Today is Election Day in the US.
During the year I have a simple rule:
Whenever somebody is whinging to me about politics, politicians or anything like that I just stop them cold and ask:
“Did you vote last time?’
If they say “No” I just tell them:
“Then come back to me in a couple of years when you’ve earned the right to bitch.”
Whether your “side” wins or loses, it’s important that you at least stand up and be counted. Otherwise… just shut up until ’16.
-Jay
I saw the sign below last night on my usual torture run around the neighborhood. Since the house has been on the market for some time it had to have been the 100th time I’d seen it, but this was the first time I’d actually read it.
Have a look at the website. Not the huge “www.terifox.com” in red, but the small one in white near the bottom.
I’m pretty sure that this local Realtor doesn’t own the URL “www.website.com”.
If you’re going to use a template when creating some artifact for your business… double check it.
-Jay
We’ve all been subjected to a month of 350 pound linebackers walking around in pink.
Yes, it’s for a great cause and I fully support the good work the ladies are doing, but it was a little disconcerting.
However, now it’s the men’s turn.
Do we wear our cause by rocking camo for a month? Nope.
We wears ours on our face… where it’ll really annoy the wives.
It’s MOvember, when we grow out a ‘stache in support of “men’s health issues” (a nice way of saying Colon and Testicular Cancer).
Personally, I already sport a goatee year-round thanks to an absence of anything vaguely resembling a chin. Therefore, my contribution will be to stop shaving entirely. Well… almost entirely. I’ll still hit the neck under the chin because the neck-beard is just WRONG.
So men, do your part and lose the Gillette for a month.
Linky goodness: http://us.movember.com/
The good news is that I’m over my BPPV. Can’t call myself “cured”… more like “in remission”.
Apparently, ENT docs can give you exercises and drugs to cure the problem, BUT you have to be having an attack in front of them so they can tell which ear is the problem. Since it was 9 days between the attack and my appointment… you guessed it. No symptoms. Kinda like taking your car to the shop and that weird noise just STOPS.
So now I just have to wait to get all dizzy and nauseous again so I can call the ENT and hope they can fit me in immediately instead of next week. So- that’s fun.
Absolutely underwater with work. Averaging 60ish hours a week and still scrambling to catch up.
Once life gets back to normal I’ll be back on a more constant schedule around here. I’ve got a good half-dozen posts in mind that I’d love to get written up.
-Jay
For the none of you that have been frantic with worry over my prolonged absence:
Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) is one of the most common causes of vertigo — the sudden sensation that you’re spinning or that the inside of your head is spinning.
Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo is characterized by brief episodes of mild to intense dizziness. Symptoms of benign paroxysmal positional vertigo are triggered by specific changes in the position of your head, such as tipping your head up or down, and by lying down, turning over or sitting up in bed. You may also feel out of balance when standing or walking.
Although benign paroxysmal positional vertigo can be a bothersome problem, it’s rarely serious except when it increases the chance of falls. You can receive effective treatment for benign paroxysmal positional vertigo during a doctor’s office visit.
And that’s been my life for the last week. Any sudden movements of the head (or staring at a monitor for too long) and stuff gets weird.
I’ll be back online as soon as possible.
Quoting my 14-year old who had never seen it:
(During most of the movie)
“This is boring.”
“Why are they so mean?”
“Did people really dress like that?”
(During the Prom scene)
“Those are some ugly tuxs”
“Why are they under the stage?…. “Ohhhhh”…. “That’s mean”
“Gross!!”
“COOL!” Wish I could do, it’d make school more fun” (This one had her parents nervous)
(During the final scene with her mom)
“Her mom stabbed her? That bitch!” (Yes, she is my child)
(During the tombstone scene)
“Why did they write that on the si… AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ”
“I’M GOING TO HAVE NIGHTMARES FOR A YEAR!!!!!!!!!!”
Mission: Accomplished
The Army recruiting site gets a NO-GO at this station.
There are two major problems with this screen.
Can you spot them, boys and girls? Go on, I’ll give you a minute.
.
.
.
Ready?
1- The floating “Social Bar” blocks a good chunk of the navigation. Very annoying to the user.
2- It violates “RPR #2” in a huge, lazy way. Have a look at the “About Us” text box. Lorem ipsum, anybody.
Sloppiness like this makes joining the Coast Guard look like a better move.
Samsung features very popular phones (like my Galaxy S5 Active), tablets and even household appliances. I have a Samsung fridge and, other than it’s tendency to turn the freezer into a snow drift, we love it.
I find it interesting that even they can’t move laptops in the Old World. If uber-cool Samsung can’t pull off the trick I’d have to assume that the days of the laptop are numbered and it’ll soon follow the desktop into the gray world of corporate sales.
Samsung will stop selling laptops – including Chromebooks – in Europe, the company said on Tuesday.
As originally reported by PC Advisor and confirmed by Samsung when I asked the firm, the move is the result of inadequate laptop sales in the European market specifically.
Here’s Samsung’s statement:
We quickly adapt to market needs and demands. In Europe, we will be discontinuing sales of laptops including Chromebooks for now. This is specific to the region – and is not necessarily reflective of conditions in other markets. We will continue to thoroughly evaluate market conditions and will make further adjustments to maintain our competitiveness in emerging PC categories.
Samsung didn’t launch new laptops at IFA in Berlin earlier this month. The PC industry is generally in decline as people switch to mobile devices (see also: Sony selling off its Vaio business), and this trend is particularly pronounced in western Europe
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This post really struck home with me. I agonized for months on what to name this blog until the day I heard the “blue paint” riddle. Suddenly I had my name, but there was still that “Is this going to make any sense?” fear. According to this eventually readers won’t even think of a Sherman Williams can when reading it. Very interesting.
By the way, the name “Virgin” still gives me a brief pause, regardless of how big Branson’s empire has grown.
I wasn’t planning on doing this one now, but a post I did yesterday put me into this frame of mind.
Everybody has heard of and probably received a “phishing” email. These are emails that are masquerading as actual messages to customers of a business. The emails make up some reason that the victim should immediately send the perpetrator personal information, such as passwords, credit card data and the like. You can guess the result if the victim actually complies.
The problem is that the crooks are getting really good at their job. In the early days it was painfully obvious when an email was fake. Now, the fake emails look almost identical to a valid message. One way of determining if an email is a fake is to pay attention to things like typos, poor English structure, obvious grammatical errors and similar. The assumption is that the REAL company would not have made such an egregious error.
The customer TRUSTS the real company to not let such an obvious error slip through the cracks.
Now, apply that same logic to a website. A potential customer who is visiting a site for the first time and spots these kinds of careless errors immediately loses faith in that company’s professionalism and diligence.
In other words, nobody is going to give you their credit card for an $800 watch is you spell it “timepeace”.
Related to this is the question of correct sentence structure and grammar. This has become more of an issue since DEV has moved offshore and you have non-native speakers providing the content for a site. Being able to speak a language to a good level of understanding does NOT make you able to write content for that site’s home country. Ditto times 20 for using a software package to due the translation.
TIPS
Red Paint Usability Blog 