molly.com
Saturday 13 December 2003
bragging party
One of the tech editing jobs I did this past year was for Christian Crumlish, who is a well-known author and maintains the group weblog radio free blogistan.
Yesterday, the book I worked on arrived and I was really excited to read his acknowledgement, which, while not all sweetness (I guess I’m kinda tough . . .)
is pretty darned cool. I feel like a kid who wants to run home and show her gold star to mom. I guess we all feel that way when we get one of those stars. Anyway, at the risk of seeming like I’m gloating, I’m sharing it here.
“When they told me Molly Holzschlag was to be our technical editor, I almost panicked. How would I get away now with lazy generalizations and received hearsay? True to form, Molly held my feet to the fire and demanded the highest standards of clarity, evidence, and proof. Her commitment to web standards and to web-design professionalism rubbed off on my chapters to my credit. Those chapters would be infinitely less effective without her input, exceptions, and advice.”
- Christian Crumlish, Author, Microsoft FrontPage 2003 Savvy
Okay, now that I’ve bragged, it’s your turn. What did you get a gold star for recently? Or, maybe there’s something you really should have gotten credit for but the deed went unnoticed. Well, now’s your chance!
Filed under: professional
Posted by: site admin | 11:13 | Comments (11)
Discovering that alternate angles between two parallel lines are equal to each other when I was only nine. I brought my discovery to the teacher, who subsequently punished me for not paying attention during her geometry lesson.
I put my socks in the hamper.
My best friend is realizing her dream of opening a retail jewelry store (for those of you in Tucson, it’s called Silver Sea and will be opening hopefully next week, on Congress St next to Hydra) and has set up a Yahoo group to coordinate the volunteers and wellwishers who are helping her get the project off the ground. the other night she sent me a sort of disjointed list of updates and issues (some them important items, like that last minute licensing issues would keep the store from opening this weekend as planned,) and stated “If you are feeling eloquent and would post a progress report to the mailing list, I would love you forever.” Which was the perfect thing for me to do. When am I ever not feeling eloquent?
Showing my cooperative’s web-based design tools to Molly Holzschag at Comdex and listening to her go wow this is so cool. And then have her log on and say kewl words to the applications software engineer and architect, Jeff Sherwin.
That was very kewl
Thanks
Fathering two wonderful, creative, lovely young women. I am so proud of these girls, they are growing up to be contributing members of our society in quite beautiful ways. Did you visit the 4th aveneue street fair this weekend? One of my daughters was playing in Jovert, the superlative Tucson High School steel band, with its huge sound, progressive arrangments, and talented musicians that are brimming with teenage attitude and enthusiasm for what they clearly love to do on a Friday and Saturday morning. If you saw them perform, you probably noticed what a diverse group they are, men and women, a mix of people with ancestry from around the globe. Have you ever visited La Pilita historical preservation association, run by students of Carillo Elementary School, on south main street in Tucson? This is the renovated building just next to the La Pilita shrine, where candles burn day and night. My younger daughter worked there as a docent for her three years at Carillo. Now she is a member of a traveling performing group based at the Utterback Middle School. These kids are rebuilding the Utterback String Ensemble for the sheer love of playing, and in honor of their beloved retired music teacher Nelson Wilt. If you see a group of middle school kids playing strings and harp at Bookmans, that’s them. She also volunteers at Casa Maria. This kid is really going somewhere, she is already with it politically. Today she described an example of the repulsive revisionist history of Spanish Colonial conquest and occupation that is being foisted on her class in some new history or social studies textbook. Wow, what a pair of kids.
I ran just over a half marathon today. And I’m excited about that. Thanks for letting me share.
I think I deserve a “Gold Star” for embracing Web Standards as early as late ‘96 early ‘97. I joined WaSP in 08.98. I taught myself HTML with the help of the W3C specs and a wonderful book by Molly.
I don’t believe I ever used tables for layouts. Shoot, I even used CSS-P before there were standards compliant browsers. Of course I validated early on and wouldn’t have it any other way. Now having used CSS since it became a recommendation, I’m a little behind in all of the things you can do with CSS but I’m learning.
When the good browsers finally appeared on the scene, it was really nifty to say “I told you so” when web designers found their designs breaking. It was a lot of fun checking my sites with NS 6 and finding out that they all worked without a problem.
Those are just some of the reasons I feel I deserve a “Gold Star”.
Regards,
Gail T. Cohen
I uh… I… dammit.
I ghost-wrote thirteen chapters of “Designing With Web Standards” for Jeffrey Zeldman. It took up so much of my time that my wife, Morgan Fairchild, left me and is rumored to be shacked up with Jon Lovitz.
I went an entire day without coffee.
Oh wait, that’s what I’m least proud of.