I am sure this is a problem for anyone that has had a design featured on CSS galleries. People will take those designs and just rip them completely. They don’t bother changing any part of the site, except a simple logo adjustment. It’s one thing to take a design and use it as influence, but when you completely rip a design and then take credit for the items in that portfolio, that crosses the line. Usually these rips are from firms/designers outside of the US, which makes it impossible to pursue any legal action. Luckily for me, this tool is homegrown.

The Fake BrettNyquist.com

The Original Portfolio Design

This douche even felt like ripping my resume. Copied the objective and modified one of my job positions to reflect his own. The reason why people like this disgust me is the fact they are using someone elses work to get more clients, apply for jobs. I don’t have as much of a problem with this tool completely ripping the design and resume as I do with him taking credit for the work that I have done. There really needs to be an easier way to exploit these designers and easier legal action to attack them. Luckily for me, one of the sites he wishes to take credit for, is a local law firm that would be more than willing to help me out in possible action.

I’m thinking I need another sweet toy to add to the collection to help build some motivation. My office is running stale with the same old gadgets and we all know how much a new piece of equipment can spice up the office life. Not sure if it’s a new computer, monitors, paint, desk, lamps, time capsule, iPhone.. who knows. I do think it’s time to make a little purchase. With the looming announcement of the new iPhone I don’t think I’ll be falling for that one. I just got mine back in December. I don’t have any real complaints about it, so I’m going to try and tune myself out from anything iPhone 2.0. Now if they want to release a new monitor or some other sweet gadget for me to spend my cash on, great.

If anyone has some other ideas of a sweet new tech toy that would help for the office, let me know.

Hillary seems to just be hanging on to this faint idea that she has a chance to win the nomination. She’s even gone as far as making up her own mathematical equation to claim she is winning the popular vote. She fails to count every state and only the ones that have benefited her thus far. She is really starting to reflect the same attitude of Bush and keep pushing through a dying situation, throwing more money out the window and tearing apart the democratic party.

I think she really needs to just go away and start supporting Obama so the democrats don’t completely blow their hopes of winning the presidency. All of this back and forth is just adding fuel to the Republican campaign. With all of the crap that congress has promised and what’s actually happened, now this continuous bashing of each other, things just get worse and worse as each day passes by.

Give it a rest lady.

We aren’t even safe in our own homes from killer beasts. A lady in our community found an alligator in her kitchen after returning from a friends house. Apparently the gator busted through her screened in lanai and she like many people in the neighborhood just leave their sliding glass doors open to let the breeze through. Well this gator busted through and wandered into her kitchen. The lady called 911 and the operator, who I’m sure thought this was a prank call, asked the lady if she was sure it wasn’t an iguana or gecko. The damn thing was 8 and a half feet long.

Luckily this wasn’t at our place, our animals would have been swallowed up. Haley would have tried to play with the thing, Jeter would have sniffed it’s butt then been chewed on, and then Rocko probably would have just ran away so he would’ve have lived. I would have crapped my pants and then peed all over myself just for extra measure. It’s scary to think the hundreds of times I’ve gone outside at night, not thinking about it to take Haley out. From now on all doors are closed and no one leaves the house past 9.

I would just like to give a big shout out to worthless America. I’m talking about all you douches who decided to take out loans you can’t actually afford and screw over the banks. Then you have this crazy idea that the Government should bail you out of your sorrow, that you got yourself into. Because of you Mr. and Mrs. Douchebag, banks and lenders have put the wraps on approving honest borrowers like myself.

It’s funny that the Government wants to “fix” this whole mess by allowing lenders to give more “affordable” loans to those that have already borrowed money. So apparently someone who can’t pay their bills will get help while people that do pay their bills get nothing at all. Then as a first time home-buyer I’m left with the same tight restrictions because those same people that are going to get “help” couldn’t pay their bills in the first place. Really this entire crisis is because people don’t know how to invest in a home purchase and thought they would buy these extravagant houses on a variable rate loan because in 3 years their house would appreciate so much that they could turn around and sell it. These people still think Enron would be a great investment for their portfolios.

People need to take responsibility for their horrible decision to invest their entire life savings into a house they couldn’t afford. You made a bad investment. When you lose money in the stock market do you expect the company that you invest in to pay you back? No. I say to hell with these people and you deserve to be kicked out on your ass. It’s called an apartment complex, go live there.

Everyday I drive through our neighbor hood about 4 or 5 times day. I’m constantly reminded that people don’t rent their entire lives and do grow up and actually buy a house. Right now Reena and I are renting a Villa/Townhome place from my boss. It’s a perfect place cause I have about a 10 minute drive to work and it’s centrally located to everything we need. Close to Reena’s school, Target, and Publix. The problem is, trying to find a home in this neighborhood would cost at least 300k and I don’t really care to triple our monthly payment.

So I have started researching mortgages, homes in the Odessa and Land O Lakes area. They are about 30 minutes away from work and are actually pretty conveniently located from Tampa, malls, the airport. The market right now is quite favorable for buyers and in the area we are looking we can get a pretty decent sized house for the price. I’m currently reviewing some agents to help us out and will be touring some houses I’m sure in the next few weeks. It’s a pretty exciting feeling, so I’ll be sure to keep you all updated. Hopefully I can get some pictures of some of the houses we tour.

I wonder sometimes, when building a new site, does design even matter that much? Sure there are things like making sure the navigation and certain elements are easy to find.. I get that. But do the actual designed elements of the site even matter? Take a look at www.paparazzi-boutique.com and tell me if you find that at all visually appealing? At first glance to me, I was repulsed. There are so many bad things going on with the site, but the navigation is relatively easy to find, the basic functions of the site work, and it loads alright.

Reena took a look at this site and couldn’t see anything wrong with it. She thought it was fine and couldn’t understand why I had such a problem with it. Granted she does spend 10 hours on Myspace everyday, so her idea of “design” is a little skewed. Now what really gets my blood boiling with a site like this is how someone can pay a company to design and develop something like this, and then on top of that, go back to this company and have them develop a shopping cart system as well.

Does the average user, the main visitor of a site, really care if the site is visually appealing, or do they just care about getting the information they need? Does it matter how that information is delivered? Has Myspace ruined any progress that the design world has tried to make in the last 10 years?

I like taking a trip every now and then to Barnes and Noble to pick up the most recent Practical Web Design magazine. I then find myself browsing through all of the other techie books that I should really read. I get about 3 or 4 in my hand then add up the prices on those bad boys. It’s usually always over 100 dollars. I mean 100 dollars is a small price to pay to help better your computer hacking skills.. but it’s still 100 dollars. What I have been doing lately is checking out the books I want real quick then once I get home just jump on Amazon. I can find ALL the books I want for half price easily.

Last night I had magazines/books that would have totaled about 130 bucks. I was about 2 minutes from just getting them because I’m extremely impatient like that. Instead I put them back and hopped on Amazon when I got home. Got everything for 50 bucks. The other awesome thing about Amazon, is their shipping. For some reason even if you just get the standard shipping rate, you’ll have your order in about 2 days. It’s pretty sweet buying something on Saturday and it showing up on your doorstep on Monday.. without having to fork over 30 bucks for overnight delivery. Amazon is definitely the way to go.