Your (or whoever’s) website is full of misspelled words and bad grammar. For starters “zaar” is spelled either “czar” or “tzar” but never “zaar”.
Just a friendly suggestion that you have someone proofread what goes on your website, preferably someone whose spelling and grammar knowledge you can trust. It is much more professional that way.
For starters, did you really think we misspelled our LOGO? Do your friends ever call you “Mo”, Maureen?
I’ve been laughing at this one all day….
My dad and his two sisters (who are all retired and all live TOGETHER in Spokane) are coming for a visit this weekend. Last time dad was here, he brought his own food, which he kept in his own refrigerator, so we only ate a couple of meals together. He also arrived on one day’s notice and didn’t provide a definite departure date. As you can imagine, this did not make him the most favored house guest of 2002. I have addressed these issues with him, so I’m hoping we will have a much better visit this time. But WHY must people over the age of 62 eat dinner before 4:30? Does not working make you hungrier earlier?
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I think Troy glossed over this whole neighbor dispute a bit… I mean these folks did just decide to make a paved parking space on our property without so much as asking. When we called them on it, they did not even apologize. These are the same folks who have been quick to ask for other help from us in the past, and have made several requests regarding just this spot of land previously, so claims of ignorance hold no water. Not only could we be fined for their malfeasance, we could have blocked their project or worse, sued. We opted to do what is right for the neighbors that use the road (provide the pullout) and what is right for the slope (get the advice of a geotech and put up retaining wall at our expense). After a week of tense conversations, they did finally patch things up a bit and we are splitting the cost of the $240 ecology blocks. I really still can’t believe their nerve, but clearly they didn’t want to be in a “favor debt” with us or something. This whole situation really ate me up for a week and caused several sleepless nights.
Our friends Annie (& Noke) are having their second baby, and so Stephanie and I threw her a baby shower on Sunday. I spent Saturday night at Steph’s so we could shop, cook and generally dish before the party. We even dyed each other’s hair — how’s that for super-girlie?! The brunch was very yummy, the baby got lots of adorable presents and Steph and I got to witness the chaos that children bring. Thoughts from my office door several years ago on this topic.
Did you know there is software that can be installed which completely changes the way another website looks without you realizing it? Recipezaar itself has been a victim — well, technically the users who (often accidentally) install this scumware are really the victims but it is the sites that suffer. In our case, the scumware changes the code of the Amazon ad on our home page, so that another site instead of us gets the credit for any purchases our users make there. Not only that but the software immediately redirects the user to Amazon, so we lose them. There is worse scumware out there as well, which changes links on the page or removes YOUR advertising and places competitors ads right on our site. This should just be illegal, but we don’t have the money to sue these creeps…. Know what is worse? Because of the way Windows is architected there is no way to know if you have this software installed on your machine because they can hide themselves from the Add/Remove programs control panel — ARG!!!
Recipezaar Corporate Headquarters actually observed Memorial Day this year — holidays are not big in the startup world. Troy and I did what the rest of the world did: worked in the yard, relaxed, ate salmon. I don’t think I even checked e-mail!
Got a new power blower/vac yesterday rather than fix the one that was on its last legs. The driveway and patio will never be dirty again!
I have a fairly unique last name, Hakala, but I’ve run into a couple other unrelated Hakalas in the past, but yesterday I met David Hakala who lives on Vashon. He sold me the blower at the hardware store. Odd, eh?
Yesterday I spent barely any time at all on the computer. I have a hard time staying away from the computer for more than a few hours and the first thing I do in the morning is check the performance graphs of the site just to ease my mind that nothing bad happened during the night. I can also check the statistics on my cell phone, but I don’t see the pretty graphs I do on the computer. It’s an addiction.
Gay went to Seattle yesterday and stayed overnight to help with a friend’s baby shower. I stayed home with the dogs and had a pretty relaxing day (working, but fun & relaxing).
Had a delicious salmon dinner and some white wine. No movies tonight, two stages of the Giro d’Italia, 60 Minutes and Sopranos.
We’re on a movie kick — 3 movies in 3 days. That’s more movies than we’ve seen in the previous 3 months.
Last night, we watched Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven. It was set in 1957 and just like Catch Me If You Can, the set design felt like the period. The movie was good — it was nominated for 4 Academy Awards, after all. It was filmed in the tradition of the movies at the time, apparently mimicking Douglas Sirk‘s style. It’s interesting to see how far the US has come on racism, interracial relationships and homosexuality (“Oh! That word!”). Nobody minded if she (Julianne Moore) was seen talking to her black female housekeeper but everyone was “in a clamor” when she talked with her black male gardener. And her husband who was gay went to a psychologist who suggested medication and electro-shock therapy to “cure” him. The US has a long way to go still on these issues, but in just 40 years (2 generations) the difference is surprising. Or maybe the US is just less blatant about its prejudices.
The other thing that I find interesting about movies that this movie imitated is how they portray the “perfect life”, the “perfect family”, etc. The innocence is appealing, I admit, but nobody truly lived like that then and they don’t now either. Even watching Leave It To Beaver reruns as a kid I knew it was all fake. But I’m not so sure most people do and Hollywood unknowingly set the impossible standard for Americans. Martha Stewart, to me, is the modern equivalent. Image sells and reality doesn’t, I guess.
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