A tip for marketing design

Here's a little tip. When designing marketing materials -- whether they be billboards, flyers, magazine ads, or websites -- remember that effective communication is more important than artistry. It can be tempting for someone to try to make these materials as beautiful as possible, but that should only be a secondary goal. The primary goal should be to communicate your message, and excessive emphasis on artistry can get in the way of that.

Consider this. What if your website were to have such magnificently beautiful artistry as to captivate your readers. Where will their focus be? What will they remember? Will they be focused on the beauty of your website, to the point that they are no longer as engaged in reading its message? That simply isn't right.

Don't get carried away with artistry, folks. It's not a good idea.

Gotta take care of a mold problem

I have to take care of a mold problem in my basement. This is going to get expensive. What's more, it'll require cleaning this place up.

Oh, and to make matters worse, my knee hurts.

Buckaroo Banzai

So I've been rewatching the Buckaroo Banzai movie. It helps if you know ahead of time that the whole thing was based on the Doc Savage pulp stories -- and if you know who Doc Savage is.

Yep, he's like a modernized Doc Savage without the overhwhelming physicality.

Incompetence

Some people are incompetent. Simply incompetent. No systematic thinking, no common sense.

Dealing with them can be most aggravating.

PowerPoint

I hate it when people simply read off their PowerPoint slides when giving a presentation. It's especially aggravating when these folks are highly educated. Gagh!

Amazingly, one friend of mine said that she tends to be more receptive to vendors who give terrible presentations. She said that she thinks this means that the speaker must be highly intelligent, and that this must mean that their product or service must be worth considering. That is some of the dumbest logic that I've ever heard.

TPiR and Chantel

If I had to pick a classic line-up of models from "The Price is Right," I'd say that the all-time iconic line-up has to be Janice, Holly, and Dian from the 70s and 80s. Out of all these folks, Holly was my favorite, thanks to her sparkling smile and wholesome good looks.

My personal favorite individual TPiR model of all time, however, was Chantel Dubay. It's a terrible shame that she wasn't on the show for very long. The current batch of beauties seems to be very much interchangeable.

Ouch, that hurts

I'm still annoyed that I'm nursing an injury due to this accident that a co-worker caused. It was a really stupid mistake, and even though I'm very forgiving of such things, it does create a huge inconvenience -- especially since I'm trying to get in shape.

GrafTech

I stumbled across this page today. It mentioned GrafTech International Ltd, which brought back some memories. I thought, "Hey, I remember hearing about GrafTech. I was making chit-chat with an attractive woman who mentioned that she worked for that company." This gal was way too conscious of her age and wrinkles. That was a shame, since she was still quite attractive.

No Harley! Yay! Yay!

I am SO glad that Harley was not in our cardio bootcamp class tonight. He's the jackass who keeps woofing like a dog and yelling stuff like "I love this!" during class, even though he's working out at a very low level. He is so lazy, but he likes to act as though he's this bad*ss athlete who's at the top of his game. What a loser.

When he's not around, the class is more pleasant. When he is in the class, he sets a horrible example. It's bad enough that most people in the class don't work very hard, and that our instructor has to routinely stop the class and say "That was pathetic" or words to that effect. When he acts as though his lackluster attempts at working out make him an exercise dynamo, he's setting the bar tremendously low for the rest of the class.

Branicky

This guy was intelligent, but like many people with brainpower, he did not understand the limits of his intellect or knowledge. He was also severely lacking in people skills. I remember the comment of one person who heard him speak: "What an *ss."

MK does ramble

I mentioned that my dear, beloved friend MK tends to take up a lot of time in conversation. I honestly do love talking to her, but she could say so much more in so fewer words.

For example, she tends to say stuff like, "A friend told me... not Sarah, the really pretty one -- who by, the way, is really enjoying herself and is thankful for her marriage. Sarah is so sweet. Do you think that she has a good marriage? Anyway, this friend of mine...." She keeps getting off track, and it gets to be kinda annoying, especially when I'm trying to get stuff done.

MK rambles

I have a friend, MK, who is very dear to me. Talking to her can be very frustrating, though. She calls and says, "Can you spare five minutes?" but her conversations tend to go on for at least half an hour. Not such a big deal when I'm not busy, but when I am busy -- or worse, at work -- it's a bit aggravating.

This is especially true when she's going through some sort of emotional trouble, the sort of thing that takes a lot more than just five minutes to discuss. I don't mind talking to her about these things, but I have pointed out that it's unfair to ask for just five minutes of my time if she's going to go on and on and on... and that happens a lot.

I'll say more about her ramblings soon.

Real Ghostbusters

That show rules. Very intelligent and very clever. The voice characterizations during the first two seasons were outstanding, and the plots were absolutely amazing for a children's program.

New penny

I saw one guy complain obnoxiously about the design of the new US penny. Apparently, some people just don't like change.

Camo pants

I'd like to find some grayish camouflage pants. Unfortunately, they can be hard to find. (Get it?)

I miss me some Disney movies

I miss the old days of the Disney animation renaissance. You know -- The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, and even the lesser lights such as Pocahontas, Tarzan, and the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

I'd love to see more of that stuff. Thankfully, Pixar is still producing top-notch stuff.

Paige O'Hara

Previously, I talked about the luminously talented Jodi Benson. I'd also like to say something about Paige O'Hara, who came right on her heels. Paige doesn't get the same amount of exposure as Jodi, but she also has an amazing voice, and she got to display more of her singing chops in Beauty and the Beast than Jodi did in her movie.

Jodi does gobs of voice work for Disney though, making it a regular gig on her part. Paige doesn't do nearly as much, for some reason. Is it a question of interest? And availability? I don't know; however, it does seem to me that Ariel is much more heavily merchandised than Belle is, which may suggest that Ms. Benson's character is simply more popular, even though O'Hara's movie did better in the box office.

This monthly so-called "dance"

I have almost totally given up on this monthly singles "dance" that I used to attend. It just wasn't any fun. The people there didn't know how to dance, nor were they really interested in learning how to do so. Rather, they just shook and wiggled around without any skill or style.

Mind you, I'm not saying that they need to become as skilled as a professional dancer. I'm not even saying that they should learn any ballroom dance styles, though that would certainly be nice. I'm just saying that it'd help if they learned at least some basic dance moves -- y'know, something at a higher level than the twist or a grapevine. The people there had no style.

The cupid shuffle was tremendously popular there. You know why? Because it requires no skill whatsoever. In a sense, that's a plus, but if you keep doing the mindless, skill-free stuff over and over again, then that's setting the bar awfully low. It means that there's no challenge and no art whatsoever.

More on Deborah

I remember how Deb reacted when I chose to search for other candidates instead of promoting her into the senior director position. She heard that I didn't think highly of her people skills, so she got me on the phone and yelled, "What do you mean, saying that I'm not a people person? I have GREAT people skills!"

The irony somehow escaped her.

Deborah

I wonder what happened to Deborah. She was this woman I knew who was intelligent, well educated, and even pretty despite her extra pounds. She was also abrasive and lacked people skills. When she was the assistant director of a charity, she tended to rub people the wrong way.

She said that she was a people person, but that she chose not to operate as one so that discipline could be enforced. Frankly, that's a cop out. A good people person can enforce discipline without having to abandon her people skills. Her problem wasn't that she was deliberately not operating as a people person; rather, her problem was that she was hostile, needlessly abrasive, and just all around tactless.