I, Muehlenhaus. U, Riedermaus.

Getting down with Oasis and the Smiths at Espresso Royale in Dinkytown right now. Just finished my dissertation proposal revision -- the LP. Feels good. I attached it to a couple of emails and sent it off and now it is out of sight, out of mind, and I can get on with making maps. Yes, maps, maps, maps! But map what?

Well, luckily our client wants me to add the name of North American Indian reservations to every dot on the map that is in a reservation. It's not exactly what I would call cream of the crop mapping. More like mopping up. So I told Birgit to let them know that I would be willing to make those changes at $65/hour. That's our standard rate right now, and I figured they would balk, since they have already paid quite a bit for the map -- though considering the hours I put in, they have been way undercharged for this. I wasn't about to spend four more unpaid hours typing up new text files for the 50 or so communities on reservations. Particularly since we asked them many times before the project began what they wanted on the map and the first mention they made of this was upon looking at the final draft. I realized that I would also have to recode some things in Flash to rearrange textboxes when someone selects particular buttons but not others. While waiting for their response, I decided to see if I could figure out the recoding, and unbelievably... I did it! Last night, after returning from a departmental dinner at Macalester, I figured it out. It's getting easier! Yippee...

Then they responded that they were willing to pay our rate over and beyond what we have done already. I was thrilled! These might be the best clients Birgit and I have, simply because they are willing to pay us what we're worth. Yes! A lot of people want custom maps these days for $50 or something outrageous... I tell you, GoogleMaps is making it look too easy. It's not. You can get a reference map for dirt cheap, but if you want a map that looks clean, professional, and has data that is only relevant to you, it costs money. Oh well... I digress. Our current clients are wonderful. That's the point.

Playing with some XML tutorials, realizing that maybe I should have never given up on learning Basic on my old Commodore 64C back in the day. Programming is really fun!

In other news... well, that's it. There is no other news. Signing off from Dinkytown... ciao!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(I think someone named SMAB took this picture. I didn't. Is it in Minneapolis? Only SMAB knows. But she's somewhere else right now... I think NYC or Paris or Montreal or something. What?)