I need to shift gears for a minute and talk about something personal. If you don’t feel like reading about me gushing about my family, it’s time to click “Next”.

I really love my kids. All (4) of them. They do some amazing, funny, incredible, funny, interesting, and funny things. And they’re funny, too.

But recently one of them has done a few things that are amazing enough that I had to comment on it. I’m well aware that she hates being publicly acknowledged (she takes after her Mother, rather than me) so she’s going to hate this. And you know what? Tough.

Let’s start with her committment to education. Back in the summer before eighth grade, she decided that public school wasn’t for her. That’s not unique. Lots of 13 year olds say “school sucks”. But her reasons were a little different: It went too slow, the kids were (generally) too unfocused, and she felt she could get more done on her own. So, for her eight-grade year she basically home-schooled herself, with light supervision from my wife and I. And it worked. She rocked through the year, usually in less hours per day or week than school would have taken. She was happier, she had learned more, and everyone was happy.

While she stopped homeschooling and moved to an online school the following year, she still enjoyed a level of freedom and control over her schoolwork that few kids get to experience.

The net result? Here at the end of her 11th grade year she has exactly one credit left in order to complete High School. And that’s after taking just one credit this year. She had all but completed high school in 2 years.

She held back those two credits because my state has a “Post Secondary Education Option”, which means it will pay the tuition if high school kids go to college before graduation. So this year, at the tender age of 16, she also enrolled in her first set of freshman courses at a local college and took more-or-less a full load of classes. By the time she graduations from high school, she will have 2 years of college also under her belt.

Honestly though, lots of kids do that around here – dozens, if not hundreds. If that was all, I’d be proud but I wouldn’t be writing this post.

During this past year my daughter also got a job, at a local bakery. She liked to bake at home, and thought she could leverage that interest into work that didn’t make her want to gouge her eyes out with a happy meal toy. It was a good job, and my daughter learned a lot and had a good time in the process.

Then the owner of the bakery went in for a routine medical exam and the doctor found a lump near his kidneys. Suddenly he was looking at surgery and several weeks of recovery, and nobody at the bakery to cover during that time.

So, for the next two weeks, my daughter went in to work at 4:00am to learn all the recipes. And for 2 months after that, she was the baker. She didn’t run the store – there were other adults that handled the books and billing and such. And the rest of the back-room staff were still there to do their jobs. But every morning it was my daughter who came in and lit the ovens, maintained the inventory, mixed the ingredients, rolled out the cakes and breads and cookies, tested and approved the results before it moved to the front to be sold.

For two and a half months, she ran herself from 4am until 9pm, working the bakery, catching classes at college, going back to the bakery, then coming home to study and write reports and attend her one high school class. All so a man she had only recently met would have a business to come back to after he recovered from having a 2.25lb cancerous mass removed from his back.

During that time, if you asked her about it, you’d get her trademark shrug, a “whatever”, and then she would tell you how the cake decorator threw flour at her this morning in retaliation for the prank she pulled on him the day before.

Then came the crash. The bakery stayed open late into the night one weekend, and everyone was on hand to deal with the anticipated flood of customers. What they didn’t anticipate was a car coming through the front of the store. Nobody was hurt, and in the end the store didn’t even lose a single cupcake. But having a 2002 Mercury come through a plate glass window can be unsettling, to say the least. Some of the staff was so shaken up they had to go home. But, according to the adults who were there, my daughter was unflappable. She moved between  tasks – pulling bread out of the oven before it overcooked; moving product away from the broken glass; finding boxes and buckets for the cleanup; ringing up sales for customers who  were undaunted by the damage and still wanted their two loaves of rye, sliced if possible.

For a grizzled old jaded adult, there are things to be learned in all of this.

• Working harder today does not always mean you earned the punishment of having to work harder again tomorrow. Sometimes it means you get to do what you want tomorrow.
• If your values say “yes”, it should always trump your fear saying “no”
• Don’t underestimate yourself, don’t overestimate the challenge, and don’t overthink the situation.

Yesterday, she reached another milestone. At 17 she took her last final, and simultaneously completed her junior year of high school and her freshman year of  college. I don’t think she’s going to pull straight-A’s this year. I believe there will be a “B” or two in the mix.

In this case, I’m not inclined to sweat the small stuff.

For more information on the specific use, see “Counting the Omer“.

In any case, here’s how I pull it off:

In the header of the page (header.php in WordPress), I add the following code:

<?php
//calculate the day of the Omer. You will need to change the date each year
$omerstring = "";
$omer = (strtotime(date("Y-m-d")) - strtotime("2012-04-08")) / (60 * 60 * 24);
if ($omer > 0 && $omer < 50) {
$omerstring = "<center><h3>Today is day ".$omer." of the Omer!</h3></center>";
}
?>

Then, wherever you want the actual count to appear, add the following line


<?php if ($omerstring <> "") { echo $omerstring;} ?>


As my comments in the code indicate, you’ll have to change the start date from year to year unless your specific application has a way of determining the start date automatically.

Otherwise, enjoy! If you use this code, leave the web site in the comments so we can admire your handiwork.

While I really appreciate the flexibility WooCommerce provides (over other shopping plugins like WP E-Commerce, which isn’t too shabby either), some aspects can be hard to wrap your head around until you’ve played with it a bit.

One of the things I struggled with initially was setting up products that had different prices depending on size, color, flavor, etc.

I should note that there are lots of how-to’s out there, including the one on WooCommerce Docs and also this tutorial from OSTraining but even with those, the process was not clear to me, which is why I’m writing this guide to supplement those.

Overview/summary

The idea here is that you have a product where you have one item (like a shirt) where the price changes based on some variable (like size – small, medium and large). You also have OTHER items (pants and paintings) that use the same sizes but the price variations are completely different in each case.

You first create an attribute that has a set of variations (“color” would contain red, green, blue and orange).

Then you associate that attribute set with your product, assigning specific cost (and other attributes) to each variation.

The key here is that the variations themselves (color, flavor, etc) do not intrinsically have an effect on price. That way you can use the same attribute set (size) in multiple products (pants, shirts, coffee mugs) without being “locked in” to a particular pricing structure OR without having to create the same attribute set multiple times.

Detailed Instructions

1. In the “Products menu, click “Attributes”
2. Create your new attribute. Make sure the type is “Select”, not “text”
3. Click the “Add Attribute” button
4. Click the “Configure Terms” button to the right of your new attribute
5. Add your variations. They can be any word or phrase. Examples are sizes (8×10, 5×7, 5 foot, 6-inch, small, medium, size 17), flavors (chocolate, vanilla), brands (nike, adidas), colors (green, blue), or options (framed, matte finish).
6. Create (or edit) your product
7. Scroll down to the section named “Product type” and change it from “Simple Product” to “Variable product”
   
8. Move down to the “Product Data” area
9. Click on the Attributes tab
10. Next to the “Add” button, select the attribute you want from the list.
11. Make sure you check both of the checkboxes (“Visible on the product page” and “Used for variations”)
12. Click the “Select All” button to select all the variations. If you don’t want some variations for a paritemticular , just “x” them out.
    
13. Save the product (click “Publish” or “Update” back at the top of the page.
14. Scroll back down to the “Product Data” and click on the Variations tab
15. Click the “Add Variation” button
16. Set the option (16×20 or whatever) from the drop down
17. Set the price
18. You can set the other items if you want, but it’s not required.
    
19. Repeat this steps 10-13 for each of the variations you want to include as options
20. Scroll back up to the top and click “Update”

As I was setting things up, I prototyped it on my server (like I always do) and it looked great.

Then I installed the them on the production site and noticed there was an upgrade for the theme, so I ran it. Lo and behold, the menus on the top weren’t working.

Since I can be pretty scattered about changes; and because modifying a theme to support WordPress’ built-in menus has become second-hand to me, I thought maybe I had forgotten doing that step. But no, that wasn’t the case. In fact, when I upgraded my test site, the problem appeared there as well.

Luckily, the guys over at InkThemes are a great (and responsive) bunch. Even using their free support, I got an answer in under 24 hours, which you can find here.

But the upshot is that one word reversal in their function code made all the difference in the world.

If you are experiencing this issue, find the line that reads:

add_action('after_theme_setup', 'inkthemes_register_custom_menu');

…and change it to…

add_action('after_setup_theme', 'inkthemes_register_custom_menu');

It’s an email one of my customers received recently. I’m listing out all of this bozo’s information so you (or your customers) don’t get scammed:

Dear Manager
We are a professional intellectual property rights consultant organization, who mainly deal with the global domain name registration and internet intellectual property rights protection.

12th,3,2012 we received an application from Matas export trade Limited. They want to register () internet brand and CN domain names. But after checking it, we find this name conflict with your company name or trademark. In order to deal with this matter better, it’s necessary to send email to you and confirm whether this company is your distributor or business partner?

Please let me know whether you let they use or register them by yourself. Waiting for your reply.

Kind Regards,
Jerry Lan
Brand Registration Department Manager
HongKong Newname Net Service Co., Limited
www.trademarkdns.com
E-Mail: jerry@trademarkdns.com
Tel: +00852-8193 0858, Fax: +00852 8193 2728
4A, Units 19/F, Far East Consortium Bldg., 121 Des Voeux Road, Central, Hong Kong

My customer was (understandably) agitated and, believing this to be a real situation, responded. This is what he received back:

Dear Sir,

Since you have no relationship with this company, we assume that they have other purposes to obtain these domain names. Matas export trade Limited want to register the following Domain name:
<yourdomain>.cn
<yourdomain>.com.cn
<yourdomain>.hk
<yourdomain>.com.hk
<yourdomain>.tw
<yourdomain>.com.tw
<yourdomain>.asia
Internet brand:(<yourdomain>)

If your company do not want other to register them, and need to protect by yourself. I will send you an application form to fill out. Then we will use it to reject Matas export trade Limited’s application and help your company to register it. If you think that it is not influences your company and give up it, we will help Matas export trade Limited to register it according to the registration procedure.

That’s when my customer got me involved. Here’s my response to him, and my take on the entire situation.

“My opinion is that the best way to deal with this is to ignore it. It’s meant to scare you into hasty action. Note the wording. He’s contacting you with an offer to PROTECT you from this other company infringing on your brand. What’s that sound like? Yep, Vinny and his cousin are standing in your store, saying what a shame it would be if there was a fire.

Those domain names are – in my not-so-humble opinion – less than useless to someone UNLESS they are going to actually develop it into a website.

If I just buy “.biz” and stick a single web page on it, it’s not going to show up on the search engines and it’s not going to do any good (or harm).

My advice is to either:

1. let it drop.
2. buy up all those domain names at $15 per name per year. It’s not THAT much if it’s really going to concern you. If you do, I would only buy the .net, .org and .biz variants. The ones he’s listing – .cn (China), .hk (HongKong) and .tw (Taiwan) are really less than less than useless.

Meanwhile, if you would like a copy of the presentation, it’s attached to this post as a PDF document:

OBBA_20120229

To those who attended: Thanks again for making the time to listen, and I hope to have a chance to work with you in the future!

There are a few online items I will probably reference, so if you attended the meeting and you are looking for those links, here they are:

• The ClueTrain Manifesto – “… learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about “listening to customers.” They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.”
• Seth Godin’s Blog – Outspoken, driven, passionate, and visionary, Seth is the master of the “short form” blog post, boiling ideas down to their most potent essence and delivering them in a writing style that is clear and readable.
• SEO, Lies and Video Tape – A series on Adatosystems.com that reveals the truth about Search Engine Optimization. It’s not all that hard, it shouldn’t cost thousands of dollars, and you don’t have to hire an amoral pantless weasel to do the job for you.

There are better ways to improve your website’s SEO than hiring a pantless weasle.

Start by reading our FREE series on SEO, Lies and Video Tape.

If you still want help, drop us a line!

The Customer is the person or entity paying. They may or may not use the service or product for which they are paying, but the money comes out of their account.

the Consumer is the person or entity using the goods or services. They may not pay.

A Colleague is someone with whom I have a mutual, reciprocal relationship that is ongoing and not (usually) influenced by monetary issues.

You are not a customer of the NFL. You are a consumer. Pepsi, Budweiser and Continental are customers. As such, the NFL is more likely to respond to the wishes of the customers (scheduling game times, selecting blackout markets, etc) than those of the consumers.

Closer to home, the manager who calls and screams at the Helpdesk analyst does so (in part) because they are under the (mistaken) impression that they are customer. The problem is not in their status, nor in our execution of services. It is in the consumer’s perception of the relationship.

Do we (or do we want to) communicate this to the end-users?

I have always found “customer” to be an uncomfortable word. It implies a fiscal relationship that isn’t there and therefore all exepctations are skewed. As my customer (I mean it), the company I contract at can decide that my services are substandard and therefore go find another vendor. As vendor, I can decide that the company is a problem client and prohibitively price myself so that I have said “no” without saying “no”.

No such privilege exists with the helpdesk. The users cannot choose to call another Helpdesk vendor, nor can the HD staff decide that the folks in one department are more trouble than they are worth.

In this situation, the word colleague, which is more like a marriage than a business partnership, seems to fit. In addition to the absence of choice I mentioned above, colleagues understand that they will have working relationships that last far longer than any specific project or organizational structure. Mary in accounting used to be Mary in the typing pool and before that she was Mary in the mail room and I saw her every day when she dropped off my mail and asked me about my kids. Next month, she’ll be Mary the V.P. of Finance.

Just a thought. I’m not sure where to take it or whether it has bearing.

I went out and bought the book. It’s a good read. Not exactly life changing, but potentially habit changing or perception affirming, depending on how you do/look at things to begin with.

Here’s one of the key ideas that I thought was relevant to “IT people”:

Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity.

Nor can you bully a subordinate into becoming a genius.

Since the modern, scientifically-conceived corporation was invented in the early half of the Twentieth Century, creativity has been sacrificed in favor of forwarding the interests of the “Team Player”.

Fair enough. There was more money in doing it that way; that’s why they did it.

There’s only one problem. Team Players are not very good at creating value on their own. They are not autonomous; they need a team in order to exist.

So now corporations are awash with non-autonomous thinkers.

“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”

And so on.

Creating an economically viable entity where lack of original thought is handsomely rewarded creates a rich, fertile environment for parasites to breed. And that’s exactly what’s been happening. So now we have millions upon millions of human tapeworms thriving in the Western World, making love to their Powerpoint presentations, feasting on the creativity of others.

What happens to an ecology, when the parasite level reaches critical mass?

The ecology dies.

If you’re creative, if you can think independently, if you can articulate passion, if you can override the fear of being wrong, then your company needs you now more than it ever did. And now your company can no longer afford to pretend that isn’t the case.

So dust off your horn and start tooting it. Exactly.

However if you’re not particularly creative, then you’re in real trouble. And there’s no buzzword or “new paradigm” that can help you. They may not have mentioned this in business school, but… people like watching dinosaurs die.