Conant Correct by Claire Conant

How many times have you asked for a critique when all you really wanted was a compliment? I know I’m guilty of that from time to time. I remember early in my career asking for feedback on something I’d written and then was completely insulted when the response was not in alignment with what I’d been thinking. I learned that what I really was looking for was validation of my ideas, not a differing point of view. I also took it personally when someone red-lined my copy with changes. I’ve long since given up wearing my feelings on my shoulder when it comes to my writing and editing. Writing and editing, for me, is what I do, not who I am. 

Recently I received a general invitation to critique a web site that someone had recently launched. I’ve done lots of web site critiques before, written copy for high-profile web sites, and even designed and managed a few back in the day of straight HTML. I also spend an inordinate amount of time surfing the web looking at good and bad web sites, what’s popular, and what’s not.

One of my favorite sites is that of Men With Pens who regularly do "Drive-by Shootings" , which are web site critiques. People sign up weeks in advance for their feedback and input. I have yet to read one of their critiques that I don’t agree with. Almost always, they are spot on. I often wonder what responses they get from each of the willing participants? Do they accept the feedback? Do they incorporate the changes? Or do the owners argue with them as to why the site is perfect the way it is?

Today, after looking at the site in question, I felt I could offer up some helpful  feedback to the owner. Understanding that this site was their "baby" and they had spent a lot of time on it, I submitted my feedback in positive terms, showing appreciation for parts done well, but then calling out areas that clearly distracted the reader from the content - what the person was selling - and ways in which the web site owner was inadvertently sending people away from their site.

The response I received was essentially, I like it this way and since I like it, it must be good, and since I understand each graphic, I’m sure everyone else will too. Each point where I suggested a change was justified from their point of view and why it worked for them. Sure, it works for the web site owner, and they like it, but will the reader?

It’s always hard to discern how feedback will be received and it’s extremely frustrating when people ask for your honest opinion and then, no matter how tactfully you give it, they argue with you about it. Essentially, they really didn’t want to know what you thought, they just wanted props for what they thought was sheer brilliance.

Moral of the story: If you don’t want to know the answer, don’t ask the question.

This site uses a Wordpress template that I customized to look how it looks today. The theme had some basic bones that worked well for me. However, in the wp-admin> Options panel, I needed to remove the blog title because it was presenting my blog title, Conant Correct, on top of my header image. Not what I wanted to see. The added impact of removing the blog title from the Options panel was that when you went to subscribe to my blog, there was no title to my blog site. That wasn’t good.

So, finally, many weeks later, I stopped and looked through the Wordpress.org support forum. I had avoided addressing fixing my blog because I thought it was going to take a long time to redo the entire template. Little did I know how a quick search through the forum would offer up just the right answer.

Five minutes later, editing my stylesheet and saving, and voila! I have a blog title and you can subscribe properly to my blog. LOVE IT! And I didn’t have to pay anyone to fix it for me. Even better. Thanks, Wordpress.org.

Have you ever wanted a job really badly and then were so heart-broken that you didn’t get it? Did you wind up discouraged for days and start doubting your abilities, undermining your confidence?

Early in my career, I used to go through this anguish when job hunting. However, I no longer experience this, as I learned a few things along the way. I’ll share what has worked for me, and hopefully some of this will work for you too. In the world of freelancing, contracting, or running my own business, I keep these thoughts front and center so a lost client, a lost gig, a lost opportunity doesn’t ruin my day, week, or month.

1. Have faith in the universe. Opportunities come and go, just like trains. There will be another better opportunity along in ten minutes.

2. Don’t take the rejection personally. Often the job you think you really want is one that you weren’t really suited for. Someone other than you had a vision of what they needed, and somehow your skills didn’t match up. You may never know why, exactly, but it’s not you personally. Even if it was you, would you want to work somewhere or with people with whom you clashed?

3. In time, you may get to see how not getting the job (or client) was just the right thing for you. I recently found out that a colleague I once worked for was select for a job I thought I wanted. It was a prestigious opportunity, rubbing elbows with multi-million dollar clients, including those at the Bill Gates level, and would have meant long-term, steady income. However, in chatting with this colleague today, I realized that I wouldn’t have liked what she is doing now anyway. It’s too fast paced, too technical, and half the time she has to be onsite. Sometimes there are hidden criteria to the job that the client or prospective employer doesn’t let on about because it’s not enticing or appealing. It will surface somehow. Be grateful  you dodged the bullet.

4. Don’t cry when a job ends before you are ready. This is somewhat related to #1, but having had several jobs end in my career involuntarily - layoff, merger, reorganization, downsizing - I’ve learned to go with the flow. Change is mandatory and part of life. It’s rare these days that jobs last for a lifetime. Economies ebb and flow, which in turn means businesses ebb and flow, and it’s all like a wonderful coordinated waltz.

5. The worst things that ever happened to me always turned out to be the best things that ever happened to me. Looking back over all the job changes I’ve had - especially when I was a corporate wage slave - when an involuntary change came along (I’ve never been fired), I can now see how the next job that came along was even better. I also can see that everything I learned in each job set me up for success in the next one.

6. It’s all about your attitude. I firmly believe that my attitude helps me adapt to changes, even when they are changes I don’t like, or things turn out differently than how I wanted. Keeping a positive attitude helps me stay focused on the bigger picture and the finer things in life. After all, it’s just a job. See #1. Next!

This has to be my new favorite product. Okay, so my last post told about my frustrations with technical support. After my last response to them, I provided them the .nfo file that they wanted, and explained my concerns. In return, their support guy turned around, using their own tool, Jing, and gave me a little video with audio to explain what the .nfo file contains, and what precisely he was looking for.

He also showed me how with Windows Vista, some drivers are still being updated, and he found a new update for my video driver. I’m going to install that and see what happens.

I responded back to him and thanked him profusely. Seriously. How cool is that that he used their own product to provide what is now excellent service. Perhaps I was just cranky and tired earlier.

Moral of the tech support story: a little goes a long way. And use visuals and audio when you can. Jing can help you do that.

In a fast-paced world, full of instant gratification, fast information, quick, lightening speed visuals and sounds, it’s important to stop and read - or listen to - what your clients are telling you before you go running off to solve their problems. This is particularly true of support people of all types. I consider myself a support person of sorts, as I’m supporting an author or a client to make their message heard.

This particular topic comes up as I am dealing with a technical support person at TechSmith - creator of this fabulous new tool called Jing, that my colleague, Beth over at Life on Avenue Z, told me about.

I downloaded Jing and it’s the sweetest screen capture invention for free that I’ve seen yet. It shows up as a little half sun on the edge of your computer screen. When you hover over it, it expands to give you three options of capture. Click one, and off you go. You can even reposition where the half sun sits on your monitor.

After a few days, I needed to contact HP support for a completely  unrelated issue. After that issue was resolved to my satisfaction, I restarted my computer and noticed that Jing was no longer working. The half sun was frozen in place and was inactive. The only way I could get JIng to work was by launching the commands from the task bar - not my preferred method because I think that Jing’s screen launcher is the coolest method. So, I uninstalled Jing, and then reinstalled it. Still not working. I sent Techsmith an email with the problem:

"I love this tool, however, after a session with HP tech support yesterday for an unrelated issue, Jing is not working. I have the yellow half-sun graphic, with a black quarter circle near it, and when I hover over the yellow half sun, nothing works, but it did before. Hmmm. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Jing, but still the same issue."

Their response:

"We have had a few reports of this problem, but we have not yet found what is the cause. It is interesting that you describe this happening after working with HP. What kind of problem were you troubleshooting, was this a problem with your computer, or were you servicing a printer? Please give me some details of what was done on that call, as it may offer a clue as to what made this change in Jing’s behavior.
I would also like to get a System info file to help me troubleshoot this problem. Please click start > run and type msinfo32.exe then hit "ok". This brings up System Information. Click file > save as.. to save a .nfo report. Attach this to your reply."

Since there was no "save as" option, I sent them a .txt file - a bit nervous though as to why they need all that information. That file offers up everything about my computer. How do I know this support person is honest? But, I digress…

So, my response to her added more clarification:

"We were troubleshooting why my built-in microphone wasn’t working after Microsoft had me change my operating system from Vista Home Premium to Vista Enterprise. I loaded Jing onto Vista Enterprise and it worked fine. Then the troubleshooting with HP - we updated audio drivers and the BIOS. That’s all that I know we did - HP had remote control, but I was watching. I’ve attached the system information as a text file. There was no "save as" option, only save or export, so I chose export. Hope this helps. Oh, and Jing works, if I choose the image capture from the taskbar, not from the half sun at the top. I can’t move the half sun or get it to work, so I just turn off Jing now when I reboot."

Here’s the response I just got back that fried my eggs this morning:

"your system info file is not useful in this format, please try this again, and choose "Save" to save in the .nfo format.
If you updated your audio components or major Windows components after installing Jing, this may be causing Jing to not appear correctly. Please unisntall Jing, then reinstall Jing, and let me knwo if this solves the problem.
Jing should still work for you, this is just a display problem. If you click "More" in the task tray icon for Jing, then go into preferences, you can uncheck "show launcher" to make the sun icon at top go away, then you can use Jing from either the task tray, or you can also set a hotkey, also in the preferences window.
Please advise."

Um…. didn’t I already tell her all that? In my first message I told her I’d already uninstalled and reinstalled it. I also tole her that it still works from the task tray (what I called the taskbar.)

Seriously. If you are a tech support person - and I say this as a reminder to myself as well - make time to stop, digest what your client tells you, before shooting from the hip. This tells the client you respect their time, you respect them, and it also gives you all the information you need - or most of it - to really troubleshoot the problem successfully and quickly, the first time - without ticking off your customer and making them repeat themselves.

And now I’ll probably have to eat my own words because I could be firing this off too fast and someone else reading my messages to the support people could be as equally confused as she was - so perhaps it’s all my fault anyway.

One of the reasons I’m not posting here as frequently as I recommend (daily) is that my site needs help. While I love the layout and the look of it (I’ve received lots of positive comments on the header), it just is not receptive to subscriptions and adding cool widgets like Twitter and such to the sidebars. More importantly, I did something to the template, or it’s how my site is hosted, that my site shows up with no name when people try to subscribe with RSS. It needs some serious overhauling and a better template.

A good site needs more than just good looks or good copy. It needs to be interactive. I want people to be able to come here and chat (as in leave comments - and I want to be notified when a comment is left - right now, I’m not notified.)

Lately, I just don’t have the time to fix it, and that nagging concern bugs me daily. I may just have to take time out of my already packed schedule of writing and editing - and living life - to redo it and choose a better template. God forbid, I actually hire someone to do it for me. That would be the logical thing to do, and I’d recommend it, but I have zero budget for that right now.

Anyone up for some trading? Are you a good blog/web site developer and need your content edited or written? I’ll write, you code. Let me know.

When you’re working from home full time - either freelancing, contracting, or running a  business -  stocking office supplies can be a big overhead. Printers, paper, pens, clips, staples, Post-It™ notes, notepads, and other sundry items - they can all add up to big bucks.

But not when you can take advantage of the back-to-school sales. I love to head to places like Target and dig through the bins of 10 pens for fifty cents and spiral bound paper notebooks for a dollar each. When I can pack a coffee mug with pens (see left photo), suddenly I feel more like I really have an office, not just working from a spare room in the house. Plus, I just have a thing for pens. 

Since I don’t have anything for you right now, let me introduce you to my friend and fellow writer’s, Moonbeam McQueen. She has just posted her solution to writer’s block. Hilarious.

I read Moonbeam McQueen’s blog regularly. She is talented with a fresh sense of humor and creativity that I find inspiring. I hope you enjoy her as much as I do.

I’ve been busy - aren’t we all? - but it seems that lately I’ve been spending a lot of time deleting junk emails. It amazes me that with the current awareness of scams and phishing emails, that they still proliferate and pester people.

I must get dozens of the emails a day that ask me to help spend some long lost relative’s inheritance or to verify my bank account because of suspicious activity. I’ve learned the email addresses of the major banks to forward some of the emails to, and I’ve learned how to block senders and domain names manually, one at a time.

However, I haven’t found a good way to block the spam from arriving in my email box in the first place. My web site is hosted and I own my own domain name. I tried using the spam tools provided by the hosting company to block the email before it is ever downloaded to my computer, but then it started asking senders for registration information. I don’t want that either because the last thing I want to do is make it difficult for legitimate messages to get through to me.

In August, I should have a bit of a break from my crazy writing and editing schedule and then I’m going to redo this site anyway, because I’m having issues with people being able to subscribe. Maybe I’ll just hire some one to help set it up for me the right way, instead of trying to do it myself. At that time, hopefully, I’ll find a way to block the junk mail permanently. I’m spoiled because when using Comcast or Yahoo mail, I never have a problem with junk mail getting through. It’s just this business address through my hosting provider and my own domain name that’s causing the problem.

Anyone have any tips?

What do you do when you work at home, you’re a freelancer, and you get sick? Do you call in to yourself?

"Self, I’m sick. I’ll be staying home today."

"Okay, Self. Hope you feel better soon."

Seriously, though. It’s been a long time since I’ve really been sick with the flu, mostly, I think, because I’m not cooped up in those airtight offices that are breeding grounds for germs. I stay away from sick people, for the most part. When I did get sick, I think the worst part was trying to get ready for work, make myself at least feel presentable, and commuting in to the office. Once there, I could barricade myself at my desk and sniffle away.

Now, working at home, I don’t have to worry about that. Another gift of being self-employed and contracting my services. I can rest when I need to, work when I have bursts of energy, and still meet my deadlines.