pdxbarrett https://pdxbarrett.com Josh Barrett's Blog en-us Permission Mon, 15 Apr 2014 16:14:00 PDT https://pdxbarrett.com/posts/permission.html https://pdxbarrett.com/posts/permission.html I was inspired to build this website and learn HTML/CSS by my friend Louie. He'd written about why its important to have your own website (as opposed to using services). And he'd also put together a little guide about how to do that. In this second piece Louie said one thing that really propelled me into starting. After describing the steps to creating your first webpage, he said:

Direct your web browser to the HTML file you uploaded. Wow! There it is. A real, actual page on the web! You shipped it. Congratulations. Times New Roman, black on white. Hyperlinks that are blue and underlined. Useful. Classic.

Look at your unstyled HTML page and appreciate it for what it is. Always remember, this is all a website has to be. Good websites can be reduced to this and still work.

Now, Louie is an amazing designer. I mean just look at the website he is building by hand! It's beautiful! In my work I advise designers and developers who also make amazing websites. Not to mention that in our daily lives we use countless websites that are attractive and functional (some more than others). Our world is so full of terrific examples of what something can be, it can sometimes feel like a barrier to someone who wants to try.

So when a really great designer like Louie said that I, someone with no experience, could make something "useful" and "classic" - that was huge. "Wow!" It gave me permission to judge my work against what I was learning as opposed to what others can do. And to appreciate beauty and functionality in simplicity. The power in this came not from the fact that Louie is my friend, but because he is someone who is very good at their thing saying "hey, you can do it too!" And him also appreciating what I made for what it is.

I see this in my own life. I'm an expert in drafting contracts. My clients find it so empowering when I tell them to have the first go at writing something up for me to look over. Or to remind them that there are no magic words in contracts, just clear writing that they can do too. Not that I'm asking them to roll their own - I'll still be there to guide them. But that little bit of encouragement can be enormously empowering.

At home, I make a lot of pizza in our outdoor oven. While I'm no pizzaiolo, I've already made hundreds of pizzas and countless mistakes. When people come over for dinner, I encourage them to try shaping the dough or launching a pie into the oven. These are hard things to do. They invariably say "I can't!" or "I'll mess it up!", but I encourage them to try. Sure, the pizza is almost always a bit misshapen or maybe it gets a little stuck in the oven, but even then it doesn't matter, its still pizza. Appreciate it for what it is! People have so much fun trying and making something. And even when imperfect, its can still be great.

We could all probably do this more with the things we are knowledgeable about. Rather than just helping someone do something (which is good, keep doing that), we can also help people give themselves permission to try for themselves. Tell them "good job!" Sure, they might mess it up, but with a little encouragement from you, they'll likely succeed (even if imperfectly) - and they'll feel great. And you'll feel great too.

]]> Percentages. Sat, 07 Apr 2014 12:10:00 PDT https://pdxbarrett.com/posts/percentages.html https://pdxbarrett.com/posts/percentages.html When you get cancer, you immediately start getting lots of information. It can be overwhelming. Information about your diagnosis, your treatment, possible outcomes, where the infusion clinic is, possible side effects, your doctor's name (or many doctors), etc. It goes on.

One thing you start hearing a lot are percentages: overall survival rate, disease free survival rate, progression-free survival rate, relapse rates, the list goes on. Rightly or wrongly, these percentages can become a shorthand to understand how serious things are or could get. But like all statistics, they are prone to being misused. I've certainly misunderstood them and I hear friends and family misunderstanding them as well. So, an attempt to clarify.

To be clear, right now I'm in remission and have been since June, 2023. But once you are in remission, you face the prospect of relapse. So, every cancer has a "relapse rate."

Every cancer has different relapse rates. My cancer is Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma ("DLBCL"). When I was diagnosed, I was Stage IV because the cancer had spread to both sides of my diaphragm (all my lymph nodes) as well as an organ outside my lymphatic system (one of my testicles). The spread of cancer to my testicle, an immune privileged site (as opposed to a different organ) is a troubling factor because it means there is a higher risk the cancer one day going to my brain ( another immune privileged site). There are also different DNA variants of DLBCL. Through gene expression profiling, it was discovered that I have one of these rearrangements (the ABC-type). This further heightens the risk of brain involvement. While lymphoma isn't rare, my diagnosis is fairly rare because of the testicular involvement and DNA rearrangement.

For people with my diagnosis (DLBCL, Stage IV, testicular involvement, ABC rearrangement), the five-year relapse rate is around 50%. The most common way this stat is misused (which I did myself) is to say "Josh has a 50% chance of relapse." That's not right. What the relapse rate means is that of the people with my diagnosis, 50% experience relapse within five years. It does not that I'm rolling 2d10 every day to see if I relapse. Whether I relapse or not isn't a percentage chance - it either will or will not happen. It isn't binary like this because of the 50% relapse rate. Rather, my dice have already been rolled behind the DMs screen. If the relapse rate was just 20%, my experience would be the same. I'm just waiting to find out the result.

This makes it simultaneously both easier and more difficult to carry on a daily basis and often why everything feels big. Some days I barely think about cancer. Some days it is all I can think about. Certainly if the relapse rate for my diagnosis was 5%, I'd probably think about it less. But that's not my lot. So, the next four years and three months, I'll get bloodwork and scans of one type or another every three months. And at some point I'll learn what my dice say.

]]> Don't Compromise. Trade. Sat, 06 Apr 2014 10:58:00 PDT https://pdxbarrett.com/posts/dont-compromise-trade.html https://pdxbarrett.com/posts/dont-compromise-trade.html In my work I help my clients negotiate services agreements. This is the agreement between them, the agency, and their client, usually a brand of some sort. The agreement speaks to the services and deliverables my client will provide in exchange for the fees that the brand will pay. In addition, the agreement sets out all the other rules of the engagement. Things like intellectual property, termination, indemnification, and the like.

The way most agencies handle negotiations is through a series of compromises. Maybe the agency wants invoices paid in 15 days, the client wants to pay in 60 days, so they compromise around 45 days. Meeting in the middle. Splitting the difference.This gets the job done of course, but it's a rather middling approach. I think it prevails because it saves the agency from having to say the hard thing:

"No. We require payment in 15 days."

Why are they afraid of saying the hard thing? Because they are afraid of the reaction. They worry the client will get mad. Or that they will yell. Or even insinuate that the agency isn't being fair. Its fear of these reactions that causes people to silently compromise instead of asking for what they need and truly negotiating.

So instead of compromising, I encourage my clients to think of negotiation as a series of trades. If you want to get paid in 15 days and the client asks for 60 days, the response should be:

"Our fees were calculated assuming payment in 15 days. However, we can extend 60 day terms to you but it will result in a 15% increase in fee to compensate for the extra risk and delay imposed on us by the terms you are asking for."

Or maybe you are negotiating portfolio rights and the client is refusing to grant them:

"When setting our fee, we assumed that we would be receiving portfolio rights as part of the transaction. If that won't be possible, then we'll need to increase our fee by 15% to compensate for the lost portfolio rights."

Trades also don't have to be just money. Almost anything can be the basis of a trade. Get creative! They want jurisdiction and venue in their local courts? Let 'em have it, but get a larger deposit in trade. But whatever you do, don't compromise. Say the hard thing and ask for what you need.

]]> Everything is Big Wed, 03 Apr 2014 19:50:00 GMT https://pdxbarrett.com/posts/everything-is-big.html https://pdxbarrett.com/posts/everything-is-big.html I have cancer. Or rather, I recently was declared in remission from cancer. A weird thing about remission is that it just means the doctors can't see any cancer in your body right now. It doesn't mean there is none. There could be cancer they don't see. And it also doesn't mean it won't come back (that's relapse). A Schrodinger's Cat of cancer status, if you will.

One thing about being in remission, at least for my type and staging of cancer, is that it is hard not to look at everything through the lens of cancer. More specifically, if my cancer comes back, it well might kill me. So maybe I should look at whatever it is I'm doing as the last time I'll get the chance to do it.

But, I can tell you, that's...a lot.

Lunch with friends? Concert of a favorite band? Something you've never done? Something you maybe shouldn't do. Something you want to do. Sure, people say we should live our lives like they might end tomorrow, but is that even feasible? Whether it's going to a restaurant or saying your good-byes, looking at things like they are the last time makes the mundane a mountain. It's too much.

Are you honoring and respecting your life and those in it by not giving things some weight? Are you really present to not acknowledge reality? No one wants regrets.

For me, its been more of the former. It does create a lot of weight but I try to process some of the "last time" weight internally, with my wife, or with my therapist rather than externally through the people and events I experience. I never know whether I'm giving it the right balance. Sometimes it feels right, sometimes it doesn't. And when it doesn't, I try to practice acceptance. That if I act with purpose, that the time and space I give for something is the right amount.

And I'm still practicing.

]]> The Goals Must Flow Wed, 03 Apr 2014 22:02:00 GMT https://pdxbarrett.com/posts/goals-must-flow.html https://pdxbarrett.com/posts/goals-must-flow.html goals must flow banner from thorns vs racing lousiville

Loved this tifo from the Thorns match vs Racing St. Louis on March 31, 2024. Thorns earned a draw that felt like a win with a goal from Sam Coffee nine minutes deep into the ten scheduled minutes of extra time. The Goals Must Flow.

]]> Now Available via RSS Mon, 25 Mar 2014 20:50:00 GMT https://pdxbarrett.com/posts/now-available-via-rss.html https://pdxbarrett.com/posts/now-available-via-rss.html What do you know, I followed Louie's instructions and it all turned out OK. You can point your favorite RSS reader at http://pdxbarrett.com/feed.xml and my posts will be available there.

One neat thing about making your plain-text website available via RSS is that even without any CSS, your website can look pretty good in an RSS reader! Gosh my website looks pretty good and I haven't done anything yet.

Because I'd never written an xml file before, I just copied the text from Louie's website into a fresh plain text file (he doesn't say this is supposed to be a plain text file, but I just inferred). Then I went through line by line and substituted references to LMNT and his posts to my material. I also read a bit from Computing Tidbits about how to do this and what comprises an xml post. Don't forget to go back into the first post Louie encouraged you to write and add the stuff that links the blog post page to the RSS feed.

The last thing I did today in my folder of text files was to make a blog post template. To do this I duplicated my first blog post and then removed the content and replaced it with something that would remind me what to do. Things like TITLE-URL-GOES-HERE or CONTENT GOES HERE. Like I said before, I did this once 35 years ago but not since. So I'll need some reminders for myself about what to do.

]]> Hey, Louie! I Made a Damn Website. Mon, 25 Mar 2014 20:11:00 GMT https://pdxbarrett.com/posts/hey-louie-i-made-a-damn-website.html https://pdxbarrett.com/posts/hey-louie-i-made-a-damn-website.html My friend Louie makes lots of things. One thing he has been working on a lot recently is his website. What’s interesting about this is that he isn’t using WordPress or Squarespace or some sort of tech stack. He is just writing in plain HTML with some CSS and posting it to a folder on the web. Old school (even though he isn’t very old).

For a number of reasons, Louie has been encouraging other people to just Make A Damn Website. And more recently, Louie published his guide as to How to Make A Damn Website. I was inspired, and well, here is my damn website.

In Louie’s post about how to make a website, he assumes you know some HTML and CSS. What’s going to be interesting about this is that I know exceedingly little HTML. I wrote a little bit of basic HTML like 35 years ago. And I’ve never written CSS. But I figure there was a time where everyone who writes CSS had never written CSS and maybe only a little bit of HTML. So I’m right there. It can’t be that hard I figure. And in any case, that’s a problem for another day.

Louie’s post about how to make a website actually assumes a bit more. It assumes you have a domain, know how to set up hosting, how to point your domain at your web host, and a number of other things. So, when thinking about what to write about for my first few blog posts, I might document some of the things omitted from Louie’s blog post. Might not.

But, because my website is here, it looks like Louie's guidance was pretty good. I was able to do it. Times New Roman on a white background. Classic.

But first thing to do after I post this is to make it accessible vs RSS.

Thanks for helping me make a website, Louie!

]]>