Speaking Out
When, exactly, is it the right time to stand up for your principles? I mean YOUR principles. I mean MY principles. When is that time? I ask because it seems to me the general tendency is to keep our heads down and our mouths shut. It makes sense: we all have to survive.
But we only get so many obvious ‘moments of truth’ that present us with the option to live up to the person we want to be and the person that’s less scary to be. More often, we just get ‘moments’ we make do with. Principles, like facts, are stubborn things. And sometimes, they won’t let you go.
Last week, I saw the most outrageous abuse of power I’ve ever witnessed personally unfold before my eyes. The only question was whether to say anything about it. According to my ex-coworkers & friends, the answer was no.
But as my eBay Peeps might tell you, I have a really hard time shutting up when The Powers That Be lose their sense of ethics/freedom/common decency and start fucking with people. (For instance: NOT shutting up, in fact, making a HELL of a lot of noise and getting a few others to do the same – when eBay Corporate mandated CSRs could no longer use their ‘ethnic sounding’ aliases. Discrimination, anyone? The matter died shortly thereafter.)
In this case, the Newcastle City Council was fucking with my friend AND a community I loved. So I wrote this. And now I’m a columnist.
Related Articles & Sources
BREAKING NEWS — City Council fires city manager, cuts more than $1 million from budget (Newcastle News)
City Council fires city manager, hires former community development director
Public Works director, parks commissioner resign
Newcastle City Council fires city manager, cuts more than $1 million from budget (Issaquah Press)
Department of Licensing
Trade Name: RTW Associates
Robert Todd Wyman
Public Disclosure Commission Contributions Report – advanced search
(select candidate/commission: Dulcich, John D; election year 2009)
John D. Dulcich Campaign Contributors
- Donner Brian, $1000
- RTW Associates, $500
- Stephen McCarthy, $500
- Seattle Business Insurance, $500
- Rich Crispo, $25 (candidate, now on council)
- Lisa Jensen, $520/website services (council member)
A Day Late…
But never short. Grandad served in World War II. Although not in this particular order: he taught Women Airforce Service Pilots to fly; he put his friend, Sid (a German Jew) in charge of Nazi POWs, and he met my Grandma in Palm Springs, CA. After an inventory discussion on what, exactly, a ‘flat bastard’ was, he asked her out.
This weekend we visited the Museum of Flight, a place where it feels there are thousands of stories I should know, but don’t. A place where I almost expect to see Grandma sitting on the next bench, ready to tell me a few.
I keep looking. But it’s still quiet. So I wander and wonder and take these for him:
A year, maybe two, before I left eBay, there was a campaign called “The Power of All of Us”. It will always be my favorite representation of the company, because it showed that its specialness had nothing to do with categories or fees or cars. It was the people. Doing good things. For the launch, they took the employees to a local theatre in Salt Lake City and showed us user stories. The kind that made us all feel warm & fuzzy inside, but which I can’t remember now. Except this one. This one made me cry.
Thank you, veterans.
Website Launch: City of Newcastle 2.0
I know, I know. I was being all good about posting on a regular basis, and then BLAM! I was gone again. But this time I have a really good excuse: I was trapped in Tron. In addition to putting on our weekly Wednesday concerts, I’ve spent the last 7 days applying the new branding adopted by the City of Newcastle earlier this year to the City’s website. Which means I’ve been reading, breathing and dreaming HTML, CSS and JavaScript for a week. And seriously, I can’t even see straight anymore.
For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, imagine reading an 8000 page book that repeats the following paragraph (that is actually 15 times longer than this excerpt) over and over and Over and OVER:
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" leftmargin="0" topmargin="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" class="bgimage" onload="MM_preloadImages(‘images/large_button_view_agendas_f2.gif’,'images/large_button_view_minutes_f2.gif’,'images/large_button_view_ordinances_f2.gif’,'images/large_button_view_resolutions_f2.gif’)">
<!–#include file="inc_header.asp" –>
<table width="792" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td width="5" rowspan="9" background="images/index_r12_c1_h.jpg"><img src="images/index_r12_c1_h.jpg" alt="" name="index_r12_c1" width="5" height="57" border="0" id="index_r12_c1" /></td>
<td width="126" valign="top"><!–#include file="inc_left_top.asp" –></td>
<td width="654" rowspan="2" align="left" valign="top" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><table width="654" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3">
<tr>
<td align="center"><img src="images/header_residents.jpg" alt="Residents Header" width="650" height="100" />
<p align="left" class="small"><a href="index.asp" class="breadcrumbs">Home</a> > <a href="city_hall.asp" class="breadcrumbs">City
Hall</a> > <a href="ch_city_departments_and_staff.asp" class="breadcrumbs">City Departments & Staff</a> > City Clerk</p></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="javascript:void(0);" onMouseOut="MM_swapImgRestore()" onMouseOver="MM_swapImage(‘index_r10_c3′,”,’images/index_r10_c3_f2.jpg’,1);"></a><a href="javascript:void(0);" onMouseOut="MM_swapImgRestore()" onMouseOver="MM_swapImage(‘index_r10_c5′,”,’images/index_r10_c5_f2.jpg’,1);"></a><a href="javascript:void(0);" onMouseOut="MM_swapImgRestore()" onMouseOver="MM_swapImage(‘index_r10_c6′,”,’images/index_r10_c6_f2.jpg’,1);"></a>
<table width="635" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2">
<tr>
<td width="509" valign="top"><p><span class="xbigMaroon">City Clerk</span></p>
<p>The City Clerks Office is a great place to start if you have an inquiry. If we are not able to help you, we can definitely direct you…
Not only do you have to READ that, you have to CHANGE that. By cutting and pasting and hunting down random, old, broken code. By doing a lot of twiddling with tables and widths and heights. By opening and closing and refreshing every single page on the site. All of which means clicking the same damn mouse buttons one-hundred-million-zillion times and your Carpal Tunnel won’t like it ONE BIT and oh my god, who INVENTED the mouse?! BECAUSE I AM GOING TO KILL HIM.
It really wasn’t supposed to be so intense. The idea was simple: in order to save time, money, sanity and user confusion – we’d simply leave the structure of the site alone, and just refresh the existing images. By creating new images and saving them over the old ones, the site would instantly look brand new.
HOWEVER.
What I failed to realize was that while this site does use CSS, it does not use it EVERYWHERE. And in plain English, that means there were little pockets of code changes that had to be made on EVERY. SINGLE. PAGE. Also? The designers (being designers) did not stop at just updating the images on the site*. They also updated the fonts. And the Tables. And the location of breadcrumbs. And the alignment of text. And DOUBLED the number of buttons through the cunning use of mouse-over effects.
So the project took 5 times as much work as expected. But truth be told, I still loved every second of it. Because:
- I am a geek
- It looks HAWESOME
City of Newcastle website 1.0
*By ‘designers update’ I mean the designers ‘sent me four sample pictures of what all the elements on the site are SUPPOSED to look like’ not ‘sent me all the images I’d need to MAKE the site look like what they want’. No. I had to create every last image, too. And that’s important because even though I can’t take credit for the DESIGN of the site, I am DEFINITELY taking credit for the UPDATE of the site. Because that? Was a helluva lot of work.
Sorry for Not Posting, but My Events Ate My Life
I have facebook tips, wedding and eBay photo posts all lined up to be finished for you, but in addition to being gone for a week, these little, baby items have been occupying all of my waking moments these days. Posting for your travel and/or weekend planning pleasure, here is the City of Newcastle 2009 Community Events Schedule:
- nDog
Saturday, May 30, 12pm – 4pm - 4th of July
Saturday, July 4, 6pm – 10pm - Concerts in the Park
Wednesdays, July 8 – August 12, 6:30pm – 8pm - *Newcastle 5K Fun Run
Saturday, August 29, 9am - Newcastle Days
Saturday, September 12, 12pm – 8pm
Sunday, September 13, 11am – 5pm - Arbor Day
Saturday, October 10, TBA
NOTE: Due to a very special, expensive, time-sensitive and non-stress requiring project**, Trav and I will be TOTALLY UNAVAILABLE for visitors or trips the entire month of September (possibly into October).
*The Newcastle 5K Fun Run is operated by the non-profit Newcastle Running Club in conjunction with the City of Newcastle.
**more to come…
