Thanksgiving

Meg says it so much better than me.

How things should be done

First of all, lessons in how to use the road from a german site. (no, not that kind of German site) It’s Shockwave, and might take a short while to load – but it’s worth it…

Second, Caitlin comes up with Honesty in Marketing.

And finally (for now) Quin explains the things one should know in a general knowledge quiz.

Knew I should go work and for Hallmark

I didn’t credit it yesterday, because my mouth was frothing more than a Scottish conservation worker‘s at various things, but I did appreciate Iain‘s comment about a card I could send to various people.

Now, I just need to organise a bulk purchase of them…

On redesigning

I’m in a dilemma. It’s a bit like being in quicksand, only the dilemma’s less squelchy.

As I commented a while back, the redesign bug seems to have bitten a range of people, and now I’m beginning to wonder if it’s more of a virus than a bug.

I’ve been fiddling about with a “one-day-only” special offer for December 1st, World Aids Day, (and H‘s birthday – pop over and say Happy Birthday to her) and it’s left me wondering if I shouldn’t do something for the start of 2003. I can’t be arsed with a redesign for the festering season, (although there will be an extra area on the site for that purpose) so Jan 1 seems as good a time as any – if I decide to go through with it.

At the same time though – what could be redone? I know most people would say “get rid of the fucking yellow!” without even having to think about it, but do I really want to? I like the idea of a new colour, but at the same time, let’s face it, you see an offensive yellow background on a site, you can be pretty damn sure it’s mine…

So at the moment I’m just thinking about redesigning, what I’d do, and how it would look at the end. And in that vein, I’m interested to know what other people think – is the yellow just offensive every time you look at the site? Or is it part of the ID of the site now?

No Shit, Sherlock

I finally got a reply from Easyspace’s Customer Service Monkeys today.

This is what I’d written to them : I am having problems with receiving returned emails implying that I am sending out spam. This is not the case, but it appears that an email address has been harvested from the site, and then adapted. I have tried sending you a copy of the email I received, but your system does not seem to allow this.

Please contact me on xxxxx xxxxxx as soon as possible so that we can stop both my site and easyspace being potentially listed as spam-senders.

Which seemed like a fairly straightforward and clear email. This is what I got in return… : (Please note, I have not changed a thing on this – it is verbatim from the email)
Hello,
this I am afraid what sounds like a Spammer using one of your email addresses to make the from address on the emails they have sent out.

regards Steve

So – that seems to be a pretty clear “Fuck off, we’ve no idea what you’re talking about, and thus will treat you as holding the same lack of IT knowledge as ourselves” then. I don’t so much mind the “we don’t know” as the “we don’t care” attitude.

Oh, and I should also point out it’s taken them a week to come up with this Proustian work of literary genius and assistance.

Nuke that pasta

Well, following on from the bit I posted a couple of days back about the joys of convenience food, I’ve ended up doing a new rant about it too.

Enjoy…

Now there’s a thing

Not something you see very often at all – Politician sacked for being honest. She called George Bush “a moron”, which made her position untenable. I personally love the response of Jacques Chretien, (the Canadian PM) saying Bush was “a friend… and not a moron at all” – so at least we know Chretien’s consistent, and is the standard breed of lying politician. (And we won’t comment at all that Chretien looks to be just a bastardisation of the word Cretin anyway) I suppose it was untenable because no other politician could trust someone who called a moron a moron, rather than calling them “Mr President”. Updated – following on from comments on No Pips and Green Fairy about “offensive” adverts featuring George Bush as an idiot I feel I should point out that so far as I can tell, Dubya can’t even spell offensive, let alone understand how something could be offensive. The “legal” argument that the ad is offensive because it implies his stupidity without asking his permission first is – frankly – complete bollocks. It sets a very nasty precedent too – any satire or comedy can be pulled/sued/dropped for not asking people whether it’s OK to take the piss out of them. Considering some of the humourless bastards in power at the moment, it gives the potential for programmes like Have I Got News For You to be pulled, and loses a major part of our humour – imagine how piss-poor Spitting Image would have been if they’d had to go cap in hand to people and say “is it OK to take the piss out of you?” Absolute bollocks that leaves me frothing at the mouth. You’d never guess, would you?