Ukulele love

As some of my regular readers will know I play (for some definition of play) the ukulele. It’s fair to say at this stage the ukulele wins more often that I do.

Anyway, while killing time on the intertubes waiting for a conference call to finish I came across this fabulous free e-book So you just got your first ukulele.

It’s from the fabulously named Uke Hunt website which I also recommend to ukulele players just starting out.

Why oh why…

As I’ve mentioned earlier we’re going through a re-branding exercise here. In fact we’re nearly done, The designers sent us the CD with the finished artwork on Monday

Now, when I briefed them I explained that things like our proposal template had to be useable in Word, and that the website design had to be easy to to install and use in our CMS.

I, however, was not responsible for signing off on quotes and those requirements weren’t reflected.

So on Monday I got a CD containing templates in InDesign… This is a mjor pain in the neck, but not impossible – I can, and have, converted them the word. (Although changing elegant simple InDesign into crappy Word hurts me in my heart)

We also got the the Website design

In Photoshop.

I could rant about why this drives me insane  – But the ‘vark guys have already said it better – go and read their comments on Photoshop as a web design tool.

And if you are a designer. Please learn – there is a difference between screen and paper.

Should I stay or should I go…

Every Australian who lives in a bush-fire zones knows there comes a point when you have to decide whether to stay or go. The general advice is that, if you are well prepared, then it is (relatively) safe to stay, to defend your house.

If you’re going to go, you need to go early, before the smoke makes driving hazardous.

The problem they had in Victoria is that the fire moved much, much faster than anyone really expected…

Gary Hughes from The Australia, explains how his family nearly didn’t make it.

The Red Cross are taking donations if you want to help.

What I am doing today…

I’m trying to develop a marketing plan and copy for our direct mail campaign. This would be much easier if the process didn’t go like this.

I write a draft

I fight with the Managing Director (MD) over what we’re planning to do
I fight with the other Divisional Director (DD) over what we want to do
DD fights with MD over why can’t we do more of the stuff that she wants to do

I write a draft that attempts to incorporate both their changes.

MD makes secret changes to DD’s stuff
DD makes secret changes to MD’s stuff
DD has a hissy fit about the changes to her stuff
MD has a hissy fit about the changes to his stuff,
DD comes to see me to explain that MD is an idiot and she doesn’t care what we do it’s just that she knows way more about this than anyone.
MD comes to see me to explain that they are both idiots and we should do whatever I think is best since I’m the expert, but since he has a wealth of experience (and is the boss) he’s sure I’ll decide to do the “right” aka “his” things.

I write a third draft

MD calls a meeting between all of us so we can ‘come to a consensus’
They argue to a standstill.
I doodle in my notebook and think about how badly I want a beer.

Meeting concludes with
“So Lindsay, you’ll get us a fresh draft in the morning?”

No prizes for guessing what I’ll be doing tomorrow.

Like OMG!

I can’t tell if this is actually satire – in which case it’s brilliant. Or a really sad indictment of our times – in which case it is also brilliant…

My mother emailed me last week to tell me she had joined Facebook. We don’t chat on the phone; we email. Soon I expect she will want to poke me, write on my wall and, worse still, tag me in photographs of my wedding last May. Well, not if I can help it, mama. I love you too much to expose you to my online self.

You see, she doesn’t yet know that I, her 24-year-old daughter, am about to divorce. She can’t see my Facebook status, so why would she?

Mummy, how do I tell you I’m a Facebook divorcee? That the son-in-law you try so hard to like cheated on your only daughter using the social networking site you so adore? That your daughter learnt of her imminent divorce via Google Mail’s free chatting facility, Gchat?

Look – read the article yourself, but given the throw away line about getting the husband to “move back to his home country” and that they’d only been married 6 months I wonder if she might have not been a wife as much as visa…

But like I’ve said before and will no doubt say again…

I couldn’t make this stuff up.