PDD Shop Talk Posts

Happy 14th birthday to us

Today marks 14 years since Barrett Chase and Scott Lunt launched Perfect Duluth Day. Celebrate with us tonight at Sir Benedict’s Tavern on the Lake from 5 to 7 p.m. There will be live music by Woodblind and free coleslaw.

Pressroom Podcast: PDD on the DNT


Click the lil’ triangle above to hear a 37-minute podcast about Perfect Duluth Day on the eve of its 14th anniversary.

Duluth News Tribune Pressroom Podcast hosts Christa Lawler and Brady Slater talk with PDD grand poobah Paul Lundgren, food and drink reporter Lissa Maki, and PDD co-founder Barrett Chase (who left PDD in 2015 to become a web editor at the DNT).

Perfect Duluth Day’s 14th birthday party is Thursday, June 29, from 5-7 p.m. at Sir Benedict’s Tavern on the Lake. Free coleslaw while supplies last!

Answer eleven questions, potentially win $100

PDDMarketingWeaselEvery two years or so, the Perfect Duluth Day Marketing Weasel crawls out from behind his desk and demands a survey be conducted. The purpose is to gather information to aid in the selling of little square advertisements to fund the operation of this website. In order to make this infiltration of PDD’s blog content space seem tolerable, the survey is kept to a simple one-page, eleven-question, completely optional task with a $100 prize drawing when the survey period ends.

The survey is now complete; thanks to those who participated.

If you are offended about even being asked, we understand. All we can do is meekly apologize and point out PDD’s content is always offered completely free to readers. We don’t run pop-up ads, we don’t scramble our pages like ugly jigsaw puzzles with cheesy animations and auto-playing videos. We just run a few modest little promotional squares for businesses that are almost entirely local and reputable. (There is one ad dished out by Google Adsense that we roll our eyes at from time to time, but that’s as bad as it gets.)

PDD Herzog Zone

If you’ve followed Perfect Duluth Day for any length of time you know one of the more prolific commenters is “Helmut Flaag,” who for a five-year stretch went under the handle “Herzog.” I’m often curious about whether people enjoy his contributions or find them annoying.

Personally, and as one of the moderators of PDD, I have mixed feelings. I often find Helmut/Herzog’s remarks to be well crafted and amusing, but they occasionally consist of a flurry of antagonistic threadjacks about how lumbersexuals are destroying rock and roll with their old-time banjo music.

So it’s time to start a thread specifically dedicated to our mysterious opinionated friend.

PDD Holiday Socks

pdd-reindeer-socks

We’re going to try something, offering some PDD Holiday swag for you to sport at your holiday gatherings. You can pre-order some Warhol-ish funky socks with the PDD smokin’ reindeer on them.

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If 20 or more people order them, the order goes through, and everyone receives socks in about 4 weeks. If less than 20 people order, they don’t get made. So spread the news, we’ve only got 7 days.

Click here to order:
bakdrop.com/products/perfectduluthday

You are not a robot

pdd-recaptchaPerfect Duluth Day blog administrators have noticed an increase recently in the number of users changing their passwords, and we’ve also had a few people write to us indicating their login process is being thwarted with the phrase: “Error: You have entered an incorrect reCAPTCHA value.”

So heads up if you are having trouble logging in: As annoying as it is, you have to remember to check the box that reads “I am not a robot.”

This extra step was implemented a month or so ago to keep out the robots that create accounts on PDD, log in, and attempt to post spam. Until we create good robots to kill the evil robots, the reCAPTCHA box will be necessary. You don’t have to enter any words or pass any picture box test in most cases, unless maybe you log in from a place you don’t usually log in. But you must check the box.

Call for Halloween Banners

pumpkin-banner-call
We want to see your Halloween photos at the top of this page as banners. Keep in mind the hauntingly horizontal format, it can be tricky to work with, but a treat when it works well.

Sorry, that was terrible.

Click here for complete submission guidelines, but the basics are: 1135 pixels wide by 197 pixels high, e-mail them to [email protected]. We’ll put them in rotation near the end of the month.

pddbannerpl391

Job opening: Save the PDD Calendar editor from going batty

pddAre you ready to make slightly above minimum wage with no benefits while working in your pajamas at home? Then Perfect Duluth Day needs you. Running the PDD Calendar is sucking the life out of the editor and his previous assistant has too much collegiate stuff to deal with at the moment. So here’s a rare opportunity to get inside the PDD media empire. Read the full job description on the PDD employment page.

Selling promotional squares for financial remuneration

always be closingAs a constantly growing media giant, Perfect Duluth Day is once again looking to expand its crew of people who sell those advertisements that are so handsomely stacked on the right column of the pages of this website (or in between the content if you are looking at PDD on a smartphone).

If you are an outgoing and enterprising person who enjoys rubbing elbows with decision makers at local businesses, click here to read the job description.

If you are a reader of PDD who hates advertising and gets nervous when reading something like this, rest assured that although PDD strives to sell more advertising to support its vast infrastructure, ads on the site will continue to be confined to appropriate space and never come in the form of a pop-up or auto-play video. We respect you too much for that.

Happy Thirteenth Birthday to Us

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Perfect Duluth Day is thirteen years old today — Wednesday, June 29, 2016. The official celebration is at Vikre Distillery in Canal Park. Here’s a link to the Facebook invite. Come on down.

From the PDD Archives: Help Wanted 2 Bucks

Help Wanted Two Bucks

Ten years ago today Starfire posted this handmade flier he found while walking his dog.

New PDD Calendar is up and running today

PDD Calendar 2016 Sample EventsThe new design of the PDD Calendar launched today. There are still a few elements to it that we will be cleaning up over the next few weeks, but it’s time to just let it rip and put it into service.

Why did we switch? When we launched the previous version of the PDD Calendar in 2011 there weren’t any good WordPress plugins for the type of event calendar we wanted. So we built our own. As the years went on, WordPress plugins surpassed our ability to innovate — or at least find the time to innovate — and our calendar was also in need of a design change to match the responsive design of our blog, adjusting to various screensizes for optimal viewing on iPhones and tablets. We decided to make this change over a year ago; finally got around to it now.

Feel free to begin complaining or complimenting the new calendar in the comments, or call/email. Mention problems if you see them, and we’ll either fix them or explain why what you think is broken is really just the best we can do.

We anticipate you will think the new calendar can’t do things the old calendar did, but once you get used to the new navigation you will see that it does. Pretty much every feature the old calendar had the new calendar has, except for the one thing we are working on and the one thing we haven’t thought of. Please tell us about that thing we haven’t thought of.

Halloween Banners

ZombieBanner-Call

Time to send ’em in. Your creepy, comical, kooky Halloween banner photos, those long skinny photos at the top of the page. Click here for complete submission guidelines, but the basics are: 1135 pixels wide by 197 pixels high, e-mail them to [email protected]

Happy dozenth birthday to us

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Perfect Duluth Day is twelve years old today – Monday, June 29, 2015. The official celebration is at the Red Herring Lounge tonight at 8 p.m. Because it’s our dozenth birthday, there will be complimentary doughnuts from A Dozen Excuses Donuts. Serving as video DJ will be Lake Superior Aquaman. And there will be prizes and merriment as usual.

PDDXII Facebook invite (consider yourself invited)

Thanks to all of you for helping to keep Perfect Duluth Day perfect!

Opportunity to win $100 by hardly selling your soul at all

PDDMarketingWeaselIn general we do our best at Perfect Duluth Day to avoid getting all up in your face with advertising-related gimmicks. Every two years or so, however, the PDD Marketing Weasel comes waltzing out with his devilish wink and snappy blue tie and demands we conduct a survey to help him sell the modest square boxes that appear on the right column of this website and supply the vast fortune that keeps our media empire thriving.

For the sake of our collective shame, we offer survey participants an entry into a $100-prize drawing. Who wouldn’t concede to a minor privacy invasion for the chance to win a fat C-note? It’s a pretty simple survey, after all.

This survey has concluded. Thanks for participating.