I was the recipient of a random act of kindness this evening. I was at Quiznos in Ramsey and a lady gave me a cookie. Apparently, one of her kids was full after having his sandwich and couldn't eat the cookie. Also, the conversation I had with the Quiznos manager this time was pretty interesting. It was about how difficult it was to predict demand. Anticipating demand is what store owners have to do all the time in order to decide how much inventory to stock and how many people to hire. The better they can predict the demand, the closer they'll get to optimal operation. Unfortunately, it happens to be nearly impossible to predict restaurant sales. It depends on such variable factors as the weather, sidewalk traffic, and what people feel like eating. I can't even predict my own visits to Quiznos. Okay, well, maybe I can. It depends on the number of coupons I have. :)
I started using juploadr to upload photos to Flickr after reading about the software at Lifehacker. Before juploadr, I simply used Flickr's web interface to upload photos, but I see that juploadr saves me time in two ways:
- I can drag image files into juploadr's window.
- If I'm using the same title, description, and tags for a bunch of photos, I can select those photos and enter the information just once.
One thing I didn't mention yesterday was that I tried using Writely to write the letter to my parents. Prior to that, I hadn't used Writely to do any significant writing so it was a good trial run. My overall impression of the online word processor is that it is just a glorified rich text editor / HTML editor, not a true word processor. It has no concept of margins or paper size, so the width of your web browser window determines where it wraps. It also uses the browser for print formatting and print preview, so wherever the browser chooses to wrap lines and break pages is what you get. (Actually, they could specify margins and widths in inches, cm, points, etc, in CSS and, provided the browser supports it, they can enable widow/orphan control in CSS2. However, I guess putting in those features will complicate the interface and implementation significantly.)
So how did Writely's lack of margins affect my letter? Well, I usually use a letter style in which the address and signature blocks are indented so that their right edges are near the right margin. Note that this is different from making those blocks flush right because they're still flush left, but with an indent of 6 or 7 inches. Since Writely doesn't have page or margin guides, it is hard to tell how much to indent those blocks so that they'll appear on the right side of the paper. I ended up making those blocks flush left against the left edge of the page.