Mark A Powell.com

We’ve needed way finding signage in our new building ever since we’ve moved in October. Over the weekend they thankfully added placards on each floor near the stairs showing which direction the conference rooms are. But, I’m totally flabbergasted on how they decided to order them.

Though this is totally needless, I will do it to satisfy my inner need to make things right.

Here is how I would change the sign

Come on people, this isn’t that hard.

While editing down the Peanuts Christmas specials that aired on Monday night I noticed a fun easter egg in the Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tales. In the Linus tale he writes a Christmas card to a girl in his class; and when it’s returned you can make out the city: Sparkyville. That’s pretty cool in my book.

Now that IT forces my computer to encrypt every file I’ve started to run in to a heap of problems when moving files around. The first is that I end up copying encrypted files to file servers that I don’t intend to and then later other people can’t figure out why they don’t work. The one I’m finding more often is this poorly worded dialog box. It pops up whenever I move a file from my desktop to a shared drive.

OK, where to begin.

The first is that the leading line doesn’t distinguish between moving and copying. Why can’t it tell what I’m doing.

The second is that the line where it states the options, it doesn’t really tell you what’s going to happen. I need to know what happens if I ignore the error. Am I going to not be able to copy it? Is it going to lose encryption? Is it going to be encrypted?

The last is the buttons. If this pops up and I skim the message and just read the message, I don’t know what Ignore means.

Here’s what I propose: A clearer message about what the problem is and the buttons describe what’s going to happen.

The most clarity I bring is that the files will be copied without encryption. That’s the crux of the message: if you move this file, it won’t be encrypted.

Man, Adobe really loads up on the stuff it puts into the default folder when installing on Windows. I don’t remember what it puts into the folder on Mac, but I really had to cut through the clutter

Before

After

Ahh! That’s better.

Just saw this for the first time on a flight from Chicago to Minneapolis.

My Brazilian Embaer 175 had a “Turn Off Electronic Devices” light instead of no smoking, which is brilliant. In looking into the details a little further, it appears that they could only safely make this change as late as 1989 for flights under 2 hours, 1990 for under 6 hours and 2000 for all flights (in the US). I had no idea you could have flown a plane as late as 1989 with someone right next to you smoking away. Next it’s going to be the rise and fall of cell phones on planes…

When you exit the Dell QuickSet control panel from the “notification area” you’re presented with this dialog box:

Blech! Most people won’t read the language and click “Yes.” Which means that it’s going to launch with your system every time you log on to your machine. But I don’t want this panel to ever launch, which means I need to exit the program every time I log on.

Cut to the chase. “Yes” and “No” are not commands that have any significance to what the actual program is asking for.

Here’s what I think it should say: