I am starting a weblog. Today. As of this very moment, 3 pm on Wednesday, November 22, Year 2000. Why? I think it could be useful.

I’m unhappy this week about the almost total decline of my intellectual development. It’s up to me to do something about it, and I think starting this will help me whip my mind back into fighting shape.

I want to experience more good, contemporary design. If I’m going to claim to be a “designer,” I must pull myself out of the muck of mediocrity. Most state websites—the system in which I currently toil—strike me as the worst of the web circa 1996. For the record, I now work at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (MN DNR). The current web site is an artifact of the previous regime. My stated goal is to redesign it by November 2001.

My hope is that, if I surround myself with excellence, or at least stuff that impresses me somehow, my ability to design will improve. Stuff that makes me say “Wow – I wish I’d done that.”

Not to mention really nice stuff that friends from college have done. Pinkey Suthers has been my favorite comic for years, and “Dr. Agonize” (clever pun!) taught me almost everything I knew about the web before I worked at HBG.