Funny Strange is Lori Culwell's blog

This post is probably going to put you to sleep, but whatever.

Maybe this will entertain you if you have any familiarity with technology, or maybe you'll just find it amusing that I spent SIX HOURS in Best Buy last Friday, trying to get Geek Squad to fix my computer.   Now, let me back up-- I am something of a techno-geek, so it would ordinarily be a cold day in Hell before I would let those hacks touch my sweet MacBook that I partitioned out myself to run Windows XP  and Mac OS X.     Problem is, a couple of months ago I scored a cheap copy of Adobe CS 4, which (surprise!) isn't supposed to run without Service Pack 3 on the Windows side, which for some reason would NOT install on the Windows-side of the partition and was throwing off this totally ridiculous error saying it didn't have enough memory, which it clearly did.    I mentioned this to a guy at Best Buy, just in conversation, when I was shopping for something else, and he was all "you should bring in your laptop for 'optimization,' then the Geek Squad guys will have to solve the problem in order to install SP 3. 

 

See, it's getting techie in here already.   Bail out now!  Save yourself!   Go back and watch some Saturday Night Live clips from the weekend!

 

I actually thought this sounded like a pretty clever idea, but, to be honest, I was not confident at all that Geek Squad would be able to solve a problem I couldn't solve myself, since I am usually the one who fixes what's wrong with other people's computers.    But, on the other hand,  the Windows partition that I set up does have some lingering problems, including the fact that the "Eject" button doesn't work, and the keys don't light up on the Windows side.  So, I figured why not?  Maybe Geek Squad can tell me something I don't know.

 

Nope.  Turns out they can't.  After making me wait, no kidding, FIVE HOURS, they came out and said "we tried it this way, and this way, and this way, and it just wouldn't install!  We don't know what to make of it!", after which I was like, "Yeah, those are all the things I told you I tried when we started this journey, my friends-- I thought you were going to bring some of your unique Geek Squad insight into the situation."

 

That's when they shrugged, and gave me my money and my computer back, y'all.  They didn't want to argue with me, and if they'd kept my money I would have kept right on going.  Perhaps they sensed this.  Maybe they read this blog.  Who knows?

 

They did have one other idea, though, which was for me to go to the "Apple Computer" embassy inside of Best Buy, which technically is a tiny Apple Store (so maybe they have diplomatic immunity and can hit you with their cars without being prosecuted), and once I'm in there, I try to stump the Apple guy with why it isn't working.  P.S. I love to stump the Apple guys because they're usually even more smug than Geek Squad.  But, I have to give this guy credit.  No lie, I told him all about it, including when I set the whole thing up, and he was all "Maybe it's....but there's no way.....I think.....um, did you install that version of Windows over Bootcamp BETA?"   When I said yes, he was like "NO!  This is impossible!  I have only heard of this in legends," because apparently the beta version of something is supposed to automatically shut itself down when the production version launches, which mine never did.  The Bootcamp BETA is like the Apple Computer version of Sasquatch, dude.  So frankly, this explains alot.  

 

And seriously, THAT was the problem.  I just had to update this one thing, and now it all works.  That one piece of advice was free, took twenty minutes to implement with software I already had (left over from Steph's computer, which I did the same thing to, only SIX MONTHS LATER, which explains the new version of BootCamp, which comes standard on Leopard).   Problem solved, computer working, ONLY SIX HOURS OF MY LIFE LOST.

 

Funny, right?   In a totally geeky "I'm not sure what half of that meant" kind of way.    Now the keys light up on the Windows side, and I can play a DVD without the whole thing crashing. 

And so this is Facebook.....

So, I'm sure you know, I'm all about Facebook now, whereas last year I was using MySpace, which I think has now turned into some cipher of marketing people marketing to other people.  I still have an account there because it's a decent way to contact me if you read my book or want to ask me a question about how to become a writer, but I'm trying to use Facebook more now because it seems like a higher-quality application, and because I actually do know most of the 300 or so people that I have as "Friends" on there.

But, here's the thing.  Facebook is, like, a one-stop shop where you can get status reports and see pictures, potentially, of people you've known over every period in your entire life.  Of course, the internet is the great equalizer, so it's brought together people you knew from the 3rd grade, people you know from work now, and people you knew when, say, you were a 17 year old idiot with the emotional capacity of celery, or a 21 year old college student....well, you get the picture.  Facebook is 95% good, and 5% opening up chapters of your life where you didn't feel so great about yourself, and that you might not want to revisit, and sometimes that can be good because it makes you feel better about things in the past and get some closure, and sometimes you'd rather just not revisit periods in your life when you felt bad, you know?

And, file this under "Facebook weirdness," I've already had to break it to someone OVER FACEBOOK that my mom passed away in 2003, after she innocently wrote on my Facebook Wall "Hey-- great to see you, how's your mom?"   Yiiiikes.   In that case, I just felt really bad for her, since she'd only just gotten on Facebook the day before, and didn't know anything about it.   So, there's an example of how something cool like Facebook can turn into real-life hurt feelings and weirdness.   Like I said, 95% awesome.....5% not so much. 

Then, there's a whole 'nother category of Facebook weirdness-- people that you know, and ordinarily you'd "friend" everyone you know in Facebook land, but for whatever reason, you are not friending them, and they are not friending you, because whatever went on between you during the time that you knew them is just too much to revisit, and maybe the last time you saw that person, you were like "I never want to see you again" and you were TOTALLY SERIOUS.  You never thought you would see them again, and so when they suddenly popped up on Facebook with pictures of themselves and funny comments on other people's walls who you can see because you have mutual friends, you're like "NO, NO, NO!"   In fact, when you mention this person to Stephan, who also knows the person, Stephan says "If that person tries to friend me, I AM QUITTING FACEBOOK."  

And, really, it's not that you're wishing harm to that person.  You're happy that person has pulled it together and has a normal life.  It's just that the life-chapter for that person is closed, has no sequel, and is not open for discussion.  So, you remain, Facebook avoiding each other, perhaps in perpetuity, as if you were both at a cocktail party and stubbornly remained on opposite sides of the room.   Facebook is kind of like that cocktail party, or maybe like a microcosm of your life.  You pick the esoteric metaphor. 

It's probably true that the longer your life has been, the more phases you've gone through, the more people you've known, the more potential there is for this on Facebook.  I just think it's at once weird and interesting that your whole life can be right there, in front of you, to re-visit every time you log on.    Not that this stops me from logging on multiple times per day, of course.  It's just food for thought. 

No, Gwyneth! No!

Actually, yes....and then NO NO NO! 

I don't know if you heard, but Gwyneth Paltrow launched a new website yesterday-- Goop.com, which is supposed to be a "collection of experience that makes life good."   Sound promising, right?  She obviously has a good life, knows how to make things happen, and has good taste.  So-- this site is something I would totally go to, in theory.

Only....oy vay!   Going there totally brought out my inner tech/ marketing geek.  Let me get this straight-- the lucky people that got to partner with Gwyneth Paltrow, who has a built-in audience of millions of people and can get the press to do a release about a WEBSITE, chose to soft launch with an all-Flash site with NO NAVIGATION?  This is a joke, right?  Because, I'm going to tell you right now, if Gwyneth Paltrow is my client, and I get her to issue a press release about the brand-new site that she's made, by God when millions of people go to it for the first time, THERE WILL BE A WAY TO GO BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE.  Oh, and also?  The whole thing won't be under one frame, and the different (Flash-based) navigational elements will actually go their respective sections, instead of all leading to the same page of text that can't be navigated away from, thus causing a nightmare of usability that even Jakob Nielsen would have to agree is a ROOKIE ERROR.   

I mean.....I just don't.....come ON.  Website building 101 says that if you're going to drive millions of people to a site, YOU SHOULD GIVE THEM SOMETHING TO DO WHEN THEY GET THERE.  Seriously?   They want us to sign up for a NEWSLETTER?   This makes me want to shreik with frustration when I think of all the hours probably spent in meetings, with one group arguing for the site to be totally fleshed out with good content and easily navigable sections, and the other one like "no-- that's ok!  Let's just get the users, THEN we'll fill in the blanks.  We have to strike while the iron is hot, man!  It's Gwyneth Paltrow."  People sometimes fall into this trance-like state where they want their websites to be done faster, and it never (I mean 100% of the time NEVER) ends well.  Oh, and also?  I'd maybe make it so the site that actually launched on the day my celebrity endorser talked about it KEYWORD OPTIMIZED, like maybe I'd even put her name in the keywords, so that when people Google "Gwyneth Paltrow, website," they can actually find the site again.    Only it's not, so you can't, and instead the fans who run sites like gwyneth-paltrow.com and gwenthpaltrowfan.com are beating the pants off of GOOP, even though Gwyneth herself is involved.  For shame!  And, I'm not even going to buy the "it takes time to get organically ranked in the search engines, and we just launched this site" argument.  There is a way.  They just didn't take it, dude.

So-- really?  You're going to launch a site with that much exposure in a Flash shell, with a title tag that reads "This is Goop."  REALLY?    And there's going to be TWO box-looking things in the upper right hand corner, leading the user to think that there are two potential outcomes for clicking them, and then they're both going to lead to the same place?  IS THAT SO?   

I'm sure you can see that this kind of thing really sticks in my craw, so to speak.  Granted, there is a chance that people are going to sign up for the newsletter just to see what Gwyneth Paltrow has to say about life, and that's cool.  I'm just saying that whoever made the site could have (and should have) done it better, so that this press announcement could have led people to a site that was fully formed and would make them want to come back.   This makes me wish they had hired me to make the site, because there is NO WAY I would have used up an opportunity like "Gwyneth Paltrow talks about a website in the press" unless I was damn good and ready to convert as many of those potential users as possible into lifelong customers, you know what I'm saying?

Oh, did you know I do website usability and write and do marketing strategy and search engine optimization for websites?  Well, I do.  I may not know several things, but there is one thing I do know.  I could have done that site better.  Stay tuned next year for my book about this very subject, which will tell you NOT to do many of the things that the GOOP people did. 

And this concludes our tech moment of the day. 

No Pressure.

Hey, did you listen to the Oprah/ Eckhart Tolle "A New Earth" podcast that's been going on for the past ten weeks?  If you didn't happen to hear about it, Oprah is doing this huge "global event" webcast, where everyone Skypes in and talks to her and her guest, and people from all over the world are watching it, the whole thing.  I think it's awesome that Oprah is trying to make the world a better place, so this post isn't even about that.   And, if you're interested in the course, you can download it for free in iTunes, or find out more about it on Oprah.com.

It's super cool that the whole effort has been so successful-- I bet just the desire to talk to Oprah got alot of people over the hump with the Skype technology, which actually is pretty labor-intensive.  Of course, I downloaded it as a series of audio podcasts, each of which ended up being so huge (average 80MB) that they kept causing my 80 GB iPod to skip, so instead I listened to them on my computer.  Just because I am a closet tech nerd, though, I wanted to know how big the VIDEO versions of these files were.  Turns out they're about 1 gig apiece, and every week, Oprah is like "the podcast has been downloaded 1.7 million times since last week."  Um, 1.7 million  1 GB downloads is literally a number of bytes so large they don't even have a number for it, dude.   

Yeah-- not only is that an impressively large amount of people that are learning about podcasts-- that's also a mind-boggling amount of server space used per week.  Can you imagine being on Oprah's tech team?  Better yet, can you imagine what the server farm that supports Oprah.com must look like?  YOWZA!  She must have, like, the entire state of Arizona filled with servers to support an enterprise this big.  OK, maybe because of Moore's Law she now only needs the state of Delaware, but you see what I'm saying.  I heard that during the first live podcast, so many people logged on that the whole thing crashed, and I know this is true because Oprah MENTIONED IT in the next one.  So-- no pressure there.  I think this is probably a double-edged sword-- Oprah obviously has vision, and is willing to really push the envelope in terms of what can be done.  I'm just saying I don't know if I'd want to be the one in the tech department when Oprah runs back there and is like "What's going on with my live webcast??"  There's no way you can put her off, like "Um-- did you try rebooting?" 

New Tivo Technology-- So Cool!

OK, I'm going to warn you-- ocassionally I have a total geeky tech moment, and I feel compelled to share it here, so I've made a new category.  Maybe you don't know, but I work on websites and am interested in advances in technology.  I'm not sure whether this officially counts as "funny" or "strange," but it IS interesting, and I thought it was worth mentioning.  So, put that in your pipe and smoke it.

The other night we were watching a Tivo'd episode of House when I noticed something so cool, I'm surprised no one thought of it before.  By cool, I mean "moderately annoying to the tv watcher," but cool that the tech people finally figured it out, since advertisers have been kvetching about lost revenue from people not watching commercials for so long.  Maybe you've noticed this too-- the people at Tivo have figured out how to embed some nifty pop-up style technology into their interface, so that when you try to zap through the commercials, the message appears OVER the commercial you're fast-forwarding.  I think this is the rough equivalent of the push technology employed by web designers who force a pop-up when they don't want you to leave their website just yet.  I have to say-- I'm SHOCKED that no one came up with this before.   I mean, we've all had Tivo for what, five years now, and marketing/ tech people are just now finding ways to force you to see their message anyway?  Wow.

Has anyone else noticed this?  Has this been around for awhile, and I'm just now paying attention?  Granted, we don't watch that much tv (even on Tivo), so they could've rolled this out without my knowing.  The commercial in question was a 24 Hour fitness commercial, that then pushed an offer you could find out more about by using the green "thumbs up" button on your Tivo.  That's nuts!

So, congratulations to whatever clever programmer at Tivo who finally got this to work.  Now, I'd really like to debate the user-friendliness of a feature called "Swivel Search," but that's a whole different post.