Monday, March 3, 2008

First Customer of the Day

Today was strange. Everything seemed to go well. I felt good, which was surprising because I basically drank all freakin' day yesterday.

I set to work on a web project I've worked on for a few months. Everything came easy this time. All the mod_rewrite crap, the search engine, even the file system I planned early on seems to work mostly as expected.

In between each of the day's tiny administrative triumphs I went to the piano and worked on that A Flat Minor thing started yesterday. It's got some distance to go but it was cool to re-visit it today and find that it still sounded interesting.

Who can explain the highs and lows? I would not want to explain it even if I thought I could. Today was not exactly a high but after last week it seemed like it.

I was completely dead inside for a few days last week. I felt like nothing, and to be nothing would have come as a relief. Days like these come and go but the disabling feelings of depression hadn't been that strong since the corporate youth days.

Who cares.

....

The morning today was wasted, but it was a fun way to waste a couple of hours. I started writing a word-of-the-day thing about the word "Chickasaw." I have never been much for native American lore but I know that the Chickasaw were a distinct peoples.

I know this because I attended summer camp as a grade-schooler from 1978 to 1980, and at those summer camps the kids were grouped in "tribes." My first year at camp I was in the Chickasaw tribe.

I found a web site for alumni of that summer camp. The site is filled with pictures from the 1970s, and I spotted myself in one of those pictures.

I got too distracted to finish the Chickasaw story, which will talk about the sound of that word versus the sound of the names of the other tribes.

The other day I spotted "Town Car" and started writing an essay about that car name. I changed my mind when I couldn't find any one story to focus on. "Town Car," could be the title of my father's biography, though, and I could fill many screens with my observations on his relationship with his car.

....

That web project I polished off today is a searchable version of Webster's 1828 English Dictionary. The Webster's 1828 is considered by some to be the finest English dictionary ever published. Religious fundamentalists like that dictionary because it cites more scripture than any other dictionary.

Today my 1828 site got its first-ever visitor. Someone found the site by typing "Webster's 1828 Dictionary" into a search engine.

This person looked up several words: Divine. God. Holy. Jesus. If their search terms were any indication then this person seemed to fit the profile of an 1828 Webster's reader.

After looking up several words from biblical verses this person surprised me by looking up FIRE FART.

Fire Fart? Is that from scripture? Is that some Cotton Mather apocalyptic preaching?

I only watch hit reports that closely while working on a new site. I watch the access_log for errors. Today a live person wandered in.

For me that's a really cool thing to set up a new site and be tailgazing when the first visitor arrives.

It reminds me of a time a friend and I road-tripped to Cape Cod. We found a resturant that looked OK, and we stepped in a few minutes after 12 noon.

The place was empty except for 3 or 4 employees, every last one of whom looked at my friend and me with obvious shock and bewilderment. It was a strange welcome, but the mood quickly turned normal and we ordered lunch.

We paid our bill and the waitress laughed, telling us that the place had just opened for business for the first time at 12 noon. We were the first customers ever to enter the place. It was a new building, a new business, a new place. And we were the first customers ever.

My first customer of the today ordered Divine, Holy, Jesus, and a Fire Fart.

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