Background Gradients

Here are the gradients you will need to incorporate into each site before next Tuesday.

I don't have all the banner colors so if you don't see your group's link, please provide me a link to your current site so I can pull the color down and create the gradient.

Remember, your background color will be grey (hex number: a9acb1)
and you're background image will be this .jpg file repeated along the X-axis (left to right) along the top.

http://brhandler.iweb.bsu.edu/background/okmovegrad.jpg
http://brhandler.iweb.bsu.edu/background/changegrad.jpg
http://brhandler.iweb.bsu.edu/background/foodtubegrad.jpg
http://brhandler.iweb.bsu.edu/background/hydrowallgrad.jpg
http://brhandler.iweb.bsu.edu/background/popcorngrad.jpg

(just open the link, then right click and hit 'save image as' and use it as needed.

A piece of code similar to this will need to placed just below your header in your HTML/CSS

(it's an image because blogger doesn't like displaying code)

Ask Dr. Dailey if you need any help implimenting it as he knows a crapton more about CSS than I do.

Brian_11_I

This is going to be one of those long posts...skip it, I suggest. It has almost nothing to do with the Simmons chapter other than the world 'objectivity'. Perhaps there will be a point near the end but that's unlikely.

I've been trained for many years as a journalist and (much to the surprise of folks like Liz) individually we all strive for objectivity. It's not until you introduce power structures like heavy-handed advertisers and high-level political influence do we begin to see biases. At the micro level, most journalist are objective and don't allow their personal opinions to interfere with non-editorial content. I could rant for hours at the absurdity of 'liberal media' - but buy me a beer or four and I'll take you on all night.

That being said, Simmons is begging us through this chapter to get away from objectivity and process. Unfortunately, that's been pounded into my head for years. Furthermore, I want to fight for quality objective journalism sans any corporate or political involvement (that includes sponsorship - looking at you Jim Lehrer) for the rest of my life. It makes me so damn sick to look at university newspapers with sissy-ass faculty advisers too afraid of the deans/president coming down on them for allowing their students to fight for a good story and learn from the process. College papers are one of the few entities in the world that should support journalism over anything else. There are no power structures that should stand in their way and advertisers in this setting should go kick rocks. We are the most sought after group to marketers so college journalist should not be afraid to do a story that disenfranchise their advertisers - there are plenty more where that came from.

Here is a personal story that I'm damn proud of. Many of you know I was General Manager at TV2 back at Kent State. Our station did two LIVE newscasts daily - most of which looked like your typical local-market news. Now most of our field reporters were crappy; story titles like "drinking causes bad grades" were aired nightly. There wasn't much I could do as the GM as the news division rested with our News Director (whom I tried to get fired at least 3 times but 'by laws' said I couldn't).

So it's near the end of the school year and my mentor and now ex-professor, Karl Idsvoog, comes bursting into my office to tell me about a story his student picked up. This guy was an investigative journalist for 20 years and also ran his own first-amendment think tank before coming back to academia so you know right where his heart is. Turns out his student found a story about the provost of our university hiring one of his family members to a non-posted, high-profile job. It was literally the biggest story to come across my desk in my tenure at TV2 News. Plus the Daily Kent Stater (newspaper) hadn't even caught the smell of a story let alone doing the leg work so it was ours!

I give the story the green light, load it into the playback server, and wait for 5:30 to roll around. I even bumped the majority of the A block so that this story could get the most prominence.

About an hour after meeting with Karl, our crappy news director strolls in and starts going over the rundown. He sees the story and pulls it. Turns out another professor, a jack-off with tenure and a bad haircut, got smacked around by the Dean upon hearing of the story and told the news director to pull it. Now let me explain why this kid sucked so bad...apparently he has no idea or passion for news, he just happened to get hired by a faculty board who was too dumb to realize this individual was a waste of sperm and eggs. So ignoring the fact that it was a breaking story, we had NO OBLIGATION to suck-up to administration, and it was the most unique publishing environment he'll ever work in...it gets pulled.

I get quietly enraged. The student that produced the package comes to me obviously upset that his best work of his life will never make it to air and I tell him, "I'm sorry, he's news director". This whole time I had no intention of letting this jack-off ruin my newscast. Aside from being GM, I was also the Friday director and it just happened to be my day.

About 10 minutes before the newscast, shortly after the news director had left for the day, I reloaded the package and my old rundown and sent it to the producers. They were ignorant and just followed my instructions. 5:30 rolls around, "and in 3, 2, 1..." - it's on the air. Within the first minute of the package my switchboard lights up. The Assistant Producer is yelling across the control room, apparently that crappy professor was on the phone sceaming. I tell her to transfer the call to me and I pick up the phone and put it back on the hook. Then I just leave the lines open and wait for the package to finish.

People in the newsroom and the control room are all frozen once we get to break and I go into the studio and tell them to get ready to see some administrators and to just stick to script and to let me handle everything. Sure enough by the middle of the C block, the professor who pulled the package is looking through the window along with my crappy news director. I politely inform them of their titles along with mine, 'you would be the faculty adviser and my by-laws say you have no editorial control what-so-ever', 'you are a news director, I am a general manager, I trump you...don't come back to this newsroom till next week'. Obviously they weren't going to give up so, catching wind of the controversy occurring during a live newscast, Karl (the good professor) gets the media lawyer in a full sprint to our building. The lawyer comes in, says that the professor was stifling my first-amendment rights and insisted that he leave the room. He does and things calm down and the rest of the newscast goes on without a hitch.

Then the 6:30 newscast comes along and all of a sudden my rundown is out of ENPS and my teleprompters aren't working. "Wow, just wow" I think to myself and inform our talent that tonight they'll be reading their printed scripts for the A block (which they did better than anyone I've ever seen in a flighty situation like that). We go to air, the story airs, and again I'm getting phone calls. I just ignore them.

Ok, so this great story goes to air, whoever saw it saw it. I felt that, as a journalist, it was my duty to inform the public of this happening on campus before some PR bitch over in the president's office got the chance to 'smooth things over'. I got some flak here and there but the true journalism professors all recognized what I had done (along with the student who produced the package) and in certain company I was a hero.

I graduated about 3 weeks after that and I consider it one of my best accomplishments of my life. Karl called me about 3-4 months later to tell me the package had won a Society of Professional Journalism awards and that the student was now getting amazing job-offers across the country. That award wouldn't have been possible had the story not made it to air. In a little twist of irony, I later saw the crappy professor talking up the award on some internal video - complimenting the excellent work of this student. What a prick.

My whole point on telling this story is that in certain professions true objectivity is more elegant than any heart-tugging story you can pull out. This student will go on to become a premiere journalist soon and it it weren't for professors like Karl Idsvoog it would have never been possible.

To quote Simmons, "It is kind of scary to intentionally stop being objective, even temporarily; but to tell a moving story, that is what it takes." Yeah right, go kick rocks.

I actually find Simmons book to be overall pretty great for this class. I think it's one of the better books I've read on storytelling. Most of our criticism through the semester was at her presentation and uppity attitude not the actual content. Just my two cents

Brian_10_I

I'm going to be completely honest. I suck at telling stories because my memory is freaking shot. I can't remember shit and it drives me nuts. I have all sort of stories but none of them work unless I'm with the guys at a bar talking about guy stuff. My day to day activities are completely uninteresting. I always revel in chad's ability to be in a strange situation and always have a story to tell. I wish I could do that...and I'm pissed I can't. So it's just a crappy downward spiral.

I'm pissed and littered with self-doubt because of everything this lady says. I wish I could tell stories better but I can't because I can't remember them. She says to 'jot' ideas down...well that's great...that'd mean I'd always need a notebook, a pencil and perhaps an audio recorder. When I have that flash it only last a few moments before its gone, often before I can even write the idea down.

I could pay complete attention to everyone's story today and within 30 minutes you could ask me to relate them and I couldn't...at all.

So damnit, give me an F in storytelling.

Brian_9_Q

Chapter 9...I kinda feel like Bozwell on this one. She's jumped to a new level of superiority, imagine that.

I found the chapter to be pretty fair, nothing really ground breaking in any way. The Hitler reference was a good step back to reality and I'm looking forward to ch 10 where they go into more detail.

The idea of not boring your listeners was good and pertinent. Us grad students are rarely bored by anything...but others I'm sure would be. I didn't exactly agree with the just stop talking idea though. If I just stop talking then I'd probably forget what I was going on about and jump subjects. Fuerthmore, and as Tim would probably support, the silence would make the group uncomfortable until someone spoke up... I don't see the goal.

Finally, my question. Simmons sharply criticizes storytelling voice. Ok, fine, it's a way to talk down to people. But what the hell does it have to do with the rest of this chapter. It's a one paragraph little blurb that really doesn't fit the surrounding topics. Did anyone else find this little mention a bit out of line?

Brian_8_I

Ok before I go into my blog, one of Simmon's first line from the chapter reads:

"New ideas need room to grow. When old beliefs crowd new ideas out, the new ones wither and die."

Reminds me of a great Homer Simpson quote:

"And how is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home winemaking course, and I forgot how to drive?"

One more pop culture reference was about 6 lines down from the last. Simmon's relates a question she posed to one of her groups about the definition of listening. Her client responds, "Listening is waiting for my turn to talk." If this doesn't remind anyone of Fight Club I'd be surprised. "Why do you do it?" "Cause when people think you're about to die they really listen instead..." "Instead of just waiting for their turn to talk."

Enough.

Good chapter, probably one of the better ones actually. I try really hard to listen to folks but I'm so distracted and ADD that I kinda suck at it. When it is an important conversation, especially with a girlfriend...I do listen really well. I can always tell that the other person appreciates it so I just do it naturally now. But when people are being sarcastic or talking when I'm in the middle of work I just say 'oh yeah' or 'uhh that sucks'.

Perhaps I need to find a happy medium.

Brian_7_I

Let me start off by saying this, my dad is an urban terrorist.

This is a story I could reflect in class but may as well put it here since it ties into this chapter so well.

On page 159, Simmons talks about adversarial relationships describing another of us vs them sort of situations. One rang very true of a situation I've lived for a good part of my life: "or a neighbor who continues to let her dog poop in your yard...".

My old man is a salty ex-hippy, with 20+ years as a Cleveland Iron Worker...he's worked with the worst type of folks in the world. These are the sort of guys that'll smoke a crack-rock before holding the rope you're father is dangling from while he's welding iron in -10 degree weather at 300' in the air. These guys don't do stories, they do revenge and my dad was the master.

So back to the neighbor with the dog. When I was about 12 they built an extension on our street with homes costing 250k...making our original part of the road looks cheap @ 130k. Mostly young professional families with fast cars and no regard for the children that played in the regularly quiet road moved in. It spurred a you vs me mentality between a lot of us, basically bridged only by the willingness of each groups children to play together.

One of these new neighbors had two large dogs. Originally they'd bring them down to my house near the intersection and they'd shit in our few acres of side yard. Not a big deal except that this yard was basically a playground for the neighborhood children. So my old man makes the calm suggestion that the guy pick up his dogs crap. Being an ignorant young rich guy he basically told my dad to go chase cars. So my dad took to shooting golfballs at the guy while he walked his dogs. A rather good tactic until the guy started sending down his wife instead...in my dad's words...'she needed the exercise' and would gently remind her of that from time to time. She was a snarly old biatch so my mom didn't complain at his level of sexism.

Eventually he confronts them both by stopping his car in the road and not letting them pass. They get into an argument and he makes the point that all the kids play in that yard and he's a f-ass for letting the dogs shit there. Instead of being rational, the guy peels into our yard and passes my dad's truck. I assume he went home to beat his wife...steroid-heads like that always do.

That point forward they'd have the dogs shit in my parents front yard near our house when my dad would leave for work. I'd catch them sometimes and since I was a surly little shit they would also avoid me like the plague. Anyways, we'd come home to little landmines in our yard from time to time.

So I setup a hidden camera system, caught them in the act, and filed charges with the community organization. The family started getting heat from others and their visits were less frequent. My dad didn't quit. He found their property was split between a commercial and a residential zoning lot and made them jump through hoops to keep their house and costing them a ton of money in legal fees.

Finally in a final act of revenge, my dad organized a crew of neighborhood children (with me quietly leading much of the cause of course) to clean all the poop out of the side yard and leave it for the neighbors as a present. Their driveway was nearly impassable so when the wife got home for the day she pulls up to the driveway and gets out of her car screaming. All the kids as well as myself are hiding in the woods near the home chuckling to ourselves. Her husband, who had already driven through the pile staining the entire driveway, came out calm telling her to just drive through it. She continues screaming, he approaches, she slaps him telling him that this whole thing was his fault.

She moved out about a week later, him to follow the next spring.

Morel of the story, don't let your dog shit in the yard where the kids play or you're going to end up divorced and living in a motel.

Brian_6_I

Apparently I help people too much and apparently that's a bad thing. Dr. Joe is on a mission to get me to say 'no' to things and I don't much care for it. Ok, sure I do things so much that I don't do as good as a job on other things had I been focused on them. So what, I'm 23 and I feel the most important thing I can do is network and have people find me useful. I'm pretty afraid that I'll end up not getting the job I want because people won't think I'm useful.

I still get everything done, it just takes longer. I get burnt out by one thing and then it takes tremendous inspiration to get me moving along to the next job. This is where Doc Joe's 'just say no' campaign comes into play. Let me list some of the crap (i mean that nicely...not like evil johnny) I've been doing these last two 1/2 semesters.

National Road dp/producer (ongoing...forever), DS website redesign manager (gently screwed), biotown production assistant (done), subcommittee on dept diversity (done, i guess), LEED touchscreen project preproduction...lots (no $/time, passed on), usability survey on CICS blog system (done, may direct thesis), instructor of record of #5 television school's only f'in lighting course (grade finals, done), Letterman Building - aka moving everyone's shit twice (done, ha), Bullpen setup (done until Martin's survey makes it to Dr Joe / Chesebro), apparent cohort drinking organizer (never gonna stop me now, baby), and Dr. Al's personal PDA fixer (done forever!)

Ok, long list...and I'm quite sure I'm missing something...oh that's right...classes (among other things, I'm sure)

Of all this all I had to do was classes/national road/biotown/cics ... but I said yes to the rest or forced myself upon the project. WHY? Why would someone who complains and bitches about everything do this...because it makes me better at what I do and networks me appropriately. Am I calling out for some credit on this stuff? No! If you must give what i'm doing right now, perhaps refer to it as 'signaling value'. Actually I'm rather humble; the aww shucks Midwest mentality is deep rooted.

(the point)

In chapter 6 Simmons tells the story of one of her participant's father. I guess he made eggnog and would deliver it to the sherrif and mayor's office first as a signifier of respect. Much later when this person's father needed help from these guys to lay the smack down on some scabs, they were much obliged.

It was the little things this man did to help in the long run. I have no damn clue how folks here at BSU will help me in the future but I bet they do. I'm sure they'll help all of us in some way. I just want to leave a mark that says I have a go get 'em attitude, a wide skill set, and a sensitive personality.

Brian_5_I

Wow, I actually really liked something from this book. Great job!

Anyways, here's the quote:

People may give yo a list of rational-sounding things that the think they want but they usually don't know what they want any more than Shiva and Parvati did. ... For instance: "I want a million dollars." Because? "Then I won't have to work for someone else." Because? "I don't like someone else telling me what to do." So it isn't a million dollars that this person wants...it is personal freedom.

She goes on to explain that when you get to the core of a need most people have fundamentally similar desires, and that good storytellers know this. To me this is almost revolutionary. I try to see below the surface of things but often it comes back to the fact I assume everyone has a ulterior motive to basically everything they do. To me, it's never as simple as this quote explains. Man, I'm a cynic.

Brian_4_Q

I think it all comes down to tone for me. I think, at least a lot of the time, I attempt to influence with tone alone yet I'm not very good at it. I know a lot of people think I'm cocky but often times I'm trying to inspire rivalry or competition because I work best in a competitive atmosphere. Other times my tone is influenced less by the situation at hand but rather something happening in the background.

When I'm pissed at my cat for using his razor blade set to rip open his food bag and pouring it all over the room...I often carry that emotion into other situations. Yesterday is a prime example; that little shit spread the food all over the extra bedroom because I wouldn't give him his second 'snack' of the day knowing his full meal was only 4-5 hours away. I woke up, saw the mess, and it set my mood for the rest of the day. My tone responded by being short and authoritarian...exactly the mood I didn't want to portray but my subconscious held onto it so tightly that I couldn't get away. Perhaps if I used the example that Simmons does in saying to my cat in a sweet, high, sing-songish voice, "oh Aristotle, you fat little bastard..." and letting the emotions around cool to the same tone. He probably would have liked it more than me yelling and chasing him and it would have kept me out of my fight/flight mindset. (I almost need to sleep after an F/F situation because it drives my mood the rest of the day...)

So my question, what's the best way to adjust my mood to make my tone sound genuine? Or should I really care?...because a lot of the time I dont.

Brian_3_I

You know this chapter is killing me. I'm like that old cop drama out of LA in the late 60's -- Dragnet. In that show the lead police officer says "just the facts, ma'am' at least every other episode and it's become a bit of a cliche joke ever since. I think in the 1987 remake they purposely have Joe Friday says that exact line quite a few times as a joke...back then they were serious.

Well...I like the facts as I said in my last post. I work better with facts but that doesn't mean everyone else does. She makes a good point on page 51:

Contrary to popular belief, bad decisions are rarely made because people have all the facts. Bad decisions are made because people ignore the facts, do not understand the facts, or do not give the facts enough importance.

I think this is a pretty enlightened thing to say I suppose. From a managerial perspective, though, I'd feel a lot better at night if I knew those on my team had the fact presented in a prioritized and usable manner. I think the little story about the fireman being seen from two perspectives is neat...but dammit I can't let go of my natural tendencies.

"A story" she continues, " will help them figure out what all these facts mean."

If the information was managed properly then the individuals should be trained to leave their own emotions and experiences on the table and work specifically for that project. Maybe, in my case, I'd have to hire someone to turn my fact-speak into a story to be an effective manager.


Arg...as I'm writing this I realize how strange I must be to everyone else. How can people even talk to me?

Anyways, I had a dream last night that I was a robot and I woke up in a sweat because someone had given me a computer virus that caused everything I looked at to appear with a distorted Eleanor Roosevelt's face and it would cause my robot body to freeze and lock up. I woke up and said "eleanor" and drifted into a weird lucid dream and the whole event has made my day feel pretty funky. I have a computer virus...must...have...facts...ahh!

Enough.

Brian_1_I

Let's talk about faith...

I'm one of those cool folks who is also awaiting delivery of The Story Factor...

Should arrive in the next few days but in the meantime I've read the google scholar blurbs and discovered something of interest in the first few pages. (work with what you got, right)

Most people who know me a bit under the surface know I put very little 'faith' in faith. I consider myself a realist and I'm most comfortable when surrounded by facts and numbers. Believing in anything I can't evaluate in scientific terms (social science is a science too) just doesn't happen. My dad ingrained an instant avoidance of anything gimmicky product wise...perhaps I took that a step too far.

People generally don't like talking politics with me. This, of course, makes me sad; I always enjoy rambunctious scholarly discussions with thoughtful people. The thing I miss is that people have blind faith in some beliefs and others (read: most) are just arrogant and irrelevant. Then I come along, confident as usual due to my obsessive ingestion of multi-faceted news and personal primary research. I have numbers, I have mixed theories, and at the end of the day I feel that the opinions I've developed are about as accurate as my 'progressive experience filter' will allow. We sit around and begin chatting and instantly I start evaluating people's opinions and as their ideas drift further away from mine I start discounting...basically everything they say. Then it's my turn to talk and I speak with authority but little spirit...little faith.

My ultimate goal in most political discussions is to make the other person reconsider their own beliefs to be reformed closer to my own. Somewhat self serving, I know, but it's my mission to fight for the underdogs of society. It's not an operation of manipulations as I believe I'm fighting for truth in a confusing media world.

Unfortunately numbers and under-the-surface political theory doesn't make the sell for many. I'm missing an important factor if I'm ever going to be successful with this goal and Simmons hits the nail on the head. I need stories...not numbers...if I'm ever going to inspire the faith required to change others.

"Telling a meaningful story means inspiring your listeners -- coworkers, leaders, subordinates, family, or a bunch of strangers -- to reach the same conclusions you have reached and decide for themselves to believe what you say and do what you want them to do. People value their own concussions more highly than yours" (Simmons 3)

I bet the chapter goes much deeper and I'm actually looking forward to reading it...at least this is digital...ehh?