Catholic Light Switch
November 10, 2007 Posted by Al Castle
add a comment Categories: Picture of the Day, Religion, Squirrels
Tags: catholics, jesus
Talk about bad design.
The Irony of Saying You’re Busy
November 9, 2007 Posted by Al Castle
add a comment Categories: Picture of the Day, Squirrels, TimeWaster, gnash-teeth
This image makes me think of a few people I know.
Dead Segway
November 8, 2007 Posted by Al Castle
1 comment so far Categories: Castle, Segway, gnash-teeth
My Segway died a few months ago actually. It’s just taken me awhile to get off my duff. The two batteries in the base of the unit need to be replaced at $400 a pop. I’ve already ordered them and am just waiting for them to arrive.
Page 681
November 8, 2007 Posted by Al Castle
add a comment Categories: Picture of the Day, Religion, Squirrels
Tags: catholics, jesus
Image courtesy http://otakubooty.com/me/lj/spoiler.jpg
Marketing Explained - Sexual Analogies
November 7, 2007 Posted by Al Castle
5comments Categories: Marketing, Squirrels
The following is from http://www.talisman.org/~erlkonig/humour/advertising-sex-tips.shtml
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Many women don’t understand Marketing. Perhaps the following analogies will help clear it up.
You see a handsome guy at a party. You go up to him and say, I’m fantastic in bed.
That’s Direct Marketing.
You’re at a party with a bunch of friends and see a handsome guy. One of your friends goes up to him and, pointing at you says, She’s fantastic in bed.
That’s Advertising.
You see a handsome guy at a party. You go up to him and get his telephone number. The next day you call and say, Hi, I’m fantastic in bed.
That’s Telemarketing.
You’re at a party and see a handsome guy. You get up and straighten your dress. You walk up to him and pour him a drink. You say, May I,
and reach up to straighten his tie, brushing your breast lightly against his arm, and then say, By the way, I’m fantastic in bed.
That’s Public Relations.
You’re at a party and see a handsome guy. He walks up to you and says, I hear you’re fantastic in bed.
That’s Brand Recognition.
You’re at a party and see a handsome guy. You talk him into going home with your friend. That’s a Sales Rep.
Your friend can’t satisfy him, so he calls you. That’s Tech Support.
You’re on your way to a party when you realize that there could be handsome men in all these houses you’re passing. So you climb onto the roof of one situated toward the center and shout at the top of your lungs, I’m fantastic in bed!
That’s Spam.
Cisco Marketing Dollars Wasted
November 6, 2007 Posted by Al Castle
add a comment Categories: Marketing, OSX, Puter Stuff, gnash-teeth
NBCs Heroes is a pretty good show. A month or so ago I purchased the entire first season from iTunes for several reasons of which Steve Jobs is aware of. NBC, not so much.
The iTunes download does not include commercials. This is an important point, as it’s one of the reasons I was willing to pay good money for the DRMware. The other reason why I simply didn’t rent the season is the convenience of digital media. I found what I wanted without having to go anywhere, watched episodes on my laptop, AppleTV and iPhone when and where I wanted.
With the recent iTunes / NBC falling out, Heroes second season is not available from iTunes download. It also probably won’t be available for DVD rental until well after the series has aired. A friend of mine pointed out that I could watch the full episodes via NBC.com. I’m writing this during the commercials of Heroes, the ones I turn the sound off for.
The first commercial of the first episode I watched, begrudgingly, as I prefer being able to enjoy a show all the way through.
(Why are commercials always louder than the actual show?) The second commercial was the same as the first - odd, but okay. All the commercials in fact were the exact same, it’s not even a good commercial. At the very least they could have done some creative variations to sell me their brand or product.
A good example of variant television marketing advertisement would be the many wonderful commercials for the iPhone. Each one different and illustrating another product feature. I was expecting something like that when the episode loaded letting me know that Cisco was sponsoring this show.
I’m now on the 4th episode and have muted the Cisco commercials each time they rear their ugly, noisy head. I also have no idea what they were trying sell me. I deem my avoidance of them a complete success. Unfortunately for Cisco that’s a lot of wasted money. I’m their target market - 30 something male who has money and likes to spend it on toys. Additionally at the companies I work for I am the purchaser of IT software and hardware.
Cisco purchased Linksys awhile back, I used to think Linksys routers & firewalls were quality products. I first learned of them through word of mouth marketing from other technical people. I in turn, told others about Linksys. Not once have I ever seen a Linksys commercial. I don’t even know if they have any, frankly they never needed any.
Just last week after using a recent Linksys home router/vpn/firewall product I was cursing it’s shoddy interface and gross limitations. Is Cisco saving money on quality assurance, interface design and product testing only to waste it on poor online marketing?
p.s.
NBC figure out a way to save face if you have to, but make up with iTunes. Your target audience is becoming agitated and may become annoyingly vocal soon.
Cisco - I’m available for consulting and house cleaning your marketing department.
The Castle has spoken.
Missing text From Feature Video Post
November 6, 2007 Posted by Al Castle
add a comment Categories: Castle, Insider, PRWeb, gnash-teeth
This is the missing part of the PRWeb Feature Video blog post that I took out at the request of a co-worker so he wouldn’t have to deal with it. One of the links for the products and services now redirects. It used to take you to a page like this which listed out all the major services we built during my watch.
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The code for Feature Video was completed long ago, but as with all things in a larger company there are many levels to go through before anything I develop is shared with the customer base. The official announcement and press release has gone out this morning and the first thing I notice is my quote from the release is missing.
You’ll notice many places throughout the PRWeb products and services both before and after the sale where I am quoted (Holy Shift, SEO Wizard, New Analytics, Console Redesign….) mentioned, and thanked for my work. It is with some disappointment that I was not done the courtesy of being informed that our press release on Feature Video and containing our own Feature Video, would not include its charismatic creator in any way.
Walker and Texas Ranger
November 5, 2007 Posted by Al Castle
add a comment Categories: Picture of the Day, Squirrels, TimeWaster
Image courtesy http://www.trendyrat.com/pshps/bc.html
SysAdmin of the Year - Ode to Jed
November 5, 2007 Posted by Al Castle
add a comment Categories: Friends, Insider, PRWeb, Puter Stuff, Techy
I wrote this last month(?) or whenever System Administrators day was, to enter Jed in for a contest. I’m not sure if this is the final version I sent or not.
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PRWeb was small company two years ago with less than 15 employees running all operations on a single antiquated home built Linux server. In order to keep pace with our explosive growth Jed researched, designed and implemented a robust and scalable network infrastructure that in short order doubled our profits, and enticed many a buyer until we sold to Vocus last year for a tidy sum.
Our entire operation is web based, including the interfaces used by our customers and internal staff. If for whatever reason DDOS, bad cable, dead router, code typo, caused the databases or websites to fail we could not accept payment from customers or provide the services for those payments and our internal staff would be sitting there unable to do their job, which is 24/7 year round. During our explosive growth to clusters of redundant database and web servers there were a few problems, most corrected before any customer or employee realized, others cropped up, especially the DDOS and other attacks from China in the wee hours of the night. In all cases Jed was the point man, first to be called in the wee hours despite having two small children, one new born - ie complete lack of sleep.
His dedication, knowledge and resourcefulness is impressive to say the least. In short our company would not have had the extreme success we’ve achieved without this scruffy individual who has sustained many a war injury on sharp edges from generic PC cases, bruises from contorting during late non-peak times to install 4U terabyte servers single handedly in cramped data center cabinets, and of course the mental trauma all support staff deal with when having to address users and customers directly.
He’s been the administrator of it all single handedly, systems, network, web, database, email, network engineer, hardware monkey, programmer and technical support. Intimate knowledge of every major networking protocol and service. Having written some of the most advanced bash shell scripts for backups, automation and other tasks. A warrior monk - Python, Perl, Java, Bash, Awk, Sed, PHP, Javascript, HTML, XML, CSS are not so much languages as melee weapons he wields. His minions, MySQL cluster trolls, load balancer orcs, powerful Apache elves, and Cyrus wizards and a host of hobbit like user workstations. A vast interconnected machine greater than the sum of its individual electronic components and miles of cabling rumble - he’s in tune with all of it. It’s a bit creepy at first, if you watch him working, he’ll suddenly stiffen as if he’s wondering if anyone heard him fart, over the sound of his speed death metal blaring, but its almost a sixth or seventh sense with him that he knows something is afoot on one of the servers even before one of his monitoring script alerts him.
Its not merely that Jed did all this, perhaps there are a few highly intelligent individuals who could have taught themselves and completed all of this in a few years. Nor is it that he has done so with the good attitude of a crufty old Unix admin that he must channel. (We call him the Mumbler among other things.) It is that we of PRWeb / Vocus have all benefited in ways that most of the staff and executives can not even comprehend except in the loosest of ways when they refer to “The Server”. He is the Morlock Supreme of this company, a thankless and sleepless position he maintains and protects so that everyone else can sleep soundly, IM their friends, watch Youtube videos and of course email and do their jobs without thinking what makes it all work and grow. Day after day he is Sisyphus and Atlas and my friend.
To Jed. Thank you
Don’t Mess With My Browser
November 4, 2007 Posted by Al Castle
2comments Categories: Puter Stuff, Web Design & Dev, gnash-teeth
There’s so many things that piss me off about web development and design. Generally what passes for it. I just experienced a big pet peeve. I go to a page and it resizes my browser to full screen. Wtf? Why not have all your navigation be java applets and a 007 midi playing too.
I had all my windows right where I wanted them. Sure I could disable Javascript or only allow approved scripts. Anyone of you who suggest such impracticalities I hope you burn in whatever place of damnation your belief system provides.
If your site requires greater than 1440 x whatever resolution to be viewed you should take your freaking Front Page 98 install cd and cut it so its all jagged, then force it into your brain stem via your eye sockets and a dirty plunger. Ass clown.
(I had to edit this - the original was far to vulgar for even adults, truck drivers and psychopaths.)
