Jim Jamesson

Not sure about other web designers out there, but I get livid when I see other web companies taking credit for work that my company produced. It’s one thing when you use someone else’s work as inspiration for your own–I’m totally cool with that, and guilty of doing the same. But to blatantly take credit for others’ work, and pass it off to clients as work they did themselves–well that’s just wrong, and boy does it piss me off. Such is the case with this clown…

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Ahh! Now this just may be the coolest plugin I’ve come across in all of 2009. And, it’s compatible up to the latest (at the time of this article) Wordpress 2.7.1.

The plugin is designed to thwart IE 6 users from seeing any content. That’s a good thing. IE 6 is akin to the crud at the bottom of your garbage can in the browser world. Why anyone would not upgrade from this antique is beyond my scope of understanding. I pray 16, maybe 17 hours per day that IE 6 will one day be banished from the world.

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I’ll give you hints.

Their main color is red.

They tout themselves as the best.

They were bought out or something, and started going downhill.

They had knowledgable tech support people at one point, however they were replaced with idiots.

The sales staff has so much enthusiasm that you almost get the hint they have high school interns calling you reading from a queue card.

They once touted the industries toughest data center with a million levels of backups. Yet, a car crashed into a telephone pole down the road and we had outages for a week.

The first four letters of their company are R A C K.

The last five letters are S P A C E.

UPDATE 12/22/09: Since this post on Rackspace Hosting, I have heard numerous mixed reviews regarding their hosting service. If anyone has any good stories regarding Rackspace, I’d love to hear about them…

It should be said though, that during this time of us moving away from Rackspace to a different managed hosting provider, the calls we received from the slew of ‘personal account manager’ or whatever it was, were absolutely ridiculous. My brother Steve can testify to the voicemails we received. “Uh, this is Jeremy, with um, uh, Racksprace, um Rackspace, um, uhhhhhhhh, oh shit…… Click.”

Really?

Dreamweaver CS4 pisses me the hell off.

I find it hard to believe that this functionality does not exist in Dreamweaver. All the Mac FTP clients I’ve used allow this. Unless I’m missing some hidden checkbox or preference option somewhere, this is not doable in this latest release (which otherwise looks a bit nicer than CS3).

Adobe, this is a real bummer. This would speed up people’s workflow. Why do you insist on keeping some of the functionality of your software products so close to Windowsey-crappiness. Do you people even use Macs? Do you even publish websites? You should be ashamed!

Man, I wish someone would come out with some extention or patch or fix for this. If anyone out there knows a cure, it would be rad of you to share!

Ok, I have tried for over a month to have my account at Zimbio removed. I have sent email after email to their support@zimbio.com email address, to absolutely no avail. My account still remains, and these shit eaters never got back to me once.

For you bloggers out there considering using Zimbio… I’m sure you will love all of your Google rankings owned by these assholes, so they can use YOUR content along side THEIR advertising. What a mistake signing up with this crappy website. Hopefully this will prevent other folks from signing up with them as well. Fair warning people.

UPDATE: Seems my harsh emailing has worked. Just minutes after emailing them, they were super fast, and super nice to respond. They deleted my account immediately, and that makes me happy.

So, with that said, I think Zimbio (and others like it) can be beneficial to bloggers. However, be sure to read the Terms of Service to make sure you are happy with the manner in which they can use your content. Personally, I didn’t think their TOS was favorable to me, for the amount of traffic I received from them.

Thank you Zimbio for finally answering my emails, and promptly and courteously removing my account.

During the course of my average day, I talk to numerous different folks; friends, clients, colleagues, and family. At least, I don’t know maybe 25 times a day, I get various instant messages, emails and text messages regarding how shitty ones particular job is.

Being the nice guy that I am, I thought it would be kind of me to ease your souls and tell you a bit about some of the horrible rules that govern our office.

DRESS CODES

We have a very strict dress code. Although it’s not written in stone, generally at the very least we try to wear underwear. Not that we have issues against each others packages, but if a client does swing by, you know we try to keep it professional.

DRINKING

While drinking on the job is encouraged in our office, it’s not necessary. Although some of the best web work is done with Bud Light and Barbarossa, we don’t require it.

BROWSING THE INTERNET

We have very strict rules when it comes to casual internet browsing. ANY Youtube that is funny, MUST BE SHARED. This is the law. Youtubes that are especially funny must be repeated at least 100-150 times each day, for no less than one week straight. Special Youtubes that are instant classics (see Funtown Auto, Crocodile Dundee theme) must be repeated throughout the day-no exceptions.

GOING HOME EARLY

Well, since we don’t have a time to show up in the first place, it’s inherently impossible to then set a departure time.

CALLING IN SICK

We always accommodate and show sympathy toward each others ailments. Since we all hang out before, during, and after work anyways, if one of us is sick, the others are sick. Therefore our policy on sick days is, if one calls in sick, everyone must call in sick.

SENSITIVE DATA

Haha.

FRIDAYS

We don’t work Fridays. Friday is Apollo day and dick off day.

Well there you go folks. I truly hope this article finds you well at your place of employment. Just remember, the next time that bitch in billing gives you hell or your chode boss gives you static, just think about how grim our working conditions are. We feel your pain (we just don’t share it).

Back a little bit ago, we were testing out the then-new Flash CS3 on our updated Groovy Web Design front-end. Well, Tom was glad to lend a hand in the name of science. Thanks man. Sorry Lauren.

Tom works for a good cause. Groovy Web Design supports good causes.

After using a new Wordpress 2.5 all I can say is that I hope Steve reads this and upgrades this Version 1.suck or whatever I am using right now. 2.5 really really kicks butt! The admin area is super duper friendly. I used to recommend Blogger over Wordpress solely for ease-of-use, but after setting up a new site of ours, I had this sucker running in no time.

But, even though ‘taint done yet, Groovy Web Design is proud to honor one of THE all-time heroes of the whole earth. Well at least I think he is one BAMF.

www.apollocreedtravels.com

UPDATE: Shit, I was wrong Apollo was built with Wordpress 2.6, not 2.5. Version 2.6 is super super kick ass. Those Wordpress developers have really nailed it with this one. Kudos.

Recently a client photographer of ours asked if there was any way possible for her to “take her photos right out of iPhoto into the website”. Upon realizing I had no idea if that was even possible outside of whatever .mac type of deal it has, a quick Google search yielded this seemingly gem of a plugin: iPhoto / Menalto Gallery Plugin Tomorrow, I’ll get a Gallery 2 running and see how well it works communicating with iPhoto. This might very well be one of the best solutions for professional / semi-pro photographers to maintain a nice portfolio of your work, or preview albums for your wedding or portrait clients, etc. This could easily be a great way for a budget-minded photographer (ie. you had to have that 2.8 lens…) to take advantage of the ease-of-use of Apple’s iPhoto application, and also an open-source Gallery system (which is an easy for your local web developer …ahem… to install/upgrade gallery… act now!). I’ll post back tomorrow with updates regarding the Gallery2 install.