My secret Santa gave to me, a smashed-in driver’s side mirror.  I may have mentioned that in a post on Monday.  I’m still troubled by it today, having left work early yesterday to take the car in to get an estimate from the insurance company.  The estimate was around $250 — well under my deductible.  Of course being that my car is so new, the pricing wasn’t even in the Allstate guy’s computer yet.  That didn’t make me feel any better.  So let’s add a half day’s work onto the $250.  So far some jerk who couldn’t be bothered to do the right thing is costing me my plasma TV.  After I wind up with a ticket because I have improper mirrors (since I couldn’t get in to the shop until next Friday) we can tack on a few dollars.  I can’t forget the time out of my day lost on the car being in the shop, I’ll be well over my deductible, but of course, the insurance company doesn’t count my time running around and the secondary effects.

At DDA we hope that our clients don’t feel like I do right now, inconvenienced and annoyed at a process that takes more work on top of an already pricey process.  Our clients do not want to know how hard it is for us to do something, they just expect that it is done as painlessly as possible for them.  In fact, we have many clients who would rather us do as much of the work as is possible, with little or no feedback — just to get it done.  Usually when we quote a programming project, we don’t have something quite as solid as a car part to be fixed.  It is usually a mess of ideas on how things need to end up, with no real process to get there.  They may say they want a car, and we’re thinking Kia, but in the end they wanted a Mercedes.  In the end, as a programmer, we have to balance what it is we quoted with what it is that they want, saving as much aggravation for all parties.

In addition to the wonderful stomach bug that Santa brought to my family over the holiday break, he was also kind enough to leave a shiny new Wii Fit under the tree for Andrea and I. For those who don’t know, the Wii Fit is a “game” for the Nintendo Wii that is intended to help you exercise, and lose weight (if that’s what you’re looking for). It includes something called the Wii Balance Board.

I was shocked at just how sensitive the balance board is. After creating my profile and entering my height and birthdate, it told me that I not only slouch backward when I stand, but I put an unequal amount of weight on my left side (probably why I have problems with my feet — especially the left one).

But of course, the ultimate moment came after I entered my weight goal and target date. I stood on the board, and my Mii (a cartoon representation of myself) smiled back from the screen, while the board measured my weight and my body mass index. Then, my Mii ballooned to an unhealthy-looking weight, and a childish female voice said, very matter of factly: “THAT’S OBESE!” (That’s not me below, it just shows what the screen looks like. My Mii is much better looking.)

After a good laugh (c’mon Nintendo, tell me something I didn’t already know), I realized that I appreciated the honesty. I mean, if the point of Wii Fit is to help me get into shape, then it shouldn’t lie to me or tell me something to make me feel better. It should tell the truth, and make me work harder on all the exercises and games that it includes to help you get up off the couch (I’m getting quite good at the ski jump and soccer ball-heading games).

The same is true here at Dynamic Digital Advertising, where our physically fit team of graphic designers, copywriters, programmers, search engine optimization specialists, videographers, and animators tell it like it is, even if it means that a client won’t choose our services. If a client simply wants us to magically optimize an existing website that has bad architecture, bad design, and no real potential, then we politely say thanks but no thanks. At DDA, our website design and development services are superior to most other companies because we have developed a start-to-finish process that integrates design, menu structure, content, and post-launch optimization into search engine marketing and optimization efforts. And while we offer just about every advertising, marketing, web design, programming, and video capability under the sun, we never try to sell clients services they don’t need. It’s an important part of our DDA Ethics.

So while I dream of the day Wii Fit tells me that I  am the “Ideal” weight, I don’t want it to lie to me — and you shouldn’t want your advertising and marketing agency to lie to you. So contact DDA today for straight answers and straight solutions that will help yor business get “fit” in 2009!

Projects here are always evolving and at times that can be depressing. You may spend numerous hours making what was agreed upon at a previous meeting only to watch in the next meeting as people change their minds or come up with something new and scrap the thing you worked on entirely. I just successfully made a nice tagging system which people seemed excited about originally, but now it has been scrapped and different programming has to be done in exchange for a new custom programming function that people again seem excited about.

Even though this is the right process to go through to come out with the best final project, I can’t help but feel a little sorrow every time I have to scrap or change something I already made. My little creations didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not their fault. How sad it is that these innocent, harmless programs must now be deleted or chopped up into fragments of their past selves. What a cruel world.

They warn you before you get into the advanced programming business that it’s a tough job physically and emotionally. They said I would see viruses wipe out entire hard drives, worms inflicting collateral damage on people’s files, and many upstanding programs falling to evil hackers and the harsh reality of change and advancement. I knew this when I joined the team, but it’s harder than I thought to look into a program’s eyes and lie to it when you say “Everything is going to be OK”.