At the beginning of the month they changed their website (and my guess is likely their provider). Here’s what they did wrong.

1 – They didn’t send out a specific “hey we’re changing our systems so here’s what you need to know” email. Instead they tagged it onto the end of a notification I used to receive which let me know that my statement is available to view. Problem? Those are a reminder email, which means that most customers don’t read them. I got my notification and assumed that everything was status quo. You need to understand how customers use your system and behave and build accordingly.

2 – They didn’t import notification/alert preferences into the new system, so I never received the alert that reminds me that my payment is due. Ergo, my payment was late. Yeah, yeah, yeah I know – as a customer I have a responsibility to check and stay on top of things. However, when you train your customers to look when they receive a notification email that their payment is due and then you stop those emails without warning, what did you expect was going to happen?

3 – You didn’t port my account information over. I had an account on the old system, so why did I need to create an account on the new system? If you wanted me to update my password to meet your new/stronger criteria, then you could have just had me do that. Really, I consider this a standard part of any upgrade – as a business, you need to make sure that people are moved over. Think “seamless” and then act on it.

4 – Make sure to label fields well & specifically. For example, I had an account on the old system so I assumed that I needed to fill out the section that said “re-register / already enrolled”. Not exactly. It turns out that I needed to create a new account, entirely from scratch. I needed the “need to enroll” option. Again, how would I have known that?

5 – Example two for labeling fields correctly. They asked for the name on my card. Normally when I see that field on the interwebs I type in “Jana LastName”. The actual name on my card is something more like “Ms Jana LastName”. Small difference, but different nonetheless. Not necessarily a big deal except for the fact that I’ve never once had a transaction declined because my name doesn’t match which has trained me to think that the first way is fine. Lesson? If you want things to match specifically, give detailed examples. If there is a reasonable expectation that something different will work (especially based on typical transactions) then either a) accept the common variants, or b) let me know exactly what to do. Don’t just block the transaction and make me call your call centre.

6 – Don’t ask stupid security questions. These need to be uber, uber specific. Remember that I likely won’t come across these until six months, a year, or more down the road. If there is any wiggle room about my answer then I will get it wrong. Which means that I’ll have to call you – costing you money and pissing me off. Here is an example of one of the really stupid questions: “What is your pet’s name?” Which one? I have multiple pets. What happens if my pet dies between now and when I have to use this question?

This is bad execution.

I wish that companies understood that bad execution slowly erodes our trust that they are looking out for us, that they can do their job well, that we should trust them. Usability matters. Your customers’ expectations matter. Doing your job well matters.

We did the first one about a month ago. It healed up really well when you consider how much movement there is in the area and the fact that the two sides of fresh tattoo rubbed against one another when my arm was down. There are some minor touch ups and I’d like to add some more yellow to it, but I was so stoked.

Having it done sucked. The first two hours weren’t bad and the third hour was almost unbearable. I convinced myself that I could sit through 2 more minutes, just 2 more minutes for an entire hour. But it was done and now I could relax. Ha! Healing it was pretty brutal as well. I was so wiped out that I slept for 13 hours the next evening. Moving my arm, dressing, stretching all made it sore. And given that I’m right handed and this was my right armpit it meant that just about everything made it sore. Luckily I heal pretty fast, so the small layer of scab was off in 5 days. Then it was just waiting for the scar tissue to open up so that I could stretch fully again.

Last night I went back to get my second one done. I was pretty nervous because I knew what I was in for. Thankfully Jason came with me to hold my hand and provide moral support.

My artist also used new machines this time. They are neumas. They are super quiet, so I wasn’t fighting the stress of the sound of the machine as well as the pain of being tattooed.

I like this picture, because normally you don’t see people look quite so happy and full of smiles when they are getting their armpits tattooed. Yup, this is about how a I roll.

This is the final piece. The glare is from the last layer of ointment prior to being bandaged up. Its also still fairly red/pink because of irritation. We’ll grab photos of the healed piece in a few weeks for you so you can see the final result.

I can now proudly rock floral armpit tattoos. Its nice to have both done so that I feel balanced again. I really like these pieces. And I really like that most people don’t realize that I have them. Its like my own little joke that the world isn’t in on.

At $20 a dog x 29 years**, that means that I need to raise $580 in order to reach my goal. That could mean 29 friends each donating $20 or 58 friends each donating $10. Even $5 will make a difference.

RAISED SO FAR: $670, 115% of total // GOAL: $580 raised for Soi Dog by July 28th

Soi Dog deals with some of the worst cases of neglect and abuse in Thailand on a daily basis. Every dollar raised goes directly to help the dogs and your donation will have an immediate impact. The pictures below are of Goldie when he was first rescued and after the Soi Dog volunteers and staff had nursed him back to health.

Donate here (the Soi Dog website & PayPal info). Feel free to pass the message along, any help is greatly appreciated.

I’m doing this old school. I can only track my total if you let me know what you donated. So please comment, or send me an email to jana at jananas dot com, or a twitter message, or hit me up on facebook, or something. Individual donation amounts will not be published here unless you give me the okay to publish the info.

We adopted our dog Gucci from Soi Dog in December 2009. I also donate $20 a month to Sponsor Joy, one of the many dogs currently being cared for by Soi Dog.

* Soi Dog is an amazing organization. They started in 2002 and have spayed/neutered more than 28,000 animals since then. They purchased land where they built a permanent shelter (they house upwards of 200 adoptable dogs and more than 50 dogs that need permanent care). Gill, one of the founders, was voted Asian of the Year as a result of her hard work and dedication (so dedicated that she lost her legs as a result of an infection she contracted while rescuing a dog). Soi Dog’s relentless efforts have directly contributed to Phuket Island being declared the first Rabies free province in Thailand.

Basically, this rescue group is about as awesome and awe-inspiring as you can get. They have achieved a huge amount and made a real difference in reducing the suffering of local dog and cat populations. The amount of neglect and abuse suffered by these animals before Soi Dog stepped in to help is difficult to even comprehend – this is a great explanation of why they do it although I’ll warn you that the photos are graphic.

** The actual math is that if you donate $1 a day for a year you can help spay/neuter 24 animals. That works out to $15.21 to spay/neuter an animal. I’ve rounded up to $20 to cover PayPal fees, etc.

In one of the dances, the partners timing was a little bit off. My immediate reaction was to blame the all star for being off. My reaction made me start thinking. I wanted to think that the second person was hitting the marks ‘late’, but how could I tell. Maybe the other person was early.

Where do you anchor your frame of reference? Your starting point can impact your interpretation of the situation. Because I like the personality of the first dancer more, they are less likely to do wrong in my eyes. This is not the same thing as actually being less likely to do wrong. For the most part, we don’t make it past that first statement. We don’t see beyond our own interpretation.

Recognizing this, can I begin to look at the situation more objectively? Can I listen better when someone else talks, because I can give them the benefit of the doubt and don’t jump to conclusions? Can I learn something new because I was open to something different? Can I make better decisions because I took the time to think about and explore the assumptions beneath my snap judgments?

Two words from above jump out at me: Learn & Open. How do you challenge yourself? How do you learn? Are you open to something new?

I’m a little surprised at having such a deep insight with wide application from an episode of SYTYCD.

Soi Dog deals with some of the worst cases of neglect and abuse seen in Thailand. They do it every day. Your donation will go directly to helping a dog like Glory (or some of the others pictured in the video clip below) get better and have a chance at a good life filled with love.

Please donate. Your contribution will make a difference.

I’m tracking my total by hand, so let me know if/how much you donated. Thanks!

I sort of winged the ingredient list/recipe, after having read a bunch of hot sauce recipes online. They were all pretty similar. So I just adjusted based on what I had.

Ingredient list:

• 14 mangos
• 3 bell peppers (red, orange, yellow)
• 14 scotch bonnet peppers
• 5 habaneros
• 2 onions
• lots of garlic (i went with pre-peeled because cutting the hot peppers and mangoes already took a whole whack of time)
• about 1-1.5cups of apple cider vinegar

First up I cut all the hot peppers. I wore nitrile gloves so that I didn’t get super spicy stuff in my eyes or on my skin. I also wore these when doing the washing up, transferring the hot sauce to jars, etc. Better safe than sorry. The fun part of cutting was the eye watering and coughing that accompanied it.

The peppers, onions, garlic, and vinegar all went on the stove to start cooking up while I chopped mangoes.

I know how to cut mangoes up properly. However, there’s a difference between cutting for eating and cutting 14 of them to cook with. I ended up peeling them as you see above, then cutting the meat off of either side of the seed. I put the seeds in the blue bowl. Once I was finished with the main part of the prep, I squished the last of the flesh off of the seeds. Probably not the best solution, but it worked for me and got the job done.

After this, I added the mango to the hot pepper mixture on the stove and let it simmer away until everything was soft and the flavors had had time to mingle. Then we blended it to get a nice smooth hot sauce. We had so much that we had to blend in three separate batches! Then it was time to transfer it to jars. We keep all our glass jars and reuse them, so it was a motley batch. But it works!

Normally, I would have heat sealed canned goods in a hot water bath. But hot sauce is normally kept in the fridge, plus most of the jars are already spoken for/will be gifted to friends.

I took a jar into work. It received rave reviews on taste and an omg that’s hot. I consider that a job well done.

First up was AJ Stephans. I would have linked to it, but their website doesn’t appear to be working. This root beer had an awesome minty smell, followed up by a lovely minty and creamy taste. And it uses cane sugar?!? Definitely a win in my books. Jason and I may have had a stare down to see who got to drink the majority of this bottle.

Next up was Monteray Bay. It had a hint of a mint aroma. Sadly this was followed up with what I can only describe as a weird taste – it was very root-y and definitely creamy. It is sweetened with cane sugar and honey. Overall, not my favorite by a long shot, but it wins for using natural sweeteners.

Instructions for Easy Vegan Cupcakes

• buy a box of cake mix. check ingredients to ensure that its vegan (not all of them are).
• normally mixes call for adding some combination of milk/water, oil, and eggs. instead, replace these with an equal volume of A) sprite or some other ‘clear’ pop for white/lighter cakes, or B) coke or some other ‘darker’ pop for chocolate/darker cakes
• bake as you normally would

Done! Seriously, stupid easy and you don’t need to have any fancy ingredients in your pantry.

I made chocolate root beer cupcakes. The base is a chocolate cake mix and I used Dr. Pepper as the liquid. The icing your standard butter cream icing made with earth balance margarine (vegan of course), icing sugar, a touch of almond milk, and some root beer flavor.

Yesterday I tackled the first bag of Lucy’s now clean fleece. I ended up with 9 batts of fiber! Here’s a photo to give some perspective on the size of the ziploc bag versus the amount of space the batts take up. The floor looks dirty because most of the last of the vegetable matter came out when I was carding it (eep).

I don’t have a project in mind yet for this fiber. I have to finish carding the second bag and then spin it all up. However, it will be enough to make a bigger project.

Its been pretty exciting to take a raw fleece and turn it into something spinnable. It’ll be even more exciting to see it turn into yarn and then into a knitted object.

Sometimes I forget about how much I accomplish in my personal life. The hours that I spend at work drag on and the lethargy spills over. Then I take a look at my stash of hand spun and realize that I actually get a lot done in my limited free time (like finishing up the book a week challenge in half the time I’d allotted for it).

I rented a drum carder from Lettuce Knit for the week and have been carding a bunch of my fiber stash. Previously it was not nice to spin and I’m in the process of making it into nice, easy to spin batts. It looks like a whole lot of fiber once it is nicely aerated. I also received a 2lb box of fiber as my CSA share from Wool n Feather Farm. Oh my goodness, so much more fiber to play with! I’m putting myself on a buying hiatus until I can get more spun up.

Let me know if you are interested in any of the skeins pictured above. We can work something out and I’ll donate all profit to my birthday fundraiser for Soi Dog Foundation.