Month: August 2003

You know you’re in trouble when you are in a pitch meeting for a site re-design and the following collection of phrases makes the committee’s eyes glaze over.

Eye candy.

Creative with space.

We want to encourage magnetism in the site. [????]

Engage the user.

We can design you your own sound.

A more hackneyed bunch of web-talk circa 1999 I have never heard. It’s amazing they will get paid so much to create their ‘highly dynamic, animated and scalable web application capable of operating in a an extremely broad range of platforms’. You really should read their proposal document. It’s hilarious.

The redesign is all about graphics, images, sound, presentation. The complete antithesis of my user focused design principles (me, principles? Who woulda thunk?). So do I talk up, try to educate the committee and look like the bitter sulking employee who has had his lolly taken away or do I go against every grain of my being and let them hang themselves?

Mmmmm.

Maybe I can take noose tying lessons to pass the time.

Maybe it was the wild windy weather, maybe it was the complete lack of sleep for two months but whatever ‘it’ was ‘it’ lead to Rae storming out of the house at 11.00pm clad in a fluffy pink dressing gown and getting involved in a mexican stand off over the position of our rubbish bin.

Neighbourly relations have officially sunk to an all time low.

I’m happy to stay – we’re annoying the hell out of ’em just by living there and that’s enough for me – but Rae is so upset at the way we are being treated she is determined to move and I can’t say I blame her.

Looks like we’ll be hunting for packing boxes before too long.

Remember the letter we wrote to our landlord? I had a phone call from the managing agents. Barlow McEwan and Tribe, today.

It seems the agent went and had a chat to the mother from the front house. As she was chatting, the brother of our back neighbour (The Water Waster) wandered over to join in. Up shot is the front “don’t think there is a problem” (Yes, there is. That’s why you’re being spoken to.) and the brother of Marion says it’s not a problem. This last bit was interesting on two fronts – a) he doesn’t sleep there and b) of course it’s not an issue for her – she has our place as insulation between the car and her room!

The decision we’ve made is to stay; for the sole reason of making their lives as miserable as we can. We’ll move our bedroom to where my office is now and then move the office to the bedroom. We’re compiling a list of ‘Annoying Things Renters Do’ so all suggestions will be taken on board, and most likely acted upon.

Let the games begin.

I always wondered what happened to the person who painted this sign all those years ago.