WHAT, YOU'RE STILL HERE?
Oh, I see. Kicking it old-skool, eh? Well, in case you want to venture with me to the year 2005, please note that Nuggets of Gold has moved.
My ranting, raving and rambling now is found at http://newsgirl.typepad.com
Much love to Blogger, but Typepad brought me flowers AND paid for my dinner. So I had to do what I had to do.
Stacy - 10:06 AM
Monday, January 26, 2004
BEHOLD! ...
So I'm all set up on Typepad, but I have 30 days to decide whether I like it, so don't be changing your links to the Nuggets just yet. I'm still a little undecided.
But check it out, if you have a mind. Lemme know what you think.
The new (but only a test-version at present) Nuggets of Gold is at: http://newsgirl.typepad.com/nuggets.
Stacy - 12:24 AM
Sunday, January 25, 2004
DEVIOUS PLANS
I am considering moving Nuggets of Gold to a new home, a home where my comments thingy won't suck so bad. The front-runner for this new home right now is Typepad, which allegedly helps HTML baby tar-tards like me make a blog that has (a) self-hosted comments, (b) a fancypants thingy for listing "LISTENING TO:" items, (c) an easy means for me to post images, and (d) somewhat customizable templates. All of these things are easily doable on blogger, mind you, but not if you're me and you know only how to italicize, bold and make links (oh but look at me, showing off. For shame).
If anyone present here today knows any reason I should not move my blog to Typepad, speak now or forever hold your peace.
And know, please know ... Mr. Robot Man will endure, no matter where his home may be.
Stacy - 5:40 PM
Saturday, January 24, 2004
A QUESTION THAT YOU SHOULD SAY YES TO (ONCE IN YOUR LIFE)
So today I'm on the Metro train going over the Potomac River, and it's frozen. Frozen. How do rivers freeze? I don't even want to understand that. Adding insult to injury, I spotted one of those flocks of crazy black birds that swoop around together sitting ON the river. Right in the middle! Just sitting there. Like it's not an enormous body of water. It's snowing a little today, supposed to snow a whole bunch the next day or two. Yey. Luckily, Geoffrey and I went to the grocery store this week and stocked up before the mad rush for bread and milk, which happens here, too, despite the fact that it snows all the time and people should be used to it. Got bread, got milk, got beer. So if it must snow and be awful, we're ready. I guess.
Went to a kickin' Old 97's show last night. As usual, my curse of exceptionally tall people standing right in front of little ol' me at shows kicked in, so I couldn't really see, but man alive they sure sounded good. And they said they'd be touring this way again in spring, so hopefully I can go to that show, too. Wearing stilts.
One year ago today, Geoffrey and I got engaged. Yep. It was at Jones Gap State Park in South Carolina, snow on the ground, blah blah you've heard this, romantic lunch afterward at Sonic, back in the glory days when they had beautiful, beautiful Pickle-O's on the menu. And now, one year later, there are no more Pickle-O's (limited time only, much to my heartbreak), but I still have a purty ring, fond memories of a snowy day at Jones Gap, and a nice little husband to come home to every day.
Sorry for the goo.
LISTENING TO: GREY DE LISLE/Homewrecker. OK, well I'll listen to it when I get home anyway. She was an opener at the Old 97's show last night, wife of Murry, the 97s' bass player extraordinaire. She plays a mean autoharp and has a purty voice. We were inspired to buy her CD at the show, but of course the rules of concertgoing dictate you must not listen to CDs by the artists you just saw as you go home from their show. So tonight will be my first listening opportunity. Hot dog!
Stacy - 3:23 PM
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
So you're sick of hearing me rant all the time, eh? Fine then, jerkface. Today you can listen to my friend Carlton rant. Carlton, for those of you who don't know, is a buddy o' mine from college and my No. 1 Merlefest buddy. You may well be thinking to yourself: "Self, why doesn't this Carlton have his own blog?" And that would be an excellent question. The answer is Carlton does have his own blog, but because he's a diva, he refuses to official unveil his blog until he has time to design it just to his liking. He is a graphic artist and designer (and a right good one at that), but you'd think he could muddle along with a blogger blog or a moveable type blog template or something 'til he gets the real thing ready. But nooooo. So for now, this is all the Carlton you can get. But I bet if you cajole and wheedle, he might be inspired to get to work already and let me add his blog to my links. Hint hint.
A VISIT FROM CARLTON
Ah yes. The wonderful life of a newspaper person. You've been reading about Stacy and her nice little rants on the editorial side of things. But the true evil darkness lies over in advertising. And I do mean lies. So, I figured I'd drop by and share with you....
TALES FROM THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE SURE YOU'RE NOT PAID ANY LESS THAN YOU ALREADY ARE.
By the way - I'm a designer. Not a copy writer. Hence the cringe-worthy headline.
Newspaper ad design is in interesting beast. At the weekly paper where I work, it's the sole source of revenue. Since we're a free paper, someone has to pay the bills and our salaries and the libel
lawsuits...At most other papers, it's the excuse they have for not hiring you any extra help.
The way it's set up where I work, none of the production staff deal directly with the client (which, I might add is fortunate since we are all a tad misanthropic. And snooty. And elitist...which are all
well-deserved titles thankyouverymuch.) So we have to deal with an Account Executive as a middleman. For the most part, it's fun. We have the creative freedom to do whatever we want, whenever we want.
Well, at least we do in my fantasy world.
Every once in awhile we get some client who feels like flexing his dick just to make sure we can still see it. And the AE is so damned petrified of saying 'no' to the client and losing their revenue (or so
in awe of his dangler), that she has a tendency to promise him pretty much anything.
AE to the client: "So...you want this picture of a hubcap zoomed out so you can see the entire car, and then placed facing the opposite direction on a flooded street in Downtown Charleston? Sure! No problem. Our designers use Photoshop!"
AE to the production staff: "What do you mean 'no'? I already told the client 'yes.' The deadline is in 20 minutes? But you have Photoshop, don't you?"
I'm not sure why the AEs think we have the Jesus Filter* on our versions of Photoshop, but we really don't.
Oh yeah - saying 'no' to an AE usually results in the bossman coming in and asking us why we're being so rude and to just go on and do whatever it is we just said we can't do. And then telling us we need the money.
And we usually end up doing it.
Because when it comes down to money...guess who is gonna win.
*Jesus Filter. The magical non-existent filter used in Photoshop that is capable of working miracles.
Stacy - 4:42 PM
