Rodent Regatta

The time has come to dive deeply into CSS, XHTML, standards, doctypes, validation…again! I’ve produced a laundry list of embellishments I’d like to make to this website. Most stem from a suggestion or request from readers.

You’ve read here many times that I have a mental block when it comes to spanning the connections between a tag in a template, XHTML in an article and the CSS that styles both. A simple example is in order.

What you’re looking at when you click on the thumbnail is a section of my home page. You’re seeing the tags from the Web Developer Toolbar (for Firefox) produced by Chris Pederick. The challenge for me is understanding how to observe that image and go into the stylesheet for the page and make appropriate changes to alter the way links appear within articles.

Please understand—I don’t want to alter the way a link appears in the navbar, in the titles of articles, in the sidebar or anywhere else on the page. I do however want to style the links within an article differently from their existing (obscure) styling.

I know people who see this, visualize the change, find the appropriate selector and change it in less than 30 seconds. For me, this will amount to a half day of trial-and-error digging, research, reading and tedium. That’s the frustrating part about not being a designer with deep skills in web development.

What would you do if you held the reigns at a place that made an announcement like this one? What if less than 90 days later you had to amplify that decision?

Maybe your challenges run to something a bit different. Your engineers and designers came up with a new vehicle. Then, after all your promotion and advertising activity, you learn that the insurance folks have a little different impression of your new car. Sadly, it brings to mind your company’s past.

Clearly, both CEO’s have the toughest jobs in business. It’s time to do something revolutionary. It’s time to stop dithering and make some things happen. Selling nine million cars a year at GMC and with Ford seeking The Way Forward, you cannot shrink to greatness. Do something radical. Regain your prestige, but do it with insanely great products.

I want a Mac, but I want a Mac that I can work with as effectively as I can work with my PC. Wait…perhaps that’s an overstatement. Plenty of days I find myself hating PC’s and Windows and USB and technology…and, I digress. Why haven’t I switched?

The three reasons are beautifully summarized by John Gruber’s essay this morning called Familiarity Breeds a User Base. He quotes liberally from and responds to this entry from Joshua Micah Marshall. However, the spur to the flank that apparently got all of the discussion under way is here.

* * * UPDATE * * * Less to do with Macs per se, but a clear message about technology, here’s I’m just sayin’. * * * UPDATE #2 * * * All (logical) objections notwithstanding, Joshua Micah Marshall bought a Mac.

At roughly 9:00a.m. EST tomorrow, Berkshire Hathaway will post the annual report and letter to shareholders on the web site. Each year we remind readers that careful study of Warren Buffett’s letters and annual reports since 1977 may provide a better education than a couple of years in a top-notch business school. Others said it; we believe it.

Berkshire completed the acquisition of BusinessWire this week. You can read about that here and here.

The company’s results for 2005 will include some charges for the losses incurred for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, other storms and other catastrophic losses. Remember, Berkshire is first and foremost an insurance company, though its list of holdings grows nearly every year. In the third quarter alone, Berkshire recorded almost $3 billion as an estimate against the ultimate losses recorded from Hurricane Katrina.

Yesterday, March 2, 2006, an “A” share of Berkshire closed at $87,000. Many believe that number might be well below the company’s intrinsic value. Let’s watch!

After all the planning and preparation, a large technology project I’ve been leading will wrap up in the next two or three weeks. It’s been a great success for everyone involved.

What’s next? That’s where I need you—fellow participants in life’s Rodent Regatta—to offer some suggestions. I’m looking for a big project. Define big along any of several dimensions: numbers of participants, scope of the challenge, timeline, budget or mission/impact.

Some examples might help:

Leaders at Bass Pro Shops are talking about taking a public arena off Memphis’s books and turning it into one of the great destination stores in the USA. Once they finish the contractual details of acquiring or leasing the property from the city, the fun begins. Architects, engineers, merchandisers and a broad selection of contractors and subcontractors will take the next two years and $75 million to transform the Tomb of Doom into a store rivaling the company’s 300,000 square foot flagship store in Springfield.

Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana has a dream. When oil sits at $200 a barrel and gasoline is $6+ a gallon, many initiatives that have been dismissed will be pursued desperately. Let’s pursue something right now on a national scale. I could see myself spending some time making the Fischer-Tropsch process economically viable in a production environment.

There’s also corn.

Rick Warren’s dream is as big as they come. There are five problems in the world that have proven nearly intractable in the face of government efforts.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Shuttleworth Foundation and Samaritan’s Purse each have great ideas.

Unfortunately, I’m looking for something other than a voluntary opportunity. Who is hiring folks to rebuild the Gulf Coast? The volunteer opportunities abound, but I’m looking for a project-for-pay.

I’m ready to go to work. I’m looking for a project. Let me know what’s on your radar screen! If you’ve got contacts that have inroads into one of these initiatives, I’d like to talk to them. If you know of other big projects, use the comments to tell us about them. Oh…and thanks!