I absolutely hate the word “blog”

Dear Bank of America Website: You should not default the radio button to having ‘Yes, remember this computer in the future’ selected. The default should either be nothing or NOT remembering it. SECURITY, PEOPLE.

Dear Google: You should not implement a feature that hides Labels that don’t have any useful content for me, but then have the hidden labels contain unread messages that then never get displayed. If you decide to implement such a ‘feature’ you should allow me to adjust settings to opt out of it.

Dear Shazam: Twitter integration only works if you allow users to modify the default tweet text, or if you make the default tweet text sufficiently un-douchey. But really you should just make it modifiable, come on.

Dear Chipotle iPhone App: You should tell me BEFORE I go to all the trouble of ordering via my iPhone that a) I cannot pay for my order via my iPhone at the location I have selected, and b) my order will never, ever, EVER get made before I arrive, thereby making iPhone ordering totally pointless.

TECHNOLOGY, YOU HAVE FAILED ME!

Holy crap, has HOBO International failed us this time. I literally did a triple take a few weeks ago when I stumbled upon this display at Nordstrom — trust me, the photo doesn’t do it justice, because these bags will SCAR YOUR RETINAE.

The colors are the same fluorescent neons of my 80s childhood, and are NOT WELCOME BACK IN MY LIFE. I don’t know what dried-up marketing exec came up with this ploy, but curse them!  This brand is known for being sleek, clean and above all else, BASIC and NEUTRAL.  I will cry if neon really is the new black.

To be fair, Jen bought a bright but pale blue wallet from this collection that looks lovely — so not all is lost.  But the pinks, oranges, chartreuse yellows and chartreuse greens can go back in the vault, please.  It’s not retro until it no longer hurts to look at it.

So there’s this stupid little head shop in Fremont and Lake City called Piece of Mind.  Now you MIGHT think that’s a cute little pun, but let’s examine things closer.  Take a look at their logo to the left.

So that’s a PEACE symbol, right? Like, world peace, peace on earth, peace and goodwill. Or PEACE of MIND. So you see, the name PIECE OF MIND would only be a good pun if the interpretation of the homonym /pIs/ that they were going for was, in fact, the PIECE meaning. I.e. a piece of pie, let me give you a piece of my mind, etc. FOR EXAMPLE.

So unless they’re trying to indicate that their shop, instead of giving one ‘piece of mind’, actually somehow robs them of a small piece of their mind, then they’re clearly not quite grasping the concept here.  And if, in fact, the whole piece thing IS in fact their desired marketing angle, then God help us all.

As another case study, let’s take a looksie at an example of a GOOD pun using the term /pIs/: Peace a Pizza, whose logo and name ACTUALLY MAKE SENSE.  Because, you see, traditionally you eat a PIECE of pizza, so changing their name to reflect the PEACE meaning instead is actually a valid pun here, that’s witty and consistent with their logo and branding.  Please take note, stoners of Seattle. Put down the pipe and pick up a thesaurus.

GOD THIS INFURIATES ME SO MUCH EVERY TIME I DRIVE BY THE PLACE.  Thank you for letting me get it off my chest, Imaginary Readers.  All better now.

1) The Date: 07-17-10. Its official!

2) The Update: Looks like the U-Village glassybaby got downgraded.

Another year, another bizzarely boring and silly retail idea: glassybaby. While Christmas shopping and running errands at Bellevue Square, I spotted the following store. (Keep in mind that this is during the INSANELY busy season, on a particularly insanely packed evening. And yes, that is one lone customer you see.  I actually peeked in a few more times over the course of the evening and saw no one at all.)

When one of these shops turned up in U-Village months before, I was perplexed and then quickly irritated. I like retail real estate to be filled with cute and /or useful shops that contain a variety of delightful goods, not sparse minimalist spaces displaying a single product that is… a little glass candle jar. Not even the friggin’ candles to put in the jar, mind you: just the jar itself. AND OH MY GOD THEY ARE FORTY DOLLARS APIECE THAT IS BALLS. Read the rest…

Really, True Blood? REALLY?

Give me a break.

(And if you think this blog post is pissy, man, you should’ve seen my better half after viewing this. I think he laughed condescendingly for a good fifteen minutes straight before we could restart the episode.

It just so happened that I needed to update both my iTunes and my Adobe Reader this weekend.  I tend to be pretty lazy with these kinds of updates, so I just click YES and GO and MAKE IT HAPPEN as quickly as I can.

And when all was said and done and downloaded and installed, guess what I had?  Three brand-spanking-new desktop shortcuts… which I happen to hate. MOST good software developers nowadays include an installation screen that asks users whether they’d like shortcuts added anywhere, which was a welcome change when I first saw that trend.  But apparently, Apple and Adobe still think you might need a hand figuring out how to start your newly updated program.

In Apple’s case, it sort of makes sense, because they STILL haven’t figured out how to make iTunes use the old shortcut when an update is installed.  (And don’t get me started about how they constantly try to bundle the unrelated Safari in with your iTunes updates — I finally just gave up, cleared out the necessary hard drive space, and accepted the Safari download, just so I’d have one less box to uncheck during every iTunes update.  Just so you know, Apple, I’m boycotting your parasitic Safari install to teach you a lesson.

But the real kicker is Adobe’s shortcut.  Have you EVER, in your ENTIRE LIFE, used a SHORTCUT to Adobe Reader to open a .PDF document, instead of just OPENING THE DAMN DOCUMENT DIRECTLY?

Here’s hoping this Facebook email thread needs no real intro:

—–Original Message to Facebook—–
From: Virginia Culler
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: PRIVACY-BUGS: “Wallster” app — spam/worm

User id: xxxxxxxxx
Description of problem: I received a message from an alleged Facebook app called “Wallmaster”, informing me that a picture from my profile had been used on xxxxxxx.com.  This appears to be a very sketchy site.  The friend who allegedly sent me this message did not in fact send it (I have informed her of this fact), and the app does not appear to actually exist.  I’d like to forward you the email, but you don’t seem to up-front about providing an email address (understandably).  If you’d like to provide me with an address to which I could send the email in question, you’d probably be able to crack down on this a bit better.  As it stands, I can only paste it in:

2008/11/10 Facebook <wallmaster+m1mh~hdm@facebookmail.com>

Lauren wrote on your Wall:

“has anyone emailed you to let you know your faceboook pic was just featured on dinascript.com”

To see your Wall or to write on Lauren’s Wall, follow the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/xxxxxxxxx

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

___
Want to control which emails you receive from Facebook? Go to:
http://www.facebook.com/editaccount.php?xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Thanks and let me know if I can be of additional help!

–Virginia

Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008092417 Firefox/3.0.3

_____

Hi Virginia,

As part of the new site design we have updated the “Friends” box to offer more customization options.  To edit these settings, simply navigate to your profile page and then click on the pencil icon in the upper right hand corner of the “Friends” box.

The Edit Box that appears will allow you to specify how many friends are displayed and which friends you always want to show.  If you want to ensure that friends from certain networks appear, you can select those networks in the “Include friends from” section.  Finally, checking the “Show Networks Section” will display a list of all of the networks your friends are in.

We hope that you enjoy these changes and welcome any feedback.  Let me know if you have any further questions.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

Daisy
User Operations
Facebook

_____

Me again.  So what just happened?  Did you actually READ my message, “Daisy”?  Taking bets as to whether or not this is yet another Facebook virus — ten bucks says “Daisy” doesn’t really exist (unless it’s like a subtle nod to Kubrick, and Facebook is actually powered by HAL?).  Ah well, now I know all about the new Facebook (TM) customization options.  So there’s that!

I was running errands in Redmond the other day on my lunch break, and I drove by what has to be the most pathetically-named city park in the history of pathetically-named city parks:

(To be fair, there are indeed grass lawns throughout this park.)

Coming next month: “Wet Water Lake”. Should be a friggin’ riot.

Let’s see if it sticks.