BLOG by zaiss

Everyone’s gone back to their respective cities, but Alexis is posting the memories for all to share.

Can you rope-a-dope?

A holiday party was planned today for my team at Microsoft. From the invite:

So what does white boy from Nebraska bring? America tends to take dishes from all around the world and “Americanize” them, so I suppose the sky’s the limit for my selection. But perhaps something that is native Nebraskan would be appropriate. Corn on the cob? Or perhaps a bunch of reuben sandwiches! (See #10). Other thoughts?

I logged into my work email this morning in the Denver airport, and got the following reminder list:

After the troubles I’ve had in communicating with United ticket agents, I definitely agree that I’m overdue for a vacation! Good thing I’m on my way back to Omaha.

People poke fun and wonder why I would maintain a page on so many social networking sites (like Facebook, Friendster, MySpace, LinkedIn, Orkut, Yelp, etc…) – and today I have an answer. It’s because you never know when or where your favorite band will make a reappearance.

I woke up this morning to find that the former band members of Splashdown had created a MySpace page – and they added me as their friend!!!

Now, I don’t normally freak out every time I get a friend request (especially on MySpace of all places… mostly strange folk adding anyone with a pulse as their friends). But this is an extenuating circumstance – I haven’t heard anything from them since I ordered my last bit of Splashdown memorabilia back in undergrad.

I’ve been singing their praises to anyone who asks, and if that isn’t you, then let me know and I’ll rectify that straight away. In the meantime, fans of the band who are on MySpace should be sure to give them an add and see what’s ahead. In the short-term, I hear they’ll be adding some songs on iTunes for your listening pleasure.

PostScript: After re-reading the post, I think I should call out that the band isn’t getting back together according to the MySpace page (sadly). By “make a reappearance,” I meant that any official mention of the band had gone away for quite a while online, so I’m quite happy to see an official site back up.

Part of my quest to master Quicken involved reconciling my accounts against past statements to make sure everything was going OK. If you don’t currently do this, by the way, I highly recommend it. Don’t even take the time to enter your account - just make a fake one and reconcile a penny. The rewards are well worth it.

Doesn’t that make the sorrow of today just melt away? There are sunnier skies out there, folks, and it starts with reconciling your bank accounts.

If we’re honest with each other, I think it’s not surprising that keeping track of one’s bank acocunt isn’t a common task. It’s a pain, right? So I’m not surprised to see Quicken try to encourage positive behavior in that regard by reinforcing it with a positive message. Still, the climate of usability these days is heavily against unnecessary dialogs. It seems like something more subtle (with less clicking) might have been in order.

Alternatively, they could have taken a cue from our friends at Facebook and just changed the button text to something like “Yipee!”, “Yessss!”, or “Ownage!”

In related news, I decided to register Quicken a couple weeks back. Now, I feel like I might be tainted having gone through a typography course, so for those who haven’t had any training… does this registration screen look normal to you? No help from past and present CDFers!!

From days long ago in another life when I used to be a Flash junkie (that’s still true, isn’t it?) I signed up to receive the Macromedia Edge newsletter, which is full of interesting articles and the like. Occasionally I also get an email about a seminar, or a new product release. Since Adobe took over, it seems like the new thing is sending out best practices.

I received my second “Best Practices” email from Adobe today, and I can tell that they ran out of best practices pretty damn quickly (or else just stopped trying):

Upgrade. Yes, I suppose that would be a best practice in Adobe’s book – upgrading is the best way for them to be making more money. But this “best practice” belies the fact that there are plenty of tips and tricks in Flash that can be done without upgrading. And even if one does happen to upgrade, what best practices will he or she be able to take advantage of that weren’t there in earlier versions?

As for people like me, who do have the latest version of Flash, I’m starting to wonder if I will ever actually get anything remotely resembling a “best practice” tip in the near future.

Gaming consoles are being released this holiday season, both the Nintendo Wii and the Playstation 3. Most Final Fantasy games tend to be released for Playstation consoles, so I’ll probably eventually get a PS3. But this holiday season? Not likely.

Tuesday, BetaNews released an article stating that most stores will be receiving eight PS3 consoles for the holiday season. But Sony is not completely unreasonable: If the store is “higher-traffic,” they will get a double shipment.

What I find the most amusing is that GameStop, one of many stores who is taking pre-orders, is letting employees have two. It seems limiting considering how many employees each store must have (wouldn’t it suck to be third on the list?), but at the same time, you’re selling 25% of your product internally? A measly six are left for the everyday consumer. I think I’ll just have to wait until the buzz dies down.

Alert: This is a blog posting.

Fidelity Investments is the broker of choice for managing Microsoft financial benefits; in my case, a 401K account and some stock management. I have minor issues with the usability of the site, but my favorite usability issue with Fidelity is the readiness with which they alert you of any activity. Two days after I logged in for the first time, I received a letter from Fidelity:

Alright, this is a handy security feature. I wouldn’t want someone doing this on my behalf, but isn’t there a way to turn off these alerts? I checked, but couldn’t find anything. Oh well, what are the odds that this will seriously happen frequently enough to care, right?

Two weeks later I go to log in, and I’ve forgotten my Customer ID. How foolish! I jump through the hoops to get it back, and sure enough, two days later I got another letter…

Seriously. Can I please set up these alerts over email? I hate the idea that I’m wasting paper and postage every time I’m the least bit forgetful. And if I do set up the alerts over email… will I get a letter notifying me that of the change?

Alert: This is the end of the blog post.

Being a huge fan of Scooby Doo as a child, I enjoy scoping out the Scooby Doo movies when they happen to be on TV. I watched it on the Family Channel about a month ago.

Tonight, it happens to be on Cartoon Network, and I noticed one stark difference – the obnoxious burping and farting scene between Scooby and Shaggy was cut short by over a minute!

I know! That’s what I thought, Shaggy! I mean, isn’t burp and fart humor right up the alley of young kids? And what exactly makes it more appropriate to show on the Family Channel as opposed to Cartoon Network?

Only 10MB / month of photos. No problem, I adapted. Only 3 photo groups allowed. I grouped my photos into 3 all-encompassing groups. Piece of cake. But now I’ve run into another ceiling on my free Flickr account - only the 200 most recent pictures will be shown. I probably can’t outsmart this one…

Any Flickr pro users out there? Is it worth it?