…and all through the house, everything was going to hell in a handbasket. Our twelve-year-old son threw one of his trademark temper tantrums (for which we can’t really even begin to get him help until the middle of January, since, when we called at the beginning of November, that was the first appointment the psychiatrist had) because a new toy was released today and he’s mad that he won’t be getting it for Christmas. In the middle of his fit, my mother-in-law called to tell us that she’s canceling the traditional Christmas Eve celebration at her house. My parents just called and decided that we won’t be able to have dinner with them on Christmas day, because it’s too much stress on my dad, who has to work on Wednesday morning.

I completely understand where he’s coming from, and don’t fault my parents at all for their decision. They’ve spent the last week (with a little bit of help from us) moving my great aunt out of the house she’s lived in for 15 years and into a new house closer to us. She officially moved in yesterday, and my parents spent all day over there today helping her unpack a very small portion of the things that are in boxes. I’m sure my dad will probably be back over there again tomorrow, at least for a short while. Then, on Christmas day, my brother and his wife are flying in sometime around noon. Then, as I mentioned, my dad has to go back to work. For anyone that would be a lot of stress, and for my dad (and, to be quite honest, for myself) stress is usually multiplied exponentially by the fact that we do not cope well with things not going according to plan.

Anyway, just felt like venting for a minute. Any of those things by themselves wouldn’t be all that bad, but all together, it’s a terribly drastic change from Christmases past. My parents are still planning to come up and share breakfast with us on Christmas morning, but they’ll be heading back home before lunch. Then, we’ll probably have our “Christmas dinner” with them, and my brother and sister-in-law and my great aunt, on the day after Christmas.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

On Black Friday, I finally had the opportunity to purchase some “LightScribe” discs to use with the burner that came in my new computer. Being that I only had a handful of the discs, I wanted to save them for something special.

Every Christmas, I make a compilation of most of the photographs I’ve taken over the year. I decided that a DVD slideshow of those photographs would be a perfect opportunity to try out my new LightScribe discs.

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I found an interesting article/slideshow on Wired.com the other day. Working in a small cube farm myself, I was curious to see what kinds of suggestions they had. While the majority of the suggestions in the article are a bit outlandish, the “takeaways” with each picture are generally rather inspiring. I’m curious, though, if anyone that works in a real office would be able to pull off any of these ideas. What do you think?

I was viewing my My Yahoo! homepage this morning and came across a very interesting news story. Apparently, a Canadian man came home from work early and found his 15-year old son smoking marijuana in the backyard.

How did the dad decide to punish his delinquent offspring? He sold the Christmas present he was planning to bestow upon his son next week.

That’s right, he put it up on ebay and sold it. This wasn’t just any Christmas present, though. It was the sought-after Guitar Hero 3 for the Nintendo Wii. All-in-all, the dad ended up making a cool $8,700 profit from his kid’s poor decision.

Maybe I should put my kids’ Christmas gifts up on ebay .

The power of images in making a sale has been well known in traditional marketing for a long time. This becomes even more important online when there’s no physical product for users to handle. The images on your website alone have to work even harder to convey the true look and feel of your product.

Although the following guidelines focus on ecommerce imagery, they can generally be applied to most websites.

1. Professional quality

The quality of photographs is one of the few clues available online for users to judge the quality of your products. The importance of quality shots can’t be stressed enough, especially for luxury goods. And it’s an investment worth making – conversions have been known to more than double through improved imagery.

Ensure images are professionally shot and of high resolution. Put as much care and thought into imagery as you would your window display. If you’re aiming at the luxury market, it’s important to create a feast for the eyes to draw your site visitors in.

2. Alternate & detailed views

Offering alternate views is crucial to convey the full sense of the product. An important alternate view is the detailed one. The range of alternate views available should aim to provide a viable alternative to viewing the product in a physical store. It’s a good idea to allow the full range of imagery to be explored by providing cues such as arrows in the gallery area.

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My Internet connection at home has been kind of screwy for the last few days. I was able to access some Web sites but could not access others. For a while, I was able to access Google with no trouble, but could not access Yahoo! Then, however, I can’t access Google or Yahoo! for some reason.

I looked into it and was finally able to resolve the problem by simply power-cycling the modem and my router. I don’t know what the problem was, but it sure was annoying.

With the holidays fast approaching, everybody and their brother is making a list (and checking it twice) of the best gifts to get and give this year.

From Yahoo! comes a list of the top 10 toys people are searching for on the Web this holiday season. At the top of the list is my beloved Nintendo Wii.

Also making the list are the new version of TMX Elmo, Transformers action figures and Bratz dolls. Sounds like I’d better head back out to talk to Santa, because my wife and I didn’t tell him to bring any of those things to our house this year.

Just a quick post to say how silly I am, and what a ripoff Sony’s Memory Sticks can be. On Black Friday, I purchased what I thought was a great deal. I got a 2 gigabyte Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo for my Sony Cybershot camera for less than $20.

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Yesterday we had the first snowfall of the season here in the D.C. area. The snow started at about 7 a.m. and had already made things really nasty by about 7:30. I was on my way to work and actually decided to turn around and head home because of how bad things were getting.

It was very strange. At the beginning, the snow wasn’t actually sticking to the roads, it was just laying on top. When the wind would blow, the snow would blow around on the road, too. Unfortunately, when the wind would blow, the cars would blow around on the road, as well.

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First of all, I am still sick, so this is going to be a short post, but I wanted to get something posted and I wanted to get this information out there for people.

TechSmith, the company that brought us Camtasia Studio, has released a new tool that’s completely free. The tool is called “Jing”, and from the limited time I’ve had to play with it, it seems wonderful.

Jing isn’t completely new. In fact, it’s been around for about six months. However, a new release was made on Nov. 28, 2007 that, according to the changelog, includes a lot of monumental improvements. I’m not sure how long Jing will be a free product, but as long as it is, I encourage you to try it out.

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