PDD Shop Talk Posts

Poll: Should the PDD Calendar display or hide event descriptions?

Two weeks ago we launched the new PDD Calendar (in test mode) and asked you for feedback. Although we received good feedback in general, there was one specific area we asked about as an afterthought in the comments and didn’t get much response on, so we’ll ask again in a more obvious and simple-to-respond-to way (though it still requires some degree of explanation):

How would you like the entries on any given day to look?

Introducing PDD Calendar Beta Test +

Perfect Duluth Day is launching an events calendar, and for the next month or so you can preview it at it’s permanent URL:

perfectduluthday.com/calendar

We have created this calendar because a majority of posts to the PDD Blog are about events, but the format of a blog is not a practical way to organize that type of information. If you wanted to know what’s happening today based on PDD posts, you’d have to select the “events” category and skim through weeks of random items looking for today’s date. That is lame.

So today our calendar is born. It doesn’t have a ton of events in it yet, and it probably has some technical issues left to be fixed, but the general format is set and it has seemed to be working well during our initial testing phase.

Check it out and tell us what you think with a comment to this post or an e-mail to calendar @ perfectduluthday.com.

Happy eighth birthday to us

PDD36MolinaSky PDD1Rhubarb PDD2Birthday PDD3KeepAways PDD4GreenMan OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA PDD6ChrisMonroe PDD7Biodiesel PDD8Gartman PDD8Turtles PDD9VicariousHalloween PDD10Martha PDD11Snowboard PDD12Bergson OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA PDD15Persch OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA PDD17Maria PDD18TShirt PDD19MariaBoots PDD20ChrisPlys OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA PDD22Sharyn PDD23OlYeller PDD24BadCat PDD25Geek PDD26Zra PDD27Squid PDD28Cachee PDD29Holden PDD30HipHopCandyShop PDD31Maria PDD32Lefty PDD33Paul PDD34PromWonderful PDD35DuluthSick

Perfect Duluth Day is eight years old today – Wednesday, June 29. We’ll be celebrating tonight at Burrito Union around 8:30ish. Stop on by. There will be a weird cake and an array of door prizes. (We’ll probably be out on the deck — space and weather permitting — so look there first. Find the people with cake on their lips.)

Also, yours truly (Paul Lundgren) will be a guest today on “The Local” with Christine Dean the Radio Queen, celebrating PDD’s birthday by playing songs with “Duluth” in the lyrics or title. That’s at 5 p.m. on 103.3 FM KUMD.

Thanks to Barrett and Starfire for starting this thing and to all you bloggers, cloggers and corn doggers who keep it going. We’re on a pace to hit 10,000 posts before the end of the year. That’s kind of something.

PDD Gravatar Poll Championship

Which PDD user has the best Gravatar?

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This poll is now closed. The results were:

Don Ness — 49.2 percent

Bev — 19.7 percent

TimK — 16.6 percent

Hot Shot — 14.4

(About Gravatars)

PDD Gravatar Poll, Fourth Bracket

Which PDD user has the best Gravatar?

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This poll is now closed. The results were:

Hot Shot — 54.1 percent

Tamara — 15.3 percent

Ethan — 11.8 percent

Mary — 9.4 percent

Edgeways — 9.4 percent

(About Gravatars)

Eighth Birthday Party Announcement and Other PDD-related Matters

Next Wednesday, June 29, is Perfect Duluth Day’s eighth birthday. As usual, we are having a little get-together, and as usual we are inviting you all, as frightening as that might seem.

So swing on by the Burrito Union next Wednesday in the vague window of 8:30 to 10 p.m. or so. There will be no program or live music or plan to get people drunk and sell them condos; it’s just our annual opportunity to meet in person and shoot the breeze with the folks who put the P in our double-D.

In addition, yours truly will be a guest on “The Local” with Christine Dean next week, celebrating PDD’s birthday by playing songs with “Duluth” in the lyrics or title. That’s Wednesday, June 29, 5 p.m., on 103.3 FM KUMD.

By the way, we should probably let you all know what’s up with some of the technical weirdness PDD intermittently experienced in recent weeks. Here are the boring details:

PDD Disinfected. Resume blogging.

Sorry about the little Malware problem earlier today.

I’d tell you what happened, but then I’d have to ask the tech guy and he’d have to explain it to me and, well … it’s a nice day and the problem is solved.

PDD Gravatar Poll, Third Bracket

A: B: C: D:

Which PDD user has the best Gravatar?

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(About Gravatars)

PDD Gravatar Poll, Second Bracket

A. B. C. D.

Which PDD user has the best Gravatar?

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(About Gravatars)

PDD Gravatar Poll, First Bracket

A. B. C. D.

Which PDD user has the best Gravatar?

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(About Gravatars)

1,000 Perfect Duluth Day Users

Perfect Duluth Day hit a milestone today at 4:28 p.m. when the user “emmajoru” created an account and made the post below about the Low concert. PDD now has 1,000 contributors.

You could win $100! Yes, it’s time once again to feed the PDD marketing weasel by taking a privacy-invading survey

PDDMarketingWeasel89457Every other year or so, Perfect Duluth Day conducts a survey of its readers in an effort to figure out who they are and what their deal is. To make up for the privacy invasion, we offer the chance to win $100 in a drawing, which convinces everyone to proceed without reservation or contempt.

The survey is now closed.

Why do PDD’s powers-that-be ignore their natural Minnesota Lutheran shame and prod you to disclose information that is none of their business? Because that’s how the vicious gears of capitalism work, you silly goose.

PDD’s little upgrade and the glitch with the Smart Unread Comments plugin

If you’re one of those compulsive people who likes to read every single comment on Perfect Duluth Day, the past few days have been a challenge for you.

The “Comments” column on the left is supposed to show which posts have new comments you haven’t read, but it hasn’t been working since PDD upgraded to WordPress 3.0.4 on Dec. 31.

In the meantime, if you’re noticing anything else not functioning properly since the upgrade, let us know. The comment thing is the only thing we’ve noticed.

UPDATE: The problem was fixed on Jan. 3, so there should be no more issues.

HotMaids post removed

A note from your friendly neighborhood PDD moderators:

Many people read and commented on a post from August 29 about a cleaning business called HotMaids. We have decided to remove the post due to deceptive tactics engaged in by the author of the post, who is also the owner of the business.

Many of the comments responding to the post were made by the author, under multiple names, all raving about what a great idea the business is. Initially we removed those comments and left the post up, but ultimately we felt the entire thing should be removed.

The post also received many negative comments from people who did not appreciate the nature of the business. That had nothing to do with why the post was removed. We simply felt that the deceitful tactics of the author were reason enough to include the phrase “let the buyer beware” at the front end of the discussion.

With that in mind, we now resume the forum on this topic — unless everyone prefers to ignore it at this point.

Perfect Duluth Day’s Seventh Anniversary Tofu Raffle

Lithis is the proud winner of the PDD Tofu Raffle.