Reverb 10, Day 3. Moment.

N and I at Balkonen in Tivoli, opening night of Jultid there.

Just in from Copenhagen cold into the cozy warmth, sitting on the balcony overlooking the park, with all the holiday lights just lit, surrounded by candles and the smells of the Julbuffet.

N, and smiles, and laughter, and just being in the moment. At the occasion. Hygge.

prompt.

Cross-platform documentation

Fair warning: there may be no blog post tomorrow. I'll be at Hersheypark and I suspect we'll be there late. I'll try to make it up over the weekend.

We have a new writer/editor on board as of yesterday. Desperately needed, I might add. I've already passed her two tasks that I really needed an editor's eye on, and she already caught a typo I missed (I did write it and hadn't proofed it yet--nor had I put it up yet, but that's beside the point).

I'd love to tell the story and link it, but it's not ready for public viewing just yet. I'll give some background instead.

In a cost-saving/environmentalist attempt to be more efficient, our office is going to stop sending a letter reminding students who apply that we're missing information from them like standardized test scores and their high school transcript. Instead, we'll be directing them to their online account with us, where they can view their regularly-updated status and see exactly what we're missing at the time.

In the past, this letter and the transcript or scores often crossed in the mail, prompting anxious calls. At the same time, I expect we'll get "I didn't know I had to check that" calls from now on, even though we've made every effort to point them to the resource, and we know that most students are using it. Obsessively, even.

So there's rewriting of current material to be done. We have to catch everywhere we might mention that letter.

Even though the process of halting this letter started almost last year at this time, it was only today that we made the decision to stop the letter entirely. Starting tomorrow.

So there was, of course, a bit of a scramble to make sure we'd killed it everywhere we needed to. Most of it was double-checking on things I'd changed six months ago and forgotten about for certain, but it was a scramble nonetheless. I checked the last place I needed to at about 5:10 this afternoon.

In the process, a few things were proven to me.

I had considered asking the new writer/editor to help me locate the letter references, but quickly dismissed that as folly. She would have no idea where to start other than a search engine. 

If I hadn't been in the office today, this might have been a problem. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I really do think that I'm the only one in the office that knows all the content on our site backwards and forwards. And given that memory isn't always my strong suit (I digitize most of it to give me more processing room), that resource needs to reside somewhere else too.

Basically, I'd argue that for a large site containing lots of procedures, you need documentation for where things that may need to be changed reside. And it has to cross platforms.

We've yanked a lot of references in my time with Admissions:

• SAT I became just SAT.
  
• We used to recommend against the rush option for their scores--strangely enough, there was a time this came to us via paper, whereas the normal scores came electronically and were loaded faster. 
  
• We used to take scores as official if they were printed on a high school transcript. No longer.

And that's just standardized test scores.

Now that I've been there long enough and I know all of our materials, I can name most of the spots all the above used to appear: which brochures (viewbook, fact brochure), presentations (prospect, out-of-state, SASD), letters (AU001--the missing information letter; a host of others not worth mentioning), pages on our site (news/html/newsat.htm, from our old site--and I'm sure you can recognize the archaic structure there), the application for admission, and a ton of standard email we send out as reminders.

It's the pieces I don't touch regularly that have gotten missed. I found an email from what used to be a separate team in the office that still has both the rush score and transcript mention that was sent out as recently as last January.  And, I suspect, more recently than that still, but have yet to have proof.

Our office is, unfortunately, a bit of a Kraken: multi-armed and sprawling. Such is the nature of a large office with independent functions, much less a large university or a multi-campus institution like ours. We can occasionally collect all our arms, but most of the time a tentacle does get loose. They're squirmy little buggers.

And no, I'm not going to make the Cthulhu comparison some of you might be expecting.

But back to my point.

Not everyone in the organization is going to be an expert. You'll always have new staff. Help with managing sites, processes, etc is always welcome. Documentation may be key to keep all your miscellaneous bits in line.

Everything is Miscellaneous, and it doesn't always flock as neatly as Weinberger demonstrates. Learn to manage your organization's information, both for the benefit of your own memory and sanity, and to help the new folks on your team.

Music, voice, and job developments

I ought to just commit to writing here after yoga every Tuesday, because it seems like I almost always have something in my head to put here afterwards. I blame the brain-expansion.

Normally I don't sing in the car. Today, however, I was belting out Splashdown's "Ironspy" both before and after class. I noted that afterwards was much stronger than beforehand: in that case, I suspect it's the navel work we did, which made me feel and use those muscles much more once I rediscovered them (as I do virtually every time I do yoga, I might add--but between times, I forget about them again. yet another reason to start practicing daily).

You may not know this about me, but when I was younger (starting when I was about eight), I took voice lessons for years. Performed a lot of Phantom and Les Mis when they were all the rage. But, of course, I realize now that I've nigh-forgotten the breath technique I learned then to support my tone.

Then again, there's probably a lot of random nonsense you might not know (Dad, you're an exception, of course). Like that I went to modeling school as well. I might add that I was far too young to do so--nor did I have the appropriate body type. But my mom put me through it anyway.

All this aside, I also realized that I no longer have the same memory triggers with music that I used to. Automatically, at least. Perfect example: Splashdown I first got intensely interested in when I was dating N, so logically one should conjure memories of the other, right? Not so much anymore.

I think it's that I've achieved enough emotional balance that music no longer acts as an immediate trigger. I can let my mind drift to it, but if I don't want to or don't think of it, I don't. On the one hand this is a very good development--certain songs no longer upset me. On the other hand, it's not so great--some of those triggers are what made me enjoy the song in the first place.

As an abrupt left turn, I need to call Uncle Len tonight. Hopefully I'll remember to after this. I also chatted with my ex-grandboss over this past weekend, and as a mental note I need to remember to email him after the Windows Media Player-friendly version of the podcast is up. I don't know what to call him in here anymore, since he's no longer my grandboss. Perhaps just by his initial, as I do most everyone else, which is P. His initials are P.S, which prompts the joke that if he ever created his own university, its shorthand would also be PSU. It was good to talk to him again: hopefully that'll continue now that I won't be seeing him virtually every day at work.

Speaking of work, it's official (to me, anyway--paper signed and all: the announcement has yet to go out to the office, but that'll happen soon enough). That really important day this past Friday? Was my interview for the assistant director position that had opened up in our office. I'm now an Assistant Director for Undergraduate Admissions: I believe my internal title will be Assistant Director of Electronic Communication, meaning I'll be managing any online delivery of information/messaging, internal and external. Which is, I might add, something I've been doing (much of, not all of) anyway, though as only a small part of my former job's description thus far (I've been going above and beyond, as is my wont with things that interest me). It's exciting: new office, new title, new salary, new conferences, new responsibilities, new opportunities. I've been getting management advice from friends and mentors, some of it coincidental, some of it after they found out. I'll do fine, I know I will: I've been doing this stuff already, quite frankly going outside the limits of my job description to do so.

I'm looking forward to these changes, all in all.

yoga as practice, yoga as technology

I just got back from yoga, and am enjoying that stage where I can feel every muscle that worked, which provides me with an odd sort of loose-limbed grace. Combine that with one of two mental states that usually occurs thereafter--either so fully open and relaxed that I'm taking in everything all at once and feeling no need to process it, or so completely focused and energized that I often go back to work and bang out half of the day's tasks in an hour or two--and it makes for a very fluid drive home. I'm experiencing the former state today, though this time I was able to free myself from the urge that often accompanies it--that of not wanting to break that state and focus on anything. But at the moment, I have a keyboard at hand, and everything's fine. This focus is an easy one for me--though of course, I'm not entirely sure if it's an appropriate state for clear writing. We'll see, I suppose.

This semester I decided to change to taking this class twice a week, and I'm glad I did.

Tonight, after finishing savasana and wrapping class with a "namaste" given and returned, I did an impromptu sarvangasana--a shoulderstand. Since I was already warmed up, I didn't even hesitate: I pretty much rolled back and went straight up, no prop, no nothing. After my teacher realized what I was doing, she called out a couple of tips, to which I adjusted immediately.

I feel the need to mention here that when I first started, I hated inverted poses like this. The first class where we were to try them, I asked the forthright question of "do we have to do these?" Not being impertinent at all: it was an honest question of if they're integral to a yoga practice. I wanted a good reason before I subjected myself to them. I was afraid of tipping over and hurting myself--and not unreasonably so, I might add. But now I love these poses. They change your viewpoint, and not just at the time.

I've also been remembering the changed viewpoint of when I practiced on the roof of a building in Indianapolis at sunset. Very dramatic, very memorable. Loved it. On that trip as well as others, I had brought along my Yoga Paws--mitts and sock bits that simulate a yoga mat without having one with you--intending to practice wherever I went: rest stops and hotel rooms and parks and mountains and streams. I only remember actually practicing at one rest stop, and both that and the rooftop bit were done without the Yoga Paws. So while helpful, they're probably unnecessary. I'd rather do the yoga than take the time to hunt down the accessory, because if the hunt takes too long, I might not do yoga at all. At that time.

But as some teachers and publications might tell you, while you might be "doing" yoga during a class or a session, it does become a way of life. Your practice extends to the rest of your time, to one extent or another. Just on the way home, I found myself adjusting my shoulders and arms to drive optimally without constricting muscles that I tend to coil too much. I've found myself unconsciously doing yoga adjustments while drying my hair, doing the Down-Dog tilt with my head upside down. After a long trip, Dad and others have seen me go into Tree Pose, Cobbler's Pose, Mountain Pose.

I sat down and made a list of all the poses I knew off the top of my head one day. It was impressively long, and rather amusing to read. Just some of the animalistically-named poses are fun: Fish, Camel, Cat/Cow, Sphinx, Cobra, Pigeon. I love Pigeon. Some people hate Pigeon. But to be fair, there's a lot of poses I find challenging that others don't, and vice versa. But I digress.

For the last six days, my voice has come in and out. No reason that I can discern. Grand-boss says I sound like Lauren Bacall. We tried to figure out a modern equivalent that prospective students might understand and came up short. But my point is that I asked Christine for any tips she might have for such. She gave a few and told me to try one. I did, and instantly felt things clear. While it's not magic, as Arthur C. Clarke said: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Working with the loosest definition of the term, yoga (and jin shin-jitsu, which is also a bit of what she showed me) is then technology.

From a simple expression about returning home from class to yoga as technology in less than 800 words, even allowing for meandering. Welcome to my brain.