FUCKIT!!!!! You're goiing to get Flash on your site!!!!!

I have spent two days trying to set up a blankety blank image fader/slideshow in Ajax/Javascript and CSS. I would get it up and running in Firefox. Looked like crap in IE. So, I'd tweak it for IE and then it went nutz in Firefox.

They were afraid some of their customers would be confused by flash. I told them that it's already over their site but they have an IT person who is anti flash.

Took 15 minutes to do it in Flash and it looks great in every browser I have tried.

Thank you for letting me rant.

I have stepped away from my office now and am going to enjoy a nice evening of television and watch the BSG that I missed last night BECAUSE I WAS>.....BWAAAARGH!!!!!

:)

http://code.google.com/p/slideshow/

seems to look great in both IE and FF.

I'll have to play around with it. Thanks for the heads up.

But their IT person is an idiot.

I'm anti-flash simply because people use it inappropriately and clog up their websites with it so much that the site itself can become unusable.

What's worse, however, is clogging up the site with so damn much code and external calls that it does the same thing, only with even less efficiency.

One should use the correct tool for the job, and in this case, it sounds like Flash was a more correct tool.

We have an IT person who is anti-png. Yes, he loathes the png graphics format. Why? I dunno. He's an idiot. He thinks it's outdated. He purposely set up the web server/content management system so that it will only accept jpg, gif, and bmp files.

Remember when tou would go to sites filled with animated gifs dancing across the screen to the Yellow Rose of Texas blaring from your cheap computer speakers? think there are a lot of folks using flash the same way.

I do a lot of history related stuff, and When the Web was New (for most people), everyone and his mother was setting up a Civil War site for their favorite person, battle, weapon, disease ... well, not so much with the diseases, but still.

And people who did Texas stuff just LOVED embedding Yellow Rose of Texas on their index pages. ARGGH!!!

There was a site out there at one time about John Bell Hood. It had good content but was unusable. The creator had some midi song playing on EVERY page. EVERY PAGE!

(shudder)

Sorry ... had a flashback.

They claim to be some sort of communal whatsis, but what they REALLY are is a lab for discovering how many serial Flash objects it takes to turn a CPU/GPU into an Etch-A-Sketch.

MySpace makes me reconsider my stance on the use of nuclear weapons and the death penalty.

All the servers should be nuked (it's the only way to be sure), and those responsible for creating it should be hanged, preferably by securing a rope and connecting the other end to a fish hook, which is then attached to their eyelids, just before they are shoved off the Sears Tower.

Funny ... I think I got that idea from a MySpace page.

I put it on MySpace.

Whoa, I like it. You've got this MASSIVE arrhythmic hip-hop thing going on. The silence between samples is really challenging me, Holmes.

WTF???!!!! Dude, that ain't no hip-hop, it's 4 on the floor METAL. Silence? Samples? WTF???!

...

That's so close to real it's barely a caricature. I get this niggling notion that no one actually looks at their own MySpace page, they just toss crap between the 14 videos and wallpaper slideshow, and trust it'll work. Either that or they're all on 16-quadcore-CPU boxes. After rendering 14 megs of Thanks For The Add! gifs my box can barely squeak out a fart, let alone play a song.

All the servers should be nuked (it's the only way to be sure), and those responsible for creating it should be hanged, preferably by securing a rope and connecting the other end to a fish hook, which is then attached to their eyelids, just before they are shoved off the Sears Tower.

Haw! If you need an Inquisitor General, I'm there.

You know what's funny? If someone pitched MySpace to me as a business opportunity, I would've chucked them out the door. A louder, mobbed-up GeoCities? Are you jerking me around?

Shows what the hell I know.

We continually underestimate the inanity of the public. If we didn't, we'd be billionaires. Who knew GeoCities with bling was a good idea.

Actual conversation:

"So, you know something about computers?" he asked me.

Hesitating, "Uh, yeah, a little."

"Could you take my songs and put them on a CD? I need a demo CD."

"What songs? You have recordings you want on a CD?"

"The ones I put on MySpace."

"How did you put them there?"

"Some guy did it."

"Ummm ... so, did he have the master tapes or something?"

"Huh?"

"Where are the original recordings?"

"I dunno."

"You dunno where the masters are? So, basically you want me to take what's on MySpace already and put in on a CD?" I asked, and in my head I'm thinking, "So you want me to take flvs that were converted from mp3s that were converted from raw tapes you didn't bother to keep track of, convert them back to wavs then burn them and give them to you so you can try to get a gig."

"Yeah. Can you?"

"No. Not possible."

I find "it's not possible" to be the most effective "out" from these situations. They have no idea anyway.

I had to answer, "No."

"Needed: MySpace programmer. I don't have any money but I will be ur friend."

But then, they advertise like that for corporate sites as well.

Huh? What? Is there some religious connotation to the PNG format I have yet to be told of? Like it's the graphics format of Satan or something?

This guy is a head case.

Yes.

I'm old enough and have enough life and work experience now to utter the following words with some authority.

The place where I work is filled with some of the stupidest people on the planet.

And they are supposed to be educators.

I now understand, all too well, what is wrong with education.

I want to go back to Cox. They had this whole sales culture thing they were trying to push, but at least the higher-ups knew on which side their bread was buttered. They didn't say stupid shit in front of the tech people, and despite my outright insubordination when they kept trying to convince me that our Internet install discs were "features," they never actually forced me into doing something idiotic against my will.

He also thinks Gimp is "pirated" software. No, he doesn't think I "pirated" Gimp. He thinks Gimp *is* pirated.

I don't even know what that means really, but in the end it resulted in my no longer being allowed to use it while the powers-that-be determine whether they want to spend the money necessary for a license for Photoshop. That was 4 months ago. I've been reduced to working with Photobucket's editor to try to get anything done I need to do with images. If I were smart, I wouldn't do that and just let it all go to hell.

design work at home, and "sell" him a license for Gimp.

Near as I can tell, his actual job is to spend money in as stupid a way as possible.

He's awesome at it.

He's the kind of person I could send a copy of Inkscape and convince him I wrote it, but he wouldn't buy it 'cause it supports png, so it's bad, and the files you save can be opened with Gimp so it's pirated.

Sorry ... lordy I wish the economy weren't so bad. I need a new job but am very reluctant to quit this one because all you seem to have to do to keep it is to have an IQ above 50 and not have sexual relations with farm animals. They do frown on that.

I say that, and I'll probably end up laid off next week.

it would be sure to work. Since you're a web designer (I guess), he could even purchase it online!

Hey. Austin has lots of jobs. I *almost* got a job with Apple, and my skills are not that impressive. I managed to get a f2f interview anyway. I should have done more interview prep. Of course that was pre-CEO issue. I went to work for a little wireless outfit. The starting pay rate was pretty awful, but you can advance quickly and even work from home. The training was way below par, which is evident if you see my post asking for wireless help! Even in this economy, people make connectivity a priority. As long as their electricity is on, they will most likely be wired.

I had to leave Austin this month to take care of yada yada. I hope to go back.

I was :lmao: at you all discussing MySpace. I try to avoid that place like a dark alley. I know someone who uses it to promote her video recording and editing "business"! Not that she has any clients. What a nightmare. In RL, she's almost 60. But, on MS, she's 39!
See? It has its benefits.

I do some of that on the side. At work it's become one of those undocumented parts of my job to maintain the web content for our department. I have to deal with the insanely complex content management system to do anything. I'd prefer raw html editing with a text editor to using this thing.

The IT guy doesn't do it either himself, but he's over all web development for his section.

And he is as stupid as I say, at least with this. He got the position in a weird way. He's actually a professor in a completely unrelated humanities field but talked himself into this job, basically on the strength of his being able to hit a power switch. It effectively doubled his salary, which is why he wanted it.

Then push him over the edge with Kompozer. Problem solved. ;-)

He about had kittens.

He was quite confused how I even got it running since his streak of paranoia has moved him to strip everyone not directly under him of install permissions. He'd never even *heard* of being able to run software from a USB stick. But he can't, so far, disable that because we have to use them for other things that are officially sanctioned.

He (and his higher-ups) removed the point of using it, though, when they started requiring use of a content management system.

So it really is all about him.

Yes, I too know the wonder and delight of making websites for people who don't know shit, will never know shit, are incapable of learning shit and are full of shit. I have a special place in my heart for the IT Nazi at the school where I teach an adult education course in Joomla and eCommerce. The amount of help he has been for me and the guy who teaches the beginner's HTML course has been exactly...none. Just like he said.

Have fun and remember: mass quantities of cheap vodka, used to wash down fistfuls of Klonapin, can be your friend. ;-)

As in the CEO of the company believes a programmer does the same thing as a web designer.

Creative vs. science here I guess.