wires, right? Do I know anything about building a bathroom from the ground up? Hey, I've heard of "sweating" a pipe! Could I even build a stud wall with any degree of accuracy? I'm relatively sure there are nails involved.

Obviously, my skills in the above areas are a bit limited. The thing is, I know I could learn how and that's what gets me into trouble. After all, most people think programming a computer is a pretty complex thing. I think it's easy. Surely I could learn how to remodel my basement! Of course, then I reflect on the fact that I have twenty years of experience putting all the ones and zeros in the right order. And the first few years were filled with errors, missteps and occasional moments of outright catastrophe. Upon reflection, do I really want that in my basement? Hmmm.

On top of that, of course, is the consideration of how much my time is worth. I could easily see myself spending an entire day trying to hang a single piece of sheetrock. What else could I have done with my time? The mind boggles. In fact, I'm sure I could make more in that day, doing the job at which I have become expert, than a professional construction worker would charge me to hang that same piece of sheetrock.

So, in what areas of your life would you consider hiring an expert (even if you know you could do just as good a job yourself)?