Archive for July 2007

Cuz You Had a Bad Day

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Meghan passed along an interesting article that made me feel particularly validated in my choice of profession. Why is good design matter? Because nobody wants to be this guy

An angry computer user who is smacking his monitor

Looking With Critical Eyes

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What does it mean to blog about a blog about an article? No fresh ideas? Too much time on my hands? Just curious, it’s not going to stop me from doing it.

Jenn blogged today about one of Jakob Nielsen’s Alertboxes from the past year. At the time I had decided to let the point drop, but now that it’s been brought back to the forefront of my mind I can’t just let it drop.

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Coming Soon… Nothing!

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I got an interesting email today about a new customer portal that Verizon Wireless is setting up. Front and center was a screen shot of the new, sexy interface along with a list of compelling features. What are they? Your guess is as good as mine…

A list of Verizons new features, except all of the white text is on a white background, so it can't be read

That’s exactly how they showed up when I checked my mail in both Firefox and Safari. Nothing like white text on a white background to get across the critical part of your message!

But I Said Please…

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Looking back at my last post, you may think that those are just two pictures that I painlessly added as part of my standard blogging routine. Indeed I do try to add pictures as often as I can to break up the message, but last time it was anything but painless.

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A Fowl Competition

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Sure, I get to see a bit of wildlife around here. Perhaps the occasional duck…

A duck looking out over Juanita Bay

But it’s not holding a candle to what my parents send me from Hummel Park. I’ve posted a few of these shots before (see here and here), but the latest shot makes me wish that ducks had a little more character.

A male turkey strutting his stuff, all puffed out with his tail feathers sticking straight up

See what I mean? Ducks are cute, but they never make you laugh quite like turkeys can.

Disassociation

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A while back, I received a new credit card in the mail, and I thought there was some kind of mistake…

My credit card with no branding up top. All key info is also blocked out

The card was missing any sort of branding! Doesn’t it look naked without it?? Read more…

Blocked Checkout

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You may have read previous posts where I urge you not to host your website with Bliksem Hosting… but in case you haven’t, I figure a reminder can’t hurt. Anyway, a good year after I posted that entry, I decided that it would be smart to follow my own advice. It’s true that I transferred my hosting plan over to Site5 (a fabulous hosting company), but I wasn’t able to transfer all of my domain registrations over to them.

So they remained with Bliksem, or more accurately, with some second company called eNom. But the interesting part is that they neglected to tell me that my domains expired. Nothing like awful customer service to cause me to spring into action.

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Forgotten Presidents

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Yeah yeah, so I couldn’t quite take a day off. Independence Day is a great day for a post about forgotten Presidents, so how could I resist?

One thing that I find interesting about checking the Digg headlines is the interest that the “mainstream” audience takes in knowing geography and history (especially given how poorly America tends to stack up in those areas). You may recall that a few months ago I mentioned the Geography quiz as a fun way to pass the time when you’re sick. These days I’m to the point where I can find any country on the map… except in Africa. Africa’s tough, but I’m getting there.

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A Day Off From Blogging

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It’s Sunday, and I just discovered a handy feature in how this blog is setup - if I post-date a blog entry, it won’t show up on the blog until that date! That’s pretty neat. So even though you’re reading my 4th of July post on the 4th of July, I’m actually taking the day off from blogging today.

Happy Independence Day!

Fireworks!

Photography by Zaiss

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I don’t really consider myself much of a photographer. More like an amateur picture taker. Point and Click! That’s why I was so surprised today to get an email from the folks at Schmap Seattle Guide asking to use (well, consider) one of my flickr pictures in the third edition of their guide.

A woman posing with a Pike Place Market worker; they're both holding a large fish

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