Re-Lit and All Fired Up

After taking a sorely needed break from Stuff and doing lots of chilling with “Mom, can we go shopping” daughter, I’m back – poorer but happier.

My office was moved and expanded to a new section of our finished basement and repainted. My old space is now the 16 year old’s “cave for the dudes”. I have a docking station with 3 monitors for testing and space for my laptop, so I can feel geeky. To my left is a whole bunch of exercise equipment that I may stop staring at and cutting articles out of magazines to show how to use. On my right is a gorgeous large bar built by my home’s previous owner. The fridge is filled with water and gatorade for the 16 year old who is on 3 baseball teams and just started mini-football camp yesterday. Plus high school isn’t over yet.

Last year we never opened our pool because it needed so many repairs. On Memorial Day we had good friends over to celebrate its new pump and liner and my terrifying next water bill after refilling it. We had the perfect fire going in the fire pit, making “smores” and the kids perfecting burnt hot dogs on a stick. Even when there was a sudden thunderstorm for 10 minutes, that fire kept on going and so did we when it stopped raining.

Speaking

I had to turn down a speaking engagement for SES San Francisco in August because we’re moving my daughter into her college then. The entire month of August is packed with her education and son’s two weeks of grueling football camp. They work out in the weight room all summer but at the exact moment it turns 105 degrees outside, the boys are called to the fields for “2 a day’s” and other miscellaneous forms of torture they don’t want us mom’s to know about.

Blog Spam

What happened out there? Did an army of blog spammers hatch from giant goose eggs? None of you has anything better to do than drop comments in broken English with made up and outlandish ties to the blog post? Is somebody paying you to be stupid?

Forum Spam

Signing up for forums to get a profile listing, with no intention of ever posting, is nearly as idiotic as walking naked in New York’s Times Square. Sure, SOMEBODY might notice you but unless you have something worthwhile to contribute, we don’t give a flying cow if you’re there. And in my forums, we don’t let you in when Google brings up a pile of profiles for you registered at other forums.

Usability Rocks

I liked this introductory article, An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Influence & Persuasion by Rand Fiskkin.

Hey Facebook! Here’s your privacy redesign, which btw, is not the title I would have given it.

Findability and Exploration: the future of search.

Let’s make a small but important distinction. There’s relevance, and there’s occurrence. When you perform a search, you’re looking for relevant content. A strong indicator of relevance is whether or not the words you’re searching for occur in the result set, but that doesn’t make relevance and occurrence the same thing.

Leaking New

Got my server. Bought my domain. Ran my ideas and goals by one person, who helped me choose the domain when she understood what I wanted to do. I’m teaching myself Drupal for a brand new web site that has nothing to do with SEO or Usability. The only hint you get now is that I’ll be repaying the friends who stood by me, no matter what. Oh, and it will continue what I originally started out to do online back in 1995.

Because sometimes to move forward means going back to the beginning.

Go FLYERS

Living north of Philadelphia has its perks.