Cory Watilo

There is nothing worse than navigating your mouse to click a link, only to find out the link was actually a dropdown menu. But it's too late, because you already clicked the link, so you're already being taken to a new page.

Example:

The problem? There is no indication this is a dropdown menu. It just looks like a link to a regular page.

So how should it work? If it's a hoverable area, the area shouldn't be clickable because you don't want to take the user to a different page if they click it. I wish more UX designers understood this basic concept. I cannot begin to explain the spout of frustration I just dealt with internally as I just ran into this on Verizon's website.

Nine years ago, my next door neighbors next door moved in. Today they are moving out.

And today as I left my house and drove by theirs, I watched as they loaded boxes into their SUVs and realized that I can count on one hand the number of times I've actually talked to them. In fact, I can count the number of interactions on one finger.

Time flies, but I never realized they had been there for nine whole years.

My justification for never getting to know them is because of their unique family situation, and the fact that they aren't the type of people I would normally spend time with. But my "justification" of the situation doesn't make it right.

I often complain that America is becoming less and less like the America that my parents grew up in. People aren't as kind to each other anymore. People look out for each other less. That's why I'm a fan of Texas. It's the last bastion of hope for American tradition and values. But today made me realize that maybe I'm just as much of the problem as anybody.

So here's a challenge for you today: reach out to someone you don't know - maybe someone you've seen for years but have never taken a moment to talk to. Take the initiative to be friendly. We were made to live in community with one another. Don't make it to the point that I have where I've realized I've wasted almost a decade to reach out and be a friend to the people who live right next door.

If there's one thing Apple likes to do, it's to tell everyone how awesome they are. At the beginning of every iPhone announcement, you can bet on them to give stats and metrics for at least a half hour about how they're killing the competition. But today, they used a metric that bears absolutely no validity, and thus required me ranting about it.

While Tim Cook was sharing that over 300 million iPods have been sold to date, he went on to make this comparison:

"It took Sony 30 years to sell 220,000 Walkman casette players."

Yeah. Okay. Thanks Tim. Good for you.

In other news, I've made more money in the past 5 years than I did in the previous 100 years combined.