Eric J. Gruber

Last week, I purchased Seth Godin’s new (audio) book “The Dip” from Apple’s iTunes Store.

I love audiobooks. I’m always on the go, and I can just pop on one my iPod, put my headphones on and get educated. But there’s some sort of glitch with the iTS version of “The Dip,” and mine won’t play on my iPod - only on my computer.

It’s not just me. Hundreds of people have written to let Godin know about the problem. And now, a week later, it’s still not resolved.

Godin posted about the persistent problem today on his blog, and had this today …

“If the head of the iTunes store focused on this problem for ten seconds, it would go away.”

Oh man, talk about hitting the nail on the head. Someone from Apple could easily look at what is going on and realize what needed to be done to resolve it. Instead, when you write Apple (as I did), you’ll be told to check this documentation and that documentation, and if all that doesn’t work, you might need to call Apple (for a fee).

This isn’t typical of Apple, but as much as I talk about how great they are, I surely have to fault them when they screw up.

I will say that for those who purchased the book and have the same problem, I found a workaround.

• Burn the audiobook to multiple CDs in iTunes (you’ll need two of them)
• Import those tracks into iTunes
• Open those tracks into an audio editor of your choice (like Quicktime Pro)
• Do some splicing and merge all the tracks into one
• Convert the one track to the audio format of your choice in iTunes and put on your iPod

That solution worked great for me, plus, I ended up removing the silly DRM by making an mp3 of the book. It’s too bad someone at Apple didn’t think of it.

Oh, how this makes my heart cringe.

I was checking out the web sites of banks in town to see who had another option for the small business owner (me) since I’m completely unhappy with Commerce Bank at the moment. (That’s really another story that I won’t get into, but let’s say this: I’ve had a business account with them for two weeks and now I’m shopping around for other options.)

So I come across the web site of People’s Bank, and I poke around. After a few minutes, I get discouraged and decide to leave, mainly because I can’t figure out from its web site if they provide debit cards with their checking accounts. I’m sure they do, but it’s not on their web site, so how do I know for sure?

Before leaving, I decide to take the online survey they link to from their site, and fill out the information. Essentially, I just say that the web site could use some help. I hit submit, and I get an error message written in geekese. (See above picture).

Well, that’s not helpful for anyone at all, is it?

Ways to fix:
1. Test your forms when you put them online to make sure they work.
2. If you do have an error page, make it show something useful, such as the e-mail of the webmaster so you can make he/she aware of the problem.

It’s sadly ironic that the survey, which could be used to help improve the web site, doesn’t work and sends the visitor to a cryptic error message that would surely prompt an unsurly remark in an online survey about the web site.

When Metal ruled the world, it was customary for fans and band geeks to know absolutely everything about their favorite bands.

For example, in the movie Rock Star, Chris ‘Izzy’ Cole (Mark Wahlberg) launched into a diatribe about how the costumes worn by a rival cover band didn’t match the real-life attire of Steel Dragon, the subject of both Cole and the band’s facsimile. Cole manages to point out every little detail of what the cover band got wrong, which escalates to an all-out brawl.

I mention this, because yesterday I was reading Your About Page Is a Robot as I work to create, tweak, hone and refine the web site for my web design company, Rumblestrut Studios. When I was a young metalhead, I would buy a new, um, tape, then dig through the liner notes reading everything. The lyrics? Oh, they were OK, but I was mostly interested in what gear the bands used.

My how things have changed. I don’t even care about the liner notes as much as getting the music, and even that I’d prefer if I could just download everything (providing it’s DRM-free, of course).  However, I like knowing the stuff only a fan would know. But in the web world, it doesn’t seem to be this way. Granted, my favorite web site, Digg, has a nifty page telling visitors what kind of operating system they use, what server  Digg is running on, and what programming languages Digg is built on, but that’s only when the site is down for maintenance. You can’t find that info on the site any other way.

And in the web design world, none of the rock stars of the industry such as SimpleBits (Dan Cederholm), mezzoblue (Dave Shea), Jeffrey Zeldman and Eric Meyer clue their fans in on this information. Me, I’d be all over it. Tell me what computer your using. Tell me your favorite application. Let me know what powers/empowers you. And please, don’t make me search your blog for that information.

As for me, I think I’ll do just that. I’ve got some bigger things to work on first, such as a design that totally rocks your face off. But it’s definitely on the list of things to add.

Whatever I come up with, I guarentee it won’t be as bad as this.

It’s seems almost too good to be true, but tonight we paid off our car - a year and a half early.

What an excellent feeling to know that the only debt we have left is our student loans. More importantly, what an excellent burden to have lifted off one’s shoulders, not to mention rid from the monthly required payments.

It’s empowering.

Little did I know that when Amy and I started this journey shortly after we married, we would have gotten so far in so little time. We’ve managed to pay off more than $12,000 in credit card debit, eliminated money owed to family members, and now paid off a $12,000 car loan (not including the interest accrued over that time) while paying student loan payments.

There’s so much more you can enjoy of your life when you don’t have payments to deal with every month. Our lives have improved greatly, and with Amy staying home with Ember and working only part-time, we’re able to do that because we live within our means, and we’ve killed off a lot of those monthly payments that eat people alive.

It has taken some sacrifice. It has been a journey of some hard lessons learned about habit and self-control. It’s meant saying “no” a lot of times when we wanted to say “yes” - which is just insane in this me-me-me culture of ours.

But it’s soooooooooo worth it.