Mega Millions Friday

Just in case I win it... nice to know you.

In the unlikely event I don't win it... see you Monday.

New banner

Decided to put my own design philosophy into practice tonight.

I was looking at my old banner and thinking "Wow... that looks BUSY."

So, I spent an hour or so fiddling with different ideas when I finally had that "Well DUH" moment that I've mentioned before and came up with the new one.

What do you all think?

- Jay

Just ordered new glasses.

I got my prescription from the optometrist and decided to give  http://www.coastal.com a shot since I had a super-secret coupon code that got me what amounts to 90% off your first pair. 

By the way... the code is "HIP2SAVEFREE"... but don't tell them that I told you. It's a secret. 

So I'm going through and I pick out a pair that will make me look like George Clooney on a good day... aww hell, who am I kidding... I'm hoping for Bruce Willis on a bad day. Anyway, I pick out a pair and I see that they have this "Try On View" function:

Now, as you can see you can select the face that they appear on. Fortunately for me, I'm an older white male, so I found the distinguished looking gent pictured. However, my first thought was "Well, thank God only white people have crappy eyesight.". You can choose the gamut between a young blonde cheerleader type, a slightly darker young lady, a young Studdly McStud college guy and... me. If you are Black, Hispanic, Asian or any other shade but Volvo-driving white guy, too bad. 

To be fair, they do offer an "Upload Image" function where you can stick in your own photo which is kind of cool... but come on... couldn't they offer at least some diversity in the stock images?

I'll let you know how the glasses are when I get them.

LESSON LEARNED:  A little diversity goes a long way. 

- Jay

Random Thought

Setting in a meeting and looking at the presenter's screen. Why is IE so insanely busy when Chrome and Firefox are so clean?

Czech done right

Wow... nothing for 3 weeks and now two posts in 10 minutes, including a REAL post and not some lame filler.

(princessbride) Inconceivable! (/princessbride)

Anyway...

I've seen a LOT of websites from Eastern Europe lately and they all have two things in common:

1. They all sport a 1990's look and feel, if not a Geocities look and feel. Somebody using a copy of Front Page 2002 could do better in 20 minutes over a latte.
2. They all have absolutely HORRID English translation. Punctuation looks like it was loaded into a shotgun and blasted at the screen, fascinating verb tenses, puzzling capitalization, you know the deal.

Today, I was sent this site via tweet:

http://atanaiplus.cz/index_en.html

It's a Czech site but it looks like it could have been done in NYC. The phone flipping around look very smooth and the design is nice and clean. The Czech-to-English translation isn't flawless, it feels rather formal and stiff in spots, but I had no problems understanding what they were trying to say. 

One reason may be that the agency that created this site: http://incube.cz/ has an office in the UK, where I assume the translation was done. 

All in all, EXCELLENT job by the Czechs and Incube. 

- Jay

A letter to my blog.

Dear Blog,

Three weeks and nothing in here. Now you know why I can't have a house plant or a dog.

At least a cat will eventually say "Screw you, fella" and make a break for it to steal from the neighbor's garbage. Either that or they do what one cat that I had used to do and walk up to me and hiss when his food or water bowl was empty. Too bad you can't do that.

If you where a plant you'd be black and wilted from lack of attention by now.

I'm sorry, little blog... I'll try to do better by you from now on.


Love,

Jay

Just testing a new app.

You may safely ignore this post.

Poor design or an attempt at fraud? You decide...

So, I went to Fry's today to pick up a tax software for this year. I needed one that did both Federal and State.

I picked up the H&R Block Deluxe package and flipped it over to check out the features:

Ahhh... apparently I can get the State version with the Basic edition. Since I don't need any of the other features offered in the Deluxe edition, I picked up a copy of Basic and flipped it over...

Ummmm....????

So... Basic says the State module is only available in the PREMIUM version?

... Confused....  Bought Turbo Tax even thought it was more expensive.