PDD Shop Talk
PDD Job Opening: Sell square boxes for fun and profit
Two seasoned professionals are about to leave the Perfect Duluth Day Media Empire. Brianna Hall-Nelson is moving to Denver to further her education; Brian Timm is giving up his PDD side-hustle to focus more on his work as a kitchen and bath designer.
That means Duluth’s Duluthiest website is looking for a new person to join its crew selling the advertisements that so handsomely stack on the right column of pages on this website (or in between the content if you are looking at PDD on a smartphone).
Click here to read the full job description and find out how to apply.
Brianna has been with PDD for three years, and Brian for eight. We’ll miss having them on the precipice of our tabernacle, tickling our 50 and sharing in other inside jokes that make no sense outside the PDD siblinghood. And we look forward to meeting the newbie and developing a whole new “slanguage.”
“Where in Duluth?” PDD 15th Anniversary Challenge Recap
Here’s a storymap that sums up the “Where in Duluth?” PDD 15th Anniversary Challenge and the winners.
PDD Job Opening: Assistant to the Calendar Editor
How does Perfect Duluth Day publish 800 events per month in its online events calendar? Through the hard work of Tony Bennett, Jessica Morgan and the occasional intern, that’s how. Sadly, Jessica will be leaving Duluth soon, and if someone new isn’t quickly found to help Tony he’ll collapse on his laptop and weep uncontrollably.
So here’s another rare opportunity to get inside the PDD media empire and earn slightly above minimum wage with no benefits while working in pajamas. Read the full job description on the PDD employment page.
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. (more…)
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
Every 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.) (more…)
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. (more…)
PDD Holiday 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. (more…)
You are not a robot
Perfect 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

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 banners@perfectduluthday.com. We’ll put them in rotation near the end of the month.
Job opening: Save the PDD Calendar editor from going batty
Are 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
As 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
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
Ten years ago today Starfire posted this handmade flier he found while walking his dog.
New PDD Calendar is up and running today
The 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. (more…)
Halloween Banners
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 banners@perfectduluthday.com
Happy dozenth birthday to us
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
In 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.
(more…)
Perfect Day Duluth
Is it just me or do you notice that a lot of people refer to this blog as “Perfect Day Duluth?”
1) What’s up with that? Why do people make that mistake?
2) When they do, do you correct them? How do you correct them without sounding like a pretentious know-it-all? I am a pretentious know-it-all, so that’s why I ask.
New calendar editor and a 2004 flashback
We threw all the résumés up in the air and one of them landed on top. Tony Bennett is the new editor of the PDD Calendar. His credentials include writing for nearly every publication in town, fronting the band Cars & Trucks, working a camera for TV shows such as Almanac North and The PlayList and for dissecting the work of “positive bros” as the Duluth News Tribune‘s music critic.
Tony can be reached via e-mail at tony @ perfectduluthday.com or calendar @ perfectduluthday.com.
(more…)
Job Opening: PDD Calendar Editor Version 3.0
Mr. Lawrence Lee, superhero editor of the PDD Calendar since April 2012, has announced his desire for fewer responsibilities. He is resigning his position, and will step down in October, when a qualified intrepid soul will be anointed to continue the mission. We promise not to turn the job interview process into a reality TV show, but we can’t say it won’t be competitive.
Follow this link to the PDD Employment page to read the job description.
During what will end up being a two-and-a-half-year stint, Lawrence will have presided over the publishing of more than 20,000 events in the calendar — and he didn’t even start getting bug eyed until a couple months ago. He plans to stay on as a contributor to the calendar, so the next person to join the ranks of PDD’s sterling staff will benefit from his wisdom and his ongoing efforts. That said, we will not accept a mere mortal taking over the reins. The bar has been set too high.
Introducing Perfect Duluth Day’s new responsive design
It’s been over five years since we’ve freshened things up around here. Welcome to the new look of PDD. At the moment we’re still fixing all the things that are breaking left and right as a result of messing with the layout of the PDD Blog, but soon things will be functioning better than ever.
Here are some fancy bullet points to get you up to speed:
- What we have done, essentially, is changed PDD’s WordPress theme. The result is a responsive design that will adapt to whatever device you are using to view this website.
- If you are on a desktop computer, you’ll notice the content field is bigger and the navigation sidebar that used to be on the left of all pages is gone. Everything that was there is still available through the navigation at the top of the page.
- If you are on a phone or tablet, everything about this website should look much better.
Happy eleventeenth birthday to us
Perfect Duluth Day is eleven years old today – Sunday, June 29, 2014. The official celebration is at Carmody Irish Pub tonight at 8 p.m. Fabulous prizes will be awarded to the top finishers of this week’s Pub Quiz, the questions for which will all be related to PDD. It’s a super tough quiz, so study intensively.
(more…)
Homegrown Banners
We’re looking for new Homegrown photo banners to run across the top of PDD during the festival. Photos shot at last year’s festival are the best candidates, but if there are compelling images of preparations for this year, I suppose that’s fair game too. For full details on banner submissions, click here. The basic info is the image must be 960 pixels wide by 167 pixels high. The Perfect Duluth Day logo will be added by PDD’s art department. Send them to banners @ perfectduluthday.com.
The Homegrown banners will replace the regular banner photos at the top of the page starting Sunday.
What’s more American than PDD?
I don’t recognize any of the PDD community in this trailer. Were we all out of town when this guy rolled his Airstream through Duluth?































































































