No, Google, No... Buzz Posts are NOT Sent Email

I just noticed recently that if I go into my Gmail™ sent items (looking of course, for pictures of the baby I've sent to people, but whatever), that my outgoing email is completely junked.

What is it junked by? Every item I've shared on Google Reader™, all my Twitter Tweets™,and every status change I've ever sent to Google Talk™.... or at least since Buzz™ started.

Since I'm a heavy Google Reader™ user, and we use Google Talk™ at work for off-site coordination --- my status changes quite a bit (usually variations of free/busy + "song playing on iTunes" option).

What is Google™ thinking?

Yes, a history of what's been "buzzed' under my name -- sure, I can support that. But why is it in my Gmail sent items?

Can't The Great Google Gods In the Sky™ give those "folder" (tag as There Are No Folders) of their OWN??

WTF Blogger and Google, WTF???

Blogger took away Spell Check.

This is obviously a spal slap in the face for dsylexics everywhere.

WTF?!?!?!

Ugh! Thanks UPI

I was looking at a feature of this site, and was treated to the following side gallery.  I think the top image is very fitting, considering what falls under it.

B/c, you know, underwear-clad shots of women from hip to navel are the only way to represent each of those stories.

Holiday Pet Peeve: UPS Site

Why is there NO place on this page to enter a second tracking number?

I have found the quickest way to check tracking on two packages is to put them into Google one at a time, but what a pain in the butt.

Of course, I'm only doing this b/c the really lovely Amazon tracking screen doesn't show the same statuses as the UPS site. Often the Amazon site will show something has left the facility and the UPS site will tell me the truth, "billing information received" (which means UPS doesn't actually have it yet.)

Amazon:

UPS:

Argh.

At least now, as a Prime customer no longer living in DFW, I don't have to watch my packages sit in the UPS depot for three days so that I don't accidentally get them in 2 days instead of 7.

Dear Outlook,

I know that this is futile, but I'm going to say it anyway.

When are you going to be better? There's so many things wrong with you, but today your lack of ability to tell that 2 people are the same people is really getting to me. 

You aren't going to send the same person 7 copies, so why won't you deduplicate my to: line?

For example:

Should become this when I click the little Man + Checkmark icon.

Not this:

That way when I'm reading a list of 75 people on the to line, I can better see that Jane is on the list (or not on it).  Speaking of, it would be nice if the To: box could expand to show everyone there, but maybe that's just me. 

This mostly happens when we have 17 Outlook distribution groups, I add each one, then need to deduplicate it to see who is missing, since between them John Smith is on 15 and yet Sally Roe is missing from all of them...

*sigh*

Google Does Mystery Meat Functionality

Ok, look at this page.

Then you tell me how I am supposed to edit a Google Toolbar Bookmark's name.

Because when I click on a bookmark to edit the name (which, incidentally usually happens b/c the toolbar saved it before I stopped typing), this is the screen I get.

It's magic!

Once you move your mouse over the text, a box appears around it and you can suddenly edit.

That little down arrow on the side? Red herring. Just allows you to delete the darn bookmark... which I have done before in frustration!

Why, Google, Why? The boxes wouldn't mess me up not hidden, so why confuse the flip out of people by hiding them?

This strikes me as classic, "Developer thought it was really cool, never mind that users have no clue when left on their own" design.

Bad, Google, Bad!

The sad thing? I still use Google Bookmarks because I really like having them follow me from computer to computer on the toolbar.

I Can't Take it Anymore: Target.com Forces Me To Post

As our personal 10 month project nears completion I've needed to utilize some third party commercial tools to facilitate relevant communications.

Specifically, I've had to set up baby registries on several sites. I was going to just do Amazon.com, but then I found out that not all of my family knows how to use Amazon.com, so that wouldn't work for said communications...

Target has coated the country in red bulls-eyes and seems to be fairly well known, so I moved items onto their registry.

Only to discover what a living Hell it is to try and use Target.com.

I would talk about the entire site, but just explaining how frustrating the menus are would take three pages.

So, today we will discuss a small, small detail: trying to login and update an item on a registry.

I have a bookmark to our registry, so I went directly there. That is, after all, why we, as developers, make pages that CAN be bookmarked.

This is the page I see:


I need to make changes. So I click the big silver button at the top, the one that says, "Update."

Except, because Target.com is evidently operating in some logic schema that makes sense to only them, the "Update" button does NOTHING.

Actually, that's not true. It reloads the page. Unchanged.

So now I am stuck trying to figure out how to login. If it won't let me update, maybe it doesn't know who I am... even though the page says, "Hi, [my name]" at the top?

I click on the even bigger blue button, "My Registry."

Which takes me here:

Hmm, I wonder what to do now. I appear to be logged in, but there is no update or edit or anything like that. I click, "My Registry" again. It reloads the page.

I click, "Add Items to Registry," that takes me to a bunch of cribs and whatnot with, again, no way to edit what I already have added. I don't go far down that path because I really don't want to add anything else to this damn thing ever again at this point.

In final desperation I click, "Create New Registry."

I know I'm clicking on the wrong thing, but I'm out of options and maybe that page will have a link to what I need.

And lo, there it is. A login screen. I know, I know, I'm already logged in. But this looks more promising that anything ELSE I've seen so far.

So I login.

Which promptly takes me back to....

The very page I started on, but with different buttons.

This leads me to wonder: Why does the silver "Update" button even exist? If you're logged in enough to actually edit stuff, it vanishes. Why, Target.com, why?

Final note... see those comment boxes under items? Well, Target.com never tells you how long is too long on them, but if you fill them up with text, they don't take. Not only do they not take, but if you put comments in, say, 15 items, and ONE of those comments is too long, the site dumps all the comments and puts a notice at the top of the page.

This is how all my comments ended up terse and identical. There's only so many times you can type cute and friendly messages only to have a website destroy them and continue to be cute and friendly.

Typing this entire blogger posting took less time than launching our original registry... by a factor of about five or six...

Update to Last Post

Dear HP,

When I print, setting the printer to print 2-4 pages per sheet of paper, b/c I'm trying to not waste paper, please insert a page break between copies 1 and 2.

It's bad enough that I have to turn collating on by hand, but it's embarassing to have to cut off 1/2 a page and staple it to the top of every odd numbered copy... and the other half to the end of every even numbered copy.

Really, your business is printing, how hard are concepts like this? There's not even a setting I can find to force the printer to do this right!

-Me

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Long Time No Post

And now, a micro-post.

Dear HP,

I'm trying to be a good citizen and not print 8,435 extra pages.

Please make collate the DEFAULT when I print multiple copies to one of your printers.

Thanks,

-Me

It's ALWAYS the Fault of that Horrible Internet...

Heard this story on the radio and was annoyed...

http://www.witn.com/home/headlines/41673662.html

Basic summary:

• Homes broken into while empty and for sale
• Appliances taken
• Homes listed on Internet
• Obviously Internet at fault

Nowhere in the story does it indicate if these home were listed in the papers, had signs in front, had open houses, had been very publicly moved out of, had had an eviction, etc.

Most homes for sale are now listed on the Internet.

While I do not doubt that someone would look at Internet listings to pick houses to steal AC units from (wish they would steal mine, I need a new one... well, ok, maybe not, we wouldn't get replacement value...) the concept of the stories seemed to be, "Don't list your home online or thieves will come vandalize it!"

How about, "Don't leave a home obviously empty while on vacation, for sale, or for rent unless you want Bad Things to happen?"

I guess there wouldn't be a story if it was just, "Some people continue to be stupid and others continue to be criminal" instead of "Internet EVIL."

I Get Annoyed Again: American Airlines Dot Com

Background: Due to a specific 40 week project, we are booking some plane tickets to go from RDU to SAN. I have in the past accidentally booked the wrong return date on AA.com, so I'm super-cautious before I want to commit to the ticket. (AA currently has the lowest tickets.)

Anyway, I will vent on AA.com today. Whee.

Let's go ticket shopping!

I've already got tickets to SAN, so let's go someplace a little more fun. Nice, France. For a month. For our anniversary and my birthday. Sounds good.

I get this lovely "not quite stolen directly from southwest.com" grid.

Except I only get the grid if I don't care when I fly. This search specifically does NOT give all the flights in a day. For RDU-ICT (a different ticket), it didn't show me anything leaving after 5 pm. The flight routing does exist... but this search won't tell me about it.

I can find that routing if I select that I only care about Schedule.

But that interface won't tell me prices! (Yes, I realize that's an insane ticket below, but I want to see it as a choice, insane or not.) So now I get that"Enhanced" means "find out the price of each leg." Because, you know, that's obvious and I'm just slow...

So, sure, American will let me search by price... but they won't give me the whole picture. I can't willingly choose a more expensive starting flight if i want to, and then switch to cheaper seats for the rest of the ticket.

Ok, let's get back to today... we pick some tickets to Nice.

This looks good, but I hope no one is talking to you, the phone doesn't ring, and your dog doesn't bark...

because that's the last time you will see that information until after you buy your ticket.

The next pages in the transaction don't tell you what tickets you bought, what dates they are one, what flights.. anything.

If you get distracted, or maybe you're a bit confused because you've been shopping multiple routings on multiple airline sites, and you want to go back and see what you're buying before you commit to spending $3070 on non-refundable tickets... well don't get distracted or confused.

Sidebar: Raise your hand if you think buying airline tickets with PayPal® won't get you on the No-Fly list, or at least the belly-button inspection list...

Clicking back to check if that's really the flight choice you wanted and ignoring all the reload warnings (hah, the dangers of being a web developer, no fear!) leads you to a page that suddenly tells you that you are returning on your departure date... or departing on your return date. That's no good.

This is the point where I actually closed my browser, turned off the TV, told my husband to shush the dog and started the whole thing again. *Sigh*.

During the process of buying my "I'm so poor" tickets to San Diego, I gave up on actual seats on one of the flights.

The following flight has $99 seats. It's from Texas to California, so I doubt the seats ever sell for less than $99 AND there is no way they will sell the whole plane at that price. In fact, as soon as the plane starts to fill up, those $99 seats will be gone.

So why is this the available seating? (The 3 center orange seats)

Is the whole flight booked with the Society of Antisocial Sociopaths Annual Vacation Club, or is it that AA is not ever going to release that coveted aisle/window seat for a lowly $99?

Later in the week, I want to go back to see if more seats are available.

I've done this before, so I go looking for the place to check in/change seats that ONLY requires my "record locator number" and name, not an AA username and password which I think I had in 1997, but don't know anymore.

Hmm. Where do I go? View / Change Reservations, that sounds good.

No. Not there.

Here?

No. Same that's the same page, again!

Where? Let's try this. The words say no, but I can't see anywhere else to try...

Finally, aha! Yes, following the link to purchase tickets allows me to select seats for a flight I already paid for. Again, I must be slow because that's so obvious.

Why is this so hard?

And lastly, in the course of grabbing these screens I saw this ad approximately 5,432,232 times.

I have to say that the URL /onebigmillion is really lame on an ad that says ONE MILLION. What, it's a different million? There is a small million but this, this is a BIG million? Either the campaign is One Big Million and the ad image doesn't tie in properly, or the URL is just silly.

Or my patience with everything AA is out, and I haven't even gotten to the airport yet...

When Bad Design Goes Even Worse

I'm picking on someone in my own backyard today.

We have tickets for an event @ UNC this weekend.

I went online looking for a map to the building.

I find this page (look right).

I click the link indicated to pop-up the map.

And it's horrible. It's little, it's square, it provides no context. So I think, "aha! it's just that no-resize pop-up code. If I save the image, I will see the whole thing."

Bzzt. Wrong.

The content owner (I'm guessing there some sort of system where one person did the pop-up code and someone else reused it, basically b/c I can't see making a non-fitting non-scrolling window for any other reason) cropped the map down so it would fit better into the little pop-up window!

This is the point where, as a designer, I want to start beating my head on the desk.

So, they couldn't get the map to show the right part in the tiny window, so instead of getting a better window or a full page... they just cropped the map down until the one building they needed would actually be seen.

Oh. My. God.

Please stop the insanity!

Dear Student Loan Provider,

That you for NOT calculating if I had any capitalized interest this year. It's really helpful, as well, that you don't send me the tax letter you send to the IRS.

You just provide excellent service all around.

Also, this (see right side) is very helpful. Can I print this and submit it with my taxes, and say it proves 93,432$ in capitalized interest? That would be really helpful!

Love,

Me

Scott Adams Is Just Plain Mean Today

I read Dilbert™ often enough to know that the plot line here is that Dilbert® has lost his job for hosting a web site from work.

However, in a time when his core constituents face the worst recession of their lifetimes, is it really necessary to tell the millions of jobless that they are "utterly worthless"?

Since Scott Adams^(?™?) is a multi-millionaire himself this strip seems particularly tacky and tasteless. I am reminded of the stories of George Bush Sr.'s shock and awe at the grocery store scanners-- someone who is out of touch with the trials of average folks.

I must be feeling better...

Dear Google®,

When I am writing an email in iGoogle's® window for Gmail®, and click the link "compose in Gmail" it is usually b/c I have my email 95% done and realize you have disabled some needed function.

You know, like cc or attach.

So then I click "compose in Gmail".

Do you suppose that you could take advantage of the 8,434 things you do with cookies and javascript states to NOT make me either copy everything line by line or retype the whole thing?

Thanks!

Love,

Me

If you could see my face...

Well, this blog got backlinked.

By someone who thinks I'm obviously a nutjob feminist for criticizing a children's movie. (That's the whole critic, kids movies are evidently not to ever be thought about.)

To which I would point out that if adults watch a movie, they can determine things like, "Hey, that guy, he's a real jerk. I don't agree with his world view at all."

But when kids watch a movie, even if we don't want them to, they are learning. And in this case, they would be learning what the sex roles for men and women are.

Kids are also much more likely to watch the same movie over and over again (with the possible exception of my husband, college, and The Empire Strikes Back). I distinctly remember a three year phase where my littlest sister watched Mannequin something like four times a week. I wouldn't want it bashed into my daughter's head over and over again that if she's good at sports, that's bad, instead she should walk around in hoop skirts and lipstick, and then she will be, "Perfect."

And, no, I do NOT think the sex roles for women in Chicken Little are sex roles I would want my son or my daughter learning.

For one thing, I want my men to know how to talk to people. For another, I want my women to take responsibility for their actions.

Thank you, drive through.

Feel free to link me, though. You drive me up in Google and Technorati every time you do, which I want.

(My facial expression, FWIW, is my eyes rolling. Back in the day, I used to hang on IRC... that was a command in my scripts, "/eyes".)

Feminist Rant

Today, not feeling entirely well, I sat down to Tivo.

Tivo didn't have much on, so I watched Chicken Little.

Gahhhhhhhhhhhh.

Now, keep in mind, on Friday I ran through some training on gender roles at work, so I sort of had this on the mind...

As a thinking woman who uses more than shame and fluttering eyelashes to get things done, I will never, ever watch that movie again.

Here's what I remember:

1. Chicken Little is oddly, a boy. I guess girls cannot save the world according to Disney, but in my books as a kid Chicken Little, also known as Henny Penny, is a girl. According to IMDB, originally the lead was supposed to have been a girl.

2. Mom is dead. No reason given, but mom is dead. Disney does that a lot, so I'm not terribly surprised.

3. Dad has no idea how to be a parent until a girl tells him how to; said knowledge being gained from dozens of Cosmo/17 style magazines. He says repeatedly that the dead mother was the one who knew how to do that stuff.

4. Until the last 10 minutes there are no living adult women.

5. The ugly duckling: She's pushy and she knows what's right, and she saves the day at least once. She's with the boys in every scene... until she's told she's pretty and gets a kiss. She then disappears from the plot except for a few shots of her looking moon-eyed and spacey.

6. Foxy Loxy: Foxy Loxy is the town bully. She's a tomboy. She's also the best baseball player the town has seen in decades (until Chicken Little upstages her). She's basically a plot device. In the next to last scene the aliens admit, "her brain waves got scrambled," as she is now covered in makeup, wearing a petticoat dress (instead of her usual overalls), and singing "Lollipop." The aliens indicate they will fix her, until sidekick #2 (a pig, literally) says "No, don't" and kisses her. So the aliens leave her brain scrambled, as a boy told them to and he must know best.... In the next scene we now see that she is the Pig's girlfriend.

7. At the end the aliens are introduced. A female adult and a male adult. They could have come out of an episode of Leave it to Beaver. The female uses no logic or intelligence, claims no responsibility for the havoc she has helped wreck, nothing. Instead she shames the male adult about how he's been overdoing it. She does this in the "ohhh, can mommy kiss your booboo" voice. Then the male takes over and she's pretty much done. (Oh, we know she's female before she speaks only b/c she has humogo eyelashes.)

8. And of course, when the whole thing is made into a movie within a movie, the male heroes are turned into muscular alpha males... and the female hero is turned into a Jessica Rabbit knockoff.

9. This was cut from the cable run, but according to Wikipedia Foxy Loxy's bully pal (a goose) decides she will be Chicken Little's friend after he wins the baseball game.

So the take home lessons are:

1. Girls are flaky, moody, and have no loyalty.
2. Girls are impressed by great physical deeds, not personal worth.
3. Girls are better as ditzy crazy stupid playthings than actual competition
4. Girls only legitimate motivations are about reading Cosmo and getting kissed
5. Women aren't necessary
6. When women do exist, it's only so someone can navigate emotional waters, b/c men surely can't
7. Men only say they are sorry when a woman makes them feel guilty
8. Women aren't responsible for anything, only men
9. Women can't be heroes
10. Girls who do better than boys need to be fixed, until they put on makeup and skirts
11. Men are better deciders of what's right for women than they themselves are
12. and on and on and on and on and on

What kills me is that most of the stuff that I found (and my husband volunteered was not good) horrific was added as humor.

"Hey, we can't tell a joke, or create real emotional growth, let's use some disturbing gender stereotypes as pratfalls!"

They don't have 1962 as an excuse, this was a major release in 2005.

Hey, Google Maps

Google Maps, you know I love you. So why do you have to do me like this?

If I want (for whatever reason) a list of local hospitals, do you think you could filter OUT of that search VETs? It's not like if I search for "human hospitals" it's going to work.

Thanks,

Love,

Me

Snopes, Ugh

I want to know how Snopes invariably jumps the blocks on pop-up windows.

Google toolbar has everything so tightened down that I can't right-click a link and open in a new window unless I also hold down control, but without fail snopes.com pops up annoying adds.

I think working for snope's web development team is selling your soul to the dark side. I recently configured a little used browser (Safari for PC) with the default to javascript OFF, so that when a family member sends me a nutty forward I can CUT and PASTE the content from snopes.

OMG, Microsoft, Seriously??

I've got a ton of meetings scheduled. The attendee lists are long. I would like to print the list of people who have accepted, declined, tentative, etc.

Except, according to Microsoft, http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA011499821033.aspx, I can't.

What, it's important enough to be a tab on the screen, but not important enough to ever print? Seriously?? WTF.

"There is currently no direct way to print the names of the people who have been invited to a meeting"

and

"Only the names of the meeting organizer and attendees are copied. If you are the meeting organizer and you want to include each attendee's response to your meeting request, click the Tracking tab, press ALT+PRINT SCREEN, and then paste the image into a Microsoft Office program file."

Ok, you're a multizillion dollar company. You know something is wrong, because you have a help page on something, and the answer is to alt-printscreen?

Really?