Tech consultant for Olympia, Lacey, And Tumwater

Koh Koh Merlot 2010

So as I have said before HERE, I am a beer snob. I love to mock wine drinkers just for fun as I did HERE.  But I am also a very curious person. As unpleasant as I find 99% of the wines out there, I have always wondered if there are any wines out there that don’t taste like either a Jolly Rancher or some nasty child’s cough syrup. This quest really started to kick into gear this last summer when I was able to meet SEATTLE WINE GAL at the legendary, awesome, and sadly final GNOMEDEX conference.  She had a very small wine tasting and was very patient trying to find a wine I would enjoy. The problem was that there was a very small selection because there was only a few hundred people to serve. Well today I went with MY WIFE to the CAPITAL FOOD AND WINE FESTIVAL to continue my mission. This place was packed with what I would guess was thousands of people, almost 50 winery’s, 15 brewery’s, and  about 20 food venders. This thing was massive enough to serve my needs to find out if there was a wine I might enjoy.

So the beers they had were pretty uninteresting to me. They were either pig swill from Budwiser or beers I have tried

Hoodsport Pear Wine

enough times that I had no need to taste them. I already knew which ones I liked and which ones I didn’t. I’m a beer snob and the beer selection they had was pathetic. So after a quick overview of what they had to offer, the mission was on. Since I know jack about wine, I had my wife lead the way. I didn’t bother keeping track of the wines that totally failed me. They tasted like the standard Jolly Rancher or some really unpleasant child’s cherry cough syrup. The first wine that didn’t suck was the Koh Koh Merlot 2010 from CLASSIC WINE MAKERS. It wasn’t amazing, but if I was at a friends house and they served this with diner I could drink it without complaint. I could tolerate it. It was very much ok. It tied for third place with one of the last wines I tried.

The second wine that didn’t suck turned out to be my favorite. It was a Pear Wine from HOODSPORT WINERY. My wife had two thoughts. Was it that this was a dessert wine or was it that this had citrus? Most wine’s are made with a very sharp tasting berry of some sort and come off as sickly sweet. This had a more mild flavor. It was like pear juice mixed with Karo Syrup.  Way more sweet than the beers I am used to, but it was the best wine I had found all day. If stuck in a

Tanjuli Orange Muscat 2006

situation where wine was all there was, I would go for this one. Hell, if I was in the right mood I might even enjoy it. Most of the time I would probably still prefer a good beer though. But this one got first place in my book. Hell, this one might even be worth keeping around the house! I didn’t love it, but it was good. And that is saying something coming from me.

Coming in right behind the Pear Wine was my second place choice Orange Muscat from TANJULI. Again with the citrus it seems. It seems to cut through the sickly sweet taste of normal wine. Like the Koh Koh Merlot, I wouldn’t say I would enjoy a glass of the stuff. I would say that in a situation where wine was what was being served in the social gathering, this is one I could drink without making that face your kid makes when you make them take medicine.  Not something that would excite me or anything, but I could hang. This one is almost worth keeping around the house, but only if my wife drinks it too. I might have a single glass.

The last wine I tried that was worth mentioning was the Chenin Blanc 2009 from KYRA WINES.  Again I would have

Kyra Wines Chenin Blanc 2009

to say that this was a wine that I could hang with, but I wouldn’t say it excited me. I could hang with it though if the situation arose. It was tolerable, but not worthy of having around the house. Now please understand that for a beer snob like myself, finding a wine that is tolerable is a pretty massive thing.  As a rule I find wine to be the most vile category of beverages man has made. For the most part I just do not get the obsession people have with it. But the fact is that in some social situations it is good to know what wines a non-wine drinker can hang with so they don’t come off as anti-social and rude. This was the reason for my quest.

So sorry SEATTLE WINE GAL, but I still have not found a wine that I would say I love. I still have not found a wine that I would say gets me excited. There are a ton of beers I would pick over even the Pear Wine that came in first. But in the right mood and maybe with the right meal I would enjoy a very occasional Pear Wine. Next year I plan to continue my quest because we have narrowed down the things to look for in a wine. First off, it must have citrus. Second, it must be a dessert wine. With this new knowledge my quest will continue. Maybe SEATTLE WINE GAL can make it down next time so her and MY WIFE can conspire and find that one elusive wine that makes me stop mocking you goofballs that love this beverage so much.

Oh, and the number one rule about tasting wine? Breathe out when you drink it because it all stinks like a garbage strike on a hot summer day. Oh, and I must mention that the music was way closer to my tastes than I thought it was going to be. No, there wasn’t any thrash bands, but they did rock way harder than I expected. I was shocked the 60 and up crowd didn’t run screaming.

The problem with iMobsters app

imobsters

So I decided to start playing the iMobsters game on my Droid phone. I am quickly noticing a problem. Somehow people are able to attack me even when I can get the app to navigate. I had enough money to upgrade my protection gear, but since I have been trying to get to the place on the app to purchase it for the past several hours I have been attacked enough so that I no longer can purchase this protection upgrade. My question is, why can others navigate around to attack me when I can’t navigate around to do a damn thing on the game?

I have a theory. I am willing to bet that those people that are attacking me have iPhones. The iPhone app is probably better designed. The Android app obviously has bugs. There are way more Android phones than iPhones. The reason for this is that Android is an operating system that goes across several phones and several providers. Iphone is just one specific phone on one provider (AT&T). Despite Android having a much wider customer base, it is still treated as the redheaded step child by developers.

Imobsters obviously doesn’t care as much about their Android users as they do for their precious iPhone users. What is the problem here Storm8? Why so buggy? Does a bigger customer base not motivate you to get your shit in gear? I will give your app a little longer, but I am growing very tired of being attacked and not being able to do anything about it because my app crashes after just one button push.

Plain and simple, you owe your Android users a major apology. Stop treating us like crap or another game developer will steal us away and you will be hard pressed to win us back. Android is the new king. Get with the program or be left behind.

Seattle Marriott Waterfront Hotel review

Marriott Chef delivering bun

So another weekend of Gnomedex and another weekend at the Seattle Marriott Waterfront Hotel. This may have been the last year of Gnomedex but another tech conference had it’s first year at the exact same conference center. For some reason they thought PII was a good name despite everyone already pronouncing it like Pee. So even though I won’t be going up for Gnomedex next year, I do hope to go up for Seattle Geek week and Pee…er, I mean Pii. So I figured why not review this years stay at the Seattle Marriott Waterfront Hotel?

The staff as always was great. I’ve never seen a group of people work so hard to make little ol’ me feel as comfortable as possible. It was nice to see Nicole (I’m starting to learn names, how sad is that?) at the front desk again. She has a pleasant laugh and a relaxing smile. Even though I know she is paid to have that laugh and smile she does it so well I am led to believe there is some sincerity to it. I’m as cynical as it gets, but she seems to actually give a crap and have fun with her job.

The chef made me laugh this year though. Last year Ciabatta buns were all the rage, so I understood why they had one of those nasty things on the burger I ordered. This year however it was a freakin’ pancake! No joke. I was told it was some sort of flat bread, but if it looked like a pancake, smelled like a pancake, and sure as heck tasted like a pancake, I think it is safe to say that was a damn pancake! It reminded me of those images of a rabbit with a pancake on it’s head. “I have no idea what you are saying so here’s a bunny with a pancake on it’s head.” So I felt like the chef was telling me, “I have no idea what you are saying, so here’s a burger with a pancake on it’s head.” To be clear, the burger tasted great otherwise. It would have been better with a real (traditional) bun, but the pancake made me laugh more than anything. It was more goofy and silly than anything that would have ruined the meal. The omelet I had on Sunday morning was way better than the one I had on the Sunday morning last year. Not sure why. Maybe it was cooked more thoroughly? Maybe I ordered different ingredients? Maybe they changed cooks, methods, recipes, equipment, or something else. All I know is that It was pretty packed with awesome.

The maid service was great of course. I think the maids got used to me leaving at 8 am for the conference. So when I slept in until about ten and was still getting stuff ready for check out at 11:00 a very polite and apologetic lady came in to change the bed sheets. If I was forced to find one complaint it would be that they kept moving the program schedule and remote to the tv. Who needs it there? I need it on the nightstand! But if that is the biggest complaint I can think of, that is some awesome work! Let me also say the guys out in front are always jumping on any excuse they can to serve you. It kind of threw a guy like me for a loop to be honest. I’m just not used to that sort of thing. I heard that the hotel was packed all weekend, but yet it just didn’t seem like it. Everything was nice and quiet. Sure there was people, but it still maintained a very relaxing vibe to me. I have heard about hotels that are about half the price just a block or two up the street, but the staff at the Seattle Marriott Waterfront Hotel treat me so well that I am afraid to try anywhere else next year. Now everyone, let me hear you scream, “Pee, Pee, Pee, Pee, Pee!” Oh, right. It’s Pii. Sorry, I keep forgetting.

What SquareSpace is getting wrong!

Now before I go into what they are doing wrong, I want to talk about what they do right. First off I love that there is no way to download the CMS and use it on another server. Why? Because they take care of all the software patches and security updates behind the scenes. Stuff just works. I want to focus on content, not some security patch. They also respond very quickly to Twitter questions and their support tickets. The site looks very modern with very little work. Posting updates is at least as easy as it is on Word Press. In many cases it is even easier because no one has to worry if they installed something wrong. I have to use a hack to get images to work on this site. Never could figure out what setting is wrong, but the internal image upload has never worked. It’s part of the reason I wanted Squarespace to work. This Word Press isn’t working as well as I would like. I wanted to replace it. I wanted Squarespace to be that replacement.

Squarespace

Now For The Negative
So here I am trying out Squarespace. I am trying to figure out their really horrid interface so I can explain it to my client. So far it is driving me nuts! It is nowhere near intuitive. I feel like I need to take a week of classes to figure out what the heck they mean on these tutorials. No wonder this place is only being used by the hardest core geeks. You have to be a super nerd to even fight through this freakin mess! Unless Squarespace improves quickly I predict they will go under in a few years. This is as intuitive as brain surgery!

Not Intuitive at all!
There is a spot where it said to edit site name. I clicked on the link and it just kept refreshing the page. Why would it do that? Why not send me to the page where I can edit the site name instead? Why else would someone click on that? Just an idea SquareSpace folks. Make it work like people would guess it would work. Now I figured out how to get this to work eventually, but that is my problem with Squarespace. It is not at all intuitive. There is a major learning curve to their system. Most will get frustrated before they get that far and just keep putting up with Word Press.

Video Tutorials Good. No Full Screen bad!
So I go to watch the video tutorial they have available. I love video tutorials and find them to be the best method of showing people something like this. So they earn points for having those available. Problem is they don’t let me watch it full screen! I have a feeling they are using Vimeo to host their video. I use Vimeo as well so I know Vimeo has a square button to the bottom right that let’s me watch the video in full screen mode. For some reason SquareSpace has that blocked. Why would they do that? I tried watching the video. It looks like I could learn a ton from it if I could see what is going on better. Without going fullscreen things were too small and I found it only left me more frustrated.

Support Ticket?
Although they do respond very quickly to the support tickets, they sometimes fall into the tech support trap of coming off like a bot. . On my first question I thought it was a bot! Either that or their support is outsourced to India and the person was just giving me what the book told him was the standard answer. It was almost as if my question was ignored. A very quick phone call could have solved this. They don’t have phone support.

What Could Save Squarespace
Phone support. Plain and simple. Their CMS is great once you get the hang of it, but most will get frustrated with the learning curve and go back to putting up with the evil they are used to (Word Press). Charge $60 a week for phone support. I would pay that without hesitation. I understand good phone support is expensive for a start up like theirs, so charge extra. The customers that are serious will pay it.

Serious Design Still Goes To The Pros
Just as with Word Press, if you are really serious about your site you will want to hire a pro designer. Just like with Word Press you can get a site that looks ok without one. In fact, as far as design goes it is pretty much even. That is why Support is where Squarespace can beat them. If only they had phone support.

Please take my money Squarespace…I beg you! Let me pay for phone support!