Web Performance, Branding, and Social Media
In: Life
20 Jun 2008My grandmother died a few months back, and while this was indeed a very sad day for all of us, she left on her own terms, and with her mind intact, facing the next adventure with grace and dignity.
What this sad event did is provide a focus for the entire Pierzchala clan to reconvene for [...]
In: Life
3 Nov 2007Part of the problem with making a lot of East to West trips across the US is that the flights back are a nightmare for timing. You either lose most of a day or have to take a red-eye.
Well, taking the red-eye has only one advantage: you get to camp in the airline lounge and [...]
In: Canada| Immigration| Life| RANTING
14 Jul 2007It seems that more than the usual immigration backlog reduction process has been at work in the USCIS. There are two likely scenarios that appear to be running around immigration circles these days, regarding the Green Card slot tease that has turned into such a furore.
The first is that the Department of State, which issues [...]
In: Life
18 Jun 2007Ok, we are back from Wasaga Beach. We crossed the border in a ridiculously easy manner — when you have a work visa, you always expect the body-cavity search treatment — and made a run for Syracuse. We picked a hotel out of the air and lucked out with the Comfort Inn near the Syracuse [...]
I am writing up a client presentation for next week, and I just realized just how flawed Internet Explorer is. Microsoft claims that the browser is standards compliant. Yet it still doesn’t support HTTP pipelining.
And the frustrating part? They won’t tell us why. I have my suspicions, which include TCP stack issues and a flawed [...]
In: RANTING| Software| Technology
10 Mar 2007March 10, 2007
When I defragment a disk, I like to know how much is left. It doesn’t have to be a graphical cue, but a percentage done can’t be hard to add.
Why doesn’t the right-click work in the message list in Outlook 2003?
Can you detect when a program is activated by an actual mouse event, [...]
In: RANTING| Software| Technology| Work
10 Mar 2007So, it was time to re-build my laptop — 4 months of cruft gets in the way and really slows things down. And since the company I work for has an Microsoft Enterprise License that includes Vista, I took the plunge.
So far, it’s ok. Nothing that really rocks my world. And one serious hindrance: It [...]
I try and avoid the “me-too” factor that has dominated the land of blogs for most of the time I have been involved in it. Simply aping one persons comments with a slight variation, or personal interpretation doesn’t add much to the initial thrill of finding the original germ of an idea.
Kathy Sierra, someone who [...]
In: Life
14 Jan 2007It’s the places that you go when you’re a child that stay with you for your whole life.
My grandparents lived their entire lives in the Crowsnest Pass. This narrow, sometimes forgotten section of the Rockies emptied itself of its coal to feed the engines of Canada and the world for more than a hundred years.
My [...]
In: Life
12 Dec 2006Over the last two years, Fisher Space Pans have taken on near iconic status with the leaders (and followers) in the trendy nouveau geek crowd.
Paul Fisher died recently at 93. [via Notebookism]
Having “donated” four space pens to the cosmos through my own absent-minded behaviour, I can say that I have done my bit to help [...]
Stephen Pierzchala is one of a cadre of crazy Canucks living in the United States. A 10-year veteran of the Web performance field, Stephen also writes on topics as diverse as branding and reputation, bipolar, and Web technologies.