weekends are for leisure

This continues my coverage of our trip out west … the move to Portland. This leg is from Cheyenne, WY to Salt Lake, UT.

We were happy to leave Cheyenne but it seems we pressed on a bit too quickly. Kristen started out driving, but we reached barren desert terrain quite soon, and the sun was beating in on her side pretty heavily. The bad La Quinta breakfast, horrible coffee, no fruit, and forgetting to drink sufficient water all contributed to her getting a bit dehydrated. No fun. I took over so she could recuperate.

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Techies and startup dreamers, how about another Friday distraction?

Please enlighten me if any of these exist. This is just a brain-dump of half-thoughs I’ve had over the past year.

Pluggable, Context-aware Help System (Updated again, 02/21)

Many web apps don’t have an integrated help system, or help docs at all. The system I’m imagining would make use of AJAX and JavaScript to add context-sensitive help to a web app that would otherwise not offer much assistance to its users.

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Think I listened to 8 Charlie Rose episodes yesterday while working. All of Michael Arrington’s (because I was curious), a few with Bill Gates and the newest with Jeff Bezos.

I think if I could trade places with any successful tech CEO/entrepreneur, it would be Jeff Bezos. He’s 100% likable, with tons of energy.

Charlie asked Jeff which qualities most helped him be successful and Jeff responded, “The willingness to be misunderstood. The willingness to fail. The willingness to be long-term oriented.”

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Wherein I discuss my elementary ideas and woes regarding radio control circuit design, air conditioners, building materials, and a few other things. It’s a portrait of what it’s like to be irked by things that should have been designed better, or could be.

Not sure when I started thinking about improving upon the design of things, but I think it was early on in my childhood. Probably as soon as I started taking things apart to investigate the internals and repurpose the parts. Mainly I’d take apart electronic toys, since they held the most mystery. Occasionally I’d take apart things, like my sister’s stereo, just to see what was inside. She wasn’t happy, but it still worked after I put it back together.

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They’re marshes, and they’re in Iraq. What the? Seriously. And the people that inhabit them staged a minor uprising against Saddam in the 90s. Saddam got pissed, and made a conscious effort to divert water away from the marshes, thus draining them. The people were displaced; the land turned to desert.

But seeds are robust. After the fall of Saddam, some of the diversion banks were breached in order to send water back into the area and restore the marshes. It’s working. Reeds are growing once-again.

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On Nov 11, I updated the survey system on Flam Swiss, my drumline cadence composition venture. In the process I also thought, I’ll dedicate the right side of the site to surveys, that way they won’t be missed, and visitors will know what to expect.

Well, this also means I removed my photo from the right-side of the site. It was on every page and sat just above the survey questions. It was a personal touch and was an instant clue as to who’s behind the site and the cadences. During the two days that the photo was removed I received no survey responses. There were 10-13 visitors during that time period so I expected to get at least 1 submission.

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One

You: Firm power bottom, game for anything. You should be good looking and ready for an evening you will never forget. Must be experienced in Quicken Deluxe, or QuickBooks Pro 2009, plus have knowledge of regional tax codes and federal small business tax exemptions and forms 1120 and 1065. Also, no fatties.

Me: Adam Lambert lookalike that has it going on where it counts. I also have numerous inquiries about itemized deductions on my state tax filings. Plus, I’m well-hung.

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With so much to learn about my target market for Flam Swiss, I’ve been making use of surveys to find out who my site visitors are.

Wufoo is great, but I only had 1 response when visitors were asked to visit a link in order to fill out my Wufoo survey form. When I decided to embed the Wufoo form directly in my webpage I got** 12 responses**. So much better! However, Wufoo wasn’t built to be used for surveys, and I found it difficult/impossible to match the embedded wufoo form to my site’s design.

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New container of creamer. Slight shake. Open. Pour. Yuck, what just plopped into my coffee? Oh right, they were bubbles. That gets me every damn time.

How does requesting scrambled eggs give the cook permission to use an egg substitute?

If I ever play drumset in a band again, and the front-man decides to jump off my bass drum in a display of showmanship, he’ll never jump again.

The job of a manager is to make their employees happy, so their employees in-turn, can make the customers happy.

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It may already be apparent to you, but I’ve recently realized that the best blogs, tweets and podcasts are the ones that actually do something for me. Seems obvious, right? By “do”, I mean they do at least one of the following:

• Enrich my life
• Inspire me
• Teach me something

Enrichment makes me glad to be human, and quite often makes me feel human once-again. The good stuff makes me laugh, smirk at some bit of unexpected cleverness, or gain a fresh perspective. The best sources of my enrichment are often non-tech, almost always come from unexpected places, especially when I’m not looking for it.

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