I arrived at noon and the line was only about 50 people long, so I left and got lunch and took the wife shopping at a different store. We made it back around 2:00 and the line had reached about 75 people so I figured I would go stake out my spot. It was proven the right move as by 3:30 the line was twice as long.

I had been standing for 5+ hours the previous day at a concert, so my legs were already exhausted. The 4 hour wait was made easier by having some people to talk to in the line. The Apple Store Employees came out at about 4:45 and started going through the line and giving you a card for the type of iPad you wanted. This was smart and seemed to speed things up as most people had to make the decision quickly and didn’t loiter in the store asking silly questions.

Once in the store, it went quickly and the iPad was ordered and activated. I went with the 64G wifi version as I can tether it to my jail-broken phone and don’t care for the extra expense of another data plan (my phone bill is already ridiculous) .

I did not own an original iPad, so I am still testing it’s usefulness. However, after only having a few hours to play with it, I can assure you it is a fun toy. The jury is still out on it as a productive work tool.

SUGGESTION: If Apple wanted to make a few extra dollars, they should sell those cheap portable camping-style chairs with an apple logo on them. They would sell thousands of them at each one of these launch events.

1. Create a new layout file in your themes folder:  app/design/frontend/default/THEME/template/page/homepage.phtml.  For now, just paste the contents from 1column.phtml into this file.  You can customize it later.   Upload this file.
2. Edit the following file:  app/code/local/Mage/Page/etc/config.xml.  If you don’t have this file, copy it from app/code/core/Mage/Page/etc/config.xml.  You don’t want to edit the file inside of core because this will break your site if you ever upgrade.  Edit the site, and add the following right after the tag “</three_columns>”:

   <homepage module="page" translate="label">
   <label>Homepage</label>
   <template>page/homepage.phtml</template>
   <layout_handle>page_homepage</layout_handle>
   </homepage>

   Save and upload this file.

3. In the following file:  app/design/frontend/default/THEME/layout/page.xml, just after the code “</page_three_columns>” add the following:

   
   <page_homepage translate="label">
   <label>Homepage</label>
   <reference name="root">
   <action method="setTemplate"><template>page/homepage.phtml</template></action>
   <!-- Mark root page block that template is applied -->
   <action method="setIsHandle"><applied>1</applied></action>
   </reference>
   </page_homepage>

4. In the following file:  app/etc/modules/Mage_All.xml  find the lines that read:

   
   <Mage_Page>
   <active>true</active>
   <codePool>core</codePool>
   <depends>
   <Mage_Core/>
   </depends>
   </Mage_Page>

   and edit them to read:

   
   <Mage_Page>
   <active>true</active>
   <codePool>local</codePool>
   <depends>
   <Mage_Core/>
   </depends>
   </Mage_Page>

   Save and upload this file.

5. Now login to the admin and choose this layout for the page you want to use it.

I say give it a try if you haven’t already!

We had nothing going on, and the kids that were with us wanted to hang out, so we waited around and watched them break everything down.  When they were about done and only about 15 people were left hanging around, Pickler came out and we were able to meet her and the kids got autographs.  She was extremel nice.

Then today my son and I went to Tiger Walk at Auburn University, then got lucky and was in the Student Union eating when the downpour started.  We were able to score some great tickets about 10 rows up.  When the rain quit, we went to the stadium and enjoyed an incredible game where Auburn pulled it out in the end and beat West Virginia.  The game was unbeleiveable and the people we were around were extremely fun to hang out with.

On the walk from the stadium to downtown, we made it to Pita Pit with absolutely no one in line!  The line had about 15 people in it when we left, so we just beat the crowd.

I don’t know what I’ll do if tomorrow is as fun as the last two days, but it’s been a really fun weekend.

So, I decided to write an Adobe Air application in Flex 3 to tackle this data entry automation.  It has a built-in web browser that made it easy to create a quick app that would visit the site, login, go to the data entry page and fill out the form.  Unfortunately, this form has one file upload entry that uses a little javascript/ajax combined with an old fashion form upload.

In an ideal world, I would just be able to set the value of the <input type=”file”> and submit the form.  However, even though this is a desktop app, the browser’s security setup prohibits this from happening.  In a web-based scenario, the benefits of such a limitation are easy to see.  In my case, it was just frustrating.  I can have my program “click” the browse button on the file upload, but could not find a way to manipulate the dialog that pops ups to select a file.  I’ve tried about a million different methods to get this to work, but after two days of chasing this unicorn I decided to back off, regroup, and take another approach.

Examining the upload page, I noticed that the file upload was in it’s own form (not in the form of the rest of the data entry).  The data entry page contained an iframe, which pointed to another page that contained the file upload information.  This way, the file upload happened as soon as you chose a file and it displayed on the data entry page.  I modified my program to make this iframe point to a php file on my server.  This php file grabbed an image from the server, posted it to the data entry site posing as the form on the original page.  I even passed in cookies and session information so it looked as legit as possible. However, the image is not uploading.  After reviewing the page for several hours, I have come to the conclusion that there is more javascript/ajax involved in this upload than I had previously hoped and expected.  There MUST be something firing on that form once an image is selected that my script is not doing.

I’ll try to spend more time tonight reviewing the data entry’s javascript to see if I can find the culprit.  Unfortunately, it has thousands of lines of ill-formatted javascript with all the spaces and lines removed.  It makes for a fun night of code review!

I’ve heard a lot of tweets lately about customer service.  A few good ones are below:

Good service leads to multiple sales. If you take care of your customers, they’ll open doors you could never open by yourself.  – @ShanePike

“One customer, well taken care of, could be more valuable than $10,000 worth of advertising.” ~Jim Rohn – @ZigZiglarQuotes

These quotes are as true as they come.  However, depending on what you do, that $10,000 worth of advertising estimate may be quite a bit low.

I’ve had a few good customer service experiences in the last week.  Both instances really opened me up to the particular business I was dealing with.  Coincidentally, they were both local restaurants.  Last week, I went to Five Guys Burgers and orders my cheeseburger.  Well, it came out with onions instead of mushrooms.  Did I order onions accidentally?  Who knows, but I wanted mushrooms.  I took the burger up to the front and an employee saw me coming.  She came out from behind the counter and met me half way.  I was ready to give the whole story and go into the typical hoopla it takes at most restaurants.  However, she stopped me, went ahead and had them start me another burger, wrapped mine back up and handed it to me and told me to take it home to someone who might want it.  I was impressed!  Not only did she take prompt care of my “issue”, but she gave me the old burger as well because they could do nothing but throw it away.

This morning, I stopped by Wendys to try their breakfast as I had never had it.  I ordered a homestyle chicken biscuit and proceeded to the window.  The lady at the window informed me that it would be about 3 minutes for the chicken to fry and asked if I would like a drink while I wait (I had not ordered a drink).  I replied “yes” and got a free coke out of the wait.  Not a big deal, cost the company next to nothing, but small things like that help the customer to understand that you care about their experience and that they are important to you.

There was a comic posted at an office I used to work at that said something to the effect:  “Lack of preperation on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine”.  Live by that.  Don’t be afraid to say “no” or that you can’t meet a requested deadline.  Don’t fall into the trap of dropping what you are working on to take care of the “call of the moment”.  Make them wait their turn just like everyone else.

I have clients where everything is an emergency.  How could this be?  How could everything be this important?  It’s not.  It’s just their nature to be worrysome.  On the other hand, I have clients where I sometimes feel bad because their updates took so long, but they call and thank me for “jumping right on it” when they are done.

Being in business is more than managing projects.  It includes managing clients.  If you can manage your clients, then the job will eat you alive with stress.  So, chill out, seperate the truly time-sensitive updates from the rest and tell them to wait.

The truth is, you don’t need to have the best product on the market.  You simply need to have the best that a potential buyer HAS SEEN.  The key to this difference is that people are lazy, and they don’t always spend the time necessary to look at every available option.  So, if you are pro-active in finding buyers, then whatever you are selling will probably be one of the first items the buyer sees.  If they like it and it meets their price point, then you have a good chance of selling it.

For example, I had a potential buyer I was talking to on Twitter about my house.  He had found another house and was in process of purchasing, but the deal had stalled when the house didn’t appraise for asking value.  Well, I hit him up, talked him into coming to see my house.  He was thinking it over, but had already fallen in love with the house he was trying to purchase.  Even though, in my opinion, my house is better (bigger, recently remodelled, better lot, etc) and at the same price point, he had seen that house first, liked it, had spent the last few weeks dreaming about how he would fix it up, decorate it, paint it, etc and so he decided to not even come by to look at my house after the seller met the appraised price.  In this case, it did not matter that my house was better.  What mattered was what he saw and liked first.

When selling houses, the mistake is using a realtor right away.   I would always recommend you at least try to sell it yourself first, then if you are not able to sell it, find a realtor.  A lot of people look online for houses.  Put it on craigslist, in the local online classifieds for your paper and see if you can proactively go after a buyer.  Talk to everyone you know and push your house.  In this situation, they are pretty much comparing my house to the others on craigslist or in some cases only currently considering my house.  In this situation, if they like my house (not like it better than another, but if they like it at all), it is sold.  If I go with a realtor, my house is being compared with everything in the local MLS system.  The odds of my house being the best a buyer has seen is greatly reduced with a realtor.  The flip side is that realtors have a larger buying pool, but give it a go yourself before you give in and see if you can get it sold.