I’m expected in my office tomorrow—in spite of my being on a self-prescribed break—to meet, alongside my boss, with a prospective web design firm. The goal? A web presence that doesn’t leave the company feeling dirty and ashamed.

I’m tempted to ask one question that, I believe, will separate the wheat from the chaff in no time flat. I call it The Cederholm Test. The name pretty much implies the question:

Who is Dan Cederholm?

If the question seems like something akin to what is Fight Club?, then hopefully you aren’t a web designer by trade. (If you are, then follow that link stat!) I figure that any web design company who has half a clue about web standards should have heard of Dan, and I also figure that we’d prefer to hire a web design company that has at least half a clue.

I could be wrong about that, though. I’ve looked at the web page of our prospective firm; what it lacks in actual CSS-based design (i.e. it uses tables for all layout—and I hate how unreadable and/or unmanageable tables make web pages) is somewhat atoned for by a sense of style (the company at least has a graphic designer on staff, and uses him/her).

Some of the other people we’ve talked to actually gave us work samples that were created in FrontPage. ICK.

…

By hook or by crook, I’ll be headed to Sunriver this weekend with Andy & co. (Yes, it’s the second annual—I missed the first—belated Andy’s birthday party Sunriver trip.)

Andy is puzzled by my unwillingness to bring my PSP to Sunriver. He apparently hasn’t seen a man in the depths of a Lumines binge (I’d include women in that, but I haven’t actually seen any females similarly affected); the isolating power of that particular game is truly frightful.