Police in Wichita, Kansas, arrested a 22-year-old man at an airport hotel after he tried to pass two (counterfeit) $16 bills.

————————-

A man in Johannesberg, South Africa, shot his 49-year-old friend in the face, seriously wounding him, while the two practiced shooting beer cans off each other’s head.

————————-

A company trying to continue its five-year perfect safety record showed its workers a film aimed at encouraging the use of safety goggles on the job. According to Industrial Machinery News, the film’s depiction of gory industrial accidents was so graphic that twenty-five workers suffered minor injuries in their rush to leave the screening room. Thirteen others fainted, and one man required seven stitches after he cut his head falling off a chair while watching the film.

————————-

The Chico, California, City Council enacted a ban on nuclear weapons, setting a $500 fine for anyone detonating one within city limits.

————————-

A bus carrying five passengers was hit by a car in St. Louis, but by the time police arrived on the scene, fourteen pedestrians had boarded the bus and had begun to complain of whiplash injuries and back pain.

————————-

Swedish business consultant Ulf af Trolle labored 13 years on a book about Swedish economic solutions. He took the 250-page manuscript to be copied, only to have it reduced to 50,000 strips of paper in seconds when a worker confused the copier with the shredder.

————————-

A convict broke out of jail in Washington D.C., then a few days later accompanied his girlfriend to her trial for robbery. At lunch, he went out for a sandwich. She needed to see him, and thus had him paged. Police officers recognized his name and arrested him as he returned to the courthouse in a car he had stolen over the lunch hour.

————————-

Police in Radnor, Pennsylvania, interrogated a suspect by placing a metal colander on his head and connecting it with wires to a photocopy machine. The message “He’s lying” was placed in the copier, and police pressed the copy button each time they thought the suspect wasn’t telling the truth. Believing the “lie detector” was working, the suspect confessed.

————————-

When two service station attendants in Ionia, Michigan, refused to hand over the cash to an intoxicated robber, the man threatened to call the police. They still refused, so the robber called the police and was arrested.

————————-

A Los Angeles man who later said he was “tired of walking,” stole a steamroller and led police on a 5 mph chase until an officer stepped aboard and brought the vehicle to a stop.

Posted in Humour/Jokes, Why & How | No Comments »

You know, sometimes there are times things need to be validated by members of the industry and this is one statement that I need to validate. Being the President, Founder and Lead Designer for a successful Multimedia company I have to get a few things off my chest.

“Web designers” are everywhere, anyone with a copy of front page and the internet are calling them selves web designers, seeking out clients to make a living from selling their services. Everyday while surfing the web I come across FrontPage built sites with stick on animated gifs and bloated Microsoft html code. There was obviously no thought to the end user or design principle while these sites where in development. Open new word document >slap in some stolen gifs from the web > save as html and WHAMMO you are a web designer. NO YOU ARE NOT.

Too many times I meet with a prospective client and they show me a horrible site that they paid obscene amounts of money for and I mean obscene, some of these sites are 3 times what my company charges and they look like they were done by a no talent hack in the basement of grandma’s house. Seriously how do you sleep at night ripping people off like that. My rates are not cheap but my portfolio is large and I have a steady flow of referral business coming in. I even have repeat customers that have multiple sites. No wonder there are so many clients that I meet that get visibly sullen when I show them my company portfolio and quote them on a new site. How can I blame them? They paid more than double what I am quoting for the mess they have now. Many of these poor people convince themselves that they have a great site because their “Web Guy” told them that it was a great site and they got a good deal on it.

I spent years in school and training in art to do what I do. My credentials include a Multimedia Diploma with Honors, Certificate of Business Admin. Marketing and Sales Major, Sales management experience, 15 years of art training and practice. During my training I spent time learning about Humane Interface design, optimization, scalability, graphic design, color palettes and more. These are some of the many tools that a true web designer has in his or her arsenal. I am a registered Adobe client using the latest in graphic design software, my companies programming principles are strict and clean and we write our own code. (Some times we write out code in notepad just to make sure we don’t get reliant on WYSIWYG editing.) We know where the code editor is in Dreamweaver and understand the differences between different versions of IE, Firefox, Opera. We understand color wheels, beta testing, bandwidth, image optimization. This list could go on forever I think you get the point.

I am going to explain what a true web designer/developer does when dealing with a new client. Before I start on any project for a client I have a FREE (YES I said FREE) consultation meeting with the prospect. Instead of spitting out some arbitrary number to them and telling them what their site will do. I have a full interview with the client and educate them to the benefits of a website. Take the time to introduce them to new technologies available for websites such as blogs, news, CMS, flash etc. After this meeting which usually take 1hr or more, I thank the client for their time and let them know I will work out a quote for them and email it later that day. If the client insists that I ballpark a quote. I will ask a few more questions and ballpark a range based on other sites that I have developed that are similar. Once the quote is approved I layout a project guideline for the client with milestones and payment schedules at each milestone reached. This helps keep things scheduled and gives the client piece of mind throughout the process.

To those guilty parties out there, you should be ashamed of yourselves. You are preying on people that want to grow their business or are just starting out. All you are accomplishing is helping these poor clients fail. Before you start demanding exorbitant amounts of money for your services try going to school and taking a few art classes, at least now you will do your clients and your reputation justice. To anyone that is out there looking for web sites PLEASE do some research and make sure that your choice in designer is based off their experience and previous work. If they have no work to show you then you are well within your right to ask for a mock-up before signing on to have them launch your web site project.

Us multimedia people are not all rip off artists and if you find the right one for your business you could be developing a long standing relationship for the better of both parties involved. As mentioned earlier I have many repeat clients and referrals making it unnecessary to advertise. No newspaper ads, no billboards, no mass emailing. My advertising consists of a small link on clients sites that allow it, linking to my main company site. My phone rings from new clients and 9 out of 10 times it is because they got my info from someone who I did work for.

Here are some other posts that give prospective clients some insight into the minds of web developers.

choosing-a-web-designer
artist-vs-programmer

My company site is located at www.mk2solutions.com if you click clients there are links to work that I have done. For other samples you can always contact me through the contact form as I have lots of sample layouts etc that are archived. As busy as we are I am always open to meeting a new prospective client to discuss their project. Worst case I will put a team together to develop it while I oversee each phase to insure the level of quality is at a level that I accept.

Posted in Business, HowTo/Tips, Personal, Rants&Thoughts, Why & How | No Comments »

The ever futile power struggle between men and women continues. We have countless lists of women’s rules for men. Like usual they change with the weather, don’t make much sense, and are frankly irrational most of the time. Seriously folks these lists are hilarious and they lighten the days when you get them in your email. However to all the women out there just because an email list says that women act this way it is not an excuse to ACTUALLY DO IT!.

The feud continues as it has for centuries with neither party understanding the other but still feeling a magnetic attraction to each other so they can enter into a life of slavery and never ending battles.

To the men out there we really do ask for it sometimes, I have forever been trying to figure out why men get married or play the game of golf. And for the record I am an avid golfer and have been married for 10 years.

Marriage:
Why do we meet a wonderful girl, have intense physical attraction, enjoy eachothers company and make some pretty awesome memories. Everything is amazing you are happy, she is happy the stars and planets are aligned, things could not be any better. The sex is great, few fights which usually end in make up sex. It’s a perfect union of two complete opposites,MEN and Woman.

Then it happens at some point knowing that everything will change ESPECIALLY our amazing woman, we go out, buy a ring and propose. Knowing full well that women marry men with the intent to change them, and men marry women hoping they dont change and they do. After the wedding there is a short period of bliss and then it begins. The car you had so many fond memories in with together is no longer condusive to a married man and she hates it. The pleading statements “But you always told me you loved my car!” are no help remember the woman in front of you now is not the same one you asked to marry you. Fights end in sleeping on the couch or 3 days of uncomfortable silence and strange looks from across the kitchen.And if you think that all the crazy wild sex you had in the past is going to continue you are sorely mistaken boys IT’s OVER!!!

WHY DO WE WILLINGLY PUT OUR SELVES INTO THIS POSITION! Well to all the women out there I received a great email from my wife that is a simple list of rules of men. Really its simple common sense stuff not so much rules but a guideline for peace and seriously the best way to get the most our of your man! PLEASE ALL WOMEN READ THIS!

Golf:
Just like marriage we fall in love with a game that is destined to put us in an early grave or at best drive us to the brink of insanity. We stand in a HUGE field and try to hit a litte ball with peice of metal on the end of a long stick. Just looking at the physics of what we are doing it’t HARD AS HELL! Then when we don’t defy the odds and make a bad shot we beat ourselves up about it. But week after week we return to the course and bet with our playing partners. The difference with golf though is no matter what happens on the course there is a Beer and a Hot Dog waiting on the ninth hole and we are actually outside getting exercise at the same time.

I GUESS US MEN ARE JUST GLUTTONS FOR PUNISHMENT!

Posted in Golf, Humour/Jokes, Personal, Rants&Thoughts, Why & How | No Comments »

Anyone that has read my resume will know that I spend many years in retail sales. Many of those years was in training new sales people and as a Sales Manager for a big box retail store. What I am going to tell you now is some secrets in the retail industry that are used to train the sales people how to play the psychological game of selling with you the consumer when you come in to the store. I trained and developed some top sales people in the company and managed top performing sales departments in two different stores. Here are some of the tools that I trained my team to use.

General Sales Process
The entire sales process from beginning to end is a game if you don’t agree with this try it out sometime. There is a winner and a loser in this game. The winner is the one who gets what they are working for in the end, the sales person get his/her sale or the customer leaves without purchasing the product that was trying to be forced on them. Sometimes the customer is going into the store to get something specific the game begins when the salesperson gets involved and tries to add the up sell products or extended warranties.

The best defense against these tactics and the up sell is not to get into a debate with the sales person or to demand a discount but simply ask tough questions designed to stump the knowledge of the sales person. Only the best of the best will be able to answer them all and if they can’t they will find out the answer for you right away. A sales person that in confident enough to say I don’t know but I will find out for you is someone that is worth dealing with and is generally going to be honest with you about your concerns.

Avoid like the plague that sales person who preys on the human need to get a “deal”. As I trained my sales people with a simple statement “A deal is only a deal when you get a quality product at a fair price”. Getting some no name 90day warranty brand for $200 less than the quality product is not a deal it’s a waste of money. You’ve seen them they litter the boxing day flyers and weekly sale flyers trying to get you into the stores to talk to a smooth sales person that will up sell you into something else. Its not bait and switch but really who wants the crappiest product just because it is cheap.

If you want to keep the sales people away tell them that you are not buying anything today you are just shopping around for some gift ideas and generally all but the eager newbies will go away and leave you alone.

That’s enough for an introduction more specifics in price and negotiating tactics etc will be coming soon…If you are interested in more information or have a specific question please feel free to leave a comment and I will reply with an answer.

Posted in Business, Why & How | No Comments »