UNDERDOG of PERFECTION

It’s been one of those weeks that a freelancer dreads. Lots of fires to put out. You’re trying to swim upstream (as always) but instead you’re treading water in a rapids. Without a team of coworkers to depend on, when a problem arises, there’s no one to pass the buck to, or at least to, uh, share it with.

The problems haven’t really been that bad. Just a few bugs to squash, a few scripts to optimize, a few clients to reassure. But when you feel like you have to be the expert at whatever you do, this kind of week can be a source of anxiety.

It doesn’t help when your main lifeline to the tech world is the expert blogs you follow. Read a few articles on A List Apart and you’ll feel both inspired and a little despondent. There are so many incredibly talented, creative people out there doing amazing things. So why am I banging my head against the wall trying to figure out why all of my form fields suddenly disappeared in IE6? (Turns out it was the position: relative on the #main element, easily fixed by overriding it with position: static in the IE6-specific CSS file I wish I didn’t have to create.)

The point is, as a freelancer, at least one who aspires to be good, if not great, at what you do, you are your own harshest critic and worst enemy. There’s no way any of my clients would ever beat me up the way I beat up myself. I don’t think I’ve ever even had one detectably angry with me. But I am constantly getting frustrated with myself for not being on top of every single technology I put my hands on, and I’m inclined to treat every bug as a personal failure.

The sad fact is, it’s impossible. You can’t specialize in everything. It’s right there in the word. Specialize. As a freelancer, you have to pick a few things to focus on as your greatest strengths, while becoming as well-rounded as you can. But there’s always someone out there who knows more about CSS3 or HTML5 or PHP or jQuery or Whatchamacallit than you do. The great thing about being a freelancer in the age of the Internet, especially if you work on the Internet, is that a lot of those superstar über-geniuses are willing to share that knowledge with you for free. All you have to do is search for it.

The biggest danger in following the superstars of your chosen field, though, is idol worship. You get to know so many facets of their work and their personalities (especially if you follow them on Twitter), that you may be tempted to think you know them personally. You might even have a brief exchange with them about baseball. But that doesn’t mean you know them or know what their lives are really like.

We all make sacrifices to live the lives we choose. It’s inherent in the finite nature of human existence. Chances are, I’ll never be a web development “rock star,” because I’ve made choices that took me on another path. I wanted to be able to work on my terms, and fit my career in as one aspect of my life. I’m not logging the kind of hours I’d need to in order to get rich doing work for hire, or building the next great social networking site. But I have time to spend with my kids and SLP (though probably still not as much as would be ideal). I can make music. I can try to set the world record on my Asteroids cocktail table. (OK, that’ll never happen, but it’s 2 feet from my desk in my home office, if I ever decide to get serious.) I can take an afternoon off to take my son to see Toy Story 3 or head down to Target Field for a Twins game or write on my coffee blog or get some fish tacos at Sea Salt.

Or, I can spend half the morning beating myself up because I’m not Jeffrey Zeldman. But, who is? (OK, he is. But that’s it.)

The point is, I’m me. I’m damn good at what I do, but I can’t do everything. And that’s OK.

As a clarinet player myself, all I can say is, “SWEET MOTHER OF GOD, THIS MAN MADE A CLARINET OUT OF A CARROT AND IT SOUNDS FREAKING AWESOME!”

Presenting “Making Jam” by Linsey Pollak:

Source: Boing Boing

Here’s another post that’s basically a cry for help. I did find this forum thread on the topic, but not a solution.

The problem: when I download a CSV file in Safari, for some inexplicable reason, Safari appends a .xls (Microsoft Excel) extension to the filename.

Never mind that I don’t use Excel… I use Apple’s own spreadsheet software, Numbers, from the iWork suite. Never mind that I don’t even have Excel installed on my Mac. Why, why on Earth, would Safari append a .xls extension on a CSV file? It’s not an Excel file; it’s a CSV. Different format. Sure, Excel can open it. But, you know what? Numbers doesn’t open it properly when it has that stupid extension on it.

Take the exact same file, remove the .xls extension (leaving the .csv extension), and Numbers opens it just fine. Leave it the way Safari has it, and it’s a mess.

This is not the only annoyance I have with Safari’s handling of downloads. I also hate how it automatically expands “safe” files, placing the original .zip or .dmg file in the Trash. I don’t want to delete those files! But if I turn this option off, it also doesn’t open the files I want it to open automatically, like Amazon MP3 downloads.

But hands down, this CSV bug — yes, that’s right, I called it a bug — is my biggest source of frustration. Sure, it’s easy enough to remove the extension. But it shouldn’t be there in the first place!

For much of the past decade I’ve been systematically reliving my childhood. I’m not totally sure what stirred up this extended wave of nostalgia, but it may have something to do with the simple fact that I have vivid memories of things I did 20-plus years ago.

It started in 2002, on the 20th anniversary of my acquisition (as an 8-year-old second grader) of an Atari 2600. I went crazy back in that summer of 2002, buying up lots (as in, auction lots, on eBay) of the games I never managed to convince my parents to buy me as a child. In the end I wound up with over 350 games in my collection, counting duplicates, including a dozen copies each of Combat and Pac-Man.

This year I’ve been rekindling my middle school obsession with baseball. (Good timing, with the Twins in a new stadium and playing exceptionally well.) I went so far as to bid on a complete Topps 1985 baseball card set, but lost in the final bidding war I didn’t expect would happen. Back in the day I owned thousands of baseball cards, mostly from the 1984-1988 Topps sets, but ironically I sold the entire collection on eBay back in 2002 to fund my Atari collection. I should have had more foresight.

And then there’s Rush. My long-dormant obsession with the band I spent so much of high school listening to (when I wasn’t — ugh — reading Ayn Rand) had been renewed back around 2002 as well, when I played briefly in a Rush cover band in Atlanta, and then in 2007 with the release of their outstanding Snakes and Arrows album. But now I’m really beginning to relive the summer of 1989, when I was 15 and first immersing myself in the band’s already extensive back catalog.

I’m not sure what prompted the latest resurgence. It might have something to do with the great new documentary about the band, which I saw at the Riverview Theater last week. But as with my Atari fixation in 2002, it’s more like there’s just something in the air.

A friend introduced me to Rush during our freshman year of high school, right around the time A Show of Hands was released. That was my first exposure to their music. Or so I thought, until the Replay x3 DVD boxed set was released a few years ago and I suddenly remembered having seen the Grace Under Pressure concert special on MTV back in fifth grade. I know that concert video had a big impact on me (probably because with his New Wave hairstyle Alex Lifeson looked so much like Simon LeBon), but for some reason I never pursued the band further.

Anyway, back to 1989: I had just gotten my first job, bagging groceries for $3.69 an hour (minimum wage), and, flush with cash, I made frequent trips to the local ShopKo store. The store’s electronics and entertainment section was well stocked both with cheap Rush cassettes and cheap (probably bootlegged) PC games. I bought a lot of both that summer.

My first two Rush cassettes were A Farewell to Kings and Signals. Even all these years later, those are probably my two favorite Rush albums, because they had such an impact on my young ears. They were so different, it was hard to believe they were produced by the same band, just five years apart. And yet they were both so good, so unlike anything else I was accustomed to hearing on the radio or on MTV in the late ’80s. (You see, there was once a time when MTV played something called “music videos,” which were just popular songs with visuals, like the band pretending to play their instruments in strange locations. MTV just played music videos… 24 hours a day. And it was good. But not as good as a then-12-year-old Rush album.)

Whenever summer comes along, I start to reminisce about the summers of my youth, especially the summer of 1989. I can see, hear, almost smell my bedroom back then, window open, cool breeze wafting in, “Xanadu” blasting out of my Panasonic boombox on a hissy cassette tape I purchased at ShopKo in the $3.99 cutout bin. (Hey, that was more than an hour’s wages!)

Why am I drawn back so strongly to that summer of 1989? I’m not sure, but I do know something about it that is strongly compelling. Even though I was working at the grocery store, that was still the last summer of my childhood. The next summer, I had my driver’s license, and everything changed. But back in 1989, I was carefree, virtually no responsibilities, and I could just sit in my room and listen to Rush and play Adventure Construction Set on my Tandy 1000 computer.

Maybe part of what reminds me of then is that in some ways, my experience during the summer now is more like 1989 than it has been at any point in my life since. I have plenty of obligations and responsibilities now — I’m married with two kids, mortgage, car payments, etc. But I’m a freelancer, working mostly from home. And like in 1989, I can sit at my computer in my bedroom, cool breeze wafting through the open window, and crank “Xanadu” up to 11. Only now it’s an MP3.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Oh wait, that’s from Hemispheres.

This is a first: SLP and I are collaborating on a blog. The title is Unchained, and the concept is that we’re taking the summer to try to break ourselves of bad habits where food and exercise are concerned: we’re going to stop shopping at chain stores and restaurants, stop buying national brands, and start getting as much of our food as we can at local markets, co-ops, and on foot or bike. It’s going to be an interesting experiment, and we’re hopeful that, as with one of my other blogs, 52 Coffees, writing a blog can be a catalyst for personal change and growth. Check it out!