Month: December 2001

Top Ten of 2001

By

On December 31, 2001

In California, Culture, Life, Minnesota, Music, Travel, Wisconsin

As this very strange year comes to an end, I believe it’s entirely appropriate for me to compose my year-end Top Ten List. I’ve decided to end the year focusing on the positive. Maybe I should break it out into categories, but I’m just too lazy.

  1. Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring twice in one weekend, with Nick and the gang on Sunday
  1. Surviving the year despite one or more incidents in which being in a car could have gotten me killed
  1. Hearing that my brother was hired as a police officer in North Carolina
  1. Seeing a baseball game in Milwaukee with my brother (and spending time with my mom, and my dad, and the rest of my family, the rest of the year)
  1. Enjoying the Land of Evermor in Baraboo, Wisconsin with Amber
  1. Discovering new (to me) music by Built to Spill, Quasi, Death Cab for Cutie, Guided by Voices (um, and, oh yeah, seeing the Minders and Of Montreal in separate shows)
  1. Visiting Seattle in the summer, and seeing Jonathan (and going to the web design conference, at which I got to meet Zeldman briefly)
  1. Launching gohlkusmaximus.com
  1. Trekking out to Ohio for the Sloan shows in Detroit and (especially) Cleveland, and road-tripping with Will
  1. Enjoying a sunny, lazy day at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in early April with Amber

Barely missed the top 10: my summer road trip to Chicago and Columbus; the end of the state employee strike; finishing the design, though not the production, of the new Minnesota DNR web site. Fairly far off the top 10: shaving off my six-month-experiment full beard (but that was a good thing—believe me).

Happy new year, everyone. See you in 2002.

civil liberties are good.

By

On December 18, 2001

In anti-blog

Via commondreams.org: George Monbiot on civil liberties.

12/14/01, 1:26 am

By

On December 14, 2001

In anti-blog, Tech

I must be nuts being up this late. I have to get up early to take the bus to St. Paul. Friday is the final day of the decidedly mediocre Minnesota Information Technology Symposium.

However, I did get something up at gohlke.net. Not much, but it’s a start.

The big plan (no relation to Gov. Ventura’s Big Plan): use gohlke.net for professional communication [portfolio, resume, clients, etc.] and gohlkusmaximus.com for personal communication [anti-blog, writings, personal projects, experiments]. (That plan doesn’t make the top-level domains make sense, but whatever.)

“To do” list, December 2001

By

On December 10, 2001

In anti-blog

  • Actually update this site at least once a week, with thoughtful and well-edited entries
  • Finish learning PHP (currently on Chapter 7 of PHP Bible), then find some way to apply it to this site
  • Start working on Old St. Anthony site again
  • Finish telling my friends about this site, which means….
  • Get back in touch with the friends I’ve scandalously ignored for the last two years (if they still care….)
  • Finish redesigning the MN DNR site, by the middle of next month (luckily, a full-time pursuit)
  • Write to Zeldman proposing an article for A List Apart about the MN DNR redesign
  • Continue working on an actually exciting new freelance project for disseminating information about political candidates
  • Next paycheck, get a Y membership (just $49/month for access to 18 YMCAs metro-wide!)
  • Get a guitar and learn to play it
  • Redesign this site (not the highest priority, to be sure)
  • Work on inexpensive but extremely personal and thoughtful (but not intensely time-consuming) gifts for those to whom I am closest, by the giving of which I may guiltlessly enjoy this upcoming Christmas season (but if all else fails, give The Nation)

“We are going forward with this important cleanup”

By

On December 4, 2001

In anti-blog

Um, is anyone else suspicious that the administration’s order to GE to dredge PCBs out of the Hudson River might be a ploy to get Superfund overturned in the Supreme Court? I mean:

The Bush administration ordered tons of PCBs
removed from New York’s upper Hudson River, which set in motion
Tuesday one of the largest dredging operations in the nation’s
history.

… “We are going forward with this important cleanup,” EPA
Administrator Christie Whitman said.

… The federal Superfund law, under which the dredging is being ordered, is largely immune to lawsuits. However, GE has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court challenging the constitutionality of the Superfund law itself.

It seems likely somehow, but maybe I’m just paranoid.

* * *

Also, I’m a bit tardy, but it’s a huge bummer George Harrison died.

that’s it?

By

On December 1, 2001

In anti-blog

That’s IT? The most disappointing aspect is that IT’s top speed is 17 miles per hour. (Hmm, the New York Times says its top speed is only 12 mph.) So… much… hype… here’s a TIME magazine graphic as well. Actually, it’s kind of nice that maybe someday soon we’ll be moving away from gasoline-powered internal combustion engines. Fine with me.

* * *

Speaking of Deans: There’s nothing disappointing about Dean Allen’s A List Apart article. (Read it if any of your tasks include visual communication.) He’s right: The primary purpose of design is to communicate. I’ll be thinking about that when I redesign this site (coming soon?).

Of course, when my writing is as lazy as it’s been, I feel like a bit of a hypocrite linking to a Dean Allen article. Do as I say, not as I do.)

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