Project Completion

This morning, I put the finishing touches on my ‘interview project‘ I’ve been working on. I hesitated to actually hit ‘send’ on the email for about an hour, as I was sure I forgot something.

Actually, this was probably a good thing since I forgot to validate all of the code for w3c compliance. There were about a dozen errors. Of course, nothing major that affects the display of the page, but just little things, alt tags on images and being sure to close tags. But, once I got those cleared up I swallowed hard and sent it off.

I wasn’t so much relieved as I was nervous that I still forgot something. But, since I had sent it, at least I could stop working on it.

I was pretty tired this afternoon as I have spent much of the week running on caffeine and adrenalin. But, then I heard back from Mike, the guy I interviewed with:

Thanks for putting this together – it looks great. I like your solution for the drop shadow. The only problem I see (and I did not put this as a requirement) is that the content area does not expand vertically – but I’m sure you could solve for that 🙂

I also liked to see the CSS-rollover you implemented. I have read about that, but never done it myself. Very cool and clean.

Krista is out today, but I’ll ask her to set up an interview for you with Tony, the Boise Managing Director. This is the final interview step, and he will explain a little more about the company, our processes, and make sure you’ll be a good fit for us.

Needless to say, that got me a little fired up. Everyone likes to hear that they did a good job. Especially on something they spent a lot of time on. So, to get a little positive feedback is huge. That will make this weekend a little easier for sure! If you want to see the final product: Click Here

Update: My final interview is set for Tuesday at 3:oo pm.  Here goes nothing…

On side note, today was the last day for the only other remaining member of the web team, Erik. He was the one that was WFR’d 3 weeks ago. We said our good-byes and shook hands. Poof. He was gone.

Well, not totally, since Joy (our ex manager) asked me if I could disassemble all of Erik’s hardware and move it to an empty cube to be excessed. So that was fun. Disconnecting dusty PC’s and cables and lugging around 50lb. monitors. Also, my cube is full of all of the remaining remnants of the once proud web team.

When we started with 4 people 7 years ago, we were invigorated. Lots of energy and lots of work to do. We had an amazing manager who was active in leading us and setting our direction. Unfortunately, his responsibilities got shifted and it was all downhill from there. Never did any of our 7 or 8 managers who followed him ever seem to get what we did and what we were capable of doing if we had someone to champion us. Sad, really.

What followed was the layoffs. First it was Mark. Probably best that he was the first to go. We were then leaner, with no dead weight. But, little by little our work dried up. Then Diana got shifted to a tech writing gig, which she did for about a year before finally getting the axe. Erik and I have soldiered on for another year and a half. But now he’s gone.

It’s funny. I was actually the last one hired onto the web team. The 3 of them were already hired and they wanted one more person. Only, I didn’t even get an interview. I was bummed, but what could you do? Then, 3 weeks later, I got an email that just said, “we’ve set up an interview for the web team this week.” Uh… ok. Apparently, none of the people they did interview impressed them enough. So, I did and ended up getting the gig. And the rest is history.

Anyway, it appears that all those good vibes that everyone has been sending me have been doing the trick. Keep it up! It appears we’re on the home stretch!

I think I need a beer.

Oh, and by the way, perhaps the easiest joke in the world fell into our laps today. I’m sure everyone with a comedic bone in their body thought this: President Bush went in for his regular colonoscopy today… Hopefully, they’ll find his head up there. *rim shot* Thank you, thank you. Remember, the 11:00 show is completely different from the 9:00 show. Be sure to tip your waitress. I’ll be here all week.