fuzzyraygun

One of the traps that many companies get into once they start looking at their Google Web Analytics is that they start to make more and more site and design choices for their site based on Analytics rather than common sense. If you change the name of the link from “Sign Up” to “Learn More” and more people click on it, it doesn’t not necessarily mean that the increase was because of the change in text. “Correlation does not imply causation.”

How about a Blue one?
My friend Paul was shopping for a car and he was doing some preliminary searches at a dealer. Paul explained what he was looking for to the guy and the dealer explained that he did not have that. He then proceeded to try and sell him a totally different thing. Paul of course, has to stop the guy and tell him, “No sorry I’m just not interested in that” to which the guy replied “Well, how about a blue one?”. Do you really think that this guy believes that the reason people weren’t buying cars from him was because they weren’t the right color?

Business and web people are always under the microscope to “Increase Traffic” or “Click throughs” or “Conversions” but it becomes a very slippery slope when you start to infer causation for something you do into an increase in one of these things. The problem with analytics is not the numbers, its the reason for the numbers. You might never know why you got more clicks this week. But since the only thing you changed was a link color from Red to Blue, you might start to infer that all your links need to be Blue and that will fix everything.

At 5am on the way to the airport. All must suckle at the Dutch Brothers teet.

Alanna and I were in seaside Oregon. And this is what the beach looked like as we looked back at the shore. Low tide and lots of fog equals surreal heavans gate experience.

Kenny and zukes defies the laws of sandwich physics.

I heard someone use this today and I had a princess bride moment.

“You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.”

My father used to say this all the time. He usually got it right by saying “All you kids need to make a concerted effort”. The problem is that most people use it in the context of a single person. “He is making a concerted effort”. A single person cannot make a concerted effort, because you cannot work in concert with yourself.
Style Nazi Link

I JUST passed most of my English classes when I was in school. It wasn’t until I was a sophomore or junior that I started to read and pay attention to this stuff. So when the hell did I learn this and at what point did it become something that I would even remember?

Somewhere along the line I changed from not being able to finish a Hardy Boys book to WANTING to read David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest for the third time.

My guess is that it was all the books around the house. We had tons of books around when we were kids. There were 2 sets of encyclopedias and a HUGE Websters dictionary that seemed to weigh 100 pounds. All the kids had books in their rooms. My father always had books on his night stand. My sister Liz gave me William Burroughs to read when I was barely out of junior high school.

Now I read 4 books at once. I am never at a loss for something to read.

I think it’s time to buy some half priced pork. cnn story >

“It has never and never will be easy work! But the road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination”
- Marion Zimmer Bradley

“Comic sans walks into a bar, bartender says, ‘we don’t serve your type.’”

Alanna have spent our first week with Mississippi, our new Doggie that we picked up the OHS shelter. She has been a handful and a half, but we are slowly falling into a rhythm. We have our morning walk followed by some food, afternoon playtime, evening walk followed by food and lots of time inbetween to totally go nuts and make us question our sanity. It seems to work for the dog.

The week has definitely been a week of testing boundaries an of Mississippi find her place in the pack. Lots to learn