Subject: Technicalities Resent-From: nystaff@agency.com Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 08:26:05 -0400 From: Mitch Golden To: "Staff (New York)" Technicalities Oct 29, 1999 *) Praise for yours truly Well, there was no Technicalities last week. That was, you may recall, what I had promised to begin with - these are occasional. I finally skipped a week, and boy did the kudos come in. _So_ many people thanked me for the respite. Thank you, thank you, it's nice to be appreciated, even if it's just for keeping my mouth shut. aaron sugarman wrote: > > mitch: > > silence is golden. pls keep up the good work. > > mucho thx. > a. I'm looking forward to much more such praise. After this week's note, the quiet will seem that much more pleasant. *) The Ad Man The newest member of the Tech department is Scott Huang, who joins us from Ogilvie Interactive. He was an old teammate of Jamie Corl's, and she claims he can walk on water. Those who've worked with Jamie know that she is pretty good at superaquatic transportation herself, so this recommendation is highly valued. Scott is an expert at Lotus Notes, though we're hoping not to subject him to using it. Current plans call for Scott to work on the Colgate team, on a project we expect will start soon. *) Great Scot! On the fourth floor, on the way to the small conference room, you will find a sign that says "You are now entering British soil". In that row you will find one Mr. James McHugh, the biggest fan of all things Scottish. His cube bears a poster emblazoned "A Pint and a Fight, a Great British Night". His desk frequently sports books such as "How the Scots Saved the Universe" and other such titles. It's remarkable that James likes to eat haggis, but more amazing is the work he has quietly done for Armstrong. The armstrong.com website is built on Lotus Notes. That is to say, it's _now_ built exclusively on Notes - it used to have a product search that employed other technology. This was a rather great annoyance to Armstrong, since they had periodically to extract their product data from their Notes database and export it to another application. This resulted in work for them and out-of-date listings on the site. Enter James. The project (known for some reason as Frankenstein) was to make the search run directly off their Notes database. Like others in the Tech Department, James rose to the challenge of using a new technology and bringing in a project on time and under budget. If you check out the Ceilings section for the website you can use the results of James's handiwork. (It's sort of buried, unfortunately - AGENCY.COM didn't do the IA.) It has been up for a few weeks now. When I told James I was going to tell everyone about the great work he did on the Armstrong site, he ended the conversation with "Be sure to tell everyone I'm Scottish." To which I replied "Huh? What did you say?" *) Corrections I know that many of the readers of these missives regard each syllable as gospel. And yes, here at Technicalities we struggle to have the highest standards of truth and accuracy - utterly unsullied by the corrupting influences of "advertorial news" so prevalent today. (But look for the "Sponsored by Razorfish" logos on the new Tech Department sweatshirts.) It is with some regret therefore, that we have to report some factual errors the last time around. ** Jeff Dibartolomeo does not have 8 weeks vacation at his new job - he was indeed pulling my leg. Then again, I did warn you about that. Those of you who have been asking him for a job, forget it. ** In the second game at the Tech-Know-Bowl Laurence Hill actually beat Chris Stetson. (The score of Chris's marriage was correctly reported.) ** Of course I know that the word is "soccer", not "socker". That was an error introduced in the typesetting process.