Zancy!

I just had to Roll with Beaker!

There’s an interesting story on MSNBC about a woman who is trying to get Best Buy support to own up to their incompetence. After taking a computer in for repairs and getting the run around for a while (waiting on a part, it’s in XYZ service center, etc) they finally admitted it never left the store and was in fact lost or stolen. Initially they offered her a gift card that didn’t even cover the initial costs. They’ve upped the offer a bit since, but with all sorts of personal information lost - including tax returns - she’s slapped them with a $54 million dollar lawsuit. She admits that she does not expect to win, but wants them to accept responsibility for their incompetence and train their staff about private data loss notification procedures (something they failed to act on). It’ll be interesting to see how this turns out.

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It was recently pointed out to me that my support for a certain candidate is (to paraphrase) blind faith unless I’m completely familiar with not only their stand on issues and their voting history but those of other candidates. To favor one over another, perhaps because you like the idea of someone or what they represent outside of issues on the table, is not truly educated, well though out support.

I can’t disagree and as a result I seeking to learn more about each of the existing front runners and where they say they stand now and where they’ve placed support in the past.

I’ve found more than a few websites that tell me the basics. Some with no regard for design (that I won’t bother mentioning), others with great snazzy layout. I’ve come across a blind voting tool, which let’s you agree or disagree to long statements by politicians and then (presumably) it tells you where you fall. I found it to be too long to finish.

My favorite, however, is OnTheIssues.org. At least so far. It’s still really early in my search. OnTheIssues let’s me view stances and voting history (yaa!) by topic and candidate. Nice. It gives simple top level, bullet overviews and is not overwhelmingly wordy. (It’s not that I don’t want to read a lot on the topic, but I like being able to take things in in small doses, at my own pace, and then eventually I will go to wikipedia and read an entire entry on a topic I want to know more about.)

As an aside, wow, 2 posts in one day. I think that’s a new record. This browser posting plugin ain’t bad. :)

I have seen this picture everywhere today. It’s just beautiful - I wish I could find a larger version somewhere for wallpaper. Wow. Kudos to Reuter’s photographer for capturing this one :)

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I just found a great site called Hair Mixer. Create mashups of celebrities, such as Will Smith in Oprah’s clothing (below), or upload your own pictures and give someone a new ‘do! Great for experimenting with new hairstyles too!

iTunes Movie Rentals!
iTunes movie rentals! Yaaa! From $2.99 to $4.99 (HD quality!) and you have 30 days to start watching a movie (but only 24 hours to finish once you start)!

Time Capsule

Time Capsule looks outstanding! I wonder how well the wireless backup feature will work with Windows and Macs. I’d love to backup wirelessly and at $299 for 500GB or $499 for 1TB it’s really reasonably priced!

iPod Touch - New Features

The iPod touch upgrade is nice. Maps and Email are welcome addons (as are Weather, Notes, and Stocks). Free for new users and $20 upgrade for existing users (lame).

MacBookAir

The rumors were true. Meet the MacBookAir. OMFG what a ridiculously thin, shiny, hot, feature-packed wow of a laptop. I really am showing great restraint at the Apple store. :)

I’m terribly sad that there wasn’t a new iPhone announced. I didn’t care about increased capacity or reduced size - I just wanted 3G technology. *sigh*. And maybe a better camera ;)

Lately I’ve noticed a large number of CSS design galleries popping up. Either they’re a great new thing to create, or I just happen to be stumbling upon them more and more. Whatever the case, I find myself drawn back to the better ones again and again in search of ideas, inspiration, solutions to problems, etc. Many sites within the collections repeat, but a great site is a great site, so that’s to be expected.

This collection is my faves of the bunch in a nice little list so I can quickly find them as I go back again and again.

Design Meltdown
Love the mouseover screenshot enlargements. Pretty broad range of categories.

Daily Slurp
Great sites daily.

Smashing Magazine
Great design collections here.

CSS Elite
Purty, with nice sized screenshots and basic categories.

CSS Mania
No frills layout with good sized screenshots and basic categories.

CSS Remix
Incredible quantity of sites. Smallish screenshots, but with ratings. Not sure about categories here.

Design Snack
Touts itself as a design showcase controlled by users. Nice sized screenshots and ratings.

CSS Bloom
Great, large screen grabs, tag based system.

I’m sure I am forgetting a few many others, and I guess I’ll update this when I uncover which favorites are missing.

Another reason to love the Internet!

From Jokeroo - where lots of time can easily be wasted :)

Alright, this is my “Hello, World” post.

Why am I writing a Hello World? Well, I think it’s required. Isn’t it? I don’t know. I guess I’ll state what I hope this blog to be, and a year from now if I’m still writing it I can look back and laugh :)

So… what will it be… hmm. Well, I’d like a place to collect all the things I find online. Both the useful things, like marketing news, CSS experiments, JavaScript successes, purty designs, and all the useless stuff too. That’s what this is. It’s Zancy! I just love the name and love saying it! :)