Carisa H-K, Author at Tales from Digital Deliria by Carisa H-K.

The Friday Before: From “Jump Around” to 9/11

Carisa H-K on March 17, 2021

"Pack it up, pack it in
Let me begin."
    -- House of Pain

Friday

Mornings meant bouncing in, step-by-step to the music. Team members bopping by, hands in the hair, just don’t care. Everybody jump, jump (to the extent appropriate in an office setting, anyway).

The newcomer passes Bright’s desk, where the music emanates. Bright: he’s a designer of magnitude in the web shop, and bringer of daybreak levity. She pumps her fist, as a brown curl bounces on his bobbing head, and they exchange smiles. She thinks: It’s another great end to a great week in utopia.

But every day felt like TGIF day here. You felt it when you heard it. But even without musical accompaniment, you lived it in your mind: Jump up, jump up, and get down.

Bright’s supercharged musical selections echoed across half of the sprawling office floor, spreading smiles and giggles. Coworkers mingled and visited, making happy hour plans. Ample time existed to enjoy the moment, given Friday meetings were not a “thing”. Deliverable due dates were few and far between and a sprawling weekend lay ahead.

A light load paired with a perpetual friendly atmosphere made this late ‘90s hot digital consultancy into a work utopia. An environment of glass, blonde bamboo surfaces, high-rise views from North Dallas to Downtown, and bright yellow walls adorned with whiteboards. Talented and on-trend people took their positions on beanbags, fiddling with legos, and planning to take their pick of upscale restaurants for lunch.

In fairness to work ethic, some readied themselves for their next kickoff, anticipating the needs of their team of 30. Well prepared agendas and project plans stood ready to take command and mobilize a versatile group. But the most important question?: how many snacks to procure for their colossal conference room.

Others arranged travel to their client sites, all expenses paid, to engage on entirely new web projects – rich with lessons learned. Such as, the importance of preparation and roles & responsibilities definition before the plane landed. Alas, the lack of a “meeting before the meeting” at times became evident, during rocky on-site project starts. Live and learn!

Still, the momentum remained tangible… yet the environment was extremely laid back at the same time.

This was Friday in the dot com utopian enclave. The Friday before it all changed.

Monday

On this day, no music blared its greeting. Instead, something unusual: the sound of Spanish language broken by static.

The newcomer enters the web shop floor, gourmet coffee in hand, blissfully virgin to what was to come. With each step, the unfamiliar words amid white noise grow louder, and increasing confusion raises the hairs on her neck.

Approaching the mystery, she witnesses a gathering of coworkers, standing rigid. Faces: worried. Body language: closed in shock. Some pace, others stand entranced. Still others ask questions to each other, as if there are answers.

“I’m going to try to pull up CNN.com,” she overhears Bright say. Another follows him to a computer.

Then she turns her head toward the source of the sound, where a dozen eyes in a tiny interior conference room remain transfixed. An old school TV stands just above their heads, on a mobile stand. Projecting a building, on fire. Debris and papers floating in the air like fluttering butterfly wings. People hurling themselves, limp, out of windows – as if salvation lie ahead. All accompanied by explanation in a language that no one could understand. Yet, the group suspects that no language would suffice to explain.

“CNN.com is down,” Bright’s sober voice responds nearby.

In this dot com boom era, the all-powerful internet is rendered frail for the first time: cracking under the strain of traffic. An office filled with powerful computers and web builders stand similarly feeble and useless. And so, the group steps deeply back in time, to childhood. When the cable bill wasn’t paid, and analog TV could only pick up the Spanish station and its undulating waves of grey noise.

She remains rooted to the spot, coffee growing cold, in horror at the images invading her eyes. In a wave of synchronicity, fresh fear blossoms: Would our building become the next target?

The momentum suddenly transforms, and the crowd’s weight shifts like vermin suddenly exposed to light. Grabbing laptops hastily, the group files out with scuttling feet, proceeding to cars and highways. A singular instinct rules her mind: to get to a place of safety, with access to information to decipher, in an attempt to make some sense of it. To get home.

A short drive later, she steps through her front door. The second tower falls as she sinks to the floor.

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Creatives Run Amok in the Land of Flash

Carisa H-K on March 10, 2021

An exciting, nervous hairball of a day arrived. A day of suits, curled hair, eye makeup, clean nails, and quirky, irresistible Web Consultants paired with Corporate Titans.

Heads held high, swallowing the nerves, the crew of “internet experts” strode confident. Slow-motion in their mind’s eye, moving past endless cubes, taking in the smells of coffee and fresh paint from their client’s recent office remodeling. Now breaching the door of a cavernous conference room, filled with about 30 Corporate stakeholders, their first job begins.

The Schmooze

Creating an inclusive sense belonging through well-designed camaraderie, they start with laughs. Light entertainment, leading into the “Dog And Pony Show”. Marketing Mavens, the Corporate Communications contingent, even IT — the contract owners — started to loosen up in minutes.

“Dim All the Lights, Sweet Darlin'”

The projector glow lights up Paris, The Creative Director. Presentation at the ready, she takes the reigns and the Circus begins. The Project Manager at her flank knows: this web design presentation could make or break the entire project… and budget… if it missed the mark with this picky Corporate crowd.

But in minutes they knew. The Creative was spot on — capturing the pure spirit and heritage of this historic soft drink conglomerate.

Every brand stood gorgeously presented.

This corporate website design fully represented the critical picture that the client wanted to portray to the whole world.

Lush “oohs and ahhs” filled the room.

Mid-table the Project Manager breathed a sigh of relief. She thought: Our first preso to my biggest client so far. Again, I have arrived!

For that moment, the well-hidden nerves drained away. The training drilled into their Consultant heads, at one time seemingly self-absorbed, now suddenly seemed manifest:
We are consultants. We keep our heads high. We offer value. We are to be respected. And, every hour is a billable hour.

Afterglow

At the conclusion of the presentation, the client thoroughly satisfied, the Project Manager chimes in: “We’re so thrilled that you love the design! Let’s talk about next steps. We can begin building the site by tomorro…”

But her sentence would never complete, as Paris pushes in: “But if you really want a great site, you need to use Flash.”

Screeeeeeeeech.

The rubber tires skid, melting into the pavement. The needle is slapped over the grooves. The nails pass down the chalkboard. And now: a full stop halt, of wide and shocked eyes around the table.

“What?” the Corporate Comms lead says. “What is Flash? How so?”

Oh no.

Flames instantly spring from our WWW dumpster.

The Creative Director proceeds to explain: “It’s animation. Every banner on every page could move. Wouldn’t you like to see your little brand character dancing?”

<Hindsight moment>

Flash! Dear God. Of all things! A future self somewhere in another dimension understands that this moment is ridiculous. Because this once-coveted Web 2.0 technology has already met its (decommissioning) maker. Why did we blow up the meeting for FLASH?? But then again — in that moment, everyone just wanted a snazzy website. Sigh.

</Hindsight moment>

“Is it in scope?”, the stern IT lady says.

The IT group Project-Managing on the customer side starts to twitch. They brokered the project and budgeted it, knowing full well that their internal customer, Corp Comms, would be a handful to manage.

The other twitcher in the room, the web agency Project Manager, didn’t know that her Creative Director would become a handful to manage too! Why did this Flash thing not come up in the Internal Review?

It’s the agency Project Manager’s turn, to douse the flame with a big, fat fire extinguisher. With a trace of white froth forming at the corner of her mouth, she states with a wide eye: “No, that’s not currently budgeted in scope.”

Ugh. And so began the…

Bait and Switch.

These words echoed across conference calls for weeks after the presentation. Indeed, straight through to the launch of the project.

Corp Comms ran wild with their Flash demands, given the Creative Director made them feel like they were getting a crap website. Not good enough, without that Flash.

Oh, it was bad. And the agency Delivery Manager pinned it on the one responsible for managing the scope: the Project Manager.

The Moral of the Story

On this day, a phase was forevermore coined: Designers Run Amok. A state of being, when desire for great(ish) design supersedes other project success criteria.

But it wasn’t an us-vs-them. The Project Manager had a design background too, and knew this phenomenon all-too-well. Heck, she even indulged in it herself from time to time.

But when playing a role, moments will arise when you further commit to your path: managing with the business in mind, not just the creative.

And so, live each instance of creative-run-amok as an adventure. And with some luck, preparation, and targeted questions, you might just catch it in the Internal Review, before the client sees.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

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Dot-Com Boom Days: Agency Tales

Carisa H-K on March 3, 2021

How many dotcom-era web development agencies can you name? Do you remember the slew of sprouts that “rose to the top” during the late 90’s web boom days? Perhaps: Luminant, Viant, Scient, Sapient, Rare Medium, Exceed, Agency.com, USWeb, Cognizant, Digitas, Razorfish?

Some of these sprouts still live to tell their tales, having grown into digital behemoths. But alive or dead, what did they all have in common?: Lofty, slightly intangible names.

Perhaps a perfect reflection of the web product they peddled, which was vaguely understood at the time. (Both technically and perhaps culturally.) But we all knew, when we worked with one of these companies, that we were on-trend… so cool… so modern.

Enter the Dot-Com Web Agency Utopia

Arriving to work at one of these hot agencies meant moving from the scrappier side of town, a land of converted warehouses, into an actual office building.

It meant being plucked away from the obscurity of “no-name” clients. And recognition (via a 4-part cross-functional interview process with peers) that you are indeed ready for the “big time” clients.

At one such place, in North Dallas, you find yourself at one of the best, most well-known dot-com agencies.

A land of modern facilities, smooth elevators, fresh paint, and grey berber carpet. Where walls of white boards stood marked by multi-colored dry erase markers. Where neon post-it notes formed networks across glass-enclosed conference rooms. Where comfy clouds of beanbag chairs lined war rooms. And where floor-to-ceiling windows offered skyline views.

Training was not a “thing” here. Because YOU were already an expert on the web. That’s why you were hired. Leads only coached in belief of capability, repeating a mantra when doubts crept in:

We are consultants. We keep our heads high. We offer value. We are to be respected. And, every hour is a billable hour.

It’s true: you’re a little too full of yourself as a result. But that’s what you needed, when riding the wild west internet bronco.

The dot-com boom is here, and you’ve entered the utopia. You busy yourself with your first proper client, getting ready for your first major presentation. So it begins…

Learn more about the the dot-com agency experience. Check out:

You Shoulda Been There – Excellent interviews and stories from the high-profile trailblazers who built the early web.

Kings of the 90’s Dot Coms

Wikipedia: the Dot Com Bubble

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

Please “like” if you did on social media (@DigitalDeliria), share, and post your comments. What do you remember about early web agency life?

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I’m Coming Out

Carisa H-K on February 23, 2021

"I'm coming out
I want the world to know
Got to let it show."
    -- Diana Ross

She’s in the sun, wind teasing her hair. Stepping into the street, the burger joint next door wafts a savory scent.

Walking out meant more today: it meant walking off the job. Freshly resigned, her brain tingled. On pure, involuntary impulse, she stuck her finger in the air, and looked up briefly. Then strutted down the street, and hopped into her sporty black car.

Windows down to embrace the fresh warm breeze, she peeled away with a music blast swirling in her wake. Off to meet with her girlfriends and celebrate a new day.

They left the same company not long before: on to bigger and better opportunities. Now she follows the same path.

Soon she strode into the high-ceilinged and high-energy restaurant. It felt like the center of the universe: booming with popularity and lively voices. A pure reflection of the sentiment of the day.

Her countenance no different, she headed to the bar. They catch each other’s eyes. Gal pals Dame and Beckums flash sudden, exhilarating smiles. The new arrival swings her arms above her head, beaming and singing:

“I’m coming out!”

The ladies bust out laughing, as they erupt into dance and exchange hearty high-fives all around their cocktail table.

The song matched the freest of feelings: of a new threshold, of achieving a higher goal. A sense of pride in self, and joy for what is yet to come.

Dame exclaims, beaming: “This the happiest I’ve ever seen you!”

And happy she was. Leaving for advancement, new challenges, a higher salary, and the opportunity to serve clients you’d know by name: it was all she dreamed. A true acknowledgment of the endless work, the long nights. Of all she accomplished over years of trailblazing work in website development.

These were the heady early days of the internet: dot-coms boomed, and demand for talent soared to a peak. She rode the wave of an employee market, where hiring was swift and competition by employers permitted her to take her pick of jobs.

In that instant, a sense of pride washed over her. But yet in that exhilarating moment, her brain still nagged with a sense of regret and bittersweet.

Should I have given more notice to my old boss?

But the other company wanted me NOW.

Should I have walked out on my last day? Such a strident snub, for this liquid lunch with my buddy colleagues?

But it’s time to CELEBRATE!

Am I too full of myself?

NO! Well yes, maybe that’s a little bit true.

The push and pull swirled in her head. But one thing’s for sure… she was off to a proper Digital Consultancy. And it was all about to start on MONDAY! Future, here we come!

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

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Shakeup at the Rainbow Bar

Carisa H-K on February 10, 2021

Old school internet leads to new school internet

What was the moment? When we knew the web started to change? When we started to transform along with it?

In the warehouse downtown, the unsung heroes worked away at building the web with utopic vision. Days passed into years. Their scrappy thrive operated in a world scarcely recognized today: before Facebook and Google, but where Apples sheathed transparent teal plastic whirred aplenty. And discarded PC towers started to pile in a corner.

Clients evolved. Their sapling online brochureware grew encased in ever-growing tree-ring layers. A game of skin and reskin, where the bones of rainbow bars and grey slate panels grew covered in the fleshy pulp of proper navigation. Animated gifs stripped away like outgrown tree bark, replaced with a new layer of Flash. Increasingly advanced design gobbled higher internet speeds, and grew yet another tree ring. The widest tree ring to form so far?: dynamic functionality.

The builders themselves evolved in their warehouse… sprouting new thinking like hydras. Talk started anew online: an eruption that never stopped. AOL AIM gave way to ICQ, opening up a whole world of users known by only numbers and aliases. Communities sprung up, where in-depth and satisfying discussion bloomed around topics of common interest. Search revealed the breadth and depth of unifying facts and productive exchange available online, without monopolistic narrowing.

This unique and fleeting moment was Web 2.0. When the foundation shook at the Rainbow Bar, and at increasing internet velocity, “Home” as we knew it approached its crumbling death.

It set the stage for a future breed, that would split the trees open and upturn their roots: Social Media. Where communities toppled in the MySpace and Facebook celebration of self. This future held not just an evolution of technology, but of the people themselves, and their behavior.

Ways of working during “Web 2.0” evolved as well. For a time, web agencies reveled in “team building” activities, and the warehouse dwellers were no different. Every Friday, a game of “Pass The Ball” filled the afternoon. The premise was simple: say how you’re feeling and pass the ball. Sometimes, players were asked to answer other similarly innocuous questions. And got paid to do it.

The problem?: it became an oh-so-repetitive distraction from bringing our utopian internet vision to life.

For a few weeks, Bone asked: “Could we do something different this week?” He even suggested a few team building activities with reasonable legs. But somehow every week, Boss did not change. He had firm ideas of what was “right”: a vision of an elevated way to run his web agency.

And so, the game proceeded as it had for months prior… the ball passed once again.

But today would be different. Just as Web 2.0 stood transforming the internet as we knew it, Bone stood against the 285^th ball pass. He slammed the perky beach wall into the floor, where it enjoyed a pretty good bounce.

“This is stupid!,” Bone shouted. “I’m not playing anymore!” With that, he stomped out of the room.

With a head of steam, then Presto followed. “And I said, don’t call me Presto anymore!,” his words spat at Boss, and out he went.

Their words hung in the air in the now-awkward emptying space. It was… team building gone bad. The group never expected to witness such an outburst for, in effect, being paid to do nothing but toss a ball. But some remained driven by a higher Web purpose, and this frivolous time waster was not for them.

For those who remained in the room, the ball-pass continued with complacency… Let’s get it over with.

Yet in ways as broad as Web 2.0 itself, and as nuanced as your coworker next in line for the ball pass, transformation remained clear and accelerating.

Lessons Learned: Listen to your people when they have ideas. Or at least, get creative and change it up on your own, before your “team building” morphs into a dumpster fire.

For those still building and experiencing the changing web… just wait. We’re still Shaking Up the Rainbow Bar, and maybe there are still a few utopian moments left for that ‘ol Web of ours.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

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Sass on the Good Foot

Carisa H-K on February 3, 2021

“I got a funky job 
and I paid my dues 
on the good foot.  
Do it with the good foot."
     -- James Brown

Jitterbug jitterbug

Fingers poking the air

Funky feet, double time

Wave up the bod

And start it again…

Sass danced as Bone played her favorite James Brown tune. The fun-loving spunk of a girl, with dark eyeliner and a crop of blonde hair, just launched her first website.

Her design was chosen from a variety of options presented to the client. After a production long-haul, the fruits of her labor finally appeared on full WWW display.

“Get on down,” she quipped with James, in that old warehouse downtown. A converted office space brimming with digital creativity, as if bits and pixels flowed out through the multi-colored window panes.

Pride and elevation pulsed in her veins. And relief that it was done, after so much work! Soon Dame and Asira joined in, with their own funky feet, in the middle of the concrete floor. Bone looked on with a grin, and popped up from his seat too.

This impromptu celebration lived on for years in Sass’s mind. It remained an unexpected and unlikely memory: achieving praise, surrounded by revelers in her accomplishment.

“Unlikely” because Sass had a secret, well-hidden from all. Her sparkling persona masked reality, and simply served as a construct of what she was not. Her mask reflected her future self: what she aspired to achieve.

She purposefully transformed to a bringer of levity. A fountain of overt energy. A dance-down-the-street kind of gal. A force-field against her own dark history, one filled with the devastating pain of losing both parents when she was all-too-young.

It left her insecure about her next meal and place to rest. Crushing depression filled her, and turned her into a child gone wild.

As much as she tried, she never achieved enough… but life became a game to overcome her destroyed youth.

Then she picked up a scent with a pivotal realization: this is my one chance. The web — a new and uncharted territory — opened a door for her. So she picked herself right up, followed electrified wires, armed with her firewall mask, and walked right down the bit-paved trail, into web design.

Never achieved enough? — Well, not until now.

This wasn’t only her first website launch. It was proof that she overcame.

Perhaps her outward persona projection finally drove itself into a new reality. Surrounded by coworkers and friends — she knew she had arrived.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

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Where’s Your Mark?

Carisa H-K on January 27, 2021

Have you made a mark yet? Why make a mark? Does your mark mean anything, to anybody, anymore?

Where does your mark persist?

In one such place, a blue window pane remains. Something easily missed by the passerby. But look closely… it offers a story.

The tale of a sunny, new day’s arrival. When every pane of glass was colored as if by creativity itself: orange, red, green, yellow, and blue.

Peering through the windows, the internet rag-tags now had their own office! Granted, a converted warehouse. But all the sizzling dot-coms and web agencies were down there: Rare Medium, Exceed, Broadcast.com, and more.

The area was called Deep Ellum. Home of the trendy and techie. A place for the young and vibrant… for the high-velocity… for the dreamers and driven entrepreneurs. A place where you could transform in a flash from working in the day, to partying at night.

A figure makes her way down the cracked sidewalk next to the windows, with rustling tutu. A vision as bright as the multi-colored windows she passes by: hot pink leggings, a side pony with purple streak, green slouch socks, blue eye shadow, and a familiar yellow lump hitched to her side with yellow wires tangled in hoop earrings: The Walkman.

Into the warehouse she swishes, and coworkers’ eyes widen to see just how far she went “all out”. She arranged this day, after all. 80’s day: a nostalgic throwback, and a bit of fun at the web agency.

The cavernous space filled with smiles and laughs all around. There’s Bone, resident DJ pumping out Duran Duran, with Presto. There’s Sass, a spirited designer decked out in 80’s garb. She always stayed “on the good foot”, perched next to the long-haired programmer who smelled sweetly of Herbal Essences. Next to the phones stood sweet friend Dame, who threw her a wedding shower just weeks earlier at the subleased office. There’s Boss, posed with his familiar smoothie, and distracted by the phones. And lastly, there’s Hacker (reformed and hired to build the web, before his ilk became known as “security professionals”).

Such was the fun of youngsters, driving the early internet all day and most of the night, in that warehouse in the arty district in town.

So, where’s your blue window? Your mark? And what does it stand for? Maybe it’s just reminiscent of a simple day of fun with coworkers… and nothing more. But if we weren’t there, creating, and you there, consuming… would the internet exist exactly as it does today?

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

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Presto Chango!

Carisa H-K on January 20, 2021

Presto bounded past the Pet Registrars and into the subleased web production room. It was the center of his universe, where web-making magic happened. He filled the few hours in between classes with web grax and HTML.

He was the best coder in the place… he could do a little of everything and do it well. Like a magician… maybe that’s why the name stuck. But oh, how he HATED the nickname. Last week he asked his boss, coiner of the name, to stop calling him “Presto”. Boss refused with a dejected expression, explaining that only this endearing shorthand would suit the magic man in his shop.

Indeed, so many of his colleagues found him endearing. He was a young and driven dude, with a face to charm the hardest of hearts, a short and nimble frame, and an unusual penchant for 1940’s Swing music. An unlikely package of new and old school, when “new” was “in”.

The entire cramped room, of hot computers and oft-studious coworkers, loved his music. It often dueled in the air with Bone’s variety of tunes: from Blues to 80’s Dance.

The residence of these two sometime-“DJs” kept the startup web agency hopping. As long as the system sounds stayed piped down, the din didn’t bother their client down the hall. Stuck in the sublease for a few more weeks, they awaited the time when they could blast it all day long, as loud as they wanted.

But today was notably quieter, as Young Presto walked in with Walkman in tow. The cool throwback cat often carried cassette dubs of old Swing records in his backpack. The long play “CD Power” cassettes were his favorite… best quality sound, and one long-play tape in a Walkman could carry him all day: across treks from class to class, and to the web agency.

Suddenly his mind wandered from his Photoshop 3 and HTML. When did I last demagnetize my playhead? Maybe he subliminally picked up on the warbly horn section, because within seconds his Walkman jammed.

Ugh, he winced, quickly extracting the tape and grabbing a pencil to wind its innards back up. His mind wandered deep into tape player mechanics: I need to find my sandpaper and alcohol… need to clean the rubber wheels… too much slippage in running that tape… why didn’t I demagnetize it sooner?

With mild irritation, and fresh out of a tape player, he realized that new means awaited to satisfy his Swing urge. Technology faced rapid change in his world. Right there in front of him sat a high-tech computer next to a low-tech Walkman. His burgeoning career in web development set a clear life path: one non-existent mere years earlier. And a truth emerged — Walkman had no place.

Simultaneously however, his mind rebelled. Technology already messed up music, he thought. Sterile electronica, tainted by machines. And digital downloads sound AWFUL. Give me a good Gene Krupa drum, some live horns, and a warm LP sound and I’m good, Presto thought to himself.

But with Walkman decommissioned, and a beckoning high-speed connection at the office, Napster sneaked up on his screen. He bargained to himself in that moment: OK, but cassettes, records and CDs will still rule my music collection.

As day melted into night, connection even faster as the office emptied, Presto’s computer speakers filled the air with Swing. The darkened production room set the stage for night of web making.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

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Bone’s Great Code Cleanup

Carisa H-K on January 13, 2021

Bone arrived from a respectable digital consultancy, lured away by a rag-tag bunch of startup geeks.

His tall stride made him the most elevated person in the room. His hawk-like gaze down a chiseled nose meant business.

He came for battle, ready to bring the first-ever digital workspace collaboration tool to life in glorious PHP. He planned to convert T&E into something sexy, with an application well before its time in the late ‘90s.

His armaments included music of all eras, to keep the cramped production room hopping. Often dueling in the air with 1940s Swing from colleague Presto.

Bone understood his assignment, and stood ready to dive in.

But to his surprise, Day 1 slammed him with a different task: entanglement in a staff departure fiasco. The proverbial “review this other guy’s undocumented code and figure out how it works”. A favorite task of developers, before “code refactoring” became a way of life.

Ugh… better get out the AC/DC, he thought to himself, needing a caffeine jolt. Bone peered down his nose at the tangle of ASP code on his monitor.

Within moments, something caught his attention amid the green lines of the shopping cart system:

If Erica = A Bitch

What the hell is going on here?, Bone thought and winced as he scratched his head. And why did I take this job?

Knowing a little something about the departed programmer, Bone was unsurprised by his passive-aggressive animus toward an ex-girlfriend. But to find it in client code and subsequently have to clean it up? — oh boy.

Ok follow the trail, Bone. Sleuth this sucker.

If Erica = A Bitch, then pull library functions…

Ok, there’s a variable “Poop Cookies”…

Uhh… Poop Cookies? What?

Woah, there’s a giant set of if/then conditions in “Poop Cookies”…

Dig, Bone, dig. Get into this guy’s head.

If Erica is a Bitch, then the shopping cart is in a foreign currency…

Then, look at Poop Cookies to determine exchange rate and shipping defaults…

Almost there, Bone. Keep looking.

If Erica is not a Bitch, then it’s US Currency…

So ping USPS module for shipping info.

TaDah! Mystery unraveled, and all before the second cup of coffee. But eww, what an utterly gnarled mess on so many levels.

Now what?, Bone pondered, remembering a similar techie atrocity and the consequences if ever found by the client.

And so continued the Wild West coding practices of the early internet… hidden in digital bowels (literally)… pre-“Me Too”. No wonder we have code reviews, nowadays.

Time for a clean-up on aisle 9, Bone concluded.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

Please “like” if you did on social media (@DigitalDeliria), share, and post your comments. What inane coding atrocity have you come across?

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Sure, I’ll Help With Your Pet

Carisa H-K on January 6, 2021

A faint elevator bing pokes through her computer focus. She can sense who is coming, without even looking. A bent woman, with a cane, a cardigan, a shawl for extra warmth, and a fistful of paperwork in an arthritic hand. She moves like a miniature on the horizon, toward her door, down an extraordinarily long hallway.

The woman makes her way with bluish upswept hair. Her floral skirt brushes her calves as she ambles and sways. A cream and mauve vision, juxtaposed against the burgundy walls and smoky berber carpet.

Moments pass, and now she knows the woman is passing through the fruity air freshener puff, that wafts invisibly out from under the bathroom door and into the hallway.

Several moments again pass, until crooked fingers rattle the bronze doorknob on her redwood-stained door. Swinging it open slowly, she brings the fruity air cloud with her, trapped in the numerous folds of her skirt, cardigan and shawl.

“Can you help me register my pet?”, she sweetly warbles.

“Yes ma’am,” her most professional voice coos in response. “I can help with your pet.”

You’d think finally making it from the apartment into an actual office building would be a boon for our startup digital agency.

But alas: “moving up” in our case meant “moving in” – to a sublease. We shared office space with our client, no less! A risky move to be sure, with potential to spin into a quick nightmare. But thankfully unlike other clients, they were our fans. And, they had us right where they wanted us: at their beck-and-call for challenging web projects.

This particular client registered pets across the city. And walk-ins were welcome.

We packed our bodies into every available space that winter – sales people working the phones in hallways, and a single production room at the back for developers. Inconveniently for me, a “Project” and “General” Manager of all trades, I took up a nook right near their front door.

Which meant that I became a defacto Pet Registration Guide, ushering people from all walks of life into the bowels of our client’s office for assistance.

Mostly, I received confused “Am I in the right place?” kinds of looks, as incomers peered at our web agency signage emblazoned on the adjacent wall. I found myself explaining “yes, yes” most of the day, whilst simultaneously guiding creatives in producing web designs.

Recognizing the customer’s confusion, our client soon placed a rightful “Pet Representative” by the front door. I moved into the production room: notoriously cited at one point for being a fire hazard, given the masses of designers and web developers packed into the space.

But I felt I had arrived: overlooking a beautiful treed Texas landscape, with no more responsibilities for watering plants (except for my own small cactus on a spacious window sill). Surrounded by up-and-coming talent, and fast friends: Bone, Presto, Sass, Beckums and Dame.

This experience created a powerful lesson learned: when it’s not your job, just help. Greet the occasion with professionalism, and treat every circumstance with graciousness. You can’t go wrong.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

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The Mixed-Up Mix Tape (A Holiday Story)

Carisa H-K on December 16, 2020

As the holidays approach, we find ourselves taking the proverbial step back in time. To a simpler era, full of childhood memories. Of warm family and friends. And of equally emotive early technologies.

Picture this: It’s your first holiday away at college. The typical traditions are gone, and as a first step toward life on your own, it’s up to you to “invent” new traditions.

How did you solve for this gap, back in the day? To evoke a sense of home and normalcy?

Mix tapes, of course.

Technology sometimes holds all the emotion and creativity of humanity, and the nimble cassette tape was no exception. These little nuggets could be shipped in $2 “Media Mailer” envelopes, bringing joy to others across the country.

The cassette trade at that time was mostly comprised of rare concert bootlegs by your favorite band. Or, hand-crafted musical messages of shared friendship, or burgeoning love. But in this story, the tape creation and delivery held a whole other deeper meaning.

On this day, before going home for the holidays, I busied myself schlepping my laundry basket across campus. On top of my fresh, folded sheets and towels sat my old yellow Walkman. With ears on, I crossed the cobblestone sidewalks with springy steps.

My favorite just came on – “Calypso Noel” by Johnny Mathis. I thought back to the desperate request to my parental unit: “Please make me a Christmas tape, to help me get in the holiday spirit!” And so the tape arrived, full of my favorites, taking me right back home.

These were younger and more blissful moments… the days when loved ones were healthy and vibrant… before our cheeks dampened not from melting snowflakes, but from holiday tears for family no longer among us.

With a skip and a jig, holding the basket on my hip, I was stronger then: ready to dance down the street to my cheesy old song.

Listening to the fade, a smile crossed my face, wondering what the next song might be.

Then…

A guttural grunt!

Thud!!

A creaky door opening!!!

And, the voice of Count Dracula announcing himself. And thus began a Halloweeny tale.

What??

Well, back then you couldn’t always afford a new tape every time you took on a new “mix tape project”. You could just re-use an old one: that was the beauty of cassettes! But, if you didn’t record “blank” at the end of the tape, there remained a glimpse of the now irrelevant and undesirable.

It always felt like a stunning discovery: a peek back in time to shunned remnants, intended to be discarded. In this case, the dub of an old, spoken-word Halloween record sat loud and proud at the end of “Side A”.

From there forward, the tape lovingly became known as the “Christmas Tape with Halloween Interlude”. For when you flipped to Side B, Christmas continued in all its glory.

It was more than a hasty oversight to get a holiday music tape to a lonely college student, pining for home and warm Christmas memories.

It was the melding of two very different holidays, side by side, into one audio experience. One holy, warm and uplifting. One dark, frightful and cheeky.

The juxtaposition was just… perfect.

The tape could not have achieved a loftier goal: bringing a smile to the face.

Sometimes the sweetest and most memorable things in life come in the smallest of early technology packages.

As always, I hope this brought a smile to your face too! Here’s a little something more to keep you dancing this holiday season.

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Meme-A-Thon: All Your Base Are Belong To Us

Carisa H-K on December 9, 2020

HEAR YE, HEAR YE: the King of Memes assumed the throne long ago. Hailed by early internet minions. Worshiped through viewership from 1998 onward. Recognized in many circles as the most prominent meme of all time: All Your Base Are Belong To Us.

What a pairing this King would make with the Queen of the early internet: the Rainbow Bar. OK, that’s a step too far into early internet fantasies…

But why was “All Your Base” so infectious? Let’s unpack it.

First, recall how you felt when you first saw the darkly decorated character, face half overtaken by robotics, and the sterile, computer-generated voice warbling its famous quote.

Maybe confused? Destabilized? A tad bit intimidated? To be sure, an innate sense of mystification clouded our minds. To deconstruct why it had this emotional impact, which in turn drove us to share the meme with fascination, you must look at the words.

All Your Base…

What is the Base? Does this refer to military bases?

Or is a Base simply a secure foundation?

…Are Belong…

Other worldly, as if an invader from another planet was trying to speak to us in our language. Here begins the intimidating feeling.

…To Us.

We’ve taken away your Base… your foundation… your security.

Wow… OK then.

“All Your Base” spinoffs = comic relief.

With such a dramatic statement, shaking our security to the core, it’s not difficult to understand the outpouring of humorous spin-off memes. Perhaps applying “All Your Base” to a Budweiser ad with ladies in swimsuits took the edge off!

But the original meme appealed to a sense of fear in all of us, and that amygdala impact drove our “sharing” behavior. What’s more, we connected culturally with the “All Your Base” sentiment. We instinctively understood it to refer to any circumstance outside of our control – situations in the hands of some unforgiving and often unseen power. However, the use of “are” and lack of plural on “bases” offered a hilarious and kitschy counterbalance to our “baser” interpretations (pun intended). We could not help but laugh in the end.

Beyond the cogent insight into how emotion drives our online behaviors, in actuality “All Your Base” was just All Meaningless. Simply a snippet of poorly translated English from a Japanese video game called Zero Wing. But, to such a great effect!

For the unindoctrinated or the nostalgic, here’s the original 2008 video including all the amusing spin-offs. One viewer aptly described it as “an elegant meme from a more civilized time”.

Members of King Meme’s Court

“All Your Base” was hugely popular, but in the Runner’s Up Circle of the earliest and most pervasive internet memes is Badger, Mushroom, Snake.

Well, there might be less to talk about on this one. There was just a Badger. A Mushroom. And a Snake.

The backstory, however, was that this was originally a Flash animation. It ran on an endless loop, which you can’t fully detect in the 3-minute YouTube video that remains today.

When the original Flash hit the web, there was something about its never-ending, incessant quality that kept us watching a long time.

We wondered: Will the loop change? What will happen when it “ends”? Is there another animation to be revealed?

So we watched, and watched, and watched… So long… We, the early web builders, kept it playing while we were working on web graphics, website coding, and emails.

And if it ran long enough, I’d say 2 hours in, the audio and animation would start to mis-sync. We’d hear about the snake before it appeared. Badgers would mash in with the mushrooms. That was all we got as a reward for our patience.

And then maybe the browser would just crash.

The lessons in all of this?

First, perhaps we can gain a little insight about engagement and stickiness from our internet ancients.

And speaking of ancients: In our old-school way, we like to talk about “What Grandma did before the internet existed”. But now, nostalgically we can say: “This is what Grandma did when the internet first started”! 🙂

P.S. – Honorable Mention in the King’s Court:

As a parting cherry on top, I bequeath my favorite meme to you, dear Reader. The first and best cat meme in memory. It’s significant, since we know how cat and dog memes persist on today’s internet like a Happy Plague.

Let’s crown her the Princess of Memes:

BABUSHKA CATS ARE IN UR BOX, BEIN OLD WIMMENS.

P.S.S. – Didn’t experience the oldest internet memes the first time around, but still curious? Let’s not forget the Dancing Babies, Bananas, and Hamsters: see this article for more!

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

Please “like” if you did on social media (@DigitalDeliria), share, and post your comments. What are your favorite early internet memes?

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Clinton-Style Entertainment

Carisa H-K on December 2, 2020

Gripping your chair arm, mouth all dry.

Feet shuffling in your seat, pupils wide.

Face flushed, scroll scroll scroll.

Titillations continue…

No, this is not some seedy porn site, nor a sordid online romance.

This is the President of the United States.

Most web workers of the 1990s “remember where they were” when the Clinton Investigation Report dropped. In our case, the story is set at the digital startup in the musty, old apartment.

For months in advance, news teased the forthcoming treasure trove of sleazy details about a once respected position: President. It was the very first time the world drove heavy demand for a piece of online content.

At a click of a button, the roughly 100-page, dense PDF instantly made its way to computers across the land.

Inside, tales of the sexual escapades of a sitting President with an Intern. Everyone in the office spent the afternoon pouring over it while sipping smoothies: the irresistible “train wreck” syndrome. And heck, it was just plain, juicy reading.

The Oval Office. The cigar. Hiding out under the desk. The rendezvous in the closet near the office. And above all, the Blue Dress.

We didn’t realize it at the time, but a milestone in digital history had arrived.

It was the first time human beings were destroyed online.

And, it destroyed the decorum around leadership and government as well.

It was pure and perfect fodder for all the Gen Xers working in digital at the time: the notoriously cynical and sarcastic. It played right into what we were looking for — more proof that our so-called leaders did not deserve reverence.

But the online landscape evolved quickly to attack not just the lofty. Now on a widespread basis, we continue to grapple with the online-people-destruction-machine today.

Consider this: you no longer need a 100-page report to invoke chaos on your fellow human being. You just need a few choice words on social media. It isn’t even that hard: no “investigation” needed. Let’s just call every social media post “mini-PDFs”.

Our culture now makes this commonplace online, across all walks of life and all levels of society. Tearing down, ridiculing, making a fool, censoring, and outright destruction of livelihoods, for beliefs deemed unpopular or undesirable.

If there’s something good to be said, perhaps the PDF served to dispel some myths in the process.

But it was the first of many destructive acts to come in the Digital Deliria.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this commentary.

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Spiritual, In a Demonic Sense

Carisa H-K on November 17, 2020

A metaphysical practitioner of peace and love. A hippie guru legitimized by a foundation of past life recall. The halo-wearer of Aquarius-Age books in print.

Ironically, the man of many names actually lived his life as a passive aggressive (but mostly aggressive) madman. As evidenced this fine morning at our digital startup, by the sound of page after page rolling off the fax machine.

Oh, not again. I eyed the machine. My boss nervously poked his head around the corner, peering with wide pupils at the rattling appliance.

The fax machine: an apropos medium for a writer. We lived at the dawn of the internet, yet email just would not do. Paper sent over the wire provided tangibility, something you could not just ignore. Heck, the machine remained tied up for 45 minutes just receiving one of the kook’s epic diatribes. That made it even more intimidating. You could nearly detect the smell of pseudo-legalese fodder hanging in the air, as acerbic words spilled onto the pages.

It is amazing that “fax” still exists today, notably in our broken medical, insurance and financial sectors, despite our seemingly advanced technological state! But I digress… back to our client, the Faxing King of the 1990’s...

For context in a previous tale, this client drove employees to moments of “Digital Deliria” and drastic self-esteem retaining measures. But why?

At his core, he was an author extraordinaire. A well-known and prolific writer of metaphysical books, that still remain as cornerstones of new age philosophy today. Ironic then, that a man in the business of being “fun loving and spiritual” was equally prolific in sending us 10-page faxes ripping us up and down.

Words of bitter criticism, hatred, blame, despair, depression – all flowered from the page in copious quantity. Manic adjectives flourished with little or no actual requests. The overflowing, demonic rants only served to destroy us.

We preferred to respond like normal human beings to these communiques. First: have a stiff drink. Then, place a return phone call. Mustering our calm, we’d carefully discuss the issues raised in the fax.

The only faxes we sent in return? Invoices. Approaching the machine with an invoice in-hand required a straightening of the spine, a deep breath, and stiff brace stance (for fear of what we might receive in return). We cringed and pressed “send”, innocently begging for sweet lifeblood to keep our digital startup going, and to meet payroll.

We were simply people who were willing to serve our client’s website needs, bending over backwards to make them happy.

But we, the far-from-perfect, seemingly rarely did for this man. It’s true: we often deserved a firm critique. We were all trying to just “figure out” how to build this new thing called the web. Fails were all-too-common. But this was an unwarranted level of abuse rarely seen – before or since!

How could a sometime self-help guru, of past life wisdom and spouter of meditative benefits, could at once live a very different mindset when dealing with actual people? The lunatic was nearly perfect in his hypocrisy.

What motivated him?: Wanting it all now, and expecting it to be perfect. But he was asking for expertise that no one had. His website was one of the first ecommerce sites ever built… to promote and sell his books. This far predated Amazon.com, when no one had ordered goods online ever before.

However like many maniacs, this man deserves a story, given so many bittersweet lessons learned:

First: Peddling the fantasy of dreams and deeper meanings in life is more prevalent and desired in this world than actually living them. Indeed: for most, it’s just about the hustle. And hustle he did: building on folks’ hopes for a deeper life roadmap, and serving it up on a platter through his books (without actually living his own gospel).
As such, matters of the spirit aren’t well-addressed by the preach of fallible human beings.
In addition: on earth, “not all is as it seems”.
And most importantly: when you’re down and “getting those faxes”, never give up! Thicken that skin to the nay-sayers… they’re all around, ready to tap your energy. Don’t give in to it. Keep moving forward.

I still value my life lessons from this madman. 🙂 And… he was the first, but not the last teacher!

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

Please “like” if you did on social media @DigitalDeliria, share, and post your comments. What did you learn from your most unforgettable client/customer “interaction-gone-bad” moment?

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Clients Shouldn’t Use FTP (And Other Lessons Learned)

Carisa H-K on November 10, 2020

“You better take that down.”

What?

What does that mean?

It’s hard to understand, but one thing is pretty clear from the tone of the voice on the other end of the line. You do not want to hear this voice at the start of your day.

Take what down? Take it down from where? Did the intern inadvertently launch the website too early?

Your mind races, until your drying mouth finally croaks: “What?”

“On the FTP site,” the simmering voice continues.

Now with a palpitating heart, you begin looking.

Before this story continues, allow me to share some context. Imagine your worst client. The belittling one. The one that sends 12-page faxes tearing your company up and down. The passive-aggressive, but mostly aggressive. The never-happy one. The one that could drive employees to take extreme measures to retain their own sanity.

Yeah that one. The Assistant of said client is our morning caller. And this morning is about to go bad. Really bad.

Looking around the FTP site… what, oh what, could be so objectionable to receive this urgent call? And what could be so inflammatory that there’s only dead silence on the other end of the line while I search?

And then… I saw it.

A folder. An otherwise innocuous entity. An omnipresent defacto of computing. But, it was the folder’s name… oh lordy mercy, the name.

I start to sweat and heat rises in my cheeks. I begin to wonder, why is our client in our FTP site? File Transfer Protocol: a tool used heavily by web-techie-folks to move files from one server to another. Why, oh why… and HOW did our client get in there? And how did they happen to find this insolently-named folder?

Well, maybe insolent is an understatement.

Look, I’m not a prude to late 90’s web developer shenanigans. Including swearing in the code, protected by the overall lack of web technical knowledge in the general population. In the early days, putting a dirty message in the client’s website code was a common bit of fun. No harm done: the client would never see or even know it was there. Only other web developers could get in on the “inside joke”, earning you brownie macho points. No wonder we have “code reviews” nowadays…

Anyway… this was no such hidden transgression, buried deep in website bowels. This folder name took a cheeky practice to a whole new level. And its presence on an FTP site made it much more discoverable.

Today, the client and I had perhaps encountered the first example of wholly digital passive-aggressive behavior. Surely a precursor to the web-world we live in now.

Well, Tell Me Already !

OK. So, one might ask: how could an employee so eloquently equate the client’s very name with a sex act, and put it on display via an FTP folder name? Through a few twists and switches of letters and syllables, that a person’s name could become an entirely new and novel term for oral sex?

Well — I’ll leave that to your imagination for the sake privacy for those involved, but I’m happy to share offline over an adult beverage. However as a hint, the client’s name was Richard (which of course has an unfortunate short form).

And I knew who did it, too. Gotta give the gal credit: she was a Creative, after all. But… Oh My.

She was the one you wouldn’t expect. The one who gave up a job at a “proper dot com” to come work with us rag-tags in our shabby, scrappy digital startup in an apartment. The one that everyone looked up to as a result. And the one who equally was distraught by her decision to enter into this world of ridiculous working conditions and clients with flame-throwing mouths.

“We will address that right away.” Click.

My next challenge had arrived: How do I tactfully yet forcefully convey to the Designer that this was not acceptable? That she’s been found out… not by her boss… but by the client himself?

I mustered all my grace, all my calm, all my stormy force. I called her name. (In that apartment, voices quite easily carried from my “office” squished next to the front door, to the “bull pen” in the adjacent family room.)

Enter said Designer into my desk area.

“Uh, you better take that down,” I said simply, pointing to the offensive file folder on my screen. “The client called me.” I put on my best stony face.

Within a second, I watched the color completely drain from her face. Followed by a sweeping beet red flush over her cheeks. A bead of sweat formed at her hairline. I’ve never since witnessed such a remarkable transformation in someone within seconds.

I felt horrible. I empathized with her. She was utterly ripped and ridiculed by this customer only late yesterday. We, the far-from-perfect, often deserved a firm critique. We were all trying to just “figure out” how to build this new thing called the web, and fails were common. But the level of abuse that she and others regularly endured from this client was unwarranted.

She turned away, acutely embarrassed, and within seconds the folder name returned to the client’s actual name.

Gotta admit now, the whole episode was pretty traumatic yet amusing… one of those “sear-into-brain-forever” moments.

What are the lessons learned?:

Don’t swear in the code.
Don’t mock your client’s name via objectionable FTP folder names.
And, face the business challenge with professionalism and tact, even if others around you do not!

As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

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