Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

Rottweilers. Computers. Cameras. World Domination. Not necessarily in that order.

Rottweilers.
Computers. Cameras.
World Domination.
Not necessarily in that order.

So tell me, web sorta-designer person…

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Why exactly do you use a free Flash intro on your website?

Maybe you think that I shouldn’t be asking this, since I’ve already admitted in earlier blog posts that I am a crappy web designer despite being responsible for the care and feeding of a few websites, and that Flash has kicked my ass hard on quite a few occasions.

I still want to hear your answer, though, Mr. or Ms. Web Sorta-Wanna-Be-A-Designer Person. I want to know why you think it is good to have some other company’s or designer’s name plastered all over the first thing that viewers to your site will see. Unless you took it off, which makes you the big giant scumbag in most cases when it comes to “free” stuff.

What exactly does a free Flash intro add to your website? The customization options on almost all of them are very minimal. Dozens of other people are using the same one, because it is free. How does it make you unique? No one thinks you did it yourself, either. Plus some of us are simply annoyed by it. I really want to know how it adds value to your website.

I actually like good Flash navigation, movies, games and occasionally even gratuitous eye candy, when it’s original and executed well. Emphasis on “good” and “original.” But I truly am clueless about the free and unoriginal stuff that’s just slapped on for no good reason I can see.

(NaBloPoMo | May ‘09: 28 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 124 of 274)

Where do you go to talk about television?

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Where do you go to talk about your favorite television shows?

I have some good conversations at work about a few shows that all, or most, of us watch. But I haven’t found many online places, with the possible exceptions of BlogHer’s TV Rants & Raves group and Television Without Pity, that I actually enjoy reading, let alone where I enjoy participating in the discussion myself.

Maybe I’m being too annoyingly picky. I just want somewhere that isn’t too squeakily fangirlish (or fanboyish), but doesn’t swing to the other extreme of overanalyzing and being unbearably pretentious. For Rescue Me discussions, I expect badge bunnies, but not an overpopulation of same. Likewise for Sons of Anarchy discussions: I’d expect some wanna-be train pullers, but again, hopefully not an overpopulation of them.

Upon reflection, the overanalyzing criteria doesn’t apply to Mad Men. I do not believe that show can be discussed without some degree of overanalysis. Just my opinion, of course.

My personal fault is being a little too nit-picky about details of cities where I’ve lived or depictions of jobs or hobbies that I’ve been involved in. But since I didn’t start working in advertising production until the late 70s, and nothing is currently filming in Chicago or Honolulu, I can probably keep it to a minimum.

So if anyone has some good suggestions for communities or forums devoted to those shows that I might enjoy, I’d love to hear them!

(NaBloPoMo | May ‘09: 27 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 123 of 274)

Wrong assumptions

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It amuses me when people make assumptions about my political leanings based upon my gender and ethnicity, because that means they will usually be wrong.

I just want to say that Sonia Sotomayor’s role in Ricci vs. New Haven colors my opinion of her far more than what some people think that I, as a minority female, should be feeling. My husband could easily face the same situation as the New Haven firefighters whose promotion exam results got thrown out because not enough blacks made the promotion list. That would be so wrong, and yeah, I would take it personal because it affects my family. And for anyone to think that it is okay because of the decision for New Haven would be even worse.

(NaBloPoMo | May ‘09: 26 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 122 of 274)

Trying to stay connected

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No, not in a human building-bridges mending-fences rediscovering-relationships kind of way. Not really wanting to do any of that at the moment, or for that matter, on most days. I’m just wanting my internet connection to remain stable for longer than an hour at a time.

I have had nearly perfect service from Comcast High-Speed Cable Internet since I switched from Earthlink DSL a few months ago. Until the last couple of weeks, which have not been quite so perfect. My husband mentioned some outages during the day, but didn’t give me too many details as to when or how many or how long. I hadn’t experienced any at all during the early morning and evening hours. I asked him to keep track, and kind of forgot about it until yesterday, when periodic outages started. Today, things were fine until early afternoon, and then the connection would go out approximately once an hour.

The customer service reps I spoke to were friendly and really did try to be helpful, but I didn’t get a sense of great knowledge either. The second one said he would need to send out a tech to the house. Oh, joy. My whole goal in doing the self-install was to prevent any Comcast tech from ever touching my network. I figured if it did not work, I’d move on to try another provider. And if it did work, it would keep working. Looks like I might have been wrong about the “keep working” part. So sad, because it was really looking good there for a while.

I’m checking around online to see if there are any known issues and fixes that don’t require me to allow a Comcast tech into my house. That is, if my connection will stay up long enough to allow me to do so!

And there is always the chance this is happening somewhere between my home and the mothership (for DSL that would be the central office but I have no idea what they would call it for cable, or if they even have the equivalent of a central office) and will go away by the time I get a chance to complain again. I would be good with that, so let’s hope maybe that is the case.

(NaBloPoMo | May ‘09: 25 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 121 of 274)

The Della debacle

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Since I replaced my own aging Dell laptop with a Sony VAIO VGN290-CSJER back at the end of February and I’m not quite ready to replace my also-aging (hmmm, guess that should be “aged,” huh?) Apple Macintosh G4 iBook, I have not been regularly checking out the latest laptop offerings.

I guess that is both a good and bad thing, because I completely missed Dell’s ill-conceived attempt at marketing their Inspiron Mini 10 netbooks specifically to women. I did not see the original incarnation of the site, no longer called “Della” (and wow, isn’t that a terrible idea from the get-go), but from the screenshots and blog posts I did see after the fact, it just reinforces in my mind what a bad idea it is to attempt gender-specific marketing of something that should be a gender-neutral product.

The stereotyping of assuming that women would mainly be computer novices and interested only in shopping, calorie counting, and finding new recipes is just laughable. Oddly enough, though, one other major criticism of the latest Dell effort is one that I didn’t personally find all that objectionable.

That would be using style as a selling point. I thought Dell had done a decent job of it up until now, too. For several of their laptop lines, cases were offered in a selection of colors, laptop skins were available, and their current Design Studio case offerings include some very stylish artwork.

Sony and Apple have always done a great job of selling style and design along with technology, and not by using insulting gender-specific verbiage either. I didn’t choose my laptops solely because of their look, but honestly. If the technical specs are similar and either one will do the jobs you need them to do, do you want the ugly one or the sharp-looking one? Be honest.

Dell lost my business entirely due to concerns that are not gender-specific at all: outsourced customer service and tech support, uneven quality control on the low- and mid-end laptops, and issues regarding timely fulfillment on some purchases made for my business. Perhaps they should concentrate more on improving areas that are of concern to everyone, rather than a poorly-planned gender-specific marketing push.

(NaBloPoMo | May ‘09: 24 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 120 of 274)