A little vignette for background: A few months ago I was walking past the boss's office and he called me in and said 'hey Dave, come here - I want you to look at this website.' So I came in and crawled over the detritus all over his office to look at his computer screen and as I watched, he slowly pecked out the address of ...our own website. He poked his finger at the screen for about five minutes, and I could tell he was trying to communicate and that perhaps he was unhappy about something, but I'll be damned if I could tell you what. Flash forward to two days ago when I was copied on an email to our art director, regarding our website:

good mechanics under the hood .....but it looks like an absolute bore....

which then went on to compare our site to another extremely popular and more brightly-colored local website. So I said that

The popularity of a website has less to do with how many colors it uses than with what it has to offer readers.

and explained that if one wants people to visit a site more often than once a week, it had better have fresh content more often than once a week.

Yesterday I was told by someone else that there were going to be professional web consultants critiquing websites at an upcoming conference and would I like to volunteer our site? So yeah, I said of course, it would be great to have an actual professional look it over. She said great, but clear it with the boss first. So I emailed him and he replied that we'd better hurry because

they may not accept us if they are looking for more primitive newspaper sites that are really bad

So in a way, I'm actually really relieved that while our site is pretty bad, there are some out there that can be considered really bad. Go me!!

- Z

I wish I could say that this was the first time this happened to us (e:zobar,12) . They called us up to tell us one of our lines was down, we said go ahead and test it, and they took down the other one for the rest of the afternoon.

One of our lines remains up, the other remains down, and Verizon has been notified. More updates when available and possible. Sorry guys.

- Z

A healthy dose of randomness to start your week. My new user sound is 'A Man Like Putin,' by a short-lived band called 'Singing Together,' widely believed to be a concoction of one of the political parties trying to curry favor with the President.

On a trip to Pakistan after this song became popular, Pres. Musharraf said to Pres. Putin: 'So I hear they even write songs about you,' to which Putin replied, 'Yes, I have to put up with everything.'

My boyfriend is in trouble again.
He got in a fight and got stoned on something nasty.
I've had enough, and I chased him away,
and now I want a man like Putin.

A man like Putin, full of energy.
A man like Putin, who doesn't drink.
A man like Putin, who wouldn't hurt me.
A man like Putin, who won't run away.

I saw him on the news last night
He was saying the world was at a crossroads.
It's easy with a man like him at home or out on the town,
and now I want a man like Putin.

gather:0314877001147695425

- Z

Been busy lately, with this and that. Now that the Menus/Best craziness is over, I'm taking some me-time.

(e:dragonlady7) and I are going to hop in the car tomorrow afternoon and wander our way down to the Finger Lakes area. The original plan was to poke around Watkins Glen a little and also to do a little wine tasting. The weather may not be cooperative, though, so in that case we'll just have to nix Watkins Glen and do a little more wine tasting instead. Damn damn damn life is tough.

(e:dragonlady7) has been assigned to come up with an itinerary, which already includes:

Bully Hill Vineyards , known for its ridiculous labels and excellent selection of delicious cheap wines
Earle Estates Meadery , who makes mead and several different kinds of fruit wine
and perhaps Pleasant Valley Wine Company (US Bonded Winery #1), the oldest winery in the Finger Lakes, and who also makes a pretty mean sherry

I have been told there may also be a brewery on the tour. Whee!

- Z

We: lost in Livingston County
Me, driving, blithely: Which way should we go now?
She, under a pile of maps, furious: What, so I'm the navigator now?

---

Our little wine-tasting junket was just perfect, I think. I admit I took a wrong turn in Livingston County, heading southwest along the wrong side of Letchworth instead of southeast along the right side of Letchworth, but to my credit we did see a really keen house along the way.

Even though this development put us off-schedule on our unscheduled vacation, we still managed to hit Bully Hill Vineyards in Hammondsport before closing time. Bully Hill has a reputation for making cheap sweet wines with funny names and funny labels; it should be mentioned that they also make some very good cheap dry wines with funny names and funny labels. For a long time, Bully Hill produced Cylinder Head grape juice, unpasteurized and packaged in wine bottles - until Welch's brought this to the attention of the FDA, who told them they had to pasteurize it and produce it somewhere else [and in the process ruining my faith in humanity]. I am pissed, but that is another rant for another time.

After that, the wineries were closing, so we mosied on over to Watkins Glen, where we ment (e:dragonlady7) 's younger sister for a pint and a burger at the Crooked Rooster , where they brew up a mean selection of ales and grill up a formidable burger. I ordered a light ale from the mystery tap; she had a brown ale - mine was good, but hers was better.

It was getting late and beginning to rain, so we made some quick reservations at the Tudor Rose . Having never stayed at a B&B before, I was astounded to realize that it was just some lady's house. The rain on the roof zonked me right the hell out until I was awakened the next morning by the heavenly aroma of French toast and sausages wafting up the stairwell.

The rain had stopped by the time we were done stuffing ourselves silly, so we had a little walk around the Glen. The gorge trail was not yet fully open for the season, but we still got to see a couple of the waterfalls, including the one that comes down over your head. Freaky.

The next winery we hit was Cascata on NY 14 overlooking Seneca Lake. We nearly missed it, and when we pulled in to the driveway I said, 'You can't fool me! This is just some guy's house.' But the winery was housed in the first floor of a B&B [The Professor's Inn]. Cascata makes their own wine, but they do not have the facilities to grow their own grapes or age or their wine; rather they buy their grapes from the local farms and lease space at a larger winery down the street. Their Estate Red is outstanding: subtle, nuanced, complex, as is their Luna Rossa. Sadly, they had run out of their Cranberry Bog mead, a mead/cranberry wine blend, but we did get a taste of their limited-run elderberry wine. Yum.

Next we hit Fulkerson , known for their bright-red and quite tasty Red Zeppelin. They offer a Traminette, a sweeter version of Gewürtztraminer. Their Cabernet Sauvignon is full-bodied and flavorful, and their Matinee is an exceptional sweet white.

We were both looking forward to visiting Earle Estates Meadery , but their tasting facilities appeared to be closed. Instead we grabbed some ice cream in Dresden and took a drive along Keuka Lake back to Hammondsport, where we stopped in at the Pleasant Valley Wine Company . Their champagne is good, but their dessert wines are excellent. We asked about the Cooking Sherry on their tasting menu, and the woman behind the bar narrowed her eyes. 'I fight with the winemakers about this constantly. Local restauranteurs wanted a sherry that was sweeter than our Sherry, but drier than our Cream Sherry, so we came out with an in-between sherry for cooking. It's just sherry; there's no added salt or herbs or anything like that. I think it should be called Gourmet Sherry instead.' We tried their Keuka Blue, which is a traditional Port made with traditional techniques - only it is 100% blueberry wine fortified with 100% blueberry brandy - and it has a very unusual and complex flavor, both sweet and woody. We finished off our trip with a taste of their Vanilla Cream Sherry, which blew my mind so hard I'm still talking about it.

- Z