Missing Letters, Holland, MI

I’m intrigued by stuff in the urban ecosystem that is deployed but untended. Consider this sign at the edge of a shopping plaza on a busy busy street. How long has it been like that? Has anyone who is accountable for the sign noticed? Is someone paying for advertising that they aren’t getting?

Compare with computer displays in airports showing a Windows error, or the piece of gum left on a realtor’s “about this property” display after the owners have moved out. Entropy, man.

(and probably some analogies with semi-smart automated systems that don’t get context 100% of the time)

NYT article about spelling errors on eBay.

Jim Griffith, whose official title at eBay is dean of eBay education, teaches 40 to 50 seminars a year around the country. Although the auction house flags common misspellings online, Mr. Griffith said, the most common question he gets is, ‘When will eBay get a spell checker?’ His answer? ‘You go to a store called a bookstore, and you buy something called a dictionary.

Now that’s a customer-oriented attitude!

Well I got rid of those errors by eliminating the pretty-much-unused comment feature. Site loads really fast now. But today I don’t see the blue background! Argh. It has been missing from the archive pages, and now seems to be missing here too. Yuck.