Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

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

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

Searching for the truth, or… something

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When my dogs are doing nothing cute or productive, nothing newsworthy is happening in my hometown(s), and my muse is AWOL, I can always turn to my search terms stats to see what questions I should have answered here!

Rally sign holders: I think I did actually answer this question for at least some of my searchers! Rally obedience signs: the illustrated version! is my most popular post to date. I guess I should try giving actual information with helpful pictures a little more often, huh? The irony is that not only am I not a dog training expert, I’m just barely getting started in rally obedience. Hey, but I have great practice signs!

I know my answer is disappointing to those who need indoor sign holders. I am currently trying to find the best price on small cones (think soccer or rugby cones) which can work well indoors, and you will need cones anyway to set up your spirals and serpentines.

And if you were looking for rally signs as in protest signs… sorry!

vps vs laptop: I didn’t really understand this one, unless VPS stands for something other than virtual private server. You wouldn’t generally compare a virtual private server and a personal laptop computer, so I’m still mystified. Sorry, guess I couldn’t answer the question after all. But I will take the opportunity to plug my most excellent VPS provider WiredTree, and state my preference for Apple and Sony laptops, and that still keeps me on topic, sort of.

Why do so many restaurants serve tilapia: Beats the heck out of me. I won’t eat it, and I explained why a while back. But even the word “tilapia” makes me laugh, so that’s a benefit for me.

(NaBloPoMo | June ’09: 23 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 150 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)