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Mon, 27 Dec 2004 19:26:00 GMT

I was being somewhat disparaging about IdeaBank in a recent entry. We added a new feature where in passers-by can sign up for a paid account right off the home page. I never expected it to generate too many new subscribers. I believe most users will go through the old existing process: ask for a free trial first and then, if we are lucky sign up for a paid account. However, today was historic apparently; I got this edited message from Chuck:

From: Charles Francis
To: Graham ...
Subject: FLAST NEWS

Dear One and All:

We have just received our first subscriber who subscribed on line. He is ***** *** ****** from Kuwait. He used his Visa credit card for a Plan 1. I must say that, so far at least, everything worked perfectly. It was almost all automatic except for my insertion of the Due Date. Thanks to everybody for helping put this new feature in play. Regards.

Chuck Francis [ emphasis mine ]

Let's hope there will be more of those :)

3, 2, 1...

Thu, 02 Dec 2004 17:59:00 GMT

Three

My lunch is culturally schizophrenic today. I ordered the Goulash Soup and the Texas Beef Brisket.

Two

Some of you already know that I run a web site for a retired marketing guy (henceforth "Chuck"). This is on the side, my day job is still working at The Company. The web site is www.idea-bank.com. Originally I did everything involved with the web site, except for write the actual content, of course. Some time back Chuck wanted to revamp the look of the site, and I recommend that he get someone else do the HTML. So now someone else is responsible for the HTML and I do the back end database and administrative tools.

This actually seemed like a pretty good idea at the time, because my philosophy toward HTML is somewhat old fashion. I don't believe in spinning or flaming logos, and I don't think every web page needs a fancy JavaScript driven GUI. I actually think those things tend to distract from the content, which is (contrary to popular opinion) why you actually go to a web site.

Chuck wants to improve the web site with some new features. As it turns out the back end (my part) is actually flexible enough that the changes required are minimal. A few weeks ago I asked our HTML guy to make some really minor changes, amounting to copying some files to a different location. I could actually do this myself... it is my server... but I want to stay out of the HTML code, and besides it would be rude. He still hasn't made these changes. I guess this is the downside to this arrangement.

Since the server is mine, I like to keep everything neat and tidy, and this guy is a Windows user, so he does little things to annoy me like using the short .htm extension instead of .html. We aren't running any sorry ass sixteen bit operating systems here; filename extensions do not have to be three characters, damn it!

One

Think I finally got Parallel Abstraction working. I'm stress testing it with test cases right now. This is big. This is proof that the Universe does not hate me.

The Twilight Report

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