Wednesday, June 20, 2007 AD Living on the Right Side of the Brain Once, wanting to prove my left-brain abilities to someone, I decided to do some logic puzzles. I pulled out a book of puzzles I got from the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth folks back in 7th or 8th grade. I worked for half an hour on a puzzle, and came up with the answer: Bertram. And it wasn't anything to do with this Bertram, either. I never picked up the book again. So I can do left-brain stuff, but when there's ever so much funner right-brain stuff to do, I avoid portside-patedness when possible.
Today, 'twas not possible. I had to do battle with *shudder* code. Last September, when The Powers That Be got in a tiff with our tech support company, they switched to a new one that doesn't provide many of the services the old one did...including writing my website forms. So I've got a smattering of forms in ASP code, which I have never learned, and every time I need to edit a form or create a new one, I have to print out reams of paper (OK...only about 15 sheets per form) and pore through the code to figure out what does what, and extrapolate that to fix whatever problem I'm trying to solve.
When asked to describe my job, I say, "I make things pretty." Give me a piece of copy, and I will happily make you sound eloquent. Give me a design assignment, and I will happily make you a brochure or newsletter you will be not be ashamed to share with your audience. But give me a thousand lines of code to wrestle with, and I will more than likely weep. Granted it's a nice feeling when I actually do solve the problem and get the thing to work, but it's not a level of niceness equal to the gray Courier tedium of the task itself.
I am ever so grateful for the code-writers, engineers, accountants and other folks do left-brain work, but as much as possible I'll stick to living on the right side of the brain! Posted by Valerie (Kyriosity) at 6/20/2007 08:54:00 PM
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