I got this from Jen this morning, under the heading I have a totally sick sense of humor: “All Wal-Mart and K-Mart stores in Iraq will be closing on or before March 17th. After that, they will all become Targets.”

Winner, Worst Customer Support/Runner-Up, Poorly Designed Website: NikonUSA. Go to their site and attempt to find the support section. Or, try to find an informational page on a camera not created in Flash. Flash should be banished to designers’ websites, K10K, and humorous 2-minute cartoon videos, not commercial product pages. Get that through your thick, vacant skulls, you marketing hacks.

Meanwhile, Nikon does not have the manual available as a PDF on their site, and the printed version is backordered for up to three weeks. Thanks.

Runner-Up, Worst Customer Support: Buy.com, for only responding to inquiries via email and charging $9.95 to talk to a warm body. I’m about ( ) this close to cancelling the order. On the positive side, I got the memory I ordered this afternoon.

On other fronts, I visited Mike Lee’s site and noticed he’s jetting out to Portland to attend an information architecture summit. I got to thinking, and did a little research, and I’m looking at a few different associations around the country wondering if joining would be a worthwhile investment. I definitely have some required reading to catch up on—a good idea for my upcoming plane rides.

All that led me to Chris Crawford’s excellent (and weighty) repository of game development (and other) writing. There’s lots to read and digest in here, and I’m looking forward to diving in.