My dad really stole the show:
Blog
I started blogging in 2005 as a way to deal with my post-college depression. I had a lot of hair back then.
I share funny stories and life lessons all written in the same down-to-earth, tell-it-like-it-is fashion that makes me my mom’s favorite blogger.
Myron.com. Sounds like moron.com, appropriately enough.
I received a stuffed envelope addressed to “MS. Jenniffer Heller” in the mail last week. Ms. Jenniffer Heller of “Artsy Greek Designs.”
OK, so it’s a promotional letter from some people who managed to get both the spelling of my first name and the name of my company wrong. It’s not the first time it’s happened, though it is the first time I’ve caught wind of “Artsy Greek.” Normally it’s “Artsy Geeky” or some such.
I open up the package and double over with laughter.
“Dear Ms. Heller,”
Yes! They got that part right!
“Surprised to see the Artsy Greek Designs name on the enclosed Regatta Horizons Duo Diary sample? Looks impressive, does it?”
I inspected the sample more closely.
Wait, that's not our name or our phone number!
I was definitely impressed. The letter went on…
“Why just send a pocket calendar when you can make a really big impression? The Duo Diary is two gifts in one – a pocket calendar and notepad.”
The question they didn’t address that’s worth asking…why send a pocket calendar at all??
But, you know, these pocket calendars are printed with erroneous information in gold. I do like gold.
I received this letter dated "August 2011" with its limited time offer in October.
Only $1.99 each?? What a steal. What do you think? Essential tax-deductible purchase or the most essential tax-deductible purchase ever??
I really need to get my hands on this book.
Like, immediately.
Thanks to long-time reader Gabe for sending me the link to this awesome exploration of the name Heller in print over the years put together by fellow blogger and long-lost-relative Steven Heller.
10/26
Bien news. For Alexis. Ana liked Jeff M. and so did Alexis. Now Jeff and Alexis are going out! And I got to ask him out for her. My social life is whack though. Nothing’s ever going to happen. Emily thinks Mike H. and I make a cute couple. I remember when he stole my inhaler and broke my pig pen. He paid $5 for the pen. The point is he might have used to like me. Emily keeps bringing the entry for 10-8. I can’t like him though. We’re just friends.
I doubt anything’s going to happen at the Halloween Dance. It’ll probably end up like the last one, my crying all through the evening.
Ana is really upset that Alexis and Jeff are going together. She was crying at lunch. I’m so happy! She deserves it.
I'm ashamed by how awful I was. Girls can be so mean.
I really hate Daniele. I mean she’s nice and all, but ever since the last dance, I haven’t been friends w/ her. She said, “Hey, Jen it’s no fun if you’re not dancing!” I know she didn’t mean to be mean, but it made me cry harder (after the dance). How is she supposed to know what I feel like? She has every guy in the school around her little finger.
When you’re purchasing sheets, you should make sure they provide good contrast to your cat.
Like I did.
The Art of Online Portraiture
My dad saved me this article on “The Art of Online Portraiture” in social media from the Wall Street Journal the other day. He clipped it out and sent it with my sister when she came to visit last Thursday. Do you realize that in fifty years no one will ever think of clipping something out of the newspaper? That perhaps there won’t be newspapers at all??
Anyway, this article (which you can read here in the Wall Street Journal online) is about how important your photos are to your social media presence. Especially when using social media professionally as we all ought to. The right picture strikes the right one, the article advises.
I read through it bragging inwardly about how awesome and professional my photo is. Even if it doesn’t capture me in action working at the computer or walking down the street as the article suggests one ought. I recognized that was pretty good advice, but still was feeling mighty good about this shot littering the internet:
And then I remembered how just last week I sent professional messages to potential attendees of my E-commerce seminar from my Facebook account.
With this as my profile pic:
Dammit. No wonder they didn’t come.
CopyBlogger needed to copyedit their own post on aweber.com
I was over at AWeber.com to explore their email marketing services. So many get-rich-quick-schemers I follow on the Internet use AWeber.com and there must be a reason.
According to AWeber.com, one of their customers is CopyBlogger. Check out their feature on aweber.com:
Obviously AWeber.com themselves could use their services. Oh what is the world coming to??
WTF Crate and Barrel? Sweater vases?
This has to be the best product I’ve seen in a long time. Vases that look like they were cable knit. Finally, a vase that captures the holiday spirit!
I can just picture my sweetie bringing me some flowers in the depths of winter. Though they are speckled with snow, the flowers glow with warmth wrapped in this ceramic sweater vase!
Wait, something’s missing here.
Now that’s a complete outfit.
the votes are in
Last Friday I asked y’all for your honest feedback about my new design.
I got four wonderfully truthful critiques (I LOVE CRITIQUES) and one very positive thumbs up (I LOVE FLATTERY) on my current, horizontal design.
Here it is for posterity, photographed on my big, spacious designer monitor where it looks really nice if I do say myself:
It also looks super hot on iphones and ipads (I think). ANYWAY, I am totally one hundred percent convinced that this foray into pushing the boundaries of web design to the limits was a total waste of time. I’m salivating over a new, sexy, vertical design so much that it’s painful to update this website as is.
I feel the need to defend this design a little bit. Or myself. I had just gone to WordCamp and gotten all these new skills that I needed to put into action IMMEDIATELY. One of them is the little diary photos at the beginning of each Diary Project post and that I never got working right in Internet Explorer (made possible in Firefox, Chrome and Safari by “pseudo elements”; thank you Chris Coiyer, awesome speaker and geeky blogger). Check them out on the post to the right (or below) but again, not if you’re running IE.
Sara Cannon taught me about responsive web design in which a website actually changes it’s layout depending on the size of the window. I should make a video for this. OK, fine, here’s a video:
The last design iteration of Jenniferheller.com got painful too. I’m so sick of looking at those clouds. And I realized that a sorta ex-friend was referring to the clouds when she was criticizing my “pixelated graphics” the other year. We all have our axes to grind.
It’s interesting to me how much I love to update this website when I love the design and how much I hate doing it when I don’t. I tell this to my clients — “When you have a website you love, you love updating it.”
Photo taken August 21st, 2011, before the horizontal scrolling action took over.
It’s so true. And this is one of the greatest things about WordPress. You can dramatically alter the look and feel of a website just by flipping a switch. What’s that? You’d like to know where you can get a sexy WordPress website? Check me out over at Artsy Geek.
And now I’m off to develop my new theme on one of my testing ground websites and will go live with it as soon as I’ve tunneled to the bottom of my pile of volunteer and client work. I can hardly wait.
