Ericka, Matt, and Jeff where
Kennedy was shot

I spent Thanksgiving in Dallas (photos) with my youngest brother, Jeff, and his fiance. My brother Matt and his wife joined us from Mammoth Lakes, California. And my mom, who lives in Pittsburgh, tagged along as well. It was the first time we had all been together in over two years. So that was cool.

What was also cool was taking a break from school. I was very happy that my professors did not expect us to accomplish much, or anything, during the break. I thus did very little.

Of course, my designer brain did not completely turn off. For instance, at 4:30 a.m. Wednesday before Thansgiving, when going through airport security with my mother, who has not flown since 1999, I recognized an obvious design opportunity.

As we made our way through the line, I first told her to get out her license. This proved difficult when already holding her boarding pass and her purse. Some security person was screaming this to everyone, but my mom didn’t register it until I told her.

Then I told her she would need to remove her shoes. She looked at me dumbfounded.

I wonder how much design thinking went into the airport security process. I didn’t notice much in the way of signs. There’s nothing to say you must take off your shoes. There’s just security personnel barking orders occasionally as passengers are hoarded through checkpoints as if prisoners entering prison.

I digress…

I find it interesting that when I go on vacation I can mostly forget about all the worries I have related to work and efforts toward achievement. I felt this way when I went to Barcelona/Amsterdam earlier this year, as well as during Thanksgiving.

I can be totally happy doing nothing but hanging out, dining, and drinking. It makes me wonder why I feel compelled to be so productive all the time. But mostly it reminds me that there is more to life than work and achievement, and that balance is necessary.

Not sure if school allows me to find that balance, but at least I have a long winter break coming up in two weeks.

Wow. Hard to believe my time at the University of Pittsburgh is coming to an end: tomorrow.

Because there is no developer yet to replace me, my workload has not decreased, and I’ve been scrambling to finish up a couple of projects. I completed one yesterday, but another will likely not be done before the final whistle blows (been watching too much World Cup). So the reality of my departure has not hit since I’ve been so busy. It will be weird to just stop and leave it all behind.

My Time at Pitt

I started working for the Pitt web team as a contractor in the summer of 2003 after moving to Pittsburgh from Arlington, Virginia. Originally, I was meant to stay 11 weeks. But they soon found me indispensible, and I was hired full time in December. It was my first full-time job since being laid off from a dot-com company one week before September 11, 2001.

Nearly three years later, I have built around 20 or so sites and leant a hand in a dozen others, and have gone through a lot of development myself.

How CSS Changed My Life

My biggest achievement was taking on CSS positioning and web standards and then introducing them to my team. That really transformed the way we built sites, and it changed the way I viewed my work. It began a heavy investment in industry best practices, information architecture, usability, design, and open source solutions.

Further, it led my application to CMU’s interaction design program within their School of Design. And since I got into the program, you could say CSS changed my life.

How I’ll Be Remembered

I’ll probably be remembered for asking questions like, “Did the client provide content for the design element mocked up in the design?” and for responding to every question about whether we can do something with, “We can. But should we?”

But I’ll also be remembered for my Starbucks coffee cup collection decor, and affinity for sprinkles.

Moving Right Along

So on the eve of my last day, I am happy with what I contributed, but excited to be moving on. I got my CMU student ID this morning. And I start my six-week design fundamentals course on Monday. It’s surreal to think that this time next week, my life will have changed so much.

Of course, if you know anything about the last year of my life?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùand arguably most of my life?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùit’s been about big changes.

I will leave you with a quote from a song from the Muppet Movie, as sung by Kermit and Fozzie Bear, “Moving right along!”

It’s easy to keep working into the night if you have a soccer match with the constant cheers of the crowd in the background.

It also helps if the match is a replay of a game (US vs. Czech Republic) that you would rather not focus on too much so that it’s not visually distracting.

Molly asked her readers what their biggest mistake was. One reader replied:

I think the biggest mistake that I?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ve made was letting my professional life take over my personal life to the point where I was always working, and never spending enough time with friends and family. I was so bad that after working at my day job for 9 hours, I would come home and start working on side projects until I went to sleep, to wake up the next day and start it all over again.

As I sometimes fall into this pattern, it stuck out. While I have been spending a lot of time working lately, I plan for it to be temporary. Once I finish up the projects I’m working on, and I’m no longer working full time at my day job (June 30), I hope to relax a bit.

One thing I learned from the bubble burst is that despite seeming really important, often what you do as work really doesn’t matter. Work is not living. Drinking beer and hanging with friends always beats work, which is why I enjoy both pursuits as often as possible.

As for my biggest mistake, I don’t regret much. Maybe the polyurethane pants. Though they made for a good laugh on occasion.