Let’s Not Be Bullies

I was in the car going home and I tiredly remarked, “When will life become something steady?”

Within an hour or so, the feeling passed. I didn’t sign up for a safe life. I’ve always done things things a bit..differently? weirdly? I don’t always do things people agree with. Actually, I can usually be found doing something a host of people don’t agree with.

I was 18 years old and I remember going home from university to find out I had been the talk of town. Somehow I had become notorious in the small tight knit desi (South Asian) community of Fort McMurray because someone saw me hanging out with a boy – nevermind that he was my partner for philosophy class and we were working on a project. I was the talk of parties and the gossip behind my back became so far flung it was nothing like the truth. Continue reading “Let’s Not Be Bullies”

I launched a podcast (because I didn’t already have enough to do)

If you haven’t already heard, I launched a podcast about 10 days ago.

Yes, I’m up to my ears in work and I added yet another thing onto my list of things to do.

Of course, I had to make it even harder:

the first season of the podcast is a daily episode for 30 days straight.

Continue reading “I launched a podcast (because I didn’t already have enough to do)”

What Happened in February + March

The first quarter of 2016 just flew by! If you missed the January update, here it is. Now it’s time to do a brief update on what happened in February and March.

Highlights

  • Wanderoak launched a client website, The Tempest, to rave reviews, and we are still continually improving and tweaking it. Super looking forwarding to working with this amazing media company.
  • I pulled a record 19 hour work day during the launch of The Tempest, which amazes and horrifies me in equal parts.
  • I dislocated a bone in my foot, which is finally healing but totally put a stop to any sort of gym activities.
  • I went rollerblading and fell 7 million times but had a lot of fun and definitely want to do it again.
  • Wanderoak soft launched a service called One Thing Better.
  • I wrote 6 posts in February and 2 posts in March.
  • I read two books in February and 0 in March.
  • I launched a brand new auroobaahmed.com, it’s still in progress, but I’m pleased with the direction it’s headed in. Continue reading “What Happened in February + March”

Running a Service Business: Operate in good faith, act with good will

I’m part of a number of Facebook groups – some related to WordPress, others about creativity, and many small business communities. A couple days ago, someone posted about their shipping rates having disappeared on their website and if someone could help, because their original developer wasn’t responding. I offered to take a look. The original developer had used an outdated and unsupported plugin that had known issues clearly documented in the reviews and around the web from way before the website was ever created. Yet he had used it, because it was free and seemed to have worked when he installed it.

Then when it stopped working and his customer frantically reached out to him, he gave her the cold shoulder. I also learned that he frequently did that with the client and failed to ever explain how things actually work. It left the client feeling bewildered and afraid to change anything lest their site broke. Continue reading “Running a Service Business: Operate in good faith, act with good will”

Building a Cleaner Navigation in WordPress

This is something I’ve played around with for a couple years. I dislike the default output of the WordPress navigation walker, however, it has some useful qualities. Specifically, the classes on links, I use them quite a lot to style different states.

A lot of websites have a flat one-level navigation, which means, ideally the nav can and should look like this:

<nav>
    <a href="/">This is a link</a>
    <a href="/">This is a link</a>
    <a href="/">This is a link</a>
</nav>

Continue reading “Building a Cleaner Navigation in WordPress”