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A guy at work pointed out the image that the City of San Angelo put up on their website. Who puts a sheep in sunglasses in front of the old bordello and then makes it smile? Sometimes I wonder what people are thinking when they design images for websites. Did they really think that by adding sunglasses to the sheep that it would encourage someone to visit San Angelo?

“Hey! Look at that sheep with sunglasses in front of the bordello! Lets go there!”

Let the influx of tourists begin…

This weekend I had one main purpose for coming to the Metroplex, other than seeing the lovely Lori: to get a new desk. Thanks to Joe, I already had the desk in mind that I wanted, all I had to do was goto IKEA, find it, pick it up, and purchase it. Pretty simple right? Let me warn you, plan on buying more than you expected while in that store. It is absolutely amazing.

It kind of hits you when you have to park in the overflow parking lot, which is just a dirt lot that people started parking in because the chances of finding an open spot up front are virtually impossible. Then you begin the mile-long (a small exaggeration) pilgrimmage to the store, with the hundreds of other individuals that had to park out in the middle of nowhere with you. It finally hits you when you walk into the door and are instantly funneled onto an escalator to the 2nd floor. Stepping off, you enter a world of endless showrooms, open product displays, and tons of ideas that you never would have imagined. Perhaps the most intriguing of things are the “Living in X sq. Feet” rooms. You’d be amazed at how much they can fit into 235 sq. ft.

Then there are the planning areas. They have a few tables in each area (bedroom, kitchen, bath, etc.) specifically designed for people to sit down with tape measures (which are provided to you as you walk around the store) and plan out your entire house/apartment/condo/whatever. Looking for that perfect dining room table, but can’t find exactly what you want, build one yourself. You pick the tabletop and the legs that you want, not some table that was premanufactured. Is the desk that you are admiring missing something? Look at the tag that is attached for any accessories that you can purchase, like more drawers, a shelf, or a retractable keyboard surface.

Going in, I had planned on purchasing just a desk. A far cry from the desk, TV stand, couch, and mirror that I walked out with. This store seriously knows how to sell their products, and by letting the customer be involved in as much as the purchase as possible (you have to go find the furniture that you want in their self-serve warehouse), they fill a niche that no other furniture store could have imagined even existing.

Disclaimer: This post contains alot of unanswered questions that popped in my head while thinking about this subject. Answer at your own risk.

That is the first question that popped into my head today as I was typing up an email here at work. I caught myself not punctuating correctly, constantly making deliberate spelling errors, and purposefully relying on the grammar-checker in Outlook to correct my mistakes. I guess my reasoning behind this is that Outlook will automatically correct these mistakes for me. If I don’t capitalize “I”, it does it for me. Forget an apostrophe? Don’t worry, Outlook fixes it. Have a runon sentence? That green squiqqly underline lets you know right quick that it is incorrect and requires attention. Heck, it even makes suggestions.

Even as I type this post, I find myself skipping over the shift key, expecting WordPress to correct it for me. Which it doesn’t do, yet. I know that a number of online applications already have this functionality, and I’m sure there is someone out there working on a plugin just for this niche.

What does this teach youngsters in school that have more access to computers than any of us ever dreamed of growing up? Will they become so reliant on computers to correct them that they cannot correct themselves? I can still remember the grammar worksheets in Mrs. Busic’s class where we had to give a reason why we didn’t use puctuation, along with why we did.

But whose fault is it that these applications do these things for us? The companies? The programmers? A lack of proper education that we need to be constantly corrected instead of proofreading our own material before sending that all important email about the upcoming company party? Do companies offer an educational version of software that does not contain these features? Should they? If children/adolescents/adults become so dependent on these grammar checks, will we become a society of illiterates, incapable of writing even the simplest of sentences without pressing F7 to have that little paperclip office assistant do it for us?