Thursday, April 3, 2008

FLAIR-apy and monkeys.

It's about 3 a.m. I am exhausted, as any normal human being should be at this hour. But I don't know if I'll get to sleep within the hour even.

And I have work tomorrow. (Today.)

Fortunately I'll be going in later since I have a late morning optometrist appointment. But still, yuck.

So why am I up so late? I'm working on the Shakespeare's Monkey Revue issue 3 layout. It really should be done by now. But the file is huge, my system's not the fastest, and I'm using an outdated version of Word (or at least, not a version that is as agile as some others). The most irritating part is that anytime I change a format of something -- alignment, size, whatever -- it keeps updating the style. Then I need to tell it to undo the style update. Both -- the initial style update & the undo -- take forever and a day. So while Word pokes along, I get to type here. Yay!

Besides losing an inane amount of time waiting around for Word to "think," I have been wasting more time than I can afford on Facebook lately. And not in any "useful" sort or way either. I mean, I'm not on there writing friends or watching videos or tagging pictures. No. No, I'm addicted to Flair. For those unfamiliar with the Flair Facebook app, it's similiar to the "sticker" type applications that allow users to pass around silly graphics with pseudo witty sayings, or whatever. What I like about Flair over stickers is:
  • containment - All of the flair you show off is constrained to a "bulletin board" on your profile. Meanwhile, it seems those sticker things go on for MILES. Just clutter, as far as I'm concerned.

  • constraints - There's a limit on how many pieces you can have showing at once. Granted, that limit is somewhere around 60, but since they're all contained, that's not so bad. Also, there are limits on how many you can make or send, so even I can't bombard everyone with it.

  • uniformity - The "flair maker" takes your uploaded image and "buttonizes" it, making it look like, well, a piece of flair. Every piece is round, clean, and spiffified. I like that.

  • trackability, sorta - here's where the addictive quality comes in. You can keep an eye on the popularity of the flair you've created. For a while, a piece of Mraz flair was my most popular (with a whopping 50ish people having it, ranking it around 20K among all Flair). Now, though, the Mr. Rogers flair I created is my most popular. It's addictive to see how many people pick up your design... I wish, though, there was some way to see who has your flair, or any specific piece, for that matter.

Lately, I've been stressed with deadlines, and then Booger got another ear infection (I won't scare y'all away with another picture, I promise), and I'm still in the process of deciding what's going to change (if anything) with my job situation. (I thought that was decided, but it didn't work out as planned.) Amid the stress, my flair-apy sessions really haven't done anything to help the situation, but they've been pleasantly distracting procrastination sessions. Ha.

I'm still waiting on word (or rather, waiting again). I've been working on this post for almost an hour now. I'm frustrated -- with the software, with my hardware, with the clock, with the fact that I was only given these ads to place late last night and there's no way I can do any work on this before 8:30 on most weeknights. I think this magazine is a wonderful, wonderful endeavor, and I am so happy to be part of it, but there are moments I wish Stephan hadn't volunteered me for this. I kinda want my life back. I mean, not that this is all consuming all the time, but it seems to demand more than I can give sometimes.

Well, it's officially 4 a.m. now. Crap. I'm waiting for Word again, because it keeps eating my headers in a certain section. Go figure. Anyhow, I think fixing that one last time is the last thing I have to do, so I'm now going to use this lag time to brush my teeth and wash my face.

Wish me restful sleep...

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I have to say I love your word spiffified since it seems that not only is that a perfect word for your flair (at least you have more than 15 pieces on) but for what you worked on for SMR too.

I hope you got to bed before too long after posting this. I am wishing you had an uneventful appointment where they didn't hold against you the inevitable blurry eyes you must have today. Hope hub can take the boys tonight so you can get to bed early!

Fill us in on what happened with the job. That is such a bummer.

disabled account said...

aaawwww....what jenn said. and i hope you got some rest, way to go with the work ethic too.

"i don't really like to talk about my flair."

Bree said...

We had a pretty significant flair analogy the other day in clinic...

"If you wanted me to wear 52 pieces of flair, you should have made the minimum 52 pieces of flair!"

Yes, really.

Sleep well.

Julie said...

Thank you, ladies, for your encouragement! It really did help.

The optometrist appt. went well - for once I wasn't scolded. My prescription decreased! (mostly since I've been wearing my glasses & not contacts 80% of the time.) No blurry vision, but spent more money than I'd planned on for glasses (the littler munchkin snapped the stem off my current pair a week ago).

I'd only gotten to bed after 4:30 that morning, so I was going on about 3 hrs sleep. I lasted until after dinner. I had planned on power napping for an hour before getting up to work on the cover, but I felt physically ill from exhaustion... so the power nap turned into a great night's sleep.

Since then, I have created 3 more pieces of flair, and Mr. Rogers is still my most popular. ;)