Scott Bush

How do you spend a rare Sat­ur­day not oth­er­wise occu­pied by fam­ily com­mit­ments, projects, house­work, etc.? Sleep in? Good guess, but no. Catch an early flick? Wrong again. Read a book you’ve been try­ing to fin­ish for weeks? Close, but no cigar. Try dri­ving down to Puyallup to judge high schooler’s news­pa­per lay­outs. Bingo.

Yep, I’m a glut­ton for pun­ish­ment. For the third year now I’ve judged at the WJEA state con­fer­ence. It’s always a Sat­ur­day and since it always seems to be located in a far-flung cor­ner of our state (okay, Puyallup isn’t that far), we have to leave early to be there by 11am. I say “we” because my friend and fel­low alum­nus of the Hawk­eye’s ban­ner year, 1995, Larry Harn­den came with me on 5 March—in fact, he drove. He, too, judged newspaper/newsmagazine layout.

Why bother?

It really is impor­tant, though. As a stu­dent, I par­tic­i­pated in write-off com­pe­ti­tions at the state jour­nal­ism con­ven­tion. Get­ting feed­back from pro­fes­sion­als in the com­mu­nity is very mean­ing­ful even if you don’t win an award. That’s why I tend to write too much, often to the cha­grin of my fel­low judges who want to get out of there before 3pm. Sure, you can just cir­cle the num­ber next to each cri­te­ria, but that’s sub­jec­tive and frankly, doesn’t help a stu­dent learn. Point­ers about tech­ni­cal aspects of the lay­out are use­ful, while high­light­ing its pos­i­tive aspects where deserved really do encour­age and teach. That, after all, is why we’re there. (It’s cer­tainly not for the lunch, which again this year was sub sand­wiches and again, no veg­e­tar­ian options.)

The judg­ing

This year the com­pe­ti­tion (and there­fore judg­ing) was slightly dif­fer­ent: stu­dents were judged on their cri­tique of a very bad news­pa­per lay­out in addi­tion to the reg­u­lar design ele­ments of story place­ment, col­umn use, photo place­ment and crop­ping, printer instruc­tions, font choice, etc. It’s good to intro­duce a hybrid approach, as not all stu­dents are adept at the man­ual lay­out method. Okay, reverse that: few stu­dents are adept at not using InDesign/Quark/PageMaker for com­pos­ing their lay­out. So stu­dents who know the con­cepts of good news­pa­per design can show that by iden­ti­fy­ing the obvi­ous prob­lems with a bad lay­out (and the sub­tler ones, too). I was excited to learn a few days later that one of the Hawkeye’s del­e­ga­tion, Kat Waldo, earned a supe­rior in that cat­e­gory! Good for her; there weren’t a ton of out­stand­ing entries and from what I remem­ber, the “excel­lent” ones were quite good. (The jud­ing is against stan­dards, not other stu­dents; awards are: hon­or­able men­tion, excel­lent, and supe­rior. There can be no more than 10% supe­ri­ors and 20% excel­lent awards given. This cat­e­gory had 17 con­tes­tants, so only two excel­lents could be awarded, and only one superior.)

Mini-reunion

The day was a reunion of sorts. In addi­tion to Larry and myself, Mike Wat­ters of Colby Cre­ative pre­sented a sem­i­nar (twice!) about work­ing as a graphic designer. Jeff Nusser, now advi­sor of the Jag­wire news­magazine at Emer­ald Ridge High School, was the orga­niz­ing chair of the con­fer­ence. Also pre­sent­ing was Michael McLaugh­lin, whose “Hella Tight” ses­sion I was sad to miss (it was about writ­ing con­cisely, not rap lyrics, though I see where you may have been con­fused). Jeff and both Mikes are also alums (’95 and ’91 for the elder Mike). It’s amaz­ing that after all this time we’re still involved in vary­ing degrees to stu­dent jour­nal­ism. Our friend and for­mer (as well as cur­rent) advi­sor of the Hawk­eye, Vince DeMiero, prob­a­bly got a bit of a kick out of that as well. If only Stacey had been there with our negatives…

But still…

It wasn’t all slices of fried gold though. Check out this par­tic­u­larly won­der­ful image depict­ing com­mon sense at its finest. Yep, it says “EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY ALARM WILL SOUND,” yet there it was, propped wide open. Espe­cially poignant in a school library, where clearly some­one couldn’t read. Or was it that they knew no alarm would sound? Either way it’s not good.

In a fit of rap-inspired click­ing, I added Get Rich or Die Tryin’ to our Net­flix queue. Last week it arrived and I watched it—to my sur­prise, with Crys­tal. I hadn’t expected her to want to see it, being a psuedo bio-pic about 50 Cent, the pop­u­lar ganster rap star and founder of the “G-Unit clique.” My impres­sion? Watch­able (assum­ing you don’t mind F– and S-bombs and con­sis­tent depic­tions of gun vio­lence), though I have some misgivings.

Plot

The story fol­lows Cur­tis (hmmm… isn’t that 50 Cent’s real first name, too?), a young boy grow­ing up in the ghetto (of Chicago? St. Louis? Atlanta? If the film said, I missed it) after the mur­der of his mother. Desire for wealth and power leads him to deal­ing crack with is crew, even­tu­ally “ris­ing to power” among his gang. After a stint in jail, he decides to pur­sue his dream of becom­ing a rap­per under the name Young Caeser. Rap­ping is inter­twined with his life as a gang­ster and gets him in trou­ble with his drug-dealing supe­ri­ors, Colom­bian drug deal­ers, and a rival rap­per. Tie all that up with a search for his mother’s mur­derer, whom he pur­sues with the same feroc­ity as OJ’s search for the “real killers,” which is to say not very much. Oh, and there’s a love inter­est and fam­ily drama sub­plot tacked on.

Glo­ri­fy­ing the lifestyle?

After a few days’ diges­tion, I still couldn’t decide whether the film glo­ri­fied this vio­lent lifestyle, fueled by drug money and a desire for power at all costs. I asked myself: If I was a teen liv­ing a dif­fi­cult life in the city and saw this movie, would I want to emu­late it? Tough ques­tion for me; but I’m only imag­in­ing myself as some­one else. An answer may come a lot eas­ier to some­one strug­gling each day.

On one hand, you see Cur­tis mur­der, rob, steal and in turn be shot and have friends (and his own mon­ther) killed. Not really an adver­tise­ment for the good life. But the movie glosses over these events, which would be all-consumingly neg­a­tive. For exam­ple, one of his crew is shot and is par­a­lyzed. The movie fol­lows Cur­tis and the oth­ers as they seek revenge; later, we see the one who was shot act­ing as a look­out for the crew dur­ing a robbery–from his weheel­chair. When Cur­tis him­self is shot nine time, we see the sur­geons work­ing on him and then recov­er­ing in a nice house we’ve not seen before. Clearly, these guys don’t have health insur­ance… so who’s pay­ing for this? Where are the bills, the police inves­ti­ga­tions, the other unfor­tu­nate facts of life that would accom­pany these hor­rific events in real life?

On the other hand, Cur­tis seems pre-destined to great­ness despite his acts of vio­lence and law­less­ness, which seem to have no neg­a­tive con­se­quence. (Even is stint in jail resulted in fur­ther con­fi­dence in his rap­ping and the serendip­i­tous meet­ing of his future man­ager.) When Cur­tis is shot mul­ti­ple times, the final bul­let misses his head by a chance. His beau­ti­ful girl­friend (with whom he grew up) seems obliv­i­ous to—or choses to ignore—the ter­ri­ble things he does. They have a son, yet never are we shown any morn­ing sick­ness, pre-natal med­ical care, the birth itself, or any of the respon­si­bil­i­ties of par­ent­hood. The final scene is the pin­na­cle of this “path to great­ness” theme. Cur­tis, or rather “Young Cae­sar” pre­pares for a con­cert in his old neigh­bor­hood when he’s approached by the leader of his for­mer drug gang. Of course there’s an alter­ca­tion and his enemy is shot and killed by Cur­tis’ entourage, but not before it’s revealed that the very same man also mur­dered his mother. Not a prob­lem for Cur­tis; he turns his back and starts rap­ping to his ador­ing fans. Very well done indeed. Oh, and how is it that he’s so ripped when he never seems to work out?

I know it’s a bio-pic and rap­pers aren’t exactly known for their humil­ity. But the over­all mes­sage seems to be: do what you need to do to get what you want; damn your fam­ily, friends, the law, com­mon sense, self-preservation, moral­ity, etc. to get it. Not exactly the mes­sage I’d want my teen-age kids (if I had them) to take away. It’s not all bad, though. Young Cae­sar does advo­cate mak­ing pro­tein shakes with Cristal, which I must admit is classy.

The other day I vis­ited a friend’s house to trou­bleshoot their e-mail con­nec­tion. We’d done all the basics over the phone, such as reboot­ing the router, etc. with­out much luck. They reported that there was just one amber light on the cable modem, so I decided to take a look myself.

Some facts: the modem was a Motorola Surf­board on Comcast’s net­work. All its indi­ca­tor lights were dark, save one: the standby light at the bot­tom. Think­ing it was the device, I rebooted it again (as though me unplug­ging it would some­how be dif­fer­ent then my friend doing it). It came up, cycled through the lights, then went to standby again. Hmm… per­haps its Comcast’s net­work? I was about to go call Com­cast when I spied a tiny but­ton atop the modem. Lo and behold, it was a standby but­ton. It had been acci­den­tally pressed, essen­tially putting the device to sleep. Another press and the lights cycled up and con­nec­tiv­ity was restored, rein­forc­ing my rep­u­ta­tion as a tech “genius.”

But really, this had noth­ing to do with technology—it was just poor design. Now, I’m sure there’s a tech­ni­cal rea­son for this standby mode. But there’s no excuse that the but­ton would be so eas­ily pressed and so poorly marked given the impact on the user: it breaks “teh intar­webs”! Let’s go over it:

• Current/bad: black but­ton on a black modem; its hard to notice it’s even there.
• Redesigned/good: use a yel­low but­ton instead; it’d be vis­i­ble and the yel­low not only matches the amber standby indi­ca­tor, it’s the uni­ver­sal color of warning.

• Current/bad: minis­cule, engraved “standby” text label.
• Redesigned/good: use a con­trast­ing color text label instead; its eas­ier to see and might offer a quicker res­o­lu­tion to troubleshooters.

• Current/bad: single-state (and too eas­ily press­able) button.
• Redesigned/good: use a tog­gle switch or a raised/lowered but­ton that pro­vides visual feed­back of the standby state (in addi­tion to the standby indi­ca­tor light).

A redesigned modem imple­ment­ing even one or two of those sug­ges­tions would be very help­ful in these sit­u­a­tions. Sure, this topic is prob­a­bly cov­ered in a users’ guide or a knowl­edge­base arti­cle on Motorola’s or Comcast’s site—but how many peo­ple actu­ally have the user guide? And how can they go online when their modem’s on standby?

Omakase is a Japan­ese word mean­ing “to entrust” or “to pro­tect.” More impor­tantly, in a sushi restu­ar­ant it means “let the chef decide.” Today was my first omakase expe­ri­ence and it could not have been more spec­tac­u­lar. (I real­ize this entry breaks the tit­u­lar rule of Nobody Cares What You Had for Lunch, but this meal was too awe­some not to talk about.) Served on a plat­ter prob­a­bly two feet in diam­e­ter, the spread included:

Sashimi

• Tuna (bluefin)
• Tuna (alba­core)
• Salmon (sock­eye)
• Mack­erel
• Scal­lop
• Octo­pus

Sushi

• Tuna (yel­low­tail)
• Salmon
• Hal­i­bit
• Crab
• Sea urchin
• Sweet shrimp (raw)

This raw-seafood extrav­a­ganza marked my final day as an employee of CESNW/SSP. The lunch was a very gen­er­ous going-away gift, one I won’t soon for­get. As I shared the plat­ter with my col­leagues, I recited a haiku I’d writ­ten the night before as a way to say good­bye. (I tend to ram­ble, so being lim­ited to 12 syl­la­bles forces me to be suc­cinct.) Here it is, titled “New Job”:

My colleagues—nay, friends
Hard to leave for the unknown
Change renews us all

Hap­pily, I will con­tinue to work with CESNW/SSP as a con­sul­tant for web and some design projects. Maybe I can have them pay me in raw fish?

Finally saw The Wicker Man last evening. I’m a fair-weather fan of Nick Cage, and I love a good horror/thriller flick. So it was with some excite­ment that Crys­tal and I sat through this 100-minute film. All I can say is… well, there was a bit of bait-and-switch at the end. Oh, and it goes with­out say­ing this is a spoiler so watch out if you haven’t—and plan to—seen this one.

Premise is good: small town cop wit­nesses a freak acci­dent, goes a lit­tle nuts, and then finds him­self on a quest to help his ex-fiancé find her daugh­ter. (It’s set on an island in the north­west, so there was a lit­tle bit of home in the movie.) In typ­i­cal thriller fash­ion, it has lots of allu­sion and fore­shad­ow­ing with Cage’s character’s dreams. The miss­ing lit­tle girl and the girl killed in the acci­dent that opens the film seem linked. Are they the same? Is one or the other dia­bol­i­cal? Hard to tell, but as he searches out the mys­te­ri­ous island and its matri­ar­chal inhab­i­tants, it promises to be a creepy, pagan-ritual filled ending.

And it is… sort of. I give the movie credit for its bru­tal and totally untra­di­tional end­ing. Here’s the spoiler, so look away if you’re not pre­pared (I wasn’t): the Wicker Man is a two-story effigy that needs a human (along with sev­eral ani­mals) sac­ri­fice before it is burned to appease the gods (of bees and honey, from what I can tell). Cage’s char­ac­ter is duped, cor­nered, and stung with bees (to which he’s aller­gic), then resus­ci­tated with adren­a­line before hav­ing his kneecaps busted with a mal­let á la Kathy Bates and James Cahn in Mis­ery. Truly hor­ri­ble to watch, espe­cially with Cage doing his best to prove he’s in pain. He’s then strung up and drug to the top of the Wicker Man, which is set alight by none other than his “miss­ing” daugh­ter. Hmm… is that irony or just messed up?

As an aside, I was annoyed at the DVD’s menu, which promised a “Shock­ing alter­nate end­ing,” which was no where to be found on the disc. What a rip!

It’s been a busy week, and it’s only (late) Tues­day! I’ve not been post­ing as much lately because I’ve been busy absorb­ing the infor­ma­tion at my new job as the online mar­ket­ing man­ager for Quad­rant Homes. Well, absorb­ing and sit­ting in traf­fic. They’re in Belle­vue, just off I-90, so my com­mute is well… a commute.

My move to this posi­tion came about thanks to my col­league and for­mer boss, Chad Estes. While at Echo­space, I worked closely with the folks at Quad­rant to build the Online Selec­tion Sheet. After Echo­space shut down, Chad con­sulted with Quad­rant for a few years, and when they needed a new per­son to fill the role, he talked me up. A few weeks later, I’m dressed in busi­ness casual and using my elec­tronic keycard!

That’s not to make light about leav­ing CESNW/SSP. It was a very hard deci­sion to leave such a won­der­ful group of peo­ple doing good work. But I trust we’ll find a good replace­ment (I’m help­ing to find my replace­ment) who can help keep them run­ning smoothly.