Logical Expressions Blog

Spring is in the air and this week, I celebrated by taking a day off and hitting the road with a friend on a major shopping excursion. As most women will attest, shopping for a swimsuit is one of life's most discouraging experiences. I needed moral support.

We were on a mission, so we headed south outta town to the land of many malls and clothing stores. What we found was beyond hideous. I can tell you that apparently, this season's swimsuit color is BROWN.

Realistically, I had to go on this shopping trip because the last time I bought a swimsuit was about 10 years ago, so let's just say it was time. I can see why I put off the purchase for so long. I have never seen so many putrid brown swimsuits in my life. They were everywhere...TJ Maxx, Ross, Target, Macy's, J.C. Penny...you name it, the brown uglies were there.

I want to know what moron designer out there thinks a swimsuit the color of dog doo makes you look pretty on the beach?

The brown motif is particularly unattractive since most of the designs also are coupled with patterns that looked like they were dragged out of some time capsule from 1973. We're talking seriously hideous swirly brown, pink and lime green.

In the end, I did find what were apparently the last two non-brown swimsuits in Northern Idaho. So sorry ladies, they're gone. I hope you look good in brown; I sure don't.

This week has been monumentally work filled. I spent a whole lot of time staring at HTML. However, the good news is that at long last  the Logical Expressions site is now updated:
http://www.logicalexpressions.com

We have an entire new line of products and services, so I added a bunch of pages and removed a lot of out of date stuff. In some ways, it's sort of a relief to have actually touched every page on the site again. It's about 270 pages, so updating it is not a trivial task. Plus, with that many pages, it's kind of hard to keep track of what's what. Now, I definitely know.

In any case, after all that nerdiness, to celebrate Friday I needed a decidedly non-technical moment. So this morning after a client meeting in town, I went over to the local Fantastic Sams and donated my hair.

The nice folks at Fantastic Sams carefully cut off the hair, bundle it into a ponytail, and then send it to a charity called:
Locks of Love

According to their Web site, "Locks of Love is a public non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children under age 18 suffering from long-term medical hair loss from any diagnosis. We meet a unique need for children by using donated hair to create the highest quality hair prosthetics."

If you have spent years growing long hair, donating it to Locks of Love is a great way to have it go to a good cause, instead of just into the garbage. The minimum length of hair they accept is 10 inches. (When they go off with your ponytail, it does look long!)

Many salons participate in the program. (I always call and ask first to make sure our Fantastic Sams is still doing it.) Or if you cut your own hair, you can send it in yourself as long as you follow the directions on the Web site.

In any case, this is the third time I've donated a ponytail, so somewhere out there by now, at least one kid is probably wearing my hair ;-)

This week I learned that the Emoticon is turning 25 this year:

Web Smiley article

I think it's kind of cool, since I use emoticons all the time. (In fact, a number of years ago, Diane Chapman wrote a rather popular Computor Companion article about the tremendous variations in emoticons...people can be rather creative with their punctuation marks.)

This week I also saw a lot of the less fun side of email. Apparently, many people who are way, way too enamored of their CapsLock key came out of hiding. I think you know what I mean. I'm talking about the people who send emails like:

I CAN'T GET WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER TO WORK. EXPLAIN IT TO ME!!!!!

(Replace any software product/computer problem/life situation/whatever of your choosing for Media Player and you get the idea.)

Even though all our contact forms say we don't answer questions via email, that doesn't seem to deter people.

Plus, unfortunately, I've been online long enough for all caps emails to set off an immediate anger response. My finger quivers over the Delete key and I yearn to pound it with great force.

However, normally, I don't hit the Delete key because after I get over my irrational ire, I realize that these people probably just don't know the finer points of email etiquette (aka netiquette), which states that all caps is the virtual equivalent of shouting. So I forward them an article I wrote ages ago:
Understanding Netiquette

Generally, I don't hear back from these people, but at least maybe I've prevented them from annoying someone else. After all, you're a lot less likely to get help with your computer problems if you shout at people  ;-)

Our book Happy Hound was written up in an Indiana newspaper! It was a fun interview actually, since the author and I are both dog lovers. We talked for ages about the thrills and chills of living with many very goofy canines  ;-)

Check out the article...

"A Happy Hound - Having problems with your new dog or puppy?"
by Jean Starr, March 3, 2007, The Times of Northwest Indiana
" Any lasting relationship requires knowledge of the other being and plenty of introspection. The same is true with making the right pet match. In her book, "Happy Hound," author Susan Daffron maps out the process of developing a great relationship with your adopted dog or puppy." Read more...

Today's hardware failure is brought to you by the letter K.

So there I was trying to write an email and type the word "okay." All was well, until the letter K just wouldn't work for me. Sure the letter K may not seem like much, but you really don't know how much you miss it until it's gone.

I'd been avoiding the reality that my keyboard was filthy, but I could avoid it no longer, since I had to write an email to a guy named Ken. I yanked off a few key caps.

It appears sharing an office with 4 dogs has some downsides...

Clearly the critters are shedding.

Another angle on the hairy keyboard minus key caps.

A close up of the F key. I'm amazed it still worked.

(By the way, don't start yanking off key caps at home without nerd supervision...removing key caps from a keyboard that isn't designed to have them removed can kill the keyboard.)