masuga.com

Am I alone in thinking that CSS Naked Day (where sites turn off their CSS styling so you can see just how well laid out and accessible they are!) is completely annoying? I mean, seriously.

Ohh lookee there now! They have pretty spinning icons that hint at some modern AJAX stuff going on under the hood! Sweet, guyys! If that’s the case, why doesn’t your site FU(&!#% work?!

How is it that you tell me all of a sudden I have a new account number so I need to create a new account - which you refuse to let me do (using Firefox 1.5 or Firefox 2.0, mind you) because all your fancy-schmancy new website can do it spit “Unable to login, please try again later. (3)” out at me, over and over again? Why in the world do I have to waste my time calling customer service for them to tell me that your own instructions (for the record: “Please enter the Comcast account number exactly as it appears on your bill including spaces and dashes.”) are meaningless? How the hell am I supposed to know that I don’t really enter the dash? Why has it not been fixed, now over two weeks later? You’re misleading your own customers.

All calls to customer service are useless (I know! I’ve tried!) because no one knows anything. I’ve had two trouble tickets put in with the promise of “they’ll take a look within 72 hours”. Great. Who’s ‘they’? They’ll look at what? Excuse me for being skeptical, but that’s what I am…a skeptic. Particularly when it comes to your fine establishment.

Look, you have decent broadband speeds, and that’s why I still give you my money. But you won’t always have the best speed I can find in my area. And I’ll never use you for TV - I know when I’m getting ripped and I didn’t want any part of that. Your website’s behavior is just not acceptable. Just let me create a new account so I can log in periodically to ensure you aren’t dipping into my pot more than you should be. And forget the funky Javascript (if I see that gaudy, oversized spinner one more time, I think I’m going to lose my mind) - do it all with a page refresh. I won’t tell anyone you’re not on “the cutting edge”. And anyone older than 45 won’t know the difference anyway.

I haven’t posted here in a while. Usually it takes something Comcast does (or doesn’t do) to get me to post. So, thanks for that I guess.

Am I one of the only ones who thinks that Twitter is the stupidest thing to come along in some time?

We complain about information overload, or not having enough time to do things because there is too much email, too many IM’s, too many phone calls, etc. Then this useful idea for a service comes down the pike where I can tell everyone what I’m doing, right now! Now only that, if anyone is foolish enough to visit a site where I’ve tied into the Twitter API - I can hang up the page load! Yay for the web!

I’m looking for some part time help at Masuga Design. The full details can be found on this post: Looking For Part Time Help, Right Now. Do you attend Grand Valley State University, Ferris, Kalamazoo, Kendall, or Calvin? Do you have some web design chops - or some photoshop chops with an interest in web design? Then you might be able to help me, and vice-versa.

If you are interested, email me at ryan [ a t ] masugadesign [.] com so we can talk things over.

Bo Schembechler and I, Grand Rapids, MI, October 2003

On the eve of what may be the biggest rivalry game ever between Michigan and that motley gang of repugnant fiends whose name I will not sully my website with by spelling out, Bo passes away. I can only hope that gives everyone extra motivation to win, excluding those evil, putrescent wildebeests from south of the border, of course.

I’ve been hearing Bo’s name ever since I was a kid. My whole family (dad’s side) were crazy Michigan fans, although no one had ever actually attended the school until I went there in 1991. My grandpa looked like Bo, we were Michigan crazy, Anthony Carter was my favorite player, and I still bleed blue. I was fortunate to meet Bo at Barnes & Noble here in Grand Rapids when he came for a signing of his book “Tradition”. Nice guy.

Go Blue!