While the brevity of Twitter is useful, it is also quite restricting.
We have arrived safely at our destination and have all began to get settled in. Two services today, the first here in Jinotega and the second this evening in a small town about ten minutes from here called Apanats.
Spent about 3 hours walking the city with a couple of guys just to get an idea of the surroundings. It’s been almost ten years since I was in Jamaica but I don’t even remember them being as poor as the people here. The people of Nicaragua take great pride in their appearance, but seem to care very little about their surroundings. You see many of the locals sweeping their shops and trying to keep them in decent shape all the while the streets, sidewalks and parking lots are completely covered in litter.
On the outskirts of town we passed what seemed to be a dump, smoke rising from the trash piles on a hillside and the tough sight of people walking along parts of it looking for what one could only assume food or treasure.
Tomorrow we begin our work and I have signed up to help build a house for one of the local church members. I was informed that our only task is to raise a structure and put a roof on it and to leave it completely unfinished. This is due to the fact that if her house is too nice her entire family/extended family will decide to move in with her without much choice on her part. The lesson was learned the hard way a couple of years ago when a house was built for a separate elderly member and finished out with interior walls, electricity and plumbing. Turned out her son actually owned the land it was built on and once finished, he had her removed from the property and moved in on his own.
I met Miguel today. Miguel, or Michael as he was practicing his English for us, is a 24-year old resident who now takes care of his three younger brothers (14-18) after the passing of his father three months ago to stomach cancer. When I asked if the residence we were standing next to was his house, his only response was “this is my father’s house.” Miguel is actually one of seven kids who’s mom left over nine years ago and was visibly upset that the youngest sibling of them all, a girl, was now being forced to live with his older sister in Managua. At 24, Miguel has seen more life than most other men twice his age. I hope to work with Miguel tomorrow.
I fared pretty well for meals today. As Meatloaf said, two out of three ain’t bad. Breakfast consisted of a cooked-to-order omlette, ham, bacon and a fresh croissant. For lunch we were served a surprisingly good breaded chicken with some jalapeno flavored rice among others. I at least made an honest attempt to try one of everything on my plate. Skipped the beats in line.
Dinner, on the other hand consisted of a slice of white bread, carrot sticks and some local chips. That was my decision in lieu of the sloppy joes that others took part in. Haven’t had one in years and didn’t want to break the streak.
Among many other reasons I wish my wife would have made the trip, all of the couples that are here ended up getting private rooms with private baths. Probably going to take Mike up on his offer to use their bathroom in the morning to get ready after they are done.
Got just a few minutes before we get locked out of the main building so I better wrap up, not excited about the idea of sleeping on the computer room tile with three less locked doors between me and the elements.
Starting tomorrow, I will be flying out with 19 others to spend the week in Jinotega, Nicaragua hopefully helping to do some good for the people there. I am assuming that access to the modern devices we take for granted will be limited so there’s a possibility that I will be un-gridded for an entire seven days. I am guessing by day there might be a small breakdown on my part.
Due to its succinct nature, the easiest form of mass communication for me would probably be Twitter, feel free to follow along this week (and regularly thereafter) and I will do my best to post interesting finds about my stay if possible. I am not taking a huge camera so hopefully my phone will suffice and hopefully I won’t get in too much trouble for hanging on to it. (more…)
Due to the fact that its Sunday night and I didn’t want to sit still, and the fact that as I peruse my stats on the back-end I see that exactly 18.1% of you are still using IE6 (shame on you, by the way); I went ahead and made some adjustments this evening.
For my IE6-ers: Sorry it has taken me almost a week to get you in the realm of a decent experience. Piggybacking off the always-handy jQuery I was already using, I fixed some of the transparent PNG issues you would have seen and then replaced some of them with standard JPG’s so that the level of visual funkiness isn’t quite as bad as before.
I do it cause I love you, because I assume that you are trapped by some corporate structure that doesn’t allow an upgrade, and because its my job to not leave you behind. Even though on occasion I want to badly.
For everyone: I have finally put together a decent collection of things I have created over the last couple of years. To be honest, I’ve done somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 sites in the last four years so this really only scratches the surface but it should give you an idea of what I produce.
There are plenty of works I’ve produced out there that I’ve done merely for the cash thus vowing to never tie my name to them in any way. Like most in my field, I have dealt with the occasional client’s wife as the design driver and even had to mix in some pink polka dots here and there. Needless to say, those projects probably won’t be showing up here.
I’ll do my best to update the portfolio a little more regularly but I make no promises.
For those of you using a feed reader, you might want to at least click on through to see the newest version of my site.
It’s late and I don’t feel like detailing a bunch of things but here just a couple of highlights:
Almost monochromatic color scheme with just a couple of touches of blue (#033) here and there.
Left-aligned with fixed position sidebars on both the left and right of the content. More to come on the right side down the road.
A wider content area so you will see some goofiness in older looking images/videos but new content will be adjusted accordingly
Font replacement for headings, titles and main navigation through Cufon. You’ll probably noticed a slight delay/change from time to time as it gets replaced. It isn’t the perfect solution but until the much awaited Typekit drops, it’s the best option.
I haven’t even thought about validating or punishing it yet, so be kind. I’ve done some browser testing: FF3/Safari 3 on Mac and IE6/7/8 & FF3 on the PC but make no guarantees that it displays perfectly on your end. IE6 users, I didn’t drop you completely as some do but I also didn’t take full care of you either. You’re going to see some funky blue rings around several places and that’s just your browser doesn’t handle transparent images. There are fixes (and I might implement) but I’m too worn down tonight. As always, you’d be better served to upgrade your browser and browsing habits.
If you see some wackiness, feel free to comment below and embarrass me in front of my friends/family or save my ego by shooting me a note.
Up next, a revamped portfolio and some links to some fresh work.
Here’s to hoping the relaunch spurs a little creativity in writing as well. Daddy needs a new pair of shoes.
