celfyddwr.com

“This”:http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/560.html is pretty funny. Though, Gmail invites don’t seem to be as popular as they use to be. Probably because everyone and their cat either has Gmail already, or has a handful of Gmail invites to give out.

I still have my invites, if anyone’s interested. Just “email me”:?s=contact with your first and last name and be sure to include the email address you’d like the invite to be sent to. First come first serve. Offer good while supplies last.

I am a semi-recent graduate with a BFA(bachelor of fine arts) degree in graphic and interactive communication. I am aslo currently unemployed (so if you need a website, wedding items, or anything else designed, let me know).

This site is an informal journal for me. There isn’t one main topic unless you count my life as a topic. This is just a place where I can indulge in writing and experiment with site design.

As I’ve said, I am a graphic designer. I’m also a pen-lover — I just love writing instruments of any kind. I’m also a geek. Technology has to be a part of my live — it all just makes sense to me. I have two computers (a PC laptop and an older Mac desktop), a PDA(personal digital assistant), a cell phone, seven e-mail addresses, and approximately eleven AIM(AOL Instant Messenger) screennames. To see what else I have, “click here”:/index.php?s=toys. And you can take a look at some of the sites I check on a daily basis “here”:/index.php?s=links.

I love hearing from new people. If you’re so inclined, feel free to “email me”:/index.php?s=contact, or “IM me”:aim:goim?screenname=ecub2k on AIM.

Here are some of my interests, à la LiveJournal style:
adult alternative music, “alphabets”:http://www.omniglot.com/, “anxiety”:http://www.adaa.org/, “art”:http://www.artnet.com/, “astronomy”:http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html, autumn, “boxer-briefs”:http://www.hanes.com/HanesCommerce/en-US/Products/Default.htm?CatalogNavigationBreadCrumbs=HanesCatalog;men;Men_ByCategory;Men_Underwear;Men_Underwear_BoxerBriefs&CanBuy=True, “calligraphy”:http://www.calligraphycentre.com/, cameras, “cats(Purrr!)”:http://www.nationalgeographic.com/cats/, “cell phones”:http://www.howardforums.com, cheese, clean sheets, “coldplay”:http://coldplay.com/, “collecting pens”:http://www.pencollectors.com/, “computers”:http://www.apple.com, “country music”:http://www.cmt.com, “depression(I’m whale shit at the bottom of the ocean. But I’m awesome!)”:http://www.wellbutrin-xl.com/, “depression medication”:http://www.crazymeds.org/, “dryer sheets”:http://doityourself.com/clean/dryer-sheets.htm, “explodingdog”:http://www.explodingdog.com, “family guy(Freakin’ sweet!)”:http://www.planet-familyguy.com, “food network”:http://www.foodnetwork.com, “foreign languages”:http://www.foreignword.com/, “fountain pens(I like fountain pens. I have lots of fountain pens. Fountain pens are neat!)”:http://www.pentrace.com, “futurama”:http://www.gotfuturama.com, “gadgets”:http://www.gizmodo.com, geeks, “graphic design(Design is the look of the world we live in. -John McWade)”:http://www.aiga.org, “homestar runner(and Strong Bad)”:http://www.homestarrunner.com, iced tea, “japan”:http://everyday.3yen.com/, “linkin park”:http://www.linkinpark.com/site.php, “macs”:http://www.apple.com/powermac, “maine(the way life should be)”:http://www.visitmaine.com/home.php, “muppets”:http://muppets.go.com/, music, new socks, “photography”:http://www.popphoto.com/, “rascal flatts”:http://www.rascalflatts.com/, “reiki”:http://www.geocities.com/fascin8or/reiki_nutshell.html, sleep, “sms messages”:http://www.textually.org/, “south beach diet”:http://www.southbeachdiet.com, “sushi”:http://www.bento.com/sushivoc.html, “tea”:http://www.republicoftea.com/, “technology”:http://www.engadget.com/, text messages, “the ocean”:http://www.ocean.com, “the simpsons(D’oh!)”:http://www.snpp.com/, thunder, “writing”:http://www.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/, “yoga”:http://www.yogajournal.com/

I’ve updated the CSS(Cascading Style Sheet) for my site. Not only did I add some new colors to the mix and re-positioned some of the elements, I converted all of my text-sizes into ems[1]. With this done, the text of my site should now be able to be resized in IE/Win. When using pixels for the text-size, text cannot be resized in IE/Win.

While I’ve looked for myself, if you notice anything broken on my site because of that change, please let me know, either by “email”:?s=contact or by posting a comment.

fn1. An em is a typographers unit of measurement that is proportioned to the width of a capital letter “M.” It will vary from font to font and will also vary with the point size of the font.

The sprinkles came in! “Check out”:/images/post/hagel.jpg how much we got!

I hate “Manpower”:http://www.us.manpower.com again (see the “last time”:?id=15 I tried to apply at Manpower). I went there today after seeing a nice job listed online at “Jobs in ME”:http://www.jobsinme.com. It was a temporary, part-time position at “UnumProvident”:http://www.unumprovident.com as an administrative assistant. It’s definitely a job I could do, and so I decided to go apply for it. When I got there, I walked into the Manpower office, and one of the three people working there helped me. She found out what I wanted to do, and I showed her the job posting I printed from the internet. She said that they didn’t handle that job, that it was Manpower at Unum on Congress St. and I should call them. Then she said that if I wanted, I could fill out an application there, and they’d fax it over to the Unum office for me, but I should follow up with them afterward. I asked if the Unum office accepted walk-ins, and found out that they do not, so I coulnd’t just hop over there and fill out an application. So, after the girl stared at me blankly, I asked if she could fax that stuff over for me, and I proceeded to fill out a sign-up form or sorts. When I was done with that, she was on the phone, so she motioned to the guy at the desk next to her to help me, he found out what I wanted, and by the time I was done explaining about the faxing of things and all that, the first girl who helped me was off the phone, and told him what I wanted to do, so he walked over to another desk wth me and gave me the application to fill out. I sat down and filled that out. When I was done with that, the first girl was “interviewing” a guy who was there watching the mandatory Manpower video. The guy was wearing a graphic printed tshirt, and gyn shorts. I was wearing black slacks, a black tshirt under a white short-sleeve button-up shirt, and business-casual slip-on shoes. I felt like I was really over dressed, and that they should give me the job merely on the merits that I cared enough to try and look presentable and professional. But I digress. The guy who helped me the second time was running around, and was on the phone. There was a third person working there, but she was on the phone, she just got off the phone, and walked over to me. She looked things over, and then asked if I could come back for an interview. Of course I said yes, and she proceeded to look up a time for me to come back. After deciding on Tuesday at 10:00am, I told her that it was actually supposed to be faxed over to the Unum office, and I showed her the job I was applying for. She told me “well then, I don’t need you to come back for an interview!” I guess if the Unum office thinks I’m a possible candidate, they’ll call me for an interview.

So, after dealing with 3 people, having to repeat my intentions three times, I finally got signed up, and I’m going to follow up on Tuesday possibly, maybe Wednesday by either emailing or calling the Manpower at Unum office and seeing if they got my application and resume. I hope they do, and I hope they like me enough to consider me, I could really use a job!

I haven’t written for a while. I just haven’t really been in a write-y mood. And nothing’s really been going on lately to write about. What I can write about now, though, is that last week I went to see the doctor. It was just a routine check-up thing, so it was no big deal, but while I was there, I decided to ask him how to get rid of the cracking at the corners of my mouth that has plagued me for a while now. I thought it was only dry skin or something, but lip balms didn’t work too well. When I asked him about it, he said that sometimes people who have creases at the sides of their mouths get a fungal thing, becuase it’s always moist. And that it something made to treat athlete’s foot would do the trick. Upon going to the grocery store for some food, I picked up some _Lotrimin_.. that stuff is expensive — $8 for 0.42oz. But, I’ve been using it for a little while now, about 2 times a day or so, and it’s really seemed to help! I don’t have the scabbing at the corners of my mouth like I did, and it seems to be healing well.

In other recent news, I now have a new-to-me tire for my car, so I no longer have to ride around on a pencil-thin donut of a tire that likes to follow every and all cracks int he road, forcing me to weave. I got the tire for going over and trying to fix my father’s computer. In trying to do so, I came across close to 500 spy/ad-ware programs, and 87 viri. It was so much, that without a clean boot disk (floppy) there was no way to heal the system. I’m not sure what the next course of action should be. I told him to get a new harddrive and just do a clean install. A new harddrive would be necessary becuase there’s somethign up with his current one that I cannot re-format it.

That’s all I can think of right now to update everyone (2 people) who read my site. There hopefully will be more posts in the future.

*_vitals_* 23 years old, dirty blond hair, slate blue eyes

*_contact me_* email: email@tduguay.com, aim: “ecub2k”:aim:goim?screenname=ecub2k, “webform”:?s=contact

“Links”:?s=links to the outside world
“Toys”:?s=toys I play with, and that helped to make this site

*_100 things about me_* “see the fad”:?s=100things

*_Fine Print_* © 2003-04 t.duguay jr   /
this site maintained with TextPattern and hosted by DreamHost.

This is kind of amazing. You too can learn how to fold your clothes in half the time. It’s kind of neat, but a little sloppy at the same time.

“judge for yourself”:http://blog.tduguay.com/media/fold.wmv (6mb windows media video file)

Today I made new icecubes, and upon checking on them tonight for my drink, I discovered that “stalagmites”:http://hyperdictionary.com/dictionary/stalagmite of water/ice had formed on a couple of the cubes. I’m totally confused and dumbfounded on how this could happen in a closed regrigerator freezer. But nontheless, it happened, and “here’s”:http://blog.tduguay.com/images/galleries/icecubes/ proof!

So far, playing with Gmail for an entire day, I’ve actually gotten to like it a bit. Some of the nice features I’ve noticed is the use of keyboard shortcuts to get around the interface. Yahoo! Mail does this, but it’s more of a menu type of thing and you have to use the ctrl and shift keys to do anything. With Gmail, you just type a letter that corresponds with the command you want. For example, you type a c for _compose_, n and p are for _next_ and _previous_ respectively (only for use withing conversations) and j and k are used for _older_ and _newer_ conversations respectively. *Return* or o opens a message and if you type g and then i, it will bring you back to your _inbox_.

The way Gmail organizes emails into _conversations_ is nice as well. It’s kind of like threading like message boards do, but it’s a little more slick with Gmail. you can expand or collapse each message in a conversation seperately, so you can look to see what has been said when composing your replies.

Making a reply in Gmail is very easy as well. At the bottom of a message that you received, there’s a text box and when you click in the text box to start composing your reply, Gmail automatically enlarges it, quote the original message, and gives you options to edit the subject and addresses. It does this on the fly, and it’s super fast.

The use of javascript makes the interface extremely fast. The expanding and collapsing of messages is almost instant, composing replies and forwaring messages is just as fast. It’s really amazing how the web-interface doesn’t feel like a web interface. One feature that I havne’t personally seen in a webmail interface before is the auto-completion of email addresses as you type them. it works kind of like the address bar in most web browsers. When you start typing a person’s name or email address, Gmail looks through your contact list to find matching entries, when doing so, it shows a little drop-down options list that matches what you’re typing. It just floats there, and doesn’t impede your typing at all. You can then either hit _tab_ or _return_ to insert the first address of the list (which is already selected) into the *to* field, or you can use your arrow keys on your keyboard to select which address you would like to use. You can even click on the address you want if you’re the mousing type.

I haven’t had to use the built-in Google search function of Gmail because I don’t have enough messages to warrant the use of it to find a message I want. But the built-in search is the main purpose of Gmail, and the one-gigabyte of storage space you get with it. Supposedly you’re not requred to delete any emails you get, and you can use Google to search your messages.

Another nice feature is that the Gmail page refreshes every so often so you’ll know when you get new email, even when you don’t intervene and refresh the page yourself. The only thing I would like is to be able to either set the interval that it refreshes, or to have a pop-up window that will tell me if I have new mail (a la “Squirrel Mail”:http://www.squirrelmail.org).

The much controversial _ads_ that inhabit Gmail haven’t really bothered me. I realize that it’s just a computer searching my email for keywords, and showing me ads based on those words. and they’re the small _adsense_ ads on the side of the window, they’re not intrusive at all. And some of my messages don’t even have ads displayed. I’m not sure if this is a fluke, a feature so conversations don’t get too visually crowded, or if they’re just aren’t any ads to be displayed for those emails. But the ads really aren’t a big deal for me. Most of them not being a bid deal is that unlike Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail, and even Fastmail, the ads aren’t contained in out-going messages, they’re strictly in the web-mail interface.

All in all, I think Gmail has serious potential, if this is something I could access from a web-enabled PDA, or my phone, it would be pretty sweet to have a gig of email space at my disposal. But, alas, right now, Gmail only works with the more popular browsers, and not browsers like Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE) without some tweaks.

And just a reminder, I’ve only played with Gmail for about a day now, these are only some of my first impressions. I may write more about it at a later date. :-)