Archive for September, 2008

profiling…

Friday, September 26th, 2008

I must say, I was a little concerned that whoever came to get our wonderful recliner might not want it…

rec

It is a bit beat up, lopsided, old… etc. And considering the only thing I had to go by was that the lady who wanted it had a Blackberry… well, they aren’t that expensive, but it’s not your average run-of-the-mill cell phone either.

Well, no fears. She drives a truck that you can hear before you see (although it’s not that loud) and lives in a trailer. Oh, and the Blackberry? She works for ATT. Bummer. I coulda traded that piece of junk for a coupla Blackberrys… after all, she works on them… Her birthday is Monday and she wanted a recliner, so she got a free birthday present. Nice. I guess people in trailer homes can have internet access too… and we have more room in our semi-small apartment. For those bookshelves… that are coming in a week…

Posted in my life/after college, tech | 2 Comments »

customer… service?

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

Considering all the instances of customer disservice I’ve run into, I thought I note on the bring side would be nice:

  1. I called BOSE
  2. A person answered the phone within three rings
  3. He didn’t transfer me anywhere
  4. He was able to help me – ie, he wasn’t a clueless kid reading a script.
  5. I was off the phone in three minutes tops.

Wow. I was pretty much amazed. Other companies might want to take note… or not.

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a lovely chain of events

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

It’s amazing how things flow along to an unexpected, surprising, disastrous conclusion…

  1. Several months/years ago, when my sister was dorm parent, someone gave her an old but comfortable recliner…
  2. My sister moved out of the dorm into an apartment. The old but comfortable recliner tags along.
  3. We have no room for the old but comfortable recliner, so we place it in the kitchen and never sit in it.
  4. My parents stop by. My dad decides the old but comfortable recliner would make a great computer chair.
  5. Between the couch, the old but comfortable recliner, and the computer, there’s not much room for maneuvering…
  6. The weather outside is delightful… meaning the window is open… by the computer…
  7. I leave for work.
  8. My sister comes home from work.
  9. She decides to close the window, and in the process, steps on my $100 Bose earphones, ripping the cord out of the plug and bending the USB plug on my drive and the audio plug on my M-M audio cable.

Posted in my life/home, tech | Comments Off

A few examples

Friday, September 12th, 2008

Headlines with the greatest comprehension:

headlines, 1 

headlines, 2

The gravity thing:

poa, ta

A "do-not-do-this:"

do not do 

(Unless you’re an average Bible-college graduate, in which case you probably couldn’t turn out something that complicated anyway… no offense… just the truth.)

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Type and Layout

Thursday, September 11th, 2008

That’s the title of a book. Type and Layout. I got it at a library book sale for cheap ~ $1?

Anyway, it is the result of a scientific study on what is good and what is bad for reading comprehension. Here is a quick rundown:

  1. Serif font over sans serif. My blog is using a sans serif font. Oops. Sans means without. Serif fonts have "feet" and "trails", etc. Sans serif fonts end in a straight point. Something like that. Georgia is a good serif font. I’m not sure why I’m not using it. Times New Roman is another one.
  2. All caps is bad, even for headlines.
  3. Headlines should be black and at the top. (surprise? look around. They’re not always at the top.) They should also not be too large, whether in width or height (as in multi-line).
  4. Headlines should not end with a period. Period means stop! Headlines is supposed to catch a person’s eye and want them to keep going
  5. The eye starts at the top left and gradually goes to the bottom right. It’s called gravity. I’ll scan the picture. It explains it better. Respect gravity.
  6. A little bit of line spacing is good, but 1.5x+ is bad. I guess around 1.25x is ok.
  7. Black text on white background is best. White text on black background is bad. Very bad! Do not do!
  8. All bold or all underline is bad.
  9. Italics does not hinder comprehension.
  10. Justified is much better than ragged left or ragged right.

There’s more, but here is the gist:

Georgia, black on white, justified, 1.5x spacing = beautiful. (Notice the now-serif font? :D )

Posted in general, tech | 4 Comments »

verrrrrry cool

Friday, September 5th, 2008

put rememberthemilk todo/task list on your desktop as active desktop – 98/xp only – no vista support (sorry, sister! vista doesn’t have active desktop)

i must say, this is the first and probably one of the few actual uses for active desktop i’ve ever found.

here’s howto (man, i wish i’d had this in college…)

oh, for sis, there is a gmail/firefox plugin (yes, that means it won’t work with IE, whereas active desktop won’t work with FF – so strange ;) )

this definitely gets a 10/10 for coolness. oh, yeah, and it can text your phone to remind you when you’re "away." what more could you want? (hint: there is more)

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no greater joy…

Friday, September 5th, 2008

There is no greater joy than discovering (at 558am) that a new, shiny, and might I add, free, toy (Hamachi) is now working properly because I discovered that I accidentally set the firewall (Comodo) permissions for it (actually, not it, as in Hamachi, but svchost.exe) to "Web Browser" when it most certainly was and is not a web browser. Wow. And now it works. Whee.

Take that, sister. :P

Now, back to that resume from Standby/Hibernate issue…

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