This:

“The foundation [of the Lutheran church] is still that salivation comes only by grace alone, faith alone, and through Christ alone.”

I forgot to post about this. The project that has been consuming me at work for two months is finally done. It’s a site where you can search for Christian colleges. (We have a few other faiths up there, but it’s mostly various denominations of Christianity.) I didn’t design it, but I built the site and managed the content (and wrote some of it).

For those familiar with web development, this was my first foray into developing in an MVC framework (in this case, CodeIgniter). There was definitely a learning curve, but I have to say, I’m going to use that for every large site I build from here on out.

And if you’re wondering, we’re hoping to add a lot more clients to the site. Right now, the selection of schools you can actually request information from is pretty slim (although there’s at least a mention for every major faith-based higher learning institution in the country). We had to have a site before we could sell clients on it, though. So if you know of a faith-based school that should have a more prominent listing here, let me know and I’ll get it routed to the right place.

All we have of it is a cell phone shot, so it’s hard to make out. Here it is!

We had a food day at work today as a sending-off for our intern, Pam. In the tradition of ThisIsWhyYoureFat.com, we concocted the most horrible things and actually ate them. Here’s some of what we came up with:

• Cherry Popper: A cherry tomato sandwiched between a scoop chip filled with cheese dip and a scoop chip filled with jalapeño cream cheese dip.
• Cheese Squirt: A “burrito” which consisted of guacamole, cream cheese, cheese dip, and pizza rolls rolled up in slices of cheddar cheese.
• Southwest Tower of Power: A scoop chip filled with jalapeño cream cheese spread, cheese dip, and corn salsa, topped with a pizza roll and a Funyun.
• Seven-Layer Chip: Chip, cream cheese, chip, cheese dip, chip, guacamole, chip. Eaten in one bite.
• Swamp Thing: Guacamole-stuffed turkey ball and cheese dip in-between two scoop chips.

There was also a lot of talk about corndog batter, although we didn’t have any (this time).

So, if you don’t know, the advertising agency I work for works exclusively with colleges. Wednesday, we had some clients in the office from a group of Adventist colleges. As you can imagine, they’re deeply religious and very conservative as well. My co-worker, Sheri, had to give a presentation to a room full of these clients, so she did her best to look like them: she wore a conservative skirt and blouse, and actually removed all of her jewelry and left it at a friend’s desk. (Adventists apparently don’t wear jewelry.)

So she gave her presentation, and from what I hear, it actually went over quite well. They were very receptive to her ideas and seemed very eager to talk to her. All in all, a successful meeting.

After the meeting, she went back to retrieve her jewelry. When she got there, she said, “Oh yeah, I’m going back to being a bad girl now!”

Her friend laughed and said, “The dollar is a nice touch.”

“What?” Sheri said.

Sheri had visited the vending machine earlier, but decided not to get anything. Since she was wearing a conservative skirt, she didn’t have any pockets, so she stuck the dollar into her bra. She forgot about the dollar. So she gave her entire presentation to the Adventist enrollment association with a dollar bill sticking visibly out of her cleavage.

People are still coming up to her and asking her to make change for larger bills. It’s still funny, even after two days.

I debated not posting this, but it’s too funny to pass up.

I had a conversation with a few co-workers a while back about how to name some of our internal training classes. When it got to my class on personality types, this exchange happened:

person 1: How about, “How to work with your schizophrenic co-workers”?
person 2: Ooh! How about, “How to work with bipolar people”?

Seriously, what are the odds?

Just a disclaimer: I’m not really all that offended by this.

I haven’t been able to blog about this, since I have some co-workers that read my blog, but I got a promotion today that I’ve been working on for a while. I’m now manager of a group of web designers/developers. Right now, I have two people under me, but I will soon have three. I’m still maintaining a lot of my old responsibilities on my old team, but I’ll be training someone else to be able to cover them as well, so my team shouldn’t suffer much because of it.

I’ll start having meetings real soon here to figure out exactly what this is going to look like and what exactly my new job will entail. I may have some stories in the coming week or two about that.

In other news, our department presentation for the company meeting was turned into a Renaissance play involving a knight, a dragon, and some minstrels. I’m in charge of costumes. At this time, I’m not exactly sure how that happened.

Given my recent luck with all things computer-related, you might expect that this is a post about me getting a computer virus, but it is actually about me getting a regular sickness-causing virus. I’ve been sick since the Friday before last with some mystery virus that has all but knocked me on my ass. I’m way, way tired, no matter how much sleep I get, and I get these nasty headaches sporadically throughout the day. I have a swollen throat from time to time as well. I saw a doctor about it, but he was pretty confident it was just a run-of-the-mill virus that I would just have to wait out. So if you’re wondering why I’ve been unresponsive or M.I.A. lately, that’s why: I’m spending my spare moments sitting or lying down.

Complicating matters is the number of important meetings I’ve been having at work. For instance, I would have come home this afternoon, but I had two meetings with senior management and one with my manager and senior team to discuss coaching redistribution. All together, I spent four hours in meetings today. And that’s not bad—I’m actually getting a lot of important stuff accomplished in these meetings—it just makes it harder to take time off when I need it.

So I will be constructing a bot to answer general questions and give unsolicited opinions while I am away from work. This bot will be programmed with over 2,000 quotes from Soren Kierkegaard, and will be able to pick a location to go to lunch as well as decipher XML server responses. The bot will have complex artificial intelligence to detect when others are talking about fantasy sports, and will be programmed to put on headphones in those situations and listen to Sigur Rós or Explosions in the Sky.

Man oh man, I have a headache.

It’s that time of year again! Culture Club campaigning has just begun at PlattForm! For those who don’t know, each year, PF employees elect a group of individuals to help keep the atmosphere here fun and engaging. This group plans activities and social events, both in and outside of work.

I’m not running, but I’m managing a campaign for one of my co-workers, Dan Carr. Here are the posters I came up with:

• Poster 1
• Poster 2
• Poster 3

Tasteless? Probably.

In other news, I think I’m coming down with something. I went home early on Friday and laid down for the remainder of the day. I laid down most of Saturday and after church on Sunday. I had an abnormal amount of trouble getting up this morning. I just asked today, and that was the first symptom that my co-workers had when they recently got sick. Sigh.

Taken from my annual self-assessment, which I just sent to my director:

List any topics you would like to discuss with your supervisor during your review:
Given that mine is such a free-form role, I’d like to discuss the future expansion of my role and responsibilities in the coming year, rooted in the expanding needs of the team. I would also like to discuss the ontological impact the emerging Postmodern mindset has had on the career college industry with specific regards to Kierkegaardian Existentialism and gunsmithing.