Things that make me go hmmm

I never understand why when businesses decide to redo their websites, they take the old website down entirely and put up a placeholder with the cheery "We're re-doing our site! Check back later!" Sometimes, those animated gifs (remember those from the mid-90s?) of a construction vehicle is displayed prominently. And the kicker is, "later" is always well after you need the information or you've already called to get it from them. I've seen some sites keep the messages up for months and months and it makes me wonder. Did they make the decision to design a new site and think they needed to take the old one down first before they could even start a new one? Did the person they hire to design the new site take longer than needed? Why not design the new one in the background and then upload it over the old one when it's finished? No matter how bad the old website looks, it looks a lot worse when customers can't easily get the information they want for months and months.

One more thing...

Netflix apparently has all seven seasons of both "Voyager" and "Deep Space Nine." I did get DS9 on DVD prior to the whole streaming versus DVD debacle, but never really got past the first couple of discs. I'd forgotten just how tedious the first three seasons of DS9 were, to be honest, and I just wanted to skip forward to season 4, which is when the true awesomeness began, but couldn't because I was introducing J to the best Trek of all time and well, plodding through the first few seasons was a necessary evil. I haven't even though about going through the first season or so of VOY -- not sure actually that I saw a lot of those first few episodes, mostly because I was in denial that anything could take DS9's place in those early days. It might very well be a time to re-attempt that trip down memory lane now that both shows are completely available on Netflix.

LotD

Interesting article: Don't Send Another Email Until You Read This. Interesting thoughts on how business communicate with customers. I've never been a big fan of direct email in my line of work for precisely the reasons outlined in the article: how do we know we're not pissing off the customer? I think about the 80 gazillion hotel emails I get a day from the various reward programs I'm enrolled in; I now delete without reading now. Maybe I'll send them a copy of this article instead.

Things that make you go hmmm...

The more I encounter them, the less I like the CAPTCHA method of telling "humans apart from computer." I understand why it's used and why it's needed, but this particular human is not very good at using them. Mostly it's because those graphics are so badly rendered that it's hard to read them correctly. The letters are pushed together, the lines are blurred or fuzzy, and it's like is that an I or a 1? I invariably get my first attempt at filling the box incorrect and have to do it again several times. A couple of times, the graphics have been so difficult to decipher that I have locked myself out of my own account. I can't be the only one who has this problem, right?

LotD

Search's Dirty Little Secrets. Interesting article on how a certain retailer was trying to gain position on google's search engine. Click on the NYTimes article above to find out who it is (hint: I bet most of you have shopped there in the last 12 months).

Computer update

Today, we took the old computer (with J's old hard drive installed in it), the monitor, keyboard and mouse to the Salvation Army and donated it. With J's old hard drive in it now, it works -- just needs to be reformatted etc., and I figure it'll be a good machine for someone who is looking for very basic applications. We assured the Salvation Army that it was in working condition and hopefully they can find someone who can make use of it. I also thought it might be good to take apart and rebuild for a computer technology training class. Either way, it felt better to take the computer to the Salvation Army than to the electronics recycling center. It was easier to part with my old "buddy", knowing there was a possibility of another life for it out there. The electronics recycling center would have meant an inglorious end in a Chinese landfill for a trusty machine.

I've begun the slow process of transferring documents to the new computer from a collection of back-up CDs and also from the laptop, where most of my pictures from recent travels are stored. On the upside, it looks like the damage from the hard drive failure is minimal. In other words, I didn't lose as much as I thought I had and I do have documents going all the way back to 2003 saved here and there. So that's the good news. I also have some of my iTunes backed up, but not all of it. So hopefully I can pull the music off the iPod itself. As soon as I get everything situated, I'm looking forward to doing two things I haven't done in a while: writing and editing! So much easier on the desktop than the laptop, that's for sure!

LotD

Ann Taylor explains itself here.

Updating

I forgot how long it takes to get your computer exactly the way you like it, with all the files and shortcuts and bookmarks, etc. So far, I've added some of my favorite software like Mozilla, Photoshop, Dreamweaver and of course, Civilization 4, but I've yet to transfer over some of my files. I backed up irregularly so I may be missing a document here or there so I'm going back to my oldest back-up, circa 2006 (there might be one from 2004 or thereabouts, but I didn't label the CD with anything more descriptive than 'Backup'). So getting those docs transferred over will be quite the interesting task. I'm hoping that for the most part everything is here.

And for those of you wondering (or not, as the case may be), I got a Dell Studio XPS 8100. I'm starting to navigate Windows 7 Home Premium (miss me my XP; don't know if Office XP will work on Windows 7. Anyone know?). All in all, no compatibility issues yet except McAfee doesn't like ZoneAlarm. That's okay; I don't particularly like McAfee so it'll be gone as soon as my free trial is up. Avast, I found, works so much better.

New computer!

Typing at you from a new, awesome computer. I'm still in the process of setting it up but looking forward to zoomin' along and not plodding painfully through. It's just amazing how far computer technology has come in the last decade since I bought the previous machine. I'm pretty psyched right now.

Once I get all of my documents reloaded and software squared away, I'll start making much needed updates to my website. I know it's kind of a mess but haven't been able to do anything with it since my previous computer sadly passed away. (I'm still a bit sorrowful, btw, as I sit in my office, staring down at the carcass of the old computer and thinking of all the things we did it to coax it back to life. It was a good machine for me).

LotD

The NY Times has an intriguing article in its most recent Sunday magazine that explores what the new social media means for privacy and how difficult it is becoming to control one's image online. It's a thoughtful analysis but no real solutions. Worth a read over here.

Test, Test, part 2

I found the workaround -- it's annoying but useful. I'm posting it here in case anyone else is having the same problem with blogger. Basically, blogger keeps "loading" in the input window, which makes it impossible to type anything at all. If you're having this problem (and I was having it on two separate laptops, though running the same browser), then when you get stuck on the "loading" new post screen, hit "Save now," and then go to "Edit post." You'll be able to type just fine in the "Edit post" screen. It's only the "new posts" that don't seem to be working (at least for me).

Test, test

My being offline has been inadvertant and actually rather annoying as blogger hasn't been allowing to me to post since at least the 4th of July and I have a lot to say! This may be the first of a couple of test posts as I may have found a workaround Blogger's weirdness.

LotD

You should totally apologize to BP, if you haven't already. And when you're done that, you can check out the death of the desktop computer.

Computer update

So I froze the hard drive. Well, before I did that, I dropped it from 2 to 3 feet on to the carpet. It landed with a nice thud, which I consider payback for the downstairs party hearty folks. Unfortunately, the drop didn't jolt the motor into action so into the freezer the hard drive went. It spent a day in there, hopefully thinking about what it had done and hopefully forgiving me for hitting the power button prematurely. But alas, the freezing technique did not work either. Now there's only one thing left to do -- take the drive apart and transfer the heads into a working hard drive. Surgery will probably commence this weekend.

Semi good news

So far nothing has really worked to get my computer up and running. This afternoon, we headed to the local tech store and picked up an adapter for the hard drive. I removed the hard drive from my computer and hooked it up to J's laptop. Nothing. The drive did spin up but there was no recognition. Disconnected it and tried another hard drive from another desktop. That one not only spun up, the laptop also recognized it and we were able to access the files. When we tried hooking up my hard drive up again, it refused to power on. So now we're going with the last ditch resort of putting it in the freezer to see if that will help.

The upside of all of this is I did find a back-up from August of last year. I checked that disk and the good news is I did have presence of mind to back up all of my iTunes music (also available on my iPod), all of my stories, resumes, and tax information to the CD. I've probably lost some data and email, but eh. What can I do? I just need to be more dilligent about backing up, especially given the age of the computer. But the story I was worried about -- the sequel to Fugue in Blue Minor -- is indeed on my disk so WHEW! (of course, I haven't worked on it since March 2009, but at least I don't have to start on it from scratch).

Oh and it goes without saying that there will be no website updates until I figure out what to do about the software etc. I'm using J's laptop for now, but at some point, I'm going to have to get another solution.

RiP

So after 9 years, or more precisely, eight years and 10 months, my beloved Dell Dimension 2100 has given up the ghost (or so I think). I got impatient with the computer yesterday when it hung up uploading photos and hit the power off button. Big mistake. Now the computer refuses to boot or recognize the hard drive. I'm hoping this is just a temper tantrum, nothing serious, but if it is, I'm kind of wondering how to get my data off the hard drive. My last back-up was in August of 2009 (I know, I know), but I haven't created many new files since then. I'm most worried about my next story in the "Lines in the Sand" series and my resume/job checklist spreadsheet.

I was planning to get a new computer in August but it looks like I'll need to get one sooner rather than later. Sadness.

Head's up

I'm pretty sure everyone is going to migrate to blogspot already has done so, but definitely check your old web server when you're done (if you were ftp'ing to your own site like I was). Apparently, when you migrate, blogger dumps a whole bunch of crap onto your server, and in my case, it increased the amount of server space I was using by 169 mb. Which is nutty when you think that this website, blog and fanfic together, and my mail only make up about 106 mb. Blogger's back-up caused me to go over on my space and as a result, my host is charging me for overusage. It's so annoying. I'm currently downloading the back-up files and deleting them off the server so I can avoid the extra fees in June. So, for those of you who are/have migrated, double-check your old digs. There might be a little surprise for you there (but I hope not!).

Privacy, schmrivacy

FYI. A new site, spokeo.com, could be considered similar to a traditional phonebook, except that in addition to your address and phone number, it also features such personal goodies such as your approx credit score, home value, income, age, etc. It even displays pictures you may have put on Facebook or other such sites. You can remove yourself by first searching for yourself on their site to find the URL of your page, copying the URL, then going to the privacy link on the bottom of their home page to open another window with a form that will allow you to remove yourself.

LotD

Yum! The 50 Best Restaurants in the World. Have you eaten at any of them? Incidentally, it's kind of annoying how most news resources have sharing buttons for Twitter or Facebook or Stumbleit(?), but not for blogger. With recent Facebook changes, I'm reluctant to share any links or "like" any links because I don't know who is going to see it or how some of these organizations are going to use the information. Of course, it seems kind of funny to care about it when I'm here blogging away...

FB Meme

"Meme" might not be the right word for it, but there is a trend on Facebook right now where people take a particular status posting and replicate it as theirs. This usually take the form of "I appreciate my mother/daughter/father/son/goldfish/car and if you do too, post this in your status." Lately, they've become more militant with some adding, "93 percent of people won't dare to post this; will you be brave enough?" And I say, BS.

First of all, the number is arbitrary. Was there a market study done to prove that 93 percent of people truly had issues with whatever the status had to the point they didn't want to replicate it in their status? Or is it more the case that people like me aren't interested in regurgitating canned Hallmark-esque statuses? Second, the inherent dare is kind of silly; a copy and pasting into Facebook status isnt' a singular act of courage in anyway and most of these meme-thingies are inane and sacchrine enough that you're actually going to offend anyone at all (though some people are, admittedly, easily offended).

I find these types of status updates annoying because they are redundant, ineffective, and useless. Of course, you could say the same about most status updates (and I'm not excluding my own either), but these are especially conversation stoppers. There's really no response required, other than perhaps imitation, and even if there is a response, how many times can you possibly read and respond to the same status? I imagine the motivation behind such redundant statuses has everything to do with accumulating a certain level of support, but to what end? And wouldn't it be more meaningful to write your own words of appreciation rather than copying something? I'm guessing 98 percent of you aren't brave enough to answer.