Fun shopping without buying!
Well today Jen and I had a lot of fun shopping around for stuff without actually buying anything! First, we went to Target to add some little items to our baby registry. That was pretty cool — they give you a scanner to walk around and scan things, and then they plug it in when you bring it back and everything gets uploaded. Pretty neat, for a techy geek like me! (there’s a 10-baseT outlet in the base of the scanner, if you’re interested….)
Then we went over to Lowes and looked at all kinds of things! Tile and laminate flooring, doors, paint, etc…. We’re going to have so much fun fixing up this house!
And also, I’m not nearly as worried about getting the cabin now. Jen’s boss pointed out, probably most, if not all, of the other people interested in buying this house are investors who are just trying to buy up foreclosed property. Duh! I wish I’d thought of that. Of course, this type will really tend to low-ball the numbers, even though the house was already marked down (for various reasons). They just want to pay a low price, fix it up, and resell it. Exactly something I would like to do one day myself. But that means that our bid is really going to be competitive. This really makes me feel a lot better!
Also, my work is going very well. I didn’t have nearly as many images to re-create as I was afraid I would have had to. Whew! I’m actually past that point. I’ve updated the biggest items in the database, now I just need to update all the itty bitty stuff. (There is, of course, a lot more of that….) I really do think I could get it done this weekend! Hopefully, I’ll even have time to get started on their little intro animations. Not that I think their site should have it, but W is really much more interested in being cutesy than being practical. They’ve spent as much time writing a dozen little two-paragraph intros for each section of their websites than I’ve spent writing their entire admin suite. Seriously. It’s insane. I don’t think it’s a very good strategy for a website.
For instance, each section will have a set of articles that can go with it (and can be added to over time). They’re more concerned with cutesy language in the articles than they are with the content of the articles. I think this is a bad idea for a company of all-clicks-and-no-bricks. Their primary focus should be making smashing content that gets bookmarked so that it gets returned to, and sent to friends. With this company at the stage they’re at…they need to worry much less about the warm-and-fuzzies people get when reading the content, and more concerned about the quality of the content.
But then again, that’s just my opinion. I’m not a business consultant. I’m just a web developer….who’s seen a lot of businesses fail.