Jeff Chausse
Digital Strategy + Design
Blog Reality Check
From an article in Business 2.0:
“Forrester Research (FORR) conducted an online survey of 3,673 people and found that 79 percent of its respondents had never heard of blogs, 98 percent had never read one [...] “
But you’re reading this blog. And that’s what matters. More commentary is available from Corante.com.
#$%& DHTML
Just a quick bug report… Figuring that modern browsers finally have decent support for CSS and DHTML/DOM standards (yeah, right), I’ve taken it upon myself to start work on a web-based app I’ve been plotting for ages. What I’m hoping to do is make the layout as flexible as a Windows app, including an “Outlook bar” clone — so there’s lots of dynamic resizing of layers going on… Anyway, long story short, I just wanted to report this Mozilla bug I ran into (Mozilla 1.3) — and spent HOURS trying to figure out…
If you have a <div> with nothing but absolute positioned block-level elements in it, Mozilla will always report the div’s offsetWidth and offsetHeight as 0.
A friendly neighborhood saved the day when I FINALLY figured out what the &@#$ was going on.
Hopefully some lost soul in a similar situation will find this post via Google, in their darkest JavaScript hour…
Skeletons in the USENET Closet
Damn, Google makes it mighty difficult to forget about the past, for anyone who’s ever touched the Internet. I was Googling my own name (hoping to find other people with the same name, as someone sent email inquiring if I was a certain person from their past), and I decided to click on “Groups”, to see what I could find in there. All I can say is: “Ouch”.
The first message was:
Apparently, I had sold an Amiga to someone via a newsgroup WAY back in 1995 and I took longer than expected to get it mailed. It took me a while to search the memory banks, but I DEFINITELY did not rip this guy off. I vaguely remember receiving an apology to his flame-o-gram after I explained the delay… Unfortunately, if anyone ever “Group Googles” me in the future, I’m branded forever with this as the first result. Swell.
Next, we journey into the “Lone-Wolf.net” project. This was a web site I set up in 1998 as a sort of bulletin board for amateur game developers to list their projects. It actually attracted quite a few developers. The most famous patron was Geoff Howland of Lupine Games, which was made semi-famous (semi-infamous?) by the bargain bin game “Hatfields and McCoys“. The reviews for it were, well, less than good, but, hell, what have YOU made that got stocked by Wal*Mart?
You can actually see the site as it appeared in 1998 via the Wayback Machine.
Now here’s the part that really makes me shudder… You will spot a couple of Multi-Level-Marketing related messages… This was a VERY brief blip in my past that I REALLY would like to forget, thank you very much. I was young, I was naive, and I was broke. After that little venture, I was young, naive, and even more broke. Let that be a lesson to you. Ugh… Moving on.
Something much less embarrassing was a piece of software I actually developed, and came very close to selling… It was called “Email Monster“, and it claimed to “eliminate absolutely all unwanted mail!”. Basically, it was a proxy between your mail reader and your POP mail server, which operated on black- and white- lists and automatically requested confirmation from unknown senders, much like a lot of newer anti-spam tools do today. But this was 5 years ago, man! I was a visionary! Unfortunately, EMM was very buggy and my software development chops were not quite up to par, and I found it impossible to debug, and eventually gave up. Incidentally, it was written in Borland C++ Builder – an awesome tool that got no respect. Unfortunately, emalmonster.com is not in the Wayback Machine archive for some reason. It had a REALLY hideous color scheme, so it’s probably for the better. The domain name appears to be owned by some advertising company now.
And, just to wrap this up by utterly humiliating myself… Here’s a USENET PERSONAL AD from 1995. Ugh. Good God, it actually says I’m not looking for an “Anna Nicole Smith type”… That meant something a lot different eight years ago… But, again, I’m clearly a visionary.
Pingback? Trackback? Over-Engineering?
I’m about to enter risky territory here, criticizing something I don’t fully understand, but here goes… A lot of the hipper webloggers use something called “Trackback” or “Pingback”. What these allow is for someone to link to your weblog, and have a link to THEIR weblog automatically appear on YOUR site. Follow that? This allows for an interesting form which is neither really one way nor two way communication… Zen thoughts aside, I always thought it would be a nifty thing to enable on my site.
First, I investigated “Trackback”. This, apparently, is a “Movable Type“-only thing, so scratch that, since I don’t run a Movable Type weblog.
So, I investigated “PingBack”. This, apparently is some kind of standard. But, to implement it involves the use of special HTTP headers, XHTML headers, knowledge of XMLRPC, and according to the spec, familiarity with regular expressions.
Huh?
What am I missing here? Why is this so complicated? It strikes me that all you REALLY need to do is this:
1.) write a script, in the web application server of your choice, that takes as a query string parameter a unique ID for a post. Provide this to those who want to link to your post. This script should do the following:
1a.) Display the post
1b.) Run a bit of code that checks the referer URL from the HTTP request. It should compare that to a list stored in a database or text file. If the referer is not in that list, add it, preferably with the time of the request.
Then, when you display your post, display this list of referers. Granted, this lacks a certain amount of flexibility, and may be open to some degree of abuse, but heck, it does what you want, no? I’m really curious if there are any Pingbacking or Trackbacking bloggers out there who think I’m a genius, an idiot, or somewhere in between, based on these thoughts. Until I implement “SomethingBack”-ing, you can contact me here.
Yes, I’m a Mac Head
The Macintosh iBook (and the PowerBook for that matter) comes with a power supply possessing a nifty feature. There is a little ring around the jack where it plugs into computer. When the computer is charging, the ring lights up with a yellowy-orange color. When the computer is fully charged, it lights up green. It looks really cool.
Thanks to a freak accident, in which I tripped over the power cord and flung the iBook off of the couch where it was peacefully recharging, the little lights don’t come on any more when I plug it in. Will I spend $80 for a replacement just because of that minor glitch? No. But the fact that I actually considered it probably proves that I am now clearly a Mac Head.
On a related note, my friend Andy has an iPod, which he sometime listens to in the car. He uses one of those cassette adapter things. It works perfectly fine, yet he desperately wants to replace it. The problem? It’s black. It clashes horribly with the sleek, white iPod.
Drinking the Apple Kool-Aid can do funny things to people…
Counter-Googling, or, How Not To Win My Business
Allow me to paraprahase this article from “Trendwatching.com”.
Calling all go-get-’em marketeers! Here’s an exciting new way to attract customers! It’s called Counter-Googling! It works like this: Find a prospective customer, use Google to dig up personal information about them (Hey, it’s publically available, right!) and then use that information to tailor-design an offer to the customer!
Now, allow me to extrapolate.
…Why stop with publically available information on the INTERNET? Why not drive by the customers’ house and see if, say, their car is looking a little rusty? And if you just HAPPEN to be walking by, and hear an argument between Mr. Customer and his wife, perhaps offer a marriage counseling course, at a deep discount! Or why not follow him around the supermarket, and see what kind of shampoo or soft drinks he prefers? HEY, THIS IS ALL PUBLICALLY AVAILABLE INFORMATION, RIGHT?!
Point being: Just because I expose a bit of information publically doesn’t mean you have the right to use that information for commercial purposes, INCLUDING MARKETING TO ME. If a company contacts me, armed with anything but the most basic information about me, they will never, ever, get my business.
The fact that I, technically, work in Marketing, does not change the fact that many “hot new marketing concepts” make me want to puke.
Sterling Balls
I am neither a pro- nor anti- Microsoft zealot, but CNET has a great interview with Sterling Ball (awesome name), CEO of Ernie Ball (leading maker of premium guitar strings). A while back, Microsoft made an example of his company, via their BSA goon squad, for having a handful of unlicensed software packages (caused by not meticulously wiping hard drives as computers got passed from one employee to another).
Ball responded by eliminating all Microsoft software from the company, and found that: Guess what? The company’s getting along just fine, thank you very much.
Q: there’s a real argument now about total cost of ownership, once you start adding up service, support, etc.
A: What support? I’m not making calls to Red Hat; I don’t need to. I think that’s propaganda…What about the cost of dealing with a virus? We don’t have ‘em.
No, I Will Not Fix Your Computer
I always try to explain to people that although I’m quite knowledgeable about computers, it doesn’t always mean that I know exactly how every program works, nor can I solve poorly explained problems over the phone or IM, without any access to the computer in question. They never quite seem to get it. My mother decided maybe I could help her friend out, and forwarded this to me:
porkypine67: i have this adaptec easy cd creator standard edition 4 and directcd 3
porkypine67: on one cd
porkypine67: it came with the computer
porkypine67: and i down loaded something on here along time ago and didnt like it so i took it off and where it ask r you sure you want to deleat it had 4 answers to it
porkypine67: compaq
porkypine67: windows me
porkypine67: the answer were — yes,yes to all, no, no to all , and i diding know witch one to click on so i hit yes to all
porkypine67: it told me that i could take something off that could be still useing what i downlaoded
porkypine67: but it was too late
porkypine67: so nowwww my easy cd creator want let me make a music cd
What do people expect? That I can just say something like “Oh, just press Ctrl-R”? This would probably take at least half an hour for me to straighten out if I were sitting at the computer. And, another thing to all the software designers out there, every time someone from the… let’s call them the “older market”… comes across a dialog with an option — no matter how innocuous (“Would you like an icon on your desktop?”, “Do you like the color blue?”) — THEY DO NOT READ THE OPTIONS. EVER. They just panic, and call someone like me. Think extremely hard about finding a way to avoid options in any installer. You will save YOUR tech support department, and millions of CS-degreed adult children, many hours of stress.
Boy, this is turning into the “all cranky, all the time” weblog, isn’t it?
Shameless Plug
Heather Hates You, the hard rocking Allston punk band — whose website is run by yours truly — has just released their first album: “Operation Suckerpunch“. Get it for only 12 bucks, and not a penny will go to the RIAA. Support kick-ass independent rock – support Heather Hates You!
Why 95% of the population are assholes
Allow me to diverge from the usual tone of this weblog. I rarely rant and rave about personal matters, let alone use profanity in a headline, but I am having a very irritating weekend, and I need to vent.
Twice this weekend I was hassled by strangers. One time, I had done absolutley no wrong to the antagonist, once I was technically in the wrong, but creating absolutely no inconvenience whatsoever to the person. So, basically, I was hassled by one (1) moron and one (1) asshole. I’m having a difficult time deciding which is more annoying to deal with: morons or assholes.
Now, I’ve been hassled plenty of times in my life. But the kicker here is that on both of these occasions, I was MAKING AN EXTRA CAREFUL EFFORT TO BE CONSIDERATE. And that is why I am utterly INFURIATED.
Episode 1:
I went to Jiffy Lube for an oil change. As is common, there were two lanes of cars, leading into two bays. It was right before closing, and there were only two cars left, mine, and that of a woman who was there before me. I knew she arrived before me, I fully appreciated the fact, and I WAS MAKING ABSOLUTELY SURE NOT TO VIOLATE HER GOD GIVEN RIGHT TO BE SERVICED FIRST, BECAUSE I AM A NICE GUY.
Actually, there were other cars involved… There was one car in front of each of us, “on deck” to go into the respective bays ahead. Now, use Matchbox cars to follow along if you have to, but here’s what happened… The car being serviced pulled out of the HER line’s bay. The car “on deck” pulled in. As was clearly the protocol, the woman in question should have pulled up on deck for the bay in front of her, but she chose not to, for whatever reason. Now, IF I WERE AN ASSHOLE, I would have cut ahead into the now vacant “on deck” spot, and she could have rightfully chewed me out. Rather, I stayed put. About one minute later, the car ahead of me pulled into the bay. Now here’s what went through my head, as an INTELLIGENT, CONSIDERATE HUMAN BEING:
1.) The woman in the other line was here first, ergo her car deserves to be serviced ahead of mine.
2.) A “Signature Oil Change ™” takes roughly the same amount of time for any given car.
3.) The car ahead of her pulled in one minute ahead of the car ahead of me, ergo the car ahead of her will have its service completed before the car ahead of me.
5.) The other woman was not pulling up “on deck” for whatever reason, though it was clear that if she were to do so, it would be to her advantage to pull up to the bay ahead of HER.
4.) THEREFORE, I should pull up “on deck” behind the car in front of ME, so that I might leave the keys for the attendant, and relax in the waiting area with a fascinating three month old magazine.
5.) QED. Let’s pull ahead.
Of course, two seconds after I pull up, I hear:
“Excuuuuuuse Me. OH MY GAWD, that was SOOOOO rude. I can’t believe what you just did”.
I had a feeling that would happen. The woman just looked like the type. I get out of the car and attempt to explain: “No, it’s OK, see… the cars ahead of us pulled in at the same time. Just pull up, and our cars will get serviced AT THE SAME TIME.”
Completely oblivous to reason, she started rambling on about how other people had gone in ahead of her (not my problem)… I tried explaining it again, and she just said “WHATEVER… that was… just… UNREAL… What. You. Did.” I believe she actually accompanied this with the “talk to the hand” gesture.
Infuriated, I just said, “FINE… if it means that much to you…,” jumped in my car, slammed it into reverse, and pulled back two spots. If she REALLY wanted that spot, she was more than welcome to pull up. She still didn’t move.
Five minutes later, AS PREDICTED BY MY STAGGERING INTELLIGENCE, both cars ahead of us pull out of their bays nearly simultaneously, and the attendant signals for both of us to pull up exactly where I knew we would both end up.
Episode 2:
This one is much simpler, and doesn’t require Matchbox cars, but it helps back up my hypothesis quite well.
As mentioned earlier, I am moving into an apartment in downtown Salem. One of the disadvantages of this place is that there is nowhere to park near the building. I have accepted this inconvenience, and I am happy to park in the city garage a block away. Unfortunately, when moving large amounts of possessions, this is not really an option, and rules must be bent. There is a driveway right next to the building. YES, it is privately owned, YES there is a “no parking” sign. Therefore, I technically have no right to park there. However, I simply MUST pull up somewhere to unload my things, AND no one EVER, EVER parks there on the weekend. My landlord explained that is rented by a business, and that there’s no problem pulling up on the weekend.
Therefore, I do my best to get in and out of the spot as quickly as possible. Instead of parking there while I bring everything up to my apartment, I only bring my things into the back door, leaving them in the hallway. The driveway never leaves my eyesight for more than 2 seconds. If some rightful “parker” were to pull up, I would pull out immediately. Upon completing the delivery into the hallway, I hop in my car, drive it to the garage, and walk back, leaving my stuff open to theft, BUT I DON’T WANT TO BE A JERK AND TAKE UP THE DRIVEWAY SPOT ANY LONGER THAN ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. Five minutes max and I’m out of there.
As you can probably guess, the owner walks by and says:
“Uh, you gotta move your car. You can’t park there.”
“Yes, I’m sorry, but you see, I just moved in and I’m just here while I unload this stuff”.
“This is private property.”
“Yes, I’m sorry, I just have to bring this stuff up to that door, and I’ll be out of here as fast as possible”.
“These spots are rented”
(Yeah, to a business that isn’t in the office on the weekend)
I make a couple more attempts at reason, but all I get back are “These are rented”, “Private property”, and the classic: “For future reference…”
You have to understand the layout of where I live, there is LITERALLY nowhere else I could leave my car while unloading large quantities of heavy items. Was I violating his ownership rights? Yes. Was I doing my best to cause as little inconvenience as possible in a situation where I had no other choice? Yes. Therefore, was he being an asshole: Yes.
Conclusion:
I am a Nice Guy ™. I pride myself on being a Nice Guy ™. I make a concerted effort not to infringe on other people’s rights, or to inconvenience them in any way. On the rare occasion where I inadvertently wrong someone, I apologetically take the blame. On the whole, I am a very calm person, and slow to anger. But, when I am accused of being inconsiderate — while I am in the process of doing everything possible NOT to be inconsiderate — it positively INFURIATES me.
This leads me to my hypothesis regarding the title of this post. When I do an asshole-ish thing (inadvertently, mind you), I calmly accept any angry reaction, apologize, and move on. When I am going out of my way to be A NICE GUY, and STILL get abuse by ignorant or just plain mean people, I get POSITIVELY RIPSHIT.
Therefore, it logically follows, to avoid the stress that comes from being POSITIVELY RIPSHIT, that I may as well intentionally be an asshole and avoid the stress such as that which I’ve received this weekend. I believe a majority of the world subscribes to this theory, whether they realize it or not. However, I have not given up the struggle to remain in the minority… so far.