Jon Reid

When you are running a business based on offering an online service of any sort to a userbase, the standard practices of usability say that the ONLY thing that matters is how the users view your site. Everything else is secondary at best, and often plain irrelevant. This is the Usability Prime Directive: Ignore your users at your peril.

Of course, this assumes that the owners of the business in question want a viable business with growth potential. This is not always a valid assumption, so it bears mentioning.

On the other hand, the Usability Prime Directive does not mean the users are automatically relevant. True, the users should determine how you will design, build, and offer your service, but only as long as that input is productive. Users are greedy, and just because they say (for a wild example) they want a telepathic interface doesn't mean you should invest all of your resources into research and development of online telepathy. In other words, it's important to separate usability issues from entitlement issues.

( In which we leave Theoryland and return to reality... )

[Edited to clarify a bit of language upon leaving Theoryland, and to make entry public.]

Hey folks, The Fabric Lab needs your help.

The Fabric Lab, for those of you playing along at home, is a great local business run by Josh (one of the designers here at Texturemedia and generally all-around way talented dude) and his wife. The Fabric Lab showcases handmade items made by local designers: clothing, accessories, and other amazing things. They're bringing real art and fashion to East Colfax and doing the neighborhood and community a good turn as well. I know a lot of you have even been to their monthly fashion shows, which I've mentioned before.

They're up for Channel 7's A-List, but they need votes. So go to http://kmgh.cityvoter.com/details.aspx?business=48730 and vote for them. Use a disposable email from Spamgourmet if you like, just be sure you click through on the link on the email they'll send.

Go forth my minions, and click!

For those of you wondering, there are a few things that are actually true in the preceeding story.

We do have an emergency generator for our building, outside, just off the alley. I did just see it for the first time a few days ago. I have no idea if it is in working condition, or how much fuel (if any) it has, or if it would come online should the power fail (I'm guessing it wouldn't). Our office was previously a data center/tech support center, and so that's probably why it's there.

And yes, right across the street from us is the Boulder Police Annex. The front of the annex is made entirely of glass. I have never been in there, so I have no idea if there's actually a gun cabinet or not. But I do know that Boulder Police are famous in local LEO circles for having lots of expensive and unnecessary weaponry.

We do have a crow who hangs around the building and I have taken to calling him Fred. He is fond of the rich pickings from the garbage that the restaurants in the building generate. He is big and fat and amiable--amiable for a crow, anyway. I'd estimate his wingspan at nearly a meter. He also has quite the vocabulary of caws and toks and strange squabbling noises. He does not, however, fly up to the windows and watch us as we work.

That would be creepy.

they came for me fred and his friends they are the only ones left in town besides HIM and me just him and me and fred makes three and we all have to tell you how to tell you now to tell you tell you tell you that they came and got me and showed me HIM and it hurt to see like when you are asleep and you are just waking up and you cant hear the fan in the room and then you can like it fades in like the screaming because it hurts to see HIM and the screams and then i went back to the sleep place where i couldnt hear my screams and then HE looked at me and he told me what i have to tell you all to tell you all have to tell you all that i am waking up now and i could only see some of HIM because i can only look with my eyes and you cant see some things like when lines cross and move apart at the same time and we should just take off and nuke the site from orbit its the only way to be sure and it is like jesus is coming and boy is he pissed so everyone look busy except its not jesus its HIM i tried to hide but they found me and they took me down to HIM down in the green and the honey and the gunpowder and he touched me he TOUCHED me he TOUCHED ME ON MY FACE i have to get back to the sleep place because of my screaming but first HE wants me to tell you all i have to tell you all that he is sending them they are his and he is sending them to you all they are for you all and they are for him and from him and to you and they are coming they are cOMING THEY ARE COMING

(omg i have to warn my flist)

Okay, very weird. The light on campus isn't from electrical lights. There's no power here as near as I can tell.

The light is coming from the stadium, and it's green. I'm over by the physics building, where I spent so much time as a student, right across the street from the stadium. It's completely silent, but almost as bright as twilight from the glow of...whatever it is.

It stinks here, enough that it's starting to upset my stomach. Rotten pineapple and pesticide.

Fred and his buddies are watching me from the roof of the building over there.

I'm debating whether or not I should check

(omg i have to warn my flist)

The reason why it's not dark is because there's light coming from campus. CU has its own power generation subfacility; maybe it's still running. I'm going to be heading through campus on my way out of town, so I'll check it out.

Still haven't seen anyone. Except for Fred and his buddies, who seem determined to follow me.

(omg i have to warn my flist)

Fred has brought some of his friends. They're all staring at me, through the window. There's about a dozen of them. I'm having my very own Tippi Hedren moment.

What's weird is that even though they all look alike, I can still tell which one is Fred.

Anyway, I'm posting this from one of our new Ricochet-enabled laptops. I'm getting the hell out of Dodge, I'm done here.

It's mostly dark outside, this sort of sickly greenish dark. And it stinks. Like bananas and fertilizer. It should be completely dark by now but it's not, I'm not sure why. No lights in the city, and just the light from the laptop screen here, since I turned off all of the lights in the building lest the light attract attention.

Anyway, I'm bugging out. Maybe not the best idea, I know, but I'm not staying here, that's for damn sure. The only problem is...I took the bus up here, so I'm going to have to hoof it, at least at first. There's nobody outside except Fred and his buddies, so I don't think I need to worry about anything other than being grossed out by the smell.

Right, then, off I go.

(omg i have to warn my flist)

Fred the Crow is still at the window.

Tokking.

I swear to god he's waiting for something.

(omg i have to warn my flist)

It smells bad outside. Like esters gone bad...chemical and sickly sweet all at once.

The sky is darker green now, I swear.

(omg i have to warn my flist)

It's crazy out there.

Across the street from our new office is a police annex and someone just drove a car into it. the front of the annex is all glass and I was upstairs here and I heard the crash followed by gunshots. I know gunshots when I hear them. And of course I ran to see what it was but I'm on the wrong side of the building and by the time I got downstairs whoever it was was already gone.

This was the first sign of life I've seen all day. And they were already gone.

It was a pickup truck, a new-ish one. Engine was warm, but front tires were shredded by the glass. Keys in the ignition. Open doors...but nobody was there. Totally pegging the WTF-O-Meter.

So there I was, in a police station, shouting "HELLO IS ANYONE THERE" like a stupid idiot. Doesn't matter, no answer. I tried the door behind the front desk, but it was locked.

Right...keys in the ignition. I tried them, and one of them worked. Nobody in the back room, but ...

Look, I know you all are going to think I'm a lunatic, but the gun cabinet was there and I swear to god I just helped myself.

I am now the ~~proud~~ scared shitless ~~owner~~ custodian of a very nice Beretta 12-gauge shotgun with a pistol grip and a slightly illegal magazine capacity, as well as a pair of matching 92FS pistols. And ammuntion, I cleaned out all the shells and 9mil (hello, armor piercing and some Glaser safety rounds?...like Boulder cops need this kind of firepower for babysitting college students).

I am SO going to prison for this.

(omg i have to warn my flist)

afk gunshots

?!?!

(omg i have to warn my flist)

Plenty of fuel in the emergency generator.

Fred kept me company while I figured out how to open the back panel and puzzle out the gauges. I took the opportunity to grab one of the SLRs (Pentax is one of our clients and they've been most generous with giving us freebies) and snap some pics.

caw.
Fred.

ooo, scary
Green clouds. Creepy, huh? Originally they were just to the north, but they've spread over the whole sky now. They're actually kind of fascinating to watch.

(omg i have to warn my flist)

Submitted for your approval: One lone man, the last one on Earth. Blogging away as if there weren't a care in the world. What he doesn't know is that he has taken a detour into...the Twilight Zone.

Okay, that wasn't as funny as I thought it would be.

Right. I'm going to go see if I can divine how much fuel is in the generator.

(omg i have to warn my flist)

Our power has gone out.

So how am I still able to post, you may ask? Turns out our building has an emergency generator.

For those of you playing along at home, you may recall that we moved our offices back in February to this new building. This office building was previously occupied by a datacenter and tech support group for GE, and so they of course needed a backup source of power (to say nothing of excellent connectivity to teh intarwebs, which was actually what attracted us to this place to start with, along with it being big enough for our entire company). I noticed the generator the other day for the first time when I was taking out some broken down boxes to the trash dumpsters out back. It's a huge beast.

I'm actually kind of surprised that there is any fuel in it, and I wonder how much there is. I should probably go outside and check.

In other news, I have tried calling some of the people I work with. We have an internal wiki, and one of the pages has everyone's contact info. So far, no luck; it appears that cell phones aren't working, and anyone who had a landline isn't answering their phones.

I don't mind telling you that I'm getting ~~a wee bit~~ creeped out.

Fred says "hi."

(omg i have to warn my flist)

There are crows everywhere. Usually we have a half dozen or so picking through the trash out in the alley, but they're all over Boulder today. (Possibly all the people in town turned into crows? hahaha...er.)

One is perched outside the window, and is staring at me. Occasionally he'll turn his head and make an odd tokking noise at me.

I shall call him Fred.

(omg i have to warn my flist)

Things Not Conducive To Working On Websites:

1. Nobody else showing up for work today. (What, is this a holiday I didn't know about?!?)
2. Loud exploding noises from outside. (Okay, so there was only one, but it made the power flicker...probably an overloaded transformer.)
3. The fact that the clouds to the north have a distinctly greenish tinge to them. (Seriously, they're sea green.)

I shall require tea.

(omg i have to warn my flist)