Monthly Archives: March 2007

The power of networking

An unexpected benefit of networking was presented to me today when Nerds on Site saved my sanity. I had posted recently about chats with my new “friends” at Bell and Sympatico, and after the last round, I could again receive (and make) phone calls, but couldn’t get on the Internet. Each service provider blamed the [...]

Posted in The Red Jacket Diaries blog | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Riding the rollercoaster

The freelance life is a true rollercoaster ride. There are stretches of calm, measured work, maybe even not too much work. I like these because I know they won’t last and I use them to run errands, organize my office or occasionally goof off. The quiet times are punctuated by spurts of frantic activity that [...]

Posted in The Red Jacket Diaries blog | Tagged | 3 Comments

Resistance is futile

Have you run across this one? “SSEWBA” — it’s short for “someday soon everything will be acronyms.” (It may already be happening in companies you and I know!) I thank Ragan’s Grapevine e-newsletter (subscribe here) for sharing this news, which commented on a Chicago Tribune article about the explosion of digital shorthand: “Resist if you [...]

Posted in The Red Jacket Diaries blog | Tagged | 2 Comments

Dogs make great communicators

There surely is proper etiquette for visiting the dying, and I had recent occasion to try to figure it out. My elderly neighbour, a widowed Scot in his eighties, knew he was dying of cancer and had just been moved to Ian Anderson House. This is a warm, homey six-bed cancer hospice that provides end-of-life [...]

Posted in The Red Jacket Diaries blog | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Watch out, holiday season approaching

Did you know that there is another “holiday season” approaching? I know this because a weekend flyer from a local grocery store mentions it several times. It was a little puzzling, at first, because the only “holiday season” (and I shudder every time I see this term) I had been aware of was the holiday [...]

Posted in The Red Jacket Diaries blog | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Hint for useful manuals: cover the features

Jakob Nielsen’s latest Alertbox on usability pointed to an interesting article on cellphone “function fatigue.” The USA Today article reports: “Manufacturers have become so enamored of cool features — including cameras, recording devices and video-streaming capabilities — that they have lost sight of the fact that many consumers just want good voice reception…Consumers say they [...]

Posted in The Red Jacket Diaries blog | Tagged | 2 Comments

This week in customer DISservice…

Here’s another tale from the customer service (or should I say, disservice) files. I was away for five days, and I mean AWAY — no laptop, Blackberry, not even a cell phone. My voice mail message was clear that I was out of the office and not often checking for messages, and there was only [...]

Posted in The Red Jacket Diaries blog | Tagged , | 2 Comments