Patrice

It’s a couple of years old….but I found this post that just strikes so close to home that I find it hysterical. Web designers…enjoy.

If Architects Had To Work Like Web Designers…

Dear Mr. Architect:

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.

Keep in mind that the house I ultimately choose must cost less than the one I am currently living in. Make sure, however, that you correct all the deficiencies that exist in my current house (the floor of my kitchen vibrates when I walk across it, and the walls don’t have nearly enough insulation in them).

As you design, also keep in mind that I want to keep yearly maintenance costs as low as possible. This should mean the incorporation of extra-cost features like aluminum, vinyl, or composite siding. (If you choose not to specify aluminum, be prepared to explain your decision in detail.)

Please take care that modern design practices and the latest materials are used in construction of the house, as I want it to be a showplace for the most up-to-date ideas and methods. Be alerted, however, that kitchen should be designed to accommodate, among other things, my 1952 Gibson refrigerator.

To insure that you are building the correct house for our entire family, make certain that you contact each of our children, and also our in-laws. My mother-in-law will have very strong feelings about how the house should be designed, since she visits us at least once a year. Make sure that you weigh all of these options carefully and come to the right decision. I, however, retain the right to overrule any choices that you make.

Please don’t bother me with small details right now. Your job is to develop the overall plans for the house: get the big picture. At this time, for example, it is not appropriate to be choosing the color of the carpet.

However, keep in mind that my wife likes blue.

Also, do not worry at this time about acquiring the resources to build the house itself. Your first priority is to develop detailed plans and specifications. Once I approve these plans, however, I would expect the house to be under roof within 48 hours.

While you are designing this house specifically for me, keep in mind that sooner or later I will have to sell it to someone else. It therefore should have appeal to a wide variety of potential buyers. Please make sure before you finalize the plans that there is a consensus of the population in my area that they like the features this house has. I advise you to run up and look at my neighbor’s house he constructed last year. We like it a great deal. It has many features that we would also like in our new home, particularly the 75-foot swimming pool. With careful engineering, I believe that you can design this into our new house without impacting the final cost.

Please prepare a complete set of blueprints. It is not necessary at this time to do the real design, since they will be used only for construction bids. Be advised, however, that you will be held accountable for any increase of construction costs as a result of later design changes.

You must be thrilled to be working on as an interesting project as this! To be able to use the latest techniques and materials and to be given such freedom in your designs is something that can’t happen very often. Contact me as soon as possible with your complete ideas and plans.

PS: My wife has just told me that she disagrees with many of the instructions I’ve given you in this letter. As architect, it is your responsibility to resolve these differences. I have tried in the past and have been unable to accomplish this. If you can’t handle this responsibility, I will have to find another architect.

PPS: Perhaps what I need is not a house at all, but a travel trailer. Please advise me as soon as possible if this is the case..

Stranger things have happened, but not to me. I was honored to be contacted by the new Admins for the SitePoint (www.sitepoint.com) forums to do a member interview. I LOVE that website! Thanks Nicky & Sarah !

I hate that I have wasted half the day already. So much to do..arg… Mowing the yards…again… will have to wait until tonight or the morning. I think it’s going to be another scorcher. So I’ll just make a list of inside stuff and try to knock out some of it. It would be so much easier to just crank the air up and curl up with a book…but I don’t have any new books to read. Things to do today…1. get off the computer (what is this?!…I NEVER BLOG…yet here I am postponing the inevitable… by blogging); 2. file ALL my bills; 3. wash the floors, (the dog needs a washing too - nothing worse than that baked dog smell - yack); 4. Find the clean clothes and fold them and put up…(the absolute WORST job ever..I’d rather scrub toilets); 5. scrub the toilets; 6. Figure out what we are going to eat since we have no money and we don’t get paid until Friday; 7. vacuum; 8. dust (2nd worse job). 9. Update Cymbalholic; 10. Update blog software; 11. work on a few other personal websites. 12. Find new chair to put in front of computer that doesn’t make my butt instantly numb; 13. Learn how to punctuate.
Yeh right. Like any of that is going to happen.

update: I did 1-3 on the list today…so I feel like I’m not a total slacker.

So, what was I thinking?

I’m not much of a talker, so why would I be much of a writer. And I really have a mundane slow paced life, which is how I like it. Maybe not the mundane part, but I seem to have used up all my adventurous energy during my early 20s. Guess I’m just pissy from being sick, again. I have had 4 colds/bugs in the past 6 months, which coincides with us switching gyms.

Spent today mostly sleeping and working on gathering info for new media kit for cymbalholic.com so that we can get some sponsors in order to afford switching to a dedicated server. God, I hope we can find 9 sponsors. I really don’t want to add anything more to the site until we can successfully get it moved.

No, this is nasty in the sense of GROSS.

Milo, our black adopted stray bastard cat, has figured out how to escape our fenced in backyard. So we have established this ritual of me going to the front door to let him in before I go to work in the morning.

4 weeks ago I heard cat yelling out the front before work and I ran out front and Milo was having a standoff with one of the many cats in the neighborhood. The other cat ran off and Milo followed me in the house where I checked him out and didn’t see any sighs of an altercation. Plus when the dog randomly attacks Milo, he goes hiding and acts all put out.

2 weeks ago he started breaking out in white scabs all over his body and he wouldn’t let touch his right ear. I brought him to the vet when I took my dog in for her yearly vaccinations. Of course the vets treated me like an over-zealous worrier and told me that they didn’t see anything and asked if I had changed his food, our detergent, or if he had been in a fight. No, no, and no. I never saw or heard a fight with the other cat, just the standoff where they make noises like drunken elephants and Milo didn’t act hurt. And believe me …he acts.

So took him home thinking I must be crazy for thinking that he had a problem and I’m just paranoid.

One week later. Chad and I come home from work and Milo’s cheek is the size of a golf ball. I immediately think crap something has bit him. So carefully look at him. Looking for two fang marks to just rule out snake and only see one possible mark which makes me think stinger.
So, having been through this with my dog, I get online and make sure that it’s ok to give the cat Benadryl.

One thing I learned before giving the cat Benadryl, it will make some cats foam PROFUSELY at the mouth. I gave him one dose and the foam works started. Man, was he pissed!!! Medicine administered. The lump seems to be not so swollen. I go to bed.

During the middle of the night, Milo jumps on me and then comes and rests by my head, where he usually sleeps, then leaves. I throw my arm to hug my pillow afterward and felt a little bit of wetness. Thinking the damn cat has been outside bringing in muddy feet and climbing all over my sheet and me…. I go back to bed.

Waking up. Milo comes running to me and the nastiness and smell of his face…makes me want to retch. It wasn’t a bite; it was a monstrous ABSCESS. And it had ruptured all over his face, my bed, and our house. Oh…I’m sick just thinking about it. Our house looked like a crime site from him shaking his head all over it. Blood splatters everywhere.

So I take him back to the vet and they asked… has he been in a fight? Well, I guess so. Since it was the same side of the face, by the right ear when I brought him in a week ago and y’all told me he was fine and i was worried over nothing.

So they shaved behind his ear and cleaned up the rest of it. Yack.

So now the little bastard is driving me up the wall because I won’t let him outside, because he has an open wound and I can’t handle any more nastiness.

I just found out from my brother that one of my favorite book series, A Song of Ice & Fire, is going to be made into an HBO mini-series like Rome!!!

Now I have to figure out how to get HBO. Damn. And I was just about to get rid of our cable.

HBO just rocks. Favorite show, The Wire. And now favorite books being made into a series for HBO?!?!

Ok not only have I decided to install Wordpress onto my personal website because I’m obvious too …uh-hem… “busy” to keep a website by any other means, but I’ve also started by not using my own design — 2 strikes against me. Actually it should be three strikes because the design has PINK in it and i HATE pink and black (which I don’t like black as a background color in websites). I must be on drugs. I blame the dieting.