![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Misc Thoughts
If I were a good man, I would have told the pharmaceutical rep - struggling across the length of the parking lot with her oversized suitcase and many, many boxes - that the doctor's office next door is closed today. It was simply more interesting to watch her problem solving and Jenga skills.
Whenever I go through the drive-thru and the well-intentioned but basically vacuous young woman on the speaker says, "OK, that'll be 3.69 at the window", I want to ask, "OK, then what is it now?"
When I was a kid, I thought the red thread in the band-aid wrapper was a prize, like in Cracker Jack.
I drove to work today with the sun at my back, sleet falling on my car, and a rainbow ahead of me. It was an interesting fifteen minutes on the highway.
What color would you like that database?
Apparently, the CFO for ClientX got on the W3C validator and validated his website1. In a rage, he showed the report of 700+ "errors" to my counterpart at the dealership and demanded to know what we're going to do about them.
I showed the report to DataGuy and suggested that we needed to not respond, and began unrolling the reasons why. When he saw the report his eyes glazed as if he were staring at a Chinese grimoire, and he stopped listening to me. So I told him, in just about these words, that he was no closer to understanding any of it than the client, and that I'd handle it.
I called ClientX CFO. I told him to run the same report on Amazon.com. That website has more than 900 "errors", and is a million times more successful than his dealership. I asked if he was still getting leads and traffic on his website. When he said "Yes", my half of the discussion, as far as I was concerned, ended.
I added a section to our online help - what passes as a policy document at our company - outlining how the validator works and why we don't support it. There was something in there about covering our ears and singing "Row Row Row Your Boat" very loudly any time the subject comes up.
1 The validator tells you how accurate your HTML is according to the W3C standards and, unless your HTML is so badly written that search engines can't read it, is basically worthless. Even Google, with it's simple one form homepage, has close to 100 errors. Any website with dynamic content, forms, or parameterized links is going to have errors. It doesn't affect SEO or usability, and most professionals I know and/or read wish it would just go away.
If I were a good man, I would have told the pharmaceutical rep - struggling across the length of the parking lot with her oversized suitcase and many, many boxes - that the doctor's office next door is closed today. It was simply more interesting to watch her problem solving and Jenga skills.
Whenever I go through the drive-thru and the well-intentioned but basically vacuous young woman on the speaker says, "OK, that'll be 3.69 at the window", I want to ask, "OK, then what is it now?"
When I was a kid, I thought the red thread in the band-aid wrapper was a prize, like in Cracker Jack.
I drove to work today with the sun at my back, sleet falling on my car, and a rainbow ahead of me. It was an interesting fifteen minutes on the highway.
What color would you like that database?
Apparently, the CFO for ClientX got on the W3C validator and validated his website1. In a rage, he showed the report of 700+ "errors" to my counterpart at the dealership and demanded to know what we're going to do about them.
I showed the report to DataGuy and suggested that we needed to not respond, and began unrolling the reasons why. When he saw the report his eyes glazed as if he were staring at a Chinese grimoire, and he stopped listening to me. So I told him, in just about these words, that he was no closer to understanding any of it than the client, and that I'd handle it.
I called ClientX CFO. I told him to run the same report on Amazon.com. That website has more than 900 "errors", and is a million times more successful than his dealership. I asked if he was still getting leads and traffic on his website. When he said "Yes", my half of the discussion, as far as I was concerned, ended.
I added a section to our online help - what passes as a policy document at our company - outlining how the validator works and why we don't support it. There was something in there about covering our ears and singing "Row Row Row Your Boat" very loudly any time the subject comes up.
1 The validator tells you how accurate your HTML is according to the W3C standards and, unless your HTML is so badly written that search engines can't read it, is basically worthless. Even Google, with it's simple one form homepage, has close to 100 errors. Any website with dynamic content, forms, or parameterized links is going to have errors. It doesn't affect SEO or usability, and most professionals I know and/or read wish it would just go away.