The bucket trap worked! More than 2 weeks after the poor girl popped out of her unlatched cage top while we vacationed in sunny Rochester, she is back in her cage, and, well, a lot worse for the wear. George set up a bucket in the laundry room, after we saw her down the basement a couple of days ago, and leaned it against a chair, put her food dish in the bottom of the bucket, and tossed some clothes around that would allow her to climb up and INTO the tilted bucket, from which her escape would be MOST unlikely.
Well, she fell for it, poor thing. I came down to take Jenna to school this morning and there was Coco in her bucket!
She lost A LOT of weight, her hair is all matted, and she looks like death warmed over. But she's had a half bottle of water today and a half dish of hamster food, so here's hoping she's on the mend. I hope she takes it slow but steady. I respect an animal who can figure out how to deal for more than two weeks on dirty laundry and dust mites.
Hey, you can lead a Hamster to water....
August 15, 2005
August 14, 2005
Asian Spam
I made the mistake of finally (after years of avoiding it) clicking 'yes' to install one of those other-language packs from, I guess, Microsoft--I dunno. I know I had often gone to websites or received emails that wanted me to install the language packs and I avoided it. Well, by mistake, when I received an email from a client in Italy, I clicked yes, and NOW I am fortunate enough to receive much foreign-language spam! I can't read Chinese. I will never open it. Make it stop.
August 13, 2005
Cult U 3
The third in our series of Cult Universities this evening is The Kabbalah Center--and don't forget your shiny red string to protect against the "evil eye." Look, I'm Sicilian, I'll tell you about the evil eye, and no red string protects you from it, you too-much-money-having Madonna Wannabes. Unless it's a red string with an Italian Horn hanging from it. The thing that looks like a large penis that you wear around your neck.
Jeesh. Can't even rip off an ancient idea right.
Jeesh. Can't even rip off an ancient idea right.
Cult U2
Endeavor Academy is the second school in tonight's Cult University Classics.
RUN! It's A Course in Miracles Run Amuck (as if ACIM Light isn't amuck enough).
This is your mind.
This is your mind on the New Age.
RUN! It's A Course in Miracles Run Amuck (as if ACIM Light isn't amuck enough).
This is your mind.
This is your mind on the New Age.
Now is it time at last to free yourself from this chaotic world of loneliness and loss and pain and death. A world constructed by your own nightmare of self-identity. It was only a meaningless place that justified your continuing need of self-sacrifice and annihilation. You have been using it in order to verify and sustain your apparent existence, and now at last it has become intolerable to you.errrr huh? I think I need to be held back a grade.
Cult U
This prep school is a boarding school for budding scientologists.
I wonder how many black scientologists there are? I'm thinking what, 1? 2?
fly me to the moon...
Remember, at Cult U, "philosophy" credits transfer as Mind Control 101 at most non-cult institutions.
I wonder how many black scientologists there are? I'm thinking what, 1? 2?
fly me to the moon...
Remember, at Cult U, "philosophy" credits transfer as Mind Control 101 at most non-cult institutions.
Calling Smart CEOs
I'm writing an article for this year's Global PR Blog Week with some other smokin' authors. My article's entitled: Adding Your Voice to the Conversation — Why CEOs Should Blog. I'm taking the Yes You Should side of the coin, with some wise nuggets tossed in to make sure CEOs take the smart path to blogdom.
PR PEOPLE AND CORP COMM FOLKS: I want to interview a few blogging CEOs for this article. [i.e., get them some ink, get me some quotes--you know how it works.] So, get your blogging CEO's email addresses, contact info, and/or best times to talk to me next week, kay? ewriter@bellsouth.net. Cell: 678-294-0900.
peace-out.
cross posted at: the content factor blog
PR PEOPLE AND CORP COMM FOLKS: I want to interview a few blogging CEOs for this article. [i.e., get them some ink, get me some quotes--you know how it works.] So, get your blogging CEO's email addresses, contact info, and/or best times to talk to me next week, kay? ewriter@bellsouth.net. Cell: 678-294-0900.
peace-out.
cross posted at: the content factor blog
15th Day of Freedom
We had a Coco spotting today!!! She's alive and in our basement, under the drum stage. I spied her after Jenna as she scooted across the floor and behind the bookshelf! We are now coming up with ways to catch her.
Easy to find Corporate Blogging White Paper
I added a link to my corporate blogging white paper -- To Blog or Not to Blog? {PDF} -- on the sidebar so it's easy to get to. It's also linked over at The Content Factor blog and I think on our site.
A new version is coming when I figure out how to use indesign and make two corrections--spell Glenn Reynolds name right (two n's) and re-add Chief Blogging Officer to the resource list. Long story. Longer assignment considering I have to GET the templates from a design firm with whom I've had a ...errrr... little disagreement, and then figure out if I can afford to GET and LEARN InDesign.
Quark or InDesign--pros and cons? I need to get back to doing some low-level design stuff myself. I was never great, but I was okay back in the day.
A new version is coming when I figure out how to use indesign and make two corrections--spell Glenn Reynolds name right (two n's) and re-add Chief Blogging Officer to the resource list. Long story. Longer assignment considering I have to GET the templates from a design firm with whom I've had a ...errrr... little disagreement, and then figure out if I can afford to GET and LEARN InDesign.
Quark or InDesign--pros and cons? I need to get back to doing some low-level design stuff myself. I was never great, but I was okay back in the day.
August 12, 2005
This little widget looks cool.
This little widget from my google adsense ads, which I just clicked through -- seeing things about being tired up there in the ads, and still being tired myself -- looks pretty cool. You might say, Jeneane, it's august and you're in georgia. why are you thinking about seasonal affective disorder? I might answer--I'm not sure. I just feel like it's winter now and I'm holed up like it's 20 degrees out not 90. I think because school has started and I'm waking up when it's still dark. So it must be winter, right? No? Try telling my internal clock that.
I couldn't figure out how much this little lightbox is, but I'd actually think about getting something like this for the winter. I just wish it tanned too.
Of course, a trip to Jamaica in November might achieve the same effect...
I couldn't figure out how much this little lightbox is, but I'd actually think about getting something like this for the winter. I just wish it tanned too.
Of course, a trip to Jamaica in November might achieve the same effect...
August 11, 2005
Working all night working all day
With this schedule change I keep griping about, you see, is work--I'm like a trick worker (that's what we called them up north in the western ny belt of factories, kodak, baush & lomb, and the like. So I'm now switching shifts. All summer I slept in with Jenna and worked from about 10 a.m. - 2 a.m. or 3 a.m., with swimming and friends' houses interpsersed, so that's a usual 15 hour work day with five hours set aside for active momming (rather than passive momming) where we do stuff. I guess we'll call that B. Shift + C shift combo., which brings the average down to a 10 hour work day spread across late morning - late afternoon and picked up again early evening through early morning.
Now I'm on the damn A trick, up at the time I'd usually be doing my sleeping from the night shift, and tired when I should be awake, and now I've switched my active work versus active momming timeframes. And active work is from 8 a.m. until 2 p.m., then picked up again at 8 p.m. until 2 a.m., which essentally equals two additional hours of ACTIVE WORKING, since the time bewteen 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. is my active MOMMING time.
So essentially this new shift adds two extra hours of active work time (at the time I'm usually asleep) and one additional hour of active momming time (right in the middle of the day).
Ergo, I now need another three hours added on to my day, and I am not sure now when to be sleeping and when to be thinking.
I started to do both, which is probably why I keep having dreams about the missing hamster.
back to work.
Now I'm on the damn A trick, up at the time I'd usually be doing my sleeping from the night shift, and tired when I should be awake, and now I've switched my active work versus active momming timeframes. And active work is from 8 a.m. until 2 p.m., then picked up again at 8 p.m. until 2 a.m., which essentally equals two additional hours of ACTIVE WORKING, since the time bewteen 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. is my active MOMMING time.
So essentially this new shift adds two extra hours of active work time (at the time I'm usually asleep) and one additional hour of active momming time (right in the middle of the day).
Ergo, I now need another three hours added on to my day, and I am not sure now when to be sleeping and when to be thinking.
I started to do both, which is probably why I keep having dreams about the missing hamster.
back to work.
Back to school 2
A month from now all of you northerners are going to be complaining about back to school time and school supplies and getting up early and carpool lines and foul-mouth bus language and uniforms (if you got 'em) and more. AND guess what. I'll be into our new routine by then, trapsing happily off to carpool with a half-gallon of coffee on the dashboard. So don't sit there all cavalier with your "summer is so much fun" posts and expect my sympathy after labor day, you late bloomers. What's the matter with you up there? Get those kids back to school!
The Name Game
Geek Streak has an interview with Kaneva's Chris Klaus here.
Here's how the 'marketplace' concept of Kaneva is shaking out:
It's fun watching Kaneva take shape. What I like about these guys is that they've been willing to "open the kimono" and let developers and plain old curious noodlers like me sign up and go in and sniff around. Chris Klaus has been open to answering questions and taking feedback on how the platform CAN work for game developers, etc. To me, that's fun. Or maybe I've just got a thing for betas. ;-)
Here's how the 'marketplace' concept of Kaneva is shaking out:
Distribution and hosting are two of the biggest barriers that exist today in MMO game development. Distribution is also a major barrier for film makers today. At Kaneva, we offer game developers a fully featured, freely downloadable platform to easily and quickly create games along with Managed Game Services so that game developers can focus on making great games, bringing them to market quickly, and earning sizeable royalties for their work.
Once game development is complete or in beta, developers utilize Kaneva's Managed Game Services for game distribution and hosting. These services also include billing, tracking and security – basically everything you need to successfully host and earn money for your online game. We also provide the developer with an opportunity to earn up to 70% royalties based on revenue size. Our Managed Game Services eliminate the need for developers to make expensive investments in the infrastructure needed to run an MMO.
It's fun watching Kaneva take shape. What I like about these guys is that they've been willing to "open the kimono" and let developers and plain old curious noodlers like me sign up and go in and sniff around. Chris Klaus has been open to answering questions and taking feedback on how the platform CAN work for game developers, etc. To me, that's fun. Or maybe I've just got a thing for betas. ;-)
August 10, 2005
BlogHer Videos I can't wait to watch.
J.D. Lassica interviewed a bunch of folks at blogher, and his videos are up. Thanks to David for the link--I can't wait to watch!
Doc takes on the Hospitality Industry
THANK GOODNESS Doc is taking it to the hospitality industry in a post where he says "freaking" so you know he's really pissed off. And he's right. How "Duh" can one industry be?
Already it's 2005, and all the hotels (like all the airlines and rental car agencies) still sit out there in their silos, with their stupid, deaf, blind CRM systems, trying to trap and hold (or, in slaveholder parlance, own) customers — about whom their systems know as little as possible — inside. Rather than engage in a truly free (and therefore open) marketplace.I wish some hospitality industry publications would pick up his post as an article so that the lodging industry's more narrow-thinking readers might catch a clue.
First day of school in da South
My baby girl started second grade this morning. They have guinnea pigs in her classrom. She is happy.
"FINALLY! A class pet!"
I remember starting second grade.
I don't remember it being so STINKING EARLY IN THE MORNING.
as you were.
"FINALLY! A class pet!"
I remember starting second grade.
I don't remember it being so STINKING EARLY IN THE MORNING.
as you were.
What's worse than not blogging? Erratic blogging.
From a reader's perspective, don't you get all "rrrrghh" when your favorite bloggers start altering their usual posting schedule? No matter how loose that schedule might be, or how much of an unschedule it is, I get this quickening-skip-a-beat feeling when I see that my favorite reads aren't posting, then they will, then won't then will, then won't.
Now, with Bloglines, if I see that you're not bolded for one or two days, and you're someone who usually posts 22 in a day, and and then you start giving me only 2 or 3 a day for a while, I get momentarily mad at you. It would make me less mad if you didn't blog at all, because my scanning routine could resume without pause. The funny part is, that momentary disappointment doesn't last. It's a micro-emotion that forms and expunges itself in seconds. On online speed-of-feeling thing. It's weird.
So, you're probably micro-mad at me too. ;-)
Now, with Bloglines, if I see that you're not bolded for one or two days, and you're someone who usually posts 22 in a day, and and then you start giving me only 2 or 3 a day for a while, I get momentarily mad at you. It would make me less mad if you didn't blog at all, because my scanning routine could resume without pause. The funny part is, that momentary disappointment doesn't last. It's a micro-emotion that forms and expunges itself in seconds. On online speed-of-feeling thing. It's weird.
So, you're probably micro-mad at me too. ;-)
August 09, 2005
Planning Your Wedding
If you're going to live in the south, and if you think you and your fiance might one day start a family, then do not get married August 7-14 because if you DO one day have a kid, you will learn that back-to-school eve (preceeded by back-to-school supplies rush) will coincide with your anniversary every year, which means you really can't tear yourself away from your child to have a couples' reunion on your anniversary night. Fortunately we had a friend with kids babysit while we went out and engulfed a great Japanese dinner. Then home to reality, combing my Jenna's special hair and trying to transform it into the style she wants by bedtime, while wondering how I forgot to get the washable markers and what about her asthma forms for the clinic.
So, I'd go for July. Or September. Unless you live in the north. Then be careful of Labor Day.
Just a tip.
So, I'd go for July. Or September. Unless you live in the north. Then be careful of Labor Day.
Just a tip.
Baby Microsofties
Jenna was how old when the first Monkey Boy video came out featuring Ballmer? You guys tell me. She's seven now--so that would have been what, 3 years ago? So she was like 4 maybe? She remembers. How could you forget if you were a kid, this sweaty guy running across your mommy's laptop screaming like a monkey boy?
Well, the other night I was laughing at the re-mix with George and Jenna's like, is that monkey boy?! And I'm like, "Yep, it is, remember?" And she comes to watch and falls on the floor, just like when she was four or five, "That crazy monkey guy--why does he do that?" and I said, "He's excited about his company."
Tonight she was in the bath, it's the night before school here, her first day of second grade tomorrow, and I hear her doing her usual bathtub jabber. Then I hear:
"Developers, developers, developers, developers. Developers, developers, developers, developers," punctuated with a big Monkey Yell. And she's doing the chant and swishing the water around, doing her own 7-year-old Ballmer remix.
And I wonder, what the heck kind of brand building is this?
Well, the other night I was laughing at the re-mix with George and Jenna's like, is that monkey boy?! And I'm like, "Yep, it is, remember?" And she comes to watch and falls on the floor, just like when she was four or five, "That crazy monkey guy--why does he do that?" and I said, "He's excited about his company."
Tonight she was in the bath, it's the night before school here, her first day of second grade tomorrow, and I hear her doing her usual bathtub jabber. Then I hear:
"Developers, developers, developers, developers. Developers, developers, developers, developers," punctuated with a big Monkey Yell. And she's doing the chant and swishing the water around, doing her own 7-year-old Ballmer remix.
And I wonder, what the heck kind of brand building is this?
CoCo, Melanie, Where are you?
You know the pig has been gone. I told you all I called the EPA and Code Enforcement at the beginning of summer when my stupidass neighbor began dumping pig manure in the runoff-creek that borders our yard with our neighbor's yard, making for the most godawful smell you can imagine, unless you're from Iowa, and then you know what I mean.
Well, add one more animal to the "where the hell did that pet end up?" list. It seems that the matriarch of our hamster family, Coco, renamed Melanie after she became a mother and ate 13 babies, is not to be found anywhere in this house. My sister was pet-sitting while we were away. Somehow the top door wasn't shut just right and she got out. That was about 10 days ago. No sigh of Melanie ever since.
Jenna has been beside herself. I even got her to clean her room by saying, well, maybe she's in here somewhere, but that backfired when she began having visions of the hamster "POPPING UP" in her bed at night and ended up sleeping next to me. "IT MIGHT POP UP!"
We've set traps, we've left out sweet baby carrots, and I hate to say it, but I dream about her every night. I think George has had two dreams about her. Last night in my dream she was as big as an infant and I was cradling her and she was glad to see me.
Ambien's good food.
I won't say it, but the dog looks content.
Shit.
Well, add one more animal to the "where the hell did that pet end up?" list. It seems that the matriarch of our hamster family, Coco, renamed Melanie after she became a mother and ate 13 babies, is not to be found anywhere in this house. My sister was pet-sitting while we were away. Somehow the top door wasn't shut just right and she got out. That was about 10 days ago. No sigh of Melanie ever since.
Jenna has been beside herself. I even got her to clean her room by saying, well, maybe she's in here somewhere, but that backfired when she began having visions of the hamster "POPPING UP" in her bed at night and ended up sleeping next to me. "IT MIGHT POP UP!"
We've set traps, we've left out sweet baby carrots, and I hate to say it, but I dream about her every night. I think George has had two dreams about her. Last night in my dream she was as big as an infant and I was cradling her and she was glad to see me.
Ambien's good food.
I won't say it, but the dog looks content.
Shit.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAMES!
My brother-in-law James is always jittery that I'm going to drag him into my blog, some story of a family gathering gone haywire, or just talk about his big smile and happy eyes, or that picture of him holding Jenna on his chest when she was a baby. He does not want all that silly attention, but today he's getting it. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JAMES! I hope your day is peaceful and happy and that you and Annie have a GREAT GREAT day.
Jenna says hi and she liked riding in the front seat like a big kid. ;-)
Jenna says hi and she liked riding in the front seat like a big kid. ;-)
Mike Remembers...
Mike Rodriquez remembers 10 years later....
We ended up spending that night in Wyoming, and thought we'd likely stop one last time, around Reno or Lake Tahoe, before heading home. We did notice some sundogs late that afternoon while driving through northern Colorado, and we did spy a long freight train, thought it wasn't north bound and it wasn't raining.
August 07, 2005
There's no wrong time for a Ballmer Re-Mix
Just when it nearly slips from memory, there it is again, all newified.
Thanks Scobes. Can I call you Scobes?
Thanks Scobes. Can I call you Scobes?
Tools vs. Tendencies
Go read Shelley.
Very significant post on weighing and ranking and linking and algorithms -- and HUMANs.
If women are not as visible in weblogging (or technology or politics and so on) because of some escoteric to do with technology, then our problems could be easily solved. I would personally devote my life to finding the Woman Algorithm — the algorithm to give equality to women. But, as we’ve seen with the recent linking to BlogHer reports, the issue isn’t that simple. Even considering the fact that BlogHer was about women in weblogging, the single most linked individual post on the conference, was Jay Rosen’s–one of the few men to attend the conference.
Why was Jay’s the most linked? Well, some of it was because he provided a viewpoint that led to debate. He used a ‘confrotational’ term that was guaranteed to trigger furious dicussion. I linked to him for that specific reason, as did other people. However, Halley Suitt also wrote a post that generated much debate, and though it was also well linked, not as much as Jay’s. Does this, then, mean that Jay’s was a better post? No, not necessarily.
Very significant post on weighing and ranking and linking and algorithms -- and HUMANs.
August 06, 2005
Big Bird Blogging
I had a babysitting gig today that had me getting up at 7 a.m. to be there at 8:00. It was to help a friend who helps me out with Jenna some Wednesday nights. She had a work-related mandatory seminar--I love mandatory seminars on Saturday's myself. Uh huh. So I said sure, I'd bring Jenna over and her two kids, who adore mine, and vice versa, could play all day.
But I didn't figure on the parrot, least I think that's what kind of a bird it was. Not a Baretta bird, but a big green bird with an orange beak. He was there because my friend's brother-in-law was visiting the area and staying with them. And the bird was his.
HOLY SHIT THAT BIRD Screeches!
Can I just say that? Not a sqwak, but a SHRIEK. RRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! RRRDLEEEEEE! I mean to tell you, it goes straight to your eighth vertibrae, and if this isn't the reason for degenerative disc disease, I don't know what it is.
So, in addition to having the three loudest kids in Cobb County absolutely screaming for seven hours straight, I had this bird creature four feet from my ear SHRIEKING because it doesn't like noise or activity.
Yah, bird, neither do I. But I don't get to Screech about it.
But I didn't figure on the parrot, least I think that's what kind of a bird it was. Not a Baretta bird, but a big green bird with an orange beak. He was there because my friend's brother-in-law was visiting the area and staying with them. And the bird was his.
HOLY SHIT THAT BIRD Screeches!
Can I just say that? Not a sqwak, but a SHRIEK. RRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! RRRDLEEEEEE! I mean to tell you, it goes straight to your eighth vertibrae, and if this isn't the reason for degenerative disc disease, I don't know what it is.
So, in addition to having the three loudest kids in Cobb County absolutely screaming for seven hours straight, I had this bird creature four feet from my ear SHRIEKING because it doesn't like noise or activity.
Yah, bird, neither do I. But I don't get to Screech about it.
Remember when I redesigned the lame Orkut landing page?
I do--now who do you recognize? Romper stomper domper doo, I see Dean and Jon, and Marek and AKMA and Tom and Meg and ... and James Brown... and Dan Gilmore... and ... okay, who else?
Up Up and Away
Jenna has added another phobia to her list, my cautious yet daring second grader. Escalators have now joined tornadoes and bugs as Very Dangerous Things.
I was afraid of them too when I was little. I remember having the same near-refusals with my mother: I'll go up but I don't wanna go down.
My fear deepened when someone told me the story about the time my cousin Martie got her shoe stuck in the ridge where the stairs go under the platform at the bottom of the escalator--better known by a young me as that "forever place"-- and fell down. Martie had to take her shoe off to get her foot loose from the munching escalator. Patrons were apparently aghast.
I've found that the best plan is not to tell a little kid a story like that when you're busy convincing them that escalators are both handy and nice.
I still haven't told Jenna the cousin Martie story, although she met this cousin for the first time on our trip, and Martie's now 50ish, has both feet, so I guess all's well that ends well.
Anyway, I decided to work with Jenna a little on the "There's nothing to worry about--no one has EVER gotten their foot stuck while on an escalator before" thing during our visit to Rochester.
Kauffmans, a department store that used to be Sibley's, has some pretty old escalators--the kind that go slower, have wider and deeper steps, thicker handrails, and are, from a kid's perspective a lot more welcoming. They also don't go up very high, and you can see the UP and DOWN escalators from the same place. This is important. Because if your kid chickens out at the last minute, you want to be able to get back down to them before an unregistered sexual offender makes off with them.
So there we are, standing at the bottom of the department store escalator. I tell Jenna to look how nice and slow this one goes. Look how BIG the steps are--who could miss a step like that? NO body. SO easy. See that little girl step right on? You can Definitely Do This.
We walk closer and she tells me for the 12th time, "Look mom, it doesn't make sense. I mean, there's an elevator over there, and there must be a stairway, and I don't like the way these steps just pop out the way they do, and why can we not take the elevator? I don't want to go on it."
I reason with her, bribe her, and finally she decides to get a little closer. She spends some time, even touches a toe on the emerging step, and off. On and off with the toe like a phobic ballerina.
"SEE?! Isn't that cool?"
She evaluates the situation for a good two minutes. I take the opportunity to put a foot on the first step and grab her hand with a smile. We are going to beat this fear. Together.
"Come on--here I go--Come with me! One foot, NOW!"
Just then she steps back, knocks my hand away, and backs off the platform to the safety of the handbag rack.
Up I go. Solo.
I look to see where she is, and can't spy her right away, and then hear, "HEY, MOM! OVER HERE!"
There she is, at the bottom of the down escalator, smiling and waving, and waiting for my return.
Five minutes later on the way up the elevator, she declares a victory of sorts: "Well, I got close this time."
"Yep, you did."
I think about cousin Martie and her shoe and am suddenly glad for the elevator.
I was afraid of them too when I was little. I remember having the same near-refusals with my mother: I'll go up but I don't wanna go down.
My fear deepened when someone told me the story about the time my cousin Martie got her shoe stuck in the ridge where the stairs go under the platform at the bottom of the escalator--better known by a young me as that "forever place"-- and fell down. Martie had to take her shoe off to get her foot loose from the munching escalator. Patrons were apparently aghast.
I've found that the best plan is not to tell a little kid a story like that when you're busy convincing them that escalators are both handy and nice.
I still haven't told Jenna the cousin Martie story, although she met this cousin for the first time on our trip, and Martie's now 50ish, has both feet, so I guess all's well that ends well.
Anyway, I decided to work with Jenna a little on the "There's nothing to worry about--no one has EVER gotten their foot stuck while on an escalator before" thing during our visit to Rochester.
Kauffmans, a department store that used to be Sibley's, has some pretty old escalators--the kind that go slower, have wider and deeper steps, thicker handrails, and are, from a kid's perspective a lot more welcoming. They also don't go up very high, and you can see the UP and DOWN escalators from the same place. This is important. Because if your kid chickens out at the last minute, you want to be able to get back down to them before an unregistered sexual offender makes off with them.
So there we are, standing at the bottom of the department store escalator. I tell Jenna to look how nice and slow this one goes. Look how BIG the steps are--who could miss a step like that? NO body. SO easy. See that little girl step right on? You can Definitely Do This.
We walk closer and she tells me for the 12th time, "Look mom, it doesn't make sense. I mean, there's an elevator over there, and there must be a stairway, and I don't like the way these steps just pop out the way they do, and why can we not take the elevator? I don't want to go on it."
I reason with her, bribe her, and finally she decides to get a little closer. She spends some time, even touches a toe on the emerging step, and off. On and off with the toe like a phobic ballerina.
"SEE?! Isn't that cool?"
She evaluates the situation for a good two minutes. I take the opportunity to put a foot on the first step and grab her hand with a smile. We are going to beat this fear. Together.
"Come on--here I go--Come with me! One foot, NOW!"
Just then she steps back, knocks my hand away, and backs off the platform to the safety of the handbag rack.
Up I go. Solo.
I look to see where she is, and can't spy her right away, and then hear, "HEY, MOM! OVER HERE!"
There she is, at the bottom of the down escalator, smiling and waving, and waiting for my return.
Five minutes later on the way up the elevator, she declares a victory of sorts: "Well, I got close this time."
"Yep, you did."
I think about cousin Martie and her shoe and am suddenly glad for the elevator.
August 05, 2005
Dear Holiday Inn
What corporations are just starting to find out, is that the new demands for customer service are coming straight out of consumers' mouths into other consumers' ears via the net. In blogging, we tell stories. Good stories and bad stories. And if I'm going to tell my story to the Holiday Inn management, I might as well tell it to my thousands of friends too.
So tell me, after you hear the story, would you stay at the Buffalo Airport Holiday Inn? That's the Holiday Inn Airport in Buffalo, NY, in case you didn't get it the first time.
-------------
Dear Holiday Inn Management,
I am writing to let you know that your 100% satisfaction guarantee isn't real.
I don't believe it, even though you post it at the front desk and in each of the guest rooms. At least it isn't real at the Holiday Inn Airport in Buffalo, New York, where my family stayed from 7/29 - 8/2.
Let me tell you about the dis-service we received there, let me highlight those individuals who went above and beyond to cheer us up, too. Because I'm not just a whining consumer. I'm a real person. In other words, I'm one of your consumers. A blogging consumer. Let me tell you our story.
The Pillow Fight
My daughter and I arrived at the Holiday Inn, Buffalo Airport on 7/29 and checked in to your King room with the fold-out couch. We requested some extra pillows (none were provided for the pull-out couch where our daughter would be sleeping), and were told someone would bring them up.
After an hour or so, I called back and offered to come get them--but they are apparently kept somewhere that the front desk crew doesn't have access to. Okay. No big deal. They tell me, the same guy that's driving the shuttle to pick up folks at the airport is the one who hands out things like pillows, and he's just really busy. It's about 8:00 p.m. I'm cool, you know, at $113 a night plus 14% tax that I can't get a pillow in four hours' time. But I'm really going to need some pillows by the time my husband flies in at 9:00.
Or so I thought. George's flight was delayed out of Atlanta, so I had nothing to do but wait. For him and some pillows. About six hours after I asked for pillows, around 10:30 p.m., the pillow man came. WOW! COOL! Thank you pillow man.
The Long Day's Journey Into Nowhere
My husband's flight got in so late (1 a.m.) that he took the shuttle to the hotel rather than me waking up our daughter and driving over to get him. The same pillow-man/driver gave him a map of the hotel and sketched out the route to our room. Of course, he sketched it out in a way that took my husband, literally, around the entire hotel to our doorstep. George asked him, "Wouldn't it just be simpler to go this way?" pointing out the more direct route on the map. He said, "Well, I guess you could, but I'd go this way."
So he did. And man was he pissed when the next morning he realized, yes, there were no walls or corners or big bad monsters lurking on the short route he COULD have taken after a 10-hour journey.
Still, no big deal. At least it's time for breakfast, and BOY are we hungry after the prior day (and night for George) of traveling.
Mixed Couple for Breakfast--How About Across the Street?
Max's Restaurant is attached to your facility. It may or may not be “part” of your hotel system, but it’s where you encourage guests of the Buffalo Airport Holiday Inn to eat.
We arrived for breakfast at Max’s at about 10:50, having read in one of the pamphlets that lunch service begins at 11:00. When we arrived in Max’s we stood at the hostess stand for two or three minutes watching the waitresses deliver food to the customers who had been seated. “Hello?” we said, after what seemed to be a very long time to wait just to get a seat. When no one showed up to seat us, we did what any smart family does: We split up in search of someone to get us a seat in time for breakfast. I saw a waitress walk past my husband, and up to me and my daughter who were standing across the restaurant. With two menus in her hand, she asked would we like to be seated.
I waved George over and instantly saw the look in her eye that any mixed couple living in Western NY has seen at least a dozen times. Whatever. You get used to it.
“I hope we’re in time for breakfast,” I said to her. “We were traveling all of yesterday.”
She told me, no, it ends at 11:00. And it’s now 11:00. But, she indicated by pointing a finger out the door, that place across the road serves breakfast all day.
Blink. Blink blink. That was the exchange between my starving husband, child, and me. Had we been somehow magically transported to Denny's? I couldn't figure it out.
“We’ve been standing here waiting to be seated for the last 5-10 minutes. We WERE here before 11:00.” George said. And followed that with a 180-degree turn, a “Come on—we’re out of here,” and two feet toward the door.
Your unaccommodating waitress disappeared without a word, and in her place appeared a very cheery hostess who apologized, asked if she could please seat us, and said that of course we could still get breakfast.
We weren’t going to stay—no way—until a wonderful woman (who turned out to be the highlight of our trip), Renee, your best Max’s waitress, came up to us and was genuine, kind, and told us that she, personally, wanted to make sure we got what we needed. And she did. She was wonderful, empathetic. Thank goodness for Renee at Max’s.
So we stayed, and Renee arranged it so that our breakfast was on the house—that was appreciated. We didn’t see our racist waitress after that morning. I have high hopes that her ass was fired. Especially since I watched couple after couple come in during the hour we were there saying, "Two for breakfast," and getting no flack.
The rest of that day was spent doing what we came to do—seeing family. We only came back to sleep.
The Sagging Bed and The “I Don’t Believe You.”
Look, when a customer tells your staff that a mattress is so uncomfortable that they’re willing to go through the hassle of packing up all of their stuff – including every Polly Pocket shoe known to man (do you KNOW how hard Polly Pocket shoes are to even FIND in a hotel room?), you better tell your people to BELIEVE that customer. That was our next battle with your front-desk manager: Laurie.
The next night’s sleep—now that we were both coherent enough after our trip to Buffalo to be aware—was terrible. The bed sagged in the middle, and although I can deal with a saggy mattress, my husband has several herniated discs and a bone spur that transforms an annoyingly saggy bed into a misery machine.
George and I talked about it as he popped Ibuprofen. We’d dealt with it for two nights—not counting the night he came in because didn’t get much sleep that night. Should we deal with it for the next two nights? He decided to try to deal with it another night and see.
By that morning the bed problem was red hot—like my husband’s back. I decided to call the front desk and ask if there was any way to fix the problem, or, worst case scenario, ugh, move to a different room for our last night there.
I first talked to a young woman at the front desk who said that the best answer was to change rooms. And to do that we had to make sure everything was packed up in our suitcases because they don’t touch loose belongings.
Oh. Joy. Okay.
At 9:30 that morning, the woman said she’d call me back in an hour and let me know if a room was available, or when it might be.
Cool. We begin the process of packing up. With Jenna crying, “I don’t WANT to move!” At around 10:00 the young lady from the front desk called and said two rooms were available—one on the first floor and one on the second. No elevator. Oh good.
I told George he’d better go check the beds before we go through the trouble of moving, and he did. He said that the first floor mattress was just the same, but that the one on the second floor was fine. Oh joy—let’s lug our stuff to the second floor without an elevator—all SIX suitcases.
At around noon I got the call from the front desk manager, Laurie. She said she had been made aware of our situation, and could she ask: “Why on the last night of your stay do you want to change rooms?”
Her tone was unprofessional, accusatory, and about the most insulting I’ve heard in all of my hotel stays combined.
“Excuse me? I mean, did the other woman I was talking to explain that my husband’s back can’t take another night on this mattress?”
“All of our mattresses are new. All of them. They don’t sag,” she said.
“Well do me a favor and come to this room, and I’ll show you the middle of THIS mattress. You’ll see that it does.”
“I’m trying to tell you, Mrs. Sessum, that all of our mattresses are new and they’re all the same, and [[she’s doing the sarcastic laugh thing at this point]], I don’t think that another bed is going to be any different.”
“Well my husband found one that is different on the second floor, but I was hoping we could hold out and see if one opens up on the first floor because we have so much to move and there’s no elevator.”
“We’ll move you. I just don’t quite understand why you want to move now, and I assure you all of our mattresses are new.”
My pressing need to get her to the room to TRY our mattress remained unfulfilled. Just like any relaxation I expected to get at this hotel.
That’s the Night that the Lights Went Out in Buffalo
The bellman, Charles, who, with George, the bad-back-guy, lugged all of our belongings up the stairs to room 437 deserves an award. He was pleasant, he was NOT the same bellman who led George through Albany in order to find our room the first night, and he was professional. He and Renee, the Max’s waitress, are your best employees. I dare say, your only professional employees.
OKAY. Now we’re in the room with the good bed. It’s our last night. I am, to say the least, thankful. Let’s just lie back on the non-saggy mattress honey and enjoy the peace and quiet.
Boom boom boom—okay now I know why this mattress is still like new. Because no one takes the room next to the stair well. Of course not. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to cipher that equation.
Even with the noise of guests bouncing up the steps late into the evening, we’re glad for a good bed. And considering the maids didn’t clean our room the morning previously, we’re REALLY glad to be in the new room.
Then the lights went out.
Came back on.
Then the cable went out.
Didn’t come back on.
Hmm. That’s odd. Oh well, let’s just watch through the fuzzy picture—maybe we’ll find something good on. Wow, sure is getting hot in here. Hmm. I wonder why the thermostat says 74 but it’s set at 70. Maybe I better push it down to 69 and the air will come on. Nope. Wow. It’s really stuffy in here.
Lord, don’t make me call that Laurie woman again.
Okay, it’s an hour later. No cable. No air. What is up?
I call the front desk again.
“I was wondering, is the cable out?”
“M'am, the entire street is out. Lightning strike. We have our generator on, but it only delivers necessary power.”
“Oh. Wow. The airport’s out too?”
“They’re on a generator too.”
“How long does the generator last?”
“A couple of hours.”
“What happens after that?”
“M’am, I really don’t know. You want a flashlight? We can bring you one.”
“Well, okay, I guess so.”
Click.
So they brought us a flashlight. Turns out it was a good thing to have when the generator gave out two hours later, the thermostat now up to 78, no way to open the windows, but at least when the whole place went dark we had our trusty flashlight.
But George’s sleep machine was hosed. And he can’t—I mean can’t—sleep without it. Neither can the rest of the neighborhood. If you have a CPAP machine, you know what I mean.
As we sat in the dark with our flashlight I have an idea.
“Honey, maybe they have a battery generator—one of those little things that would run your machine.”
“It’s okay,” he said defeated.
“Just let me call and see—they hate me already.”
So I call—Big Mistake.
“Hello, my husband is on a CPAP machine and I was wondering if you have any reports on how long the power will be out—because he has to have power to run it.”
“We have no idea. They’re working on it.”
“Well, do you know if there are any smaller generators for people that need breathing machines?”
“Would you like me to call 911, M’am?
“No. It’s not like he’s NOT BREATHING. It’s just that he’s on a C-PAP machine—C-P-A-P—and it needs power to run.”
“Well, let me call the fire department and see if they have one.”
“Um, okay, but tell them it’s NOT an emergency. Just that he’s on a C-PAP machine—C-P-A-P—and if they have something to plug it into that would be great.”
Click.
Five minutes later three paramedics arrive at our door ready to resuscitate my husband.
“Hello—Is someone having trouble breathing!?!?”
“Oh. Dear. You see I told her to tell you it’s just that he’s on a C-PAP machine—I even spelled it for her—and she thought you might have a little generator…I’m so sorry.”
Fortunately, power was restored within an hour of the generator shutting down. Our four-hour power outage came to an end. We got plugged in and languished through our last night at the hotel, with the air conditioning never cooling the room below 76 degrees. It was bearable, sure. But not comfortable—especially during the final pack up the next morning.
The whole hotel stunk the next morning from all circulation having been shut off for so long. I mentioned this to the front desk—that our air conditioning wasn’t working since the power outage--not that we expected anything could be done about it, but for them to know for the NEXT guest. Our entire wing seemed to be without air. They sent maintenance, who moved our little refrigerator over six inches and said that should help.
It didn’t. And by that point, we didn’t care. Sorry next resident of #437--you're on your own.
Glad to Get Out of the Holiday Inn
We had lunch at Max’s, and said goodbye to our angel Renee, who herself walked over to the lobby and asked the front desk manager if we could have a late checkout since our plane didn’t leave until 6. She got that set up for us, and we are eternally grateful.
I also ran into the Hotel Manager before we left, a golden-retriever-sort-of gentleman, and I recounted the story to him of our entire trip. No discounts were offered or given for our trouble, but he said that in his next staff meeting, he sure would make his staff aware of these problems.
Four nights of hassle and well over $500 later, I don't care what he does.
Defeat The Peter Principle
So you see, Holiday Inn Management, the people following through on your 100% satisfaction guarantee aren’t your managers, your front desk or your hotel bosses. They are the people without fancy titles and fancy attitudes. They are the regular people in the less glamorous jobs that don’t require them to put on airs with their suits and ties.
They’re Renee and Charles. And nobody else.
So tell me, after you hear the story, would you stay at the Buffalo Airport Holiday Inn? That's the Holiday Inn Airport in Buffalo, NY, in case you didn't get it the first time.
-------------
Dear Holiday Inn Management,
I am writing to let you know that your 100% satisfaction guarantee isn't real.
I don't believe it, even though you post it at the front desk and in each of the guest rooms. At least it isn't real at the Holiday Inn Airport in Buffalo, New York, where my family stayed from 7/29 - 8/2.
Let me tell you about the dis-service we received there, let me highlight those individuals who went above and beyond to cheer us up, too. Because I'm not just a whining consumer. I'm a real person. In other words, I'm one of your consumers. A blogging consumer. Let me tell you our story.
The Pillow Fight
My daughter and I arrived at the Holiday Inn, Buffalo Airport on 7/29 and checked in to your King room with the fold-out couch. We requested some extra pillows (none were provided for the pull-out couch where our daughter would be sleeping), and were told someone would bring them up.
After an hour or so, I called back and offered to come get them--but they are apparently kept somewhere that the front desk crew doesn't have access to. Okay. No big deal. They tell me, the same guy that's driving the shuttle to pick up folks at the airport is the one who hands out things like pillows, and he's just really busy. It's about 8:00 p.m. I'm cool, you know, at $113 a night plus 14% tax that I can't get a pillow in four hours' time. But I'm really going to need some pillows by the time my husband flies in at 9:00.
Or so I thought. George's flight was delayed out of Atlanta, so I had nothing to do but wait. For him and some pillows. About six hours after I asked for pillows, around 10:30 p.m., the pillow man came. WOW! COOL! Thank you pillow man.
The Long Day's Journey Into Nowhere
My husband's flight got in so late (1 a.m.) that he took the shuttle to the hotel rather than me waking up our daughter and driving over to get him. The same pillow-man/driver gave him a map of the hotel and sketched out the route to our room. Of course, he sketched it out in a way that took my husband, literally, around the entire hotel to our doorstep. George asked him, "Wouldn't it just be simpler to go this way?" pointing out the more direct route on the map. He said, "Well, I guess you could, but I'd go this way."
So he did. And man was he pissed when the next morning he realized, yes, there were no walls or corners or big bad monsters lurking on the short route he COULD have taken after a 10-hour journey.
Still, no big deal. At least it's time for breakfast, and BOY are we hungry after the prior day (and night for George) of traveling.
Mixed Couple for Breakfast--How About Across the Street?
Max's Restaurant is attached to your facility. It may or may not be “part” of your hotel system, but it’s where you encourage guests of the Buffalo Airport Holiday Inn to eat.
We arrived for breakfast at Max’s at about 10:50, having read in one of the pamphlets that lunch service begins at 11:00. When we arrived in Max’s we stood at the hostess stand for two or three minutes watching the waitresses deliver food to the customers who had been seated. “Hello?” we said, after what seemed to be a very long time to wait just to get a seat. When no one showed up to seat us, we did what any smart family does: We split up in search of someone to get us a seat in time for breakfast. I saw a waitress walk past my husband, and up to me and my daughter who were standing across the restaurant. With two menus in her hand, she asked would we like to be seated.
I waved George over and instantly saw the look in her eye that any mixed couple living in Western NY has seen at least a dozen times. Whatever. You get used to it.
“I hope we’re in time for breakfast,” I said to her. “We were traveling all of yesterday.”
She told me, no, it ends at 11:00. And it’s now 11:00. But, she indicated by pointing a finger out the door, that place across the road serves breakfast all day.
Blink. Blink blink. That was the exchange between my starving husband, child, and me. Had we been somehow magically transported to Denny's? I couldn't figure it out.
“We’ve been standing here waiting to be seated for the last 5-10 minutes. We WERE here before 11:00.” George said. And followed that with a 180-degree turn, a “Come on—we’re out of here,” and two feet toward the door.
Your unaccommodating waitress disappeared without a word, and in her place appeared a very cheery hostess who apologized, asked if she could please seat us, and said that of course we could still get breakfast.
We weren’t going to stay—no way—until a wonderful woman (who turned out to be the highlight of our trip), Renee, your best Max’s waitress, came up to us and was genuine, kind, and told us that she, personally, wanted to make sure we got what we needed. And she did. She was wonderful, empathetic. Thank goodness for Renee at Max’s.
So we stayed, and Renee arranged it so that our breakfast was on the house—that was appreciated. We didn’t see our racist waitress after that morning. I have high hopes that her ass was fired. Especially since I watched couple after couple come in during the hour we were there saying, "Two for breakfast," and getting no flack.
The rest of that day was spent doing what we came to do—seeing family. We only came back to sleep.
The Sagging Bed and The “I Don’t Believe You.”
Look, when a customer tells your staff that a mattress is so uncomfortable that they’re willing to go through the hassle of packing up all of their stuff – including every Polly Pocket shoe known to man (do you KNOW how hard Polly Pocket shoes are to even FIND in a hotel room?), you better tell your people to BELIEVE that customer. That was our next battle with your front-desk manager: Laurie.
The next night’s sleep—now that we were both coherent enough after our trip to Buffalo to be aware—was terrible. The bed sagged in the middle, and although I can deal with a saggy mattress, my husband has several herniated discs and a bone spur that transforms an annoyingly saggy bed into a misery machine.
George and I talked about it as he popped Ibuprofen. We’d dealt with it for two nights—not counting the night he came in because didn’t get much sleep that night. Should we deal with it for the next two nights? He decided to try to deal with it another night and see.
By that morning the bed problem was red hot—like my husband’s back. I decided to call the front desk and ask if there was any way to fix the problem, or, worst case scenario, ugh, move to a different room for our last night there.
I first talked to a young woman at the front desk who said that the best answer was to change rooms. And to do that we had to make sure everything was packed up in our suitcases because they don’t touch loose belongings.
Oh. Joy. Okay.
At 9:30 that morning, the woman said she’d call me back in an hour and let me know if a room was available, or when it might be.
Cool. We begin the process of packing up. With Jenna crying, “I don’t WANT to move!” At around 10:00 the young lady from the front desk called and said two rooms were available—one on the first floor and one on the second. No elevator. Oh good.
I told George he’d better go check the beds before we go through the trouble of moving, and he did. He said that the first floor mattress was just the same, but that the one on the second floor was fine. Oh joy—let’s lug our stuff to the second floor without an elevator—all SIX suitcases.
At around noon I got the call from the front desk manager, Laurie. She said she had been made aware of our situation, and could she ask: “Why on the last night of your stay do you want to change rooms?”
Her tone was unprofessional, accusatory, and about the most insulting I’ve heard in all of my hotel stays combined.
“Excuse me? I mean, did the other woman I was talking to explain that my husband’s back can’t take another night on this mattress?”
“All of our mattresses are new. All of them. They don’t sag,” she said.
“Well do me a favor and come to this room, and I’ll show you the middle of THIS mattress. You’ll see that it does.”
“I’m trying to tell you, Mrs. Sessum, that all of our mattresses are new and they’re all the same, and [[she’s doing the sarcastic laugh thing at this point]], I don’t think that another bed is going to be any different.”
“Well my husband found one that is different on the second floor, but I was hoping we could hold out and see if one opens up on the first floor because we have so much to move and there’s no elevator.”
“We’ll move you. I just don’t quite understand why you want to move now, and I assure you all of our mattresses are new.”
My pressing need to get her to the room to TRY our mattress remained unfulfilled. Just like any relaxation I expected to get at this hotel.
That’s the Night that the Lights Went Out in Buffalo
The bellman, Charles, who, with George, the bad-back-guy, lugged all of our belongings up the stairs to room 437 deserves an award. He was pleasant, he was NOT the same bellman who led George through Albany in order to find our room the first night, and he was professional. He and Renee, the Max’s waitress, are your best employees. I dare say, your only professional employees.
OKAY. Now we’re in the room with the good bed. It’s our last night. I am, to say the least, thankful. Let’s just lie back on the non-saggy mattress honey and enjoy the peace and quiet.
Boom boom boom—okay now I know why this mattress is still like new. Because no one takes the room next to the stair well. Of course not. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to cipher that equation.
Even with the noise of guests bouncing up the steps late into the evening, we’re glad for a good bed. And considering the maids didn’t clean our room the morning previously, we’re REALLY glad to be in the new room.
Then the lights went out.
Came back on.
Then the cable went out.
Didn’t come back on.
Hmm. That’s odd. Oh well, let’s just watch through the fuzzy picture—maybe we’ll find something good on. Wow, sure is getting hot in here. Hmm. I wonder why the thermostat says 74 but it’s set at 70. Maybe I better push it down to 69 and the air will come on. Nope. Wow. It’s really stuffy in here.
Lord, don’t make me call that Laurie woman again.
Okay, it’s an hour later. No cable. No air. What is up?
I call the front desk again.
“I was wondering, is the cable out?”
“M'am, the entire street is out. Lightning strike. We have our generator on, but it only delivers necessary power.”
“Oh. Wow. The airport’s out too?”
“They’re on a generator too.”
“How long does the generator last?”
“A couple of hours.”
“What happens after that?”
“M’am, I really don’t know. You want a flashlight? We can bring you one.”
“Well, okay, I guess so.”
Click.
So they brought us a flashlight. Turns out it was a good thing to have when the generator gave out two hours later, the thermostat now up to 78, no way to open the windows, but at least when the whole place went dark we had our trusty flashlight.
But George’s sleep machine was hosed. And he can’t—I mean can’t—sleep without it. Neither can the rest of the neighborhood. If you have a CPAP machine, you know what I mean.
As we sat in the dark with our flashlight I have an idea.
“Honey, maybe they have a battery generator—one of those little things that would run your machine.”
“It’s okay,” he said defeated.
“Just let me call and see—they hate me already.”
So I call—Big Mistake.
“Hello, my husband is on a CPAP machine and I was wondering if you have any reports on how long the power will be out—because he has to have power to run it.”
“We have no idea. They’re working on it.”
“Well, do you know if there are any smaller generators for people that need breathing machines?”
“Would you like me to call 911, M’am?
“No. It’s not like he’s NOT BREATHING. It’s just that he’s on a C-PAP machine—C-P-A-P—and it needs power to run.”
“Well, let me call the fire department and see if they have one.”
“Um, okay, but tell them it’s NOT an emergency. Just that he’s on a C-PAP machine—C-P-A-P—and if they have something to plug it into that would be great.”
Click.
Five minutes later three paramedics arrive at our door ready to resuscitate my husband.
“Hello—Is someone having trouble breathing!?!?”
“Oh. Dear. You see I told her to tell you it’s just that he’s on a C-PAP machine—I even spelled it for her—and she thought you might have a little generator…I’m so sorry.”
Fortunately, power was restored within an hour of the generator shutting down. Our four-hour power outage came to an end. We got plugged in and languished through our last night at the hotel, with the air conditioning never cooling the room below 76 degrees. It was bearable, sure. But not comfortable—especially during the final pack up the next morning.
The whole hotel stunk the next morning from all circulation having been shut off for so long. I mentioned this to the front desk—that our air conditioning wasn’t working since the power outage--not that we expected anything could be done about it, but for them to know for the NEXT guest. Our entire wing seemed to be without air. They sent maintenance, who moved our little refrigerator over six inches and said that should help.
It didn’t. And by that point, we didn’t care. Sorry next resident of #437--you're on your own.
Glad to Get Out of the Holiday Inn
We had lunch at Max’s, and said goodbye to our angel Renee, who herself walked over to the lobby and asked the front desk manager if we could have a late checkout since our plane didn’t leave until 6. She got that set up for us, and we are eternally grateful.
I also ran into the Hotel Manager before we left, a golden-retriever-sort-of gentleman, and I recounted the story to him of our entire trip. No discounts were offered or given for our trouble, but he said that in his next staff meeting, he sure would make his staff aware of these problems.
Four nights of hassle and well over $500 later, I don't care what he does.
Defeat The Peter Principle
So you see, Holiday Inn Management, the people following through on your 100% satisfaction guarantee aren’t your managers, your front desk or your hotel bosses. They are the people without fancy titles and fancy attitudes. They are the regular people in the less glamorous jobs that don’t require them to put on airs with their suits and ties.
They’re Renee and Charles. And nobody else.
History Herstory
Susan Kitchens is giving a veritable history lesson over at her place on the war--OH not this war, but THAT war. She's sort of live-blogging an event from the past. It's blogging--there are no rules, and this is a fascinating idea very well executed. This is how Susan is celebrating the anniversary of the Atomic Bomb. Some folks, they have champagne. Others, they might spend some quiet time at the park in meditation. Susan? She blogs.
Blog like it’s 1945! That’s what I’m doing for the 60th anniversary of the first atomic bomb explosion. (There is more to July 16 than a new Harry Potter book, you know)So go tell her.
The most recent posts are at the top, older ones are below. So if you want to catch up to what’s already happened, go to the 1945 category page, start at the bottom, and scroll up. And tell me what you think!
August 04, 2005
Tag, Rag, Sag - I still don't do it.
I found Om Malik's recent post on the dark side of Technorati Tags interesting for many reasons--the first of which is the way he eloquently describes the problem with Technorati Tags that I've been having: an inability to keep scammers and spammers out of the mix.
And it's a big problem when you're trying to use the Net to do what you came to the Net to do: read words that matter to you.
Technorati tags give spammers one more opportunity to BYPASS the conversation and jump right in for the kill. And not just spammers--other blog opportunists as well. Even within our own mix.
The more we force categories and constructs on one another (If you're participating in this discussion, Tag it Such-and-Such, i.e., or else you won't be heard), the more we defeat our own purpose.
I prefer to follow the conversation through hyperlinks--those magical devices that brought us all together in the first place. Even using an RSS reader, I'm a "click the link" kind of girl. Because the more we open the door to the conversation dead ends like spam blogs and regurgitation blogs with Google Adsense motives, the more we drown in the noise of meaningless pixels.
Om also makes the intersting distinction between tagging photos WITHIN flickr, and tagging posts via Technorati. He's right on:
And that isn't to say I wouldn't ever try tagging even after all of these years of blogging. I would use tags to categorize my own posts if Blogger offered that functionality inherently. It doesn't. And so far I'm opting out of the "HOSTED" tag space. The Web is webby enough for me--and I like it that way.
I discovered that if the tag was “mortgage” it took me to special tagged page. However, most of the links on the tagged page essentially were some sort of a spam-blog, which basically was set-up for the express purpose of extracting money from Google. Never mind, Technorati gets money from AdSense. I checked out other tags like VoIP, Broadband, DSL, Cable, Vioxx and what not. (I did not check all the popular tags, but I hope you do!) The entries were highly dominated by spam links. Interestingly, the page ranks of these tagged pages were pretty high.If you read around the broadband space at all, you know the spam blogs he speaks of. I know them intimately. And every time I click on a Technorati link where I think I see a "glimmer" of content only to end up at VERIZON, COMCAST, DIGITAL TV, VOIPP, blah-blah-blah, I feel duped, betrayed. Maybe that's not logical, but it's a fact.
And it's a big problem when you're trying to use the Net to do what you came to the Net to do: read words that matter to you.
Technorati tags give spammers one more opportunity to BYPASS the conversation and jump right in for the kill. And not just spammers--other blog opportunists as well. Even within our own mix.
The more we force categories and constructs on one another (If you're participating in this discussion, Tag it Such-and-Such, i.e., or else you won't be heard), the more we defeat our own purpose.
I prefer to follow the conversation through hyperlinks--those magical devices that brought us all together in the first place. Even using an RSS reader, I'm a "click the link" kind of girl. Because the more we open the door to the conversation dead ends like spam blogs and regurgitation blogs with Google Adsense motives, the more we drown in the noise of meaningless pixels.
Om also makes the intersting distinction between tagging photos WITHIN flickr, and tagging posts via Technorati. He's right on:
Many forget that Flickr is a photo site, needs a finite amount of meta data, and can be tagged because there are a few hundred thousand ways to tag information. A puppy is a puppy is a puppy. Rather a bat is a bat even if its flat. What works for photos doesn’t work for words.
And that isn't to say I wouldn't ever try tagging even after all of these years of blogging. I would use tags to categorize my own posts if Blogger offered that functionality inherently. It doesn't. And so far I'm opting out of the "HOSTED" tag space. The Web is webby enough for me--and I like it that way.
Open Source is a Boy's Sport Too
When it comes to money, that's when I get pissed, kids. You can tell me there isn't a woman in open source today who lives up to the achievements of these four men. But I won't believe you. Not when O'Reilly's involved. Because it's not believable. And it's not okay when $25G is on the line.
Nonetheless, congrats to Doc, and to the other winners on their achievements.
Nonetheless, congrats to Doc, and to the other winners on their achievements.
August 03, 2005
BlogHers
Number one: Don't let me go away for 8 days again. It's a long time. It might as well be three months, which I might enjoy better than 8 days, which just makes no sense as a vacation timeframe. That's just too long to go to a destination that isn't an island and isn't located in an ocean or sea.
To recap the highlights: Jenna and I had a blast in Rochester and Buffalo. Buffalo had its fun moments for the three of us, but the stay at the Buffalo Airport Holiday Inn wasn't one of them. More on that in a future post where I bemoan what customer non-service has come to in Emerica. Remember how the net raised the bar for customer service back in the dot-days? Well, I now realize precisely how far the mighty have fallen. Again. Don't get me started. My blood pressure pills are still packed.
It was great to see friends and family in Rochester--HEY MARGIE!--and Buffalo--HEY JAMES AND ANNIE!--and funny to know that the folks who read my blog have been playing the Sessum Home Game and already knew pretty much everything, so we had fun laughing over the old baby hamster stories and such. Oh these blogs we keep.
Speaking of Hamsters, Coco/Melanie is missing. She must have gotten out four days ago. If you have tips for luring her back, tell me. I've done the bucket/carrot/steps trap. I've put food out. I've started to sniff for foul odors.
Life sure is interesting.
Even bigger than my regret over having stayed at the Buffalo Airport Holiday Inn is the one I expected to have--the sadness over missing blogher (there's a great Blogging 101 PDF available on the site, FYI) and all of the great women who appear to have had a blast and a worthwhile experience coming together to talk (and listen) about what's important, but what often doesn't make the Technorati Ticker Tape Top 100. Lisa and company deserve a whole lotta credit for pulling BlogHer together and making it WORK!
As a proud and mouthy advisor and reluctant-non-attendee, I will tell you that these women worked very hard to coordinate an event that would spark lively conversation that would continue well beyond the conference date and location.
From the pieces and parts I'm finding all around on my first looks since returning (I DID NOT TAKE MY LAPTOP ON PURPOSE), I see some very interesting stuff. Oh my, yes! I do believe some engaging dialog will rage on, and I will do my part to jump in as soon as I'm not so befuddled.
In the mean time, I see that the conference reinforced the trend of bestowing on WWK (women with kids) with the 'mommyblogger' label. In that, I saw some irony--and I always like irony better than ironing, which I don't do--because I missed blogher primarily because I am a mommy, and when it came down to the decision of getting Jenna to a family reunion or to BlogHer on the weekend of the 30th, I opted to treck off to Rochester/Buffalo where she saw a total of six great aunts (across both sides), two great uncles, an uncle and aunt-to-be, DOZENS of cousins, and I think I counted nearly 100 people in all.
It was action packed. It wasn't all a blast. That was part of the lesson. It always is.
As part of our week-long journey through Western NY--the first half of a mother-daughter solo trip--Jenna got to experience the joys and the disappointments of being with family. The closeness and and the familiarity, the strangeness and the gray areas, the hellos and goodbyes, the body-shaking laughter and the full blown sobbing. The sun bracketing white puff clouds that only the Great Lakes can form, the early afternoon with me and her and our closest aunt at the lake, me telling my daughter about Lake Ontario, about swimmig my horse in that lake when I was 13, how the horses pooped in the lake, yes, right in front of everyone, and yes of course it floated for a while at least, and then breaking the rules ourselves as we held hands and ran from the beach police on a no-swim day to put our feet in the water together and then splash out again just before the watchman got within shouting range.
These are the stories I can give her now, her stories to tell later. In her own way. In her own voice.
Her stories of coming and going of laughing and losing.
Her stories of craft stores and snow-globes, of thunderstorms and esclalators, of oddly-shaped rocks and stuffed animal machines.
In the end, she and I did our own BlogHer.
Of new connections, of hyperlinked drama and quiet understanding.
And this is my round-up post.
And it was an overwhelming success.
To recap the highlights: Jenna and I had a blast in Rochester and Buffalo. Buffalo had its fun moments for the three of us, but the stay at the Buffalo Airport Holiday Inn wasn't one of them. More on that in a future post where I bemoan what customer non-service has come to in Emerica. Remember how the net raised the bar for customer service back in the dot-days? Well, I now realize precisely how far the mighty have fallen. Again. Don't get me started. My blood pressure pills are still packed.
It was great to see friends and family in Rochester--HEY MARGIE!--and Buffalo--HEY JAMES AND ANNIE!--and funny to know that the folks who read my blog have been playing the Sessum Home Game and already knew pretty much everything, so we had fun laughing over the old baby hamster stories and such. Oh these blogs we keep.
Speaking of Hamsters, Coco/Melanie is missing. She must have gotten out four days ago. If you have tips for luring her back, tell me. I've done the bucket/carrot/steps trap. I've put food out. I've started to sniff for foul odors.
Life sure is interesting.
Even bigger than my regret over having stayed at the Buffalo Airport Holiday Inn is the one I expected to have--the sadness over missing blogher (there's a great Blogging 101 PDF available on the site, FYI) and all of the great women who appear to have had a blast and a worthwhile experience coming together to talk (and listen) about what's important, but what often doesn't make the Technorati Ticker Tape Top 100. Lisa and company deserve a whole lotta credit for pulling BlogHer together and making it WORK!
As a proud and mouthy advisor and reluctant-non-attendee, I will tell you that these women worked very hard to coordinate an event that would spark lively conversation that would continue well beyond the conference date and location.
From the pieces and parts I'm finding all around on my first looks since returning (I DID NOT TAKE MY LAPTOP ON PURPOSE), I see some very interesting stuff. Oh my, yes! I do believe some engaging dialog will rage on, and I will do my part to jump in as soon as I'm not so befuddled.
In the mean time, I see that the conference reinforced the trend of bestowing on WWK (women with kids) with the 'mommyblogger' label. In that, I saw some irony--and I always like irony better than ironing, which I don't do--because I missed blogher primarily because I am a mommy, and when it came down to the decision of getting Jenna to a family reunion or to BlogHer on the weekend of the 30th, I opted to treck off to Rochester/Buffalo where she saw a total of six great aunts (across both sides), two great uncles, an uncle and aunt-to-be, DOZENS of cousins, and I think I counted nearly 100 people in all.
It was action packed. It wasn't all a blast. That was part of the lesson. It always is.
As part of our week-long journey through Western NY--the first half of a mother-daughter solo trip--Jenna got to experience the joys and the disappointments of being with family. The closeness and and the familiarity, the strangeness and the gray areas, the hellos and goodbyes, the body-shaking laughter and the full blown sobbing. The sun bracketing white puff clouds that only the Great Lakes can form, the early afternoon with me and her and our closest aunt at the lake, me telling my daughter about Lake Ontario, about swimmig my horse in that lake when I was 13, how the horses pooped in the lake, yes, right in front of everyone, and yes of course it floated for a while at least, and then breaking the rules ourselves as we held hands and ran from the beach police on a no-swim day to put our feet in the water together and then splash out again just before the watchman got within shouting range.
These are the stories I can give her now, her stories to tell later. In her own way. In her own voice.
Her stories of coming and going of laughing and losing.
Her stories of craft stores and snow-globes, of thunderstorms and esclalators, of oddly-shaped rocks and stuffed animal machines.
In the end, she and I did our own BlogHer.
Of new connections, of hyperlinked drama and quiet understanding.
And this is my round-up post.
And it was an overwhelming success.
July 25, 2005
Off we go
The rest of the day will likely be filled with packing and RX-picking-up and trying to figure out what to take and what to leave.
I am puzzled for several reasons:
1) I never go away for 7 days.
2) I usually pack two weeks in advance "just in case" (in case what, I'm not sure--in case Airtran calls and says that pre-boarding has begun a week early, for example).
3) I'm in recovery.
When you are in recovery from [[pick one: (a) hell, (b) a lifetime of trauma, (c) addiction of your choice, (d) recovery, (e) all of the above]], every little thing in life looks different.
I approach everything differently now--including nice things, like vacations--and because I'm NOT ALL BETTER YET, this "in the midst of things" phase, which I expect to last until I'm 73, means I seldom do anything the way I used to.
For better and for worse, recovery turns your life backassward. For me, it means that since I don't catastrophize as much as I used to (WHAT IF, WHAT IF, WHAT IF fill-in-your-own-worst-case-scenario), I have become highly disorganized.
Without worry, I have no compass.
When panic was my friend, I was much more functional. I was a good employee because I had always been the one to fix things and be just exactly who others needed me to be. I had no opinion of my own, but I was a reliable sponge who could recite back in perfect form anything I learned, anything I heard, just the right way, on time and on budget, every time.
Bonus please.
I was a good friend not because I really really liked you, because I wasn't sure what that felt like. I was a friend because I made you laugh and it made me feel good to make you feel good, and besides, I needed you to like me.
And of course, I packed two weeks in advance for every trip because I might forget one single pill, or one single sock, or one single tampon, which might trigger a panic attack, so to avoid said "mights" I did everything ahead of time. Just right. On time and on budget.
I wrote my college papers in advance, in case I might get sick and feel too sick to do a good job and get the A I managed to get in every class, every semester, for four years, except that one lousy speach class. Damn B+.
I always planned a way out--in case I didn't feel well, got anxious, or some pre-conceived and pre-mourned disaster happened, say someone died and I had to be checked into the nearest mental facility for IV Valium.
Which all is to say, except for every other Tuesday, I'm not that person of impending doom anymore. AKA: I'm in recovery.
Which is to say, I don't know how to go on vacation now.
Because I don't know how to pack when I don't pack two weeks ahead of time.
I don't know how to go pick up prescriptions today that I would have had packed in a ziplock bag in the inner suitcase pocket two weeks ago.
I don't know how to travel without worrying about getting back in case someone dies.
This is all very new.
I have started laughing about it.
I think that's a good sign.
Jenna is now putting the toys that she wants to take in a laundry basket. Even though we don't talk about terrorism much, she's done enough travel that she knows the security drill. She said: "Mom, I want to put all my toys in this laundry basket first, then you do a security check, and THEN I'll put them in my suitcase."
Lest her best Brown Barbie set off the alarm at the x-ray machine.
Be well all.
I am puzzled for several reasons:
1) I never go away for 7 days.
2) I usually pack two weeks in advance "just in case" (in case what, I'm not sure--in case Airtran calls and says that pre-boarding has begun a week early, for example).
3) I'm in recovery.
When you are in recovery from [[pick one: (a) hell, (b) a lifetime of trauma, (c) addiction of your choice, (d) recovery, (e) all of the above]], every little thing in life looks different.
I approach everything differently now--including nice things, like vacations--and because I'm NOT ALL BETTER YET, this "in the midst of things" phase, which I expect to last until I'm 73, means I seldom do anything the way I used to.
For better and for worse, recovery turns your life backassward. For me, it means that since I don't catastrophize as much as I used to (WHAT IF, WHAT IF, WHAT IF fill-in-your-own-worst-case-scenario), I have become highly disorganized.
Without worry, I have no compass.
When panic was my friend, I was much more functional. I was a good employee because I had always been the one to fix things and be just exactly who others needed me to be. I had no opinion of my own, but I was a reliable sponge who could recite back in perfect form anything I learned, anything I heard, just the right way, on time and on budget, every time.
Bonus please.
I was a good friend not because I really really liked you, because I wasn't sure what that felt like. I was a friend because I made you laugh and it made me feel good to make you feel good, and besides, I needed you to like me.
And of course, I packed two weeks in advance for every trip because I might forget one single pill, or one single sock, or one single tampon, which might trigger a panic attack, so to avoid said "mights" I did everything ahead of time. Just right. On time and on budget.
I wrote my college papers in advance, in case I might get sick and feel too sick to do a good job and get the A I managed to get in every class, every semester, for four years, except that one lousy speach class. Damn B+.
I always planned a way out--in case I didn't feel well, got anxious, or some pre-conceived and pre-mourned disaster happened, say someone died and I had to be checked into the nearest mental facility for IV Valium.
Which all is to say, except for every other Tuesday, I'm not that person of impending doom anymore. AKA: I'm in recovery.
Which is to say, I don't know how to go on vacation now.
Because I don't know how to pack when I don't pack two weeks ahead of time.
I don't know how to go pick up prescriptions today that I would have had packed in a ziplock bag in the inner suitcase pocket two weeks ago.
I don't know how to travel without worrying about getting back in case someone dies.
This is all very new.
I have started laughing about it.
I think that's a good sign.
Jenna is now putting the toys that she wants to take in a laundry basket. Even though we don't talk about terrorism much, she's done enough travel that she knows the security drill. She said: "Mom, I want to put all my toys in this laundry basket first, then you do a security check, and THEN I'll put them in my suitcase."
Lest her best Brown Barbie set off the alarm at the x-ray machine.
Be well all.
July 24, 2005
Free Range Children
| If you forget to mind out, I guess you can eat them. |  Free Range Children Originally uploaded by bartmaguire. |
July 23, 2005
BlogHer!
BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer.
I'll be thinking about EVERYONE at BlogHer while I'm shuffling off to Buffalo for the family reunion on the 30th. I'll have email. And cell phone. But laptop's staying home.
Actually, plan to leave this coming Tuesday and be back the following Tuesday. Don't think I'll get much time to blog. Whoopie!
But you still have a couple more days of My Big Mouth.
I'll be thinking about EVERYONE at BlogHer while I'm shuffling off to Buffalo for the family reunion on the 30th. I'll have email. And cell phone. But laptop's staying home.
Actually, plan to leave this coming Tuesday and be back the following Tuesday. Don't think I'll get much time to blog. Whoopie!
But you still have a couple more days of My Big Mouth.
July 21, 2005
Not Just Any Corporate Blogging White Paper
Who better to tell the corporate blogging story than us? By us, I mean we bloggers who have been working in large, multi-national corporations, middle market companies, small firms, two-person startups, or out on our own, while nudging the blogworld into form over the last several years.I've said before, when it comes to the intersection of business and blogging, one thing that makes this intersection point important for business is that we are typically people who work, have worked, and/or will work somewhere--some business, some place, whether it's IBM or the Harley Davidson shop on North Oak in Kansas City.
We are people first. We connect as people, but also delight in discovering those things we are passionate about, including what it is that we "do." I'm not saying that this is blogging's value. But it's part of how blogging can help businesses better understand and move closer to their markets.
And these relationships continue to grow. It has been one of the most rewarding parts of blogging for me during the last 5 years, both personally and professionally, to have met and learned from some mighty minds.
Those learnings are reflected, at least a little bit, here.
The bottom line is, blogging gives business an opportunity to shrink the distance between its front doors and ours.
Why go on and on. It looks a lot prettier here:
To Blog or Not to Blog: Blogs Help Corporations Answer the Call to Conversation
from The Content Factor.
Note of thanks to Michael O'Connor Clarke, whose keen eye and, shall we say "zesty?" understating of this space were WAY valuable in getting this paper done.
A couple additional notes:
Not sure if the links inside the PDF are working--will be interested to know from you all.
The resource section at the end is something I want to put back into HTML and expand.
There are a lot of compendium of "must read" blogs, but when I started putting this paper together, I realized I needed a different kind of "blogroll" for it--and that is still emerging.
Because, as we know, everything is changing so friggin' fast. ;-)
Lemme know.
Thanks.
Industrious Pippa
When I wake up, God willing, and I get back here to this very spot, I wanted to have something to start off my day--something to change my steroid-induced funk into a creative nirvana, or at least a productive morning.
Found one, thanks to Margaret & AKMA's creative daughter, Pippa. See Pippa's other artwork on Flickr.
Blows my mind.
I love these folks.
July 20, 2005
I am not sure how to help, but maybe someone will be
See Constantin's blog for information on a woman who needs immediate medical help in the way of a liver transplant. I called the number Constantin provided to get information on exactly--really--what Shari needs.
She doesn't need a transfusion, or blood, or that kind of thing. The deal is this: She needs a cadaver liver, and she needs it right away. It doesn't have to come from NY, but I would think a good way to start would be putting the word out in the NY Hospitals, or NY Doctors, and doctors around the country--world even?--regarding Shari's current condition.
I don't know, personally, how designating an organ takes place. For instance, if today, you were to know of a loss in your family or another family's--an aunt, uncle, cousin, sister, brother, friend--is it possible to say, get this liver to Shari? Does there have to be a matching process, or is any liver better than no liver? I'm not sure we can get these answers in time, but stranger and more miraculous things have happened.
If you know of anyone who can help, this is the number to start off with, and they can refer you onward: 877/223-3386.
She doesn't need a transfusion, or blood, or that kind of thing. The deal is this: She needs a cadaver liver, and she needs it right away. It doesn't have to come from NY, but I would think a good way to start would be putting the word out in the NY Hospitals, or NY Doctors, and doctors around the country--world even?--regarding Shari's current condition.
I don't know, personally, how designating an organ takes place. For instance, if today, you were to know of a loss in your family or another family's--an aunt, uncle, cousin, sister, brother, friend--is it possible to say, get this liver to Shari? Does there have to be a matching process, or is any liver better than no liver? I'm not sure we can get these answers in time, but stranger and more miraculous things have happened.
If you know of anyone who can help, this is the number to start off with, and they can refer you onward: 877/223-3386.
July 19, 2005
Good Journalists Gone Wild!
Sheila Lennon's new blogspace is more bloggish than ever, with RSS, Comments and the ability, finally, for Sheila to post from home. WOHOO! That means she'll be posting more often I bet. She's still adding code, so, you know, lookout.
And we won't lose the stuff she's already written in the rehab, thank goodness:
And we won't lose the stuff she's already written in the rehab, thank goodness:
The previous three+ years of blogs will still be available, linked somewhere on the right. For now, they're all at the bottom of today's page -- the one many of you started at before clicking to come here.Welcome to the after hours club Sheila!
{shhhh. cut a check to chris locke quick}
Though they may not be earth-shaking, business-shaking, or the panacea of a lifetime of sinusitus and phleghm, the truth is that real-life best/worst practices are unfolding, here and now.
This isn't a hypothetical Harvard Review Business Case Study that poses the 'Blogger in Your Midst' question to businesses.
This is realtime.
Another way for PR practitioners to look at the ongoing Ketchum Conversation: How would you advise Ketchum if you were the PR Agency's PR Agency?
Note: The first two comments are from ex-Ketchum employees who have been actively blogging since 2001, and have been working to advance the space as it applies to marketing and PR and the real people that intersect those disciplines since 2001, including while with the company.
This I can predict with the utmost certainty: Folks are sitting down in a conference room or sitting on a conference call right now at Omnicom Group's Ketchum deciding the hows, ifs, whens, whys, and whos of their next communication with what they call the PR Blogosphere. If you were in the room, what would you advise?
Batters Up!
This isn't a hypothetical Harvard Review Business Case Study that poses the 'Blogger in Your Midst' question to businesses.
This is realtime.
Another way for PR practitioners to look at the ongoing Ketchum Conversation: How would you advise Ketchum if you were the PR Agency's PR Agency?
Note: The first two comments are from ex-Ketchum employees who have been actively blogging since 2001, and have been working to advance the space as it applies to marketing and PR and the real people that intersect those disciplines since 2001, including while with the company.
This I can predict with the utmost certainty: Folks are sitting down in a conference room or sitting on a conference call right now at Omnicom Group's Ketchum deciding the hows, ifs, whens, whys, and whos of their next communication with what they call the PR Blogosphere. If you were in the room, what would you advise?
Batters Up!
You Can't BS a BSer
I really like the title and substance of this post at Advancing Insights that references yours truly and David and Constantin on the Ketchum Thang. "The Pathology of Business Bullshit" is a right on way to look at it. An example now being played out real-time via the traditional BigPR 'control the message' mantra. This is just the malady that blogging sprouted up to remedy--it grows from the ground like echinacea for business.
It's not much like Western medicine practices that are predictable and 'managed-care' manageable; it's more like Traditional Chinese Medicine and accupuncture, twisting in the needles to unblock and re-direct the flow of energy.
Or maybe I've had too many steroids today.
{Full transparency disclaimer: I am sick and on antibiotics and steroids. Don't mess w/ me.}
It's not much like Western medicine practices that are predictable and 'managed-care' manageable; it's more like Traditional Chinese Medicine and accupuncture, twisting in the needles to unblock and re-direct the flow of energy.
Or maybe I've had too many steroids today.
{Full transparency disclaimer: I am sick and on antibiotics and steroids. Don't mess w/ me.}
I Get By with a Little Help from My Friends...
The latest interview with Ketchum's Blog Representative, Adam Brown, is up at Jeremy's place. I added a few follow-on questions that came to mind after a first read. I also helped out last night when I first scanned the piece and noticed it said Adam joined Ketchum in 1988. Whoops. Typos can really make one stop and think. It was actually 1998, in April, same week as I signed on. Jeremy said that's how it was in the bio he received, but he changed it after he did the ciphering. Not always, but sometimes I have a pretty good eye for proofing.
July 18, 2005
Pod Doc
Pappa Doc and The Kid do their first podcast, and its just great. I love the light and excited voice of The Kid layed just beneath Docs staccato expressions, until The Kid gets way excited and lights up the melody of voice over doc's in the pocket groove.
I've talked to Chris, I've talked to David, and now I know what Doc sounds like (Plus The Kid). That means I'm 3/4 clued. We ever find Levine, I got first dibs on his voice.
I've talked to Chris, I've talked to David, and now I know what Doc sounds like (Plus The Kid). That means I'm 3/4 clued. We ever find Levine, I got first dibs on his voice.
Love Notes to my Google Referrers...
How badly is your tooth chipped? You can probably get it fixed for about $150. Don't freak out.
I don't know when school starts, but I wish I did!
You know what? I'm not sure that anyone won the showdown between Vinnie Colaiuta, Steve Gadd, and Dave Weckl -- except for us fans who get to watch it forever because it was digitized. We won.
I can't believe you didn't know YAHOO stood for You Always Have Other Options! I'm glad I could help, but I can't believe I'm number 1 result on Google over such a funny little thing. But you know something--I really don't believe we really do always have other options. I hate to be a pessimist, but I think I might believe these are the only options I have. But you? YOU HAVE OPTIONS Girlfriend/Boyfriend. The sky is wide open to your potential.
As far as the Arkansas Bees go, I would just get a good can of Wasp spray at the dollar store, maybe Big Lots. Look, you can go to Lowes and get the expensive kind, but then you won't have the money to pay the Lowes card, and they start calling all the way from India to tell you that your attidude isn't helping. TRUST ME. Stick with the Dollar Store. Arkansas Bees aren't any worse than any other bees. (Oh Geez, Myrtle, did you mean Africanized Bees? You searched on Arkansas Bees--their is a difference. Never trust a dark bee. They'll mug you in the elevator.)
The DiGiorno Pizza cooking directions are on the back of the box. You use my post, you're gonna do it RageBoy's way and cook the cardboard. You do NOT want to go there. Just do what the box says.
Don't get me started about Earthlink Live Chat support. The first two times I tried it honey, It was m-e-s-s-e-d u-p. Okay? But now, I think they've worked the kinks out. I really would give it another chance. I think there's a new rule that they can't get offline with you until you answer with just the right string of characters. Don't try fuck you--they don't respond to it. It's like yelling into a black hole.
Whoever is making Halushki, you better invite me over. And I mean it. I don't care where you're cooking it, you either freeze some and send it to me or you invite my ass over with the most greatful set of molars and tastebuds you've ever seen. Now make sure you get the fried cabbage just a little bit brown--cook it long enough--because when some of those slivery pieces of cabbage get brown, the sugar in the cabbage carmelizes. HELLO! Czech Heaven.
When it comes to bronchitis pleghm, you are looking at the woman who can tell you more than you wanted to know: Taste, Color, Texture--you name it. Now, you probably didn't want these details when you first came here, but if it's green or brown tinged (maybe blood) get some antibiotics, a steroid shot in you ass, a take home Medrol Dose Pack and call in sick tomorrow. (Give me a shout on my cell when you go through the steroid shakes. I'll talk you down: 678-294-0900)
Ketchum? Just don't go there.
And last of all, stop worrying about getting a bigger one and start loving the one God gave you.
I don't know when school starts, but I wish I did!
You know what? I'm not sure that anyone won the showdown between Vinnie Colaiuta, Steve Gadd, and Dave Weckl -- except for us fans who get to watch it forever because it was digitized. We won.
I can't believe you didn't know YAHOO stood for You Always Have Other Options! I'm glad I could help, but I can't believe I'm number 1 result on Google over such a funny little thing. But you know something--I really don't believe we really do always have other options. I hate to be a pessimist, but I think I might believe these are the only options I have. But you? YOU HAVE OPTIONS Girlfriend/Boyfriend. The sky is wide open to your potential.
As far as the Arkansas Bees go, I would just get a good can of Wasp spray at the dollar store, maybe Big Lots. Look, you can go to Lowes and get the expensive kind, but then you won't have the money to pay the Lowes card, and they start calling all the way from India to tell you that your attidude isn't helping. TRUST ME. Stick with the Dollar Store. Arkansas Bees aren't any worse than any other bees. (Oh Geez, Myrtle, did you mean Africanized Bees? You searched on Arkansas Bees--their is a difference. Never trust a dark bee. They'll mug you in the elevator.)
The DiGiorno Pizza cooking directions are on the back of the box. You use my post, you're gonna do it RageBoy's way and cook the cardboard. You do NOT want to go there. Just do what the box says.
Don't get me started about Earthlink Live Chat support. The first two times I tried it honey, It was m-e-s-s-e-d u-p. Okay? But now, I think they've worked the kinks out. I really would give it another chance. I think there's a new rule that they can't get offline with you until you answer with just the right string of characters. Don't try fuck you--they don't respond to it. It's like yelling into a black hole.
Whoever is making Halushki, you better invite me over. And I mean it. I don't care where you're cooking it, you either freeze some and send it to me or you invite my ass over with the most greatful set of molars and tastebuds you've ever seen. Now make sure you get the fried cabbage just a little bit brown--cook it long enough--because when some of those slivery pieces of cabbage get brown, the sugar in the cabbage carmelizes. HELLO! Czech Heaven.
When it comes to bronchitis pleghm, you are looking at the woman who can tell you more than you wanted to know: Taste, Color, Texture--you name it. Now, you probably didn't want these details when you first came here, but if it's green or brown tinged (maybe blood) get some antibiotics, a steroid shot in you ass, a take home Medrol Dose Pack and call in sick tomorrow. (Give me a shout on my cell when you go through the steroid shakes. I'll talk you down: 678-294-0900)
Ketchum? Just don't go there.
And last of all, stop worrying about getting a bigger one and start loving the one God gave you.
From CBO to EXBO, he's the Internet's Chief MoFo
David reports that Chris' tenure as Highbeam's Chief Blogging Officer has ended. Perhaps the big man's work there is done. You know, this blogging thing: once you get the rapid implementation done, the rest is pretty much value, value, value. (cough.)
There were many entertaining ideas in a recent email exchange on what Mr. Locke should "be" next. Michael O'Connor Clarke suggested this:
Me, I was thinking TAE Blogging Officer has a nice ring. Which brings me back to my post the other day -- except it's not just for BigPR anymore. Smart companies won't let their bloggers get away just yet. Now isn't the time to do something "leading edge" and then take your jellybeans and go home.
What if MS decided having Scobel's mouth open all the time was more pain than pleasure. What if Scobel decided to retire to Jamaica and chase hurricanes? There isn't a thicket thick enough to hide him from the companies that would want their very own Scobelizer. You and I both know, it would be really stupid for MS to cut bait on its technical evangelist any time soon. Short of any hard jail time, Scobel's there for a while.
And that's the thing corpo-newbies need to understand: blogging isn't a project or a program; blogging's for life. It's not an engagement, it's a process by which your organization becomes ever increasingly closer to your markets. It's not linear. It's an inward churning circle, spinning like a hurricane, bringing your markets closer to your eye, where what you see happening will blow your hair back.
At the same time, it's an outward churning circle, like a reverse hurricane, and I don't even know what a weather bug would call that.
The point is, now that CBO has re-emerged as the Internet's Chief MoFo, you would be wise to follow David's links to what RB's up to. Or try some of these.
Peace, Out.
There were many entertaining ideas in a recent email exchange on what Mr. Locke should "be" next. Michael O'Connor Clarke suggested this:
Maybe you’ll still re-emerge as a Highbeam Blogging Officer. Pity you weren’t doing this back when you did that gig in Japan - you could have been an Artificial Intelligence Blogging Officer, and then sued those Sony chaps for copyright infringement. Personally, I’ve always fancied playing the Official Blogging Officer – but six years of French horn messed up my embouchure. With my background in knowledge management, I guess I could try for Knowledge Intranet Blogging Officer, but I don’t think the world really needs another one of those.
Me, I was thinking TAE Blogging Officer has a nice ring. Which brings me back to my post the other day -- except it's not just for BigPR anymore. Smart companies won't let their bloggers get away just yet. Now isn't the time to do something "leading edge" and then take your jellybeans and go home.
What if MS decided having Scobel's mouth open all the time was more pain than pleasure. What if Scobel decided to retire to Jamaica and chase hurricanes? There isn't a thicket thick enough to hide him from the companies that would want their very own Scobelizer. You and I both know, it would be really stupid for MS to cut bait on its technical evangelist any time soon. Short of any hard jail time, Scobel's there for a while.
And that's the thing corpo-newbies need to understand: blogging isn't a project or a program; blogging's for life. It's not an engagement, it's a process by which your organization becomes ever increasingly closer to your markets. It's not linear. It's an inward churning circle, spinning like a hurricane, bringing your markets closer to your eye, where what you see happening will blow your hair back.
At the same time, it's an outward churning circle, like a reverse hurricane, and I don't even know what a weather bug would call that.
The point is, now that CBO has re-emerged as the Internet's Chief MoFo, you would be wise to follow David's links to what RB's up to. Or try some of these.
- Was Highbeam's Chief Blogging Officer
- Now Ex-Blogging Officer
- Continuing to write the most entertaining, Enlightening and frightening book of the 21st century. (Oh wait, he started it last century, so I guess that would be "of the last two centuries combined.")
Named in a 2001 Financial Times Group survey as one of the "top 50 business thinkers in the world," Christopher Locke (aka RageBoy, aka Chief Blogging Officer) is co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business As Usual, and author of Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices and The Bombast Transcripts: Rants and Screeds of RageBoy®. He has worked at the Japanese government's Fifth Generation Project, at Ricoh, at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, at MCI, at IBM, as a consultant/blogger for HighBeam Research, and as a short-order cook at Nick Tahoe's Texas Hots. Locke has written for Wired, Release 1.0, The Industry Standard, Harvard Business Review and many other publications. His work has been covered by Fast Company, Advertising Age, Business Week, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, The Economist, The Financial Times, and like that. He has never recanted anything. Before now. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.
Peace, Out.
July 17, 2005
100,000 mile club
When I started blogging in 2001, a search on my name, in quotes, brought up two search results: one, a comment on an online discussion group about women's health, and the other, I don't even remember.
Today, I did a quick check for something I'm working on and saw that Google's kicking out more than 100,000 hits on my unique name, in quotes.
I think that means I get a new car.
To dispel any conjecture, no one else has my full name, with this spelling. Color me lucky.
Note to risk-averse corporations on the reverberating effect of the Internet--participating doesn't always mean "having a blog." It does mean participating in the conversation. Comments, forums, Wikis, IRC, conferences all of these places are hang out spots for bloggers in our "off" time (i.e., non-posting time). Wouldn't it be cool to be able to talk to us on the things we're talking about? You may even find, after a while, that you, too, want to blog!
We like to talk to people. Why the heck else would we be out here doing this year after year. You think we're after the free car?
Today, I did a quick check for something I'm working on and saw that Google's kicking out more than 100,000 hits on my unique name, in quotes.
I think that means I get a new car.
To dispel any conjecture, no one else has my full name, with this spelling. Color me lucky.
Note to risk-averse corporations on the reverberating effect of the Internet--participating doesn't always mean "having a blog." It does mean participating in the conversation. Comments, forums, Wikis, IRC, conferences all of these places are hang out spots for bloggers in our "off" time (i.e., non-posting time). Wouldn't it be cool to be able to talk to us on the things we're talking about? You may even find, after a while, that you, too, want to blog!
We like to talk to people. Why the heck else would we be out here doing this year after year. You think we're after the free car?
OMG, The World Is Round?
Spurred by this NY Times article, Scoble is surprised that Dave Winer is considering treating his PC as a consumable, like an ink jet printer which now cost less than the cartridges, because Microsoft's OEMs don't provide Windows install disks when you purchase a PC, and it's nearly the same costwise--even less sometimes--to buy a new computer instead of purchasing a full-fledged copy of Windows.
Let the dumpster diving begin!
My guess would be that Scoble gets his Windows CDs free, or that perhaps they have WindowsXPPro CDs sitting around in candy dishes at Microsoft for all who wish to partake, but newsflash to Scoble: Most of us regular folks have to RE-BUY the software if we want to be able to pave our machines (to get rid of offending agents, because we deleted an important operating system component and screwed it up bad, or just because we feel like it).
I spent $2,000 on computers last year--my Acer laptop from buy.com (do NOT buy.com) and an HP PC from Microcenter here in Atlanta. The year before we bought a PC from a different store (or OEM as Scoble refers to them). In fact, I've been buying PCs for years, and it's been a long, long time since I got the actual software that would let me re-install, from scratch, the Microsoft OS. Maybe never.
Yes, Robert, the world is round and every day all around this round world, people pay for Microsoft's OS twice. Once on the computer and once in the box.
I hate that too. Grrr.
Let the dumpster diving begin!
My guess would be that Scoble gets his Windows CDs free, or that perhaps they have WindowsXPPro CDs sitting around in candy dishes at Microsoft for all who wish to partake, but newsflash to Scoble: Most of us regular folks have to RE-BUY the software if we want to be able to pave our machines (to get rid of offending agents, because we deleted an important operating system component and screwed it up bad, or just because we feel like it).
I spent $2,000 on computers last year--my Acer laptop from buy.com (do NOT buy.com) and an HP PC from Microcenter here in Atlanta. The year before we bought a PC from a different store (or OEM as Scoble refers to them). In fact, I've been buying PCs for years, and it's been a long, long time since I got the actual software that would let me re-install, from scratch, the Microsoft OS. Maybe never.
Yes, Robert, the world is round and every day all around this round world, people pay for Microsoft's OS twice. Once on the computer and once in the box.
I hate that too. Grrr.
Oh and by the way...
Thank goodness all the men are doing the heavy lifting around this issue. We from Girls Gone Wild: PR Spring Break just wouldn't know how to hold all of those deep thoughts in our pee-sized heads, would we? Nooo. We haven't been writing on these topics for years, have we? Nooo. We're busy making our hair fluffy and color coding our Organizers with our earrings. Spending all that time in Media Map can make a girl perspire!
Make sure you keep it in the family, boys.
Make sure you keep it in the family, boys.
A good un
Tom Murphy has a sizzling rant on the silliness of the predictions regarding the demise of PR-Proper. Some are now prophesizing that your average PR flacks will morph into event planners, thanks to blogging. Follow the bouncing predictions. I think they all end up with telemarketing. So quit now and get yourself an extra phone line or a ticket to India.
I do agree with the folks who use the word "folks" a lot, whom Tom quotes, that command and control doesn't work, and that public relations is a dish best served as private relations, thank you Chris Locke for writing all of that many years ago.
However, I see the division coming along the lines of flexibility and speed. In other words, practitioners who stay small and nimble and on the outside of BigAgencies will make headway into all but the Very Large accounts of BigPR. But in BigPR, there will always be room for a good crisis guy. So don't write your telemarketing script just yet.
Things are changing. Tom is right that the hyperbole among the 'because I said so' blog bunch is getting annoying.
But then, I have been in that 'because I said so' bunch for years, so I guess I'll shut up now.
I think I have an event to plan anyway.
I do agree with the folks who use the word "folks" a lot, whom Tom quotes, that command and control doesn't work, and that public relations is a dish best served as private relations, thank you Chris Locke for writing all of that many years ago.
However, I see the division coming along the lines of flexibility and speed. In other words, practitioners who stay small and nimble and on the outside of BigAgencies will make headway into all but the Very Large accounts of BigPR. But in BigPR, there will always be room for a good crisis guy. So don't write your telemarketing script just yet.
Things are changing. Tom is right that the hyperbole among the 'because I said so' blog bunch is getting annoying.
But then, I have been in that 'because I said so' bunch for years, so I guess I'll shut up now.
I think I have an event to plan anyway.
July 16, 2005
Jesse knows...
...what a sinus infection feels like. This pretty picture is me! It neglects the painful teeth though. And the cough I'm now sprouting thanks to the post nasal runoff.It's wet enough around Georgia now to grow sinus infections from the earth, on little vines, waiting for noses to happen by and inhale them like jasmine.
Everything changes even while we're sick. The net stands still less and less often these days. I think that when we die we'll be summed up and remembered and forgotten before our bodies touch the earth. We will be vintage in 5 years or less. The age of an online antique reduced from 100 years to ten.
All the while, infectious agents will hold fast to the insides of sinuses everywhere.
Mama PR, Don't Let Your Good Bloggers Get Away.
Especially right now.
It's an odd thing. Besides my finger injury, which is now better thanks to all the funnies and encouragement you left me in comments, I'm sick. I know the routine by now, after all of these years. I get worked up over something incredibly important that's being discussed online, I try to make a difference, I realize I can't, and then I get a sinus infection.
Works like clockwork.
Does this mean that blogging makes me sick? Well, not blogging per se, but the twisting of blogspace by powerful non-participators who have not a clue what it means to be here--that makes me sick. The command-and-control oriented who don't know what it means to talk as people who happen to work in companies large and small, or for themselves, in the U.S., and globally, but as people first. Blog posers who use out terms like 'dialogue' and 'conversation' but don't understand what having one feels like. These folks make me spend my co-pay, and that gets me cranky.
The first step for the blogging clueless: Admit your are powerless.
Would it be so difficult, for example, for a company like Ketchum to admit that they've missed the blog boat but are correcting that by, say, encouraging their employees to blog, listening to what bloggers within the organization already know--striking up conversations (not defense arguments) with people outside the organization? To understand that the "PR Blogosphere" is not the some place out in the ether separate from the rest of the blogworld? To cop to the fact that it isn't just PR bloggers who think they've behaved stupidly?
To admit they have a lot to learn from others with commitment and caring and years of living in the blogosphere? And that they're ready to engage that expertise?
That some of these experts are the very ones they have systematically ignored within their own organization for years on this very topic?
To understand that blogging is about lowering yourself to the level of your market--to take off your PR Holy See robes and listen up? Not by "putting a blog up," necessarily, but by at least being interested?
And to help their clients understand this?
I could go on and on and cover old ground, talk about the conversations I had with my colleagues on blogging at a time when eKetchum barely had its "e". Back when I had Chris Locke, Gonzo-Marketing fresh, ready to talk with them about how they could leap forward in a largely undefined space by participating.
That's when Anthony Parcero and I were blogging from the inside, and even after I left, and blogging became "bigger," Anthony remained a participating-if-semi-secret-ketchum voice encouraging Ketchum, and PR as a whole, into the blogosphere--for the most part, without any sign that Ketchum was listening to its own clued employee.
Compare Ketchum's recent defense messaging with what Anthony has written in the past--someone who, as a technologist, is not at the top of the hierarchical PR food chain. From what I can tell as an outside observer over the last few years, Anthony kept his ketchum connection mostly behind the scenes. The reasons for that are his to write about or not. But his voice did not go unnoticed. Maybe even now noticed by Ketchum, as they scramble to catch up.
Compare and see if any of Ketchum's recent press sounds vaguely familiar to what one of its past blogging employees has been saying for a long time:
The fact is this: Ketchum needs to catch up quick and stop using the positioning that "blogging isn't always the right strategy" to explain its lack of presence in this space over the last five years.
Ketchum may need to take a page from the Edelman playbook and engage the services of a real live blogger (like David is for Edelman), to play devil's advocate and put a hand up when it's time to call bullshit bullshit.
It's a lot less messy than letting the blogosphere play that role for you.
Now excuse me while I go expel the toxins from my system.
It's an odd thing. Besides my finger injury, which is now better thanks to all the funnies and encouragement you left me in comments, I'm sick. I know the routine by now, after all of these years. I get worked up over something incredibly important that's being discussed online, I try to make a difference, I realize I can't, and then I get a sinus infection.
Works like clockwork.
Does this mean that blogging makes me sick? Well, not blogging per se, but the twisting of blogspace by powerful non-participators who have not a clue what it means to be here--that makes me sick. The command-and-control oriented who don't know what it means to talk as people who happen to work in companies large and small, or for themselves, in the U.S., and globally, but as people first. Blog posers who use out terms like 'dialogue' and 'conversation' but don't understand what having one feels like. These folks make me spend my co-pay, and that gets me cranky.
The first step for the blogging clueless: Admit your are powerless.
Would it be so difficult, for example, for a company like Ketchum to admit that they've missed the blog boat but are correcting that by, say, encouraging their employees to blog, listening to what bloggers within the organization already know--striking up conversations (not defense arguments) with people outside the organization? To understand that the "PR Blogosphere" is not the some place out in the ether separate from the rest of the blogworld? To cop to the fact that it isn't just PR bloggers who think they've behaved stupidly?
To admit they have a lot to learn from others with commitment and caring and years of living in the blogosphere? And that they're ready to engage that expertise?
That some of these experts are the very ones they have systematically ignored within their own organization for years on this very topic?
To understand that blogging is about lowering yourself to the level of your market--to take off your PR Holy See robes and listen up? Not by "putting a blog up," necessarily, but by at least being interested?
And to help their clients understand this?
I could go on and on and cover old ground, talk about the conversations I had with my colleagues on blogging at a time when eKetchum barely had its "e". Back when I had Chris Locke, Gonzo-Marketing fresh, ready to talk with them about how they could leap forward in a largely undefined space by participating.
That's when Anthony Parcero and I were blogging from the inside, and even after I left, and blogging became "bigger," Anthony remained a participating-if-semi-secret-ketchum voice encouraging Ketchum, and PR as a whole, into the blogosphere--for the most part, without any sign that Ketchum was listening to its own clued employee.
Compare Ketchum's recent defense messaging with what Anthony has written in the past--someone who, as a technologist, is not at the top of the hierarchical PR food chain. From what I can tell as an outside observer over the last few years, Anthony kept his ketchum connection mostly behind the scenes. The reasons for that are his to write about or not. But his voice did not go unnoticed. Maybe even now noticed by Ketchum, as they scramble to catch up.
Compare and see if any of Ketchum's recent press sounds vaguely familiar to what one of its past blogging employees has been saying for a long time:
- Anthony on What is a Weblog
- Anthony on Interactive PR Strategies
- Anthony's Q&A
The fact is this: Ketchum needs to catch up quick and stop using the positioning that "blogging isn't always the right strategy" to explain its lack of presence in this space over the last five years.
Ketchum may need to take a page from the Edelman playbook and engage the services of a real live blogger (like David is for Edelman), to play devil's advocate and put a hand up when it's time to call bullshit bullshit.
It's a lot less messy than letting the blogosphere play that role for you.
Now excuse me while I go expel the toxins from my system.
July 14, 2005
typing without pointer...
With all the football i played as a kid, with all the horses I fell off of, with all the times my brother stuffed my clothes full of pillows and beat me to a pulp, with all the stairs I fell down, I must have never sprained anything. I know this because no appendage has caused me such discomfort in all of my God-given injuries.
This pointer finger thing (see below; linking is too much work) is not so good and it's swelling and I can't move it so good. It's not broken I'm pretty sure because I can bend it and the pain is down low, near the part where the knuckle bends, but I don't WANT to bend it because it hurts. Four Advil Bad. Jeremy told me to take six. He just wants me off Global PR Week because I jabber during conference calls. I wish I could link--i'll come back in tomorrow and link. Right now my injured finger wants to stay stiff and sort of curled, like a claw finger, and george said no no make sure you keep moving it but put ice on it, don't let it stiffen up, but now it's 1:24 and i would kind of like to sleep.
I am learning how to send my middle finger in to do my pointer finger's job on the keyboard. He can reach all the way to "t" and "b" now, but it slows me down.
This means my fuck-you finger has to work harder and reach farther, but hey, he's never been shy before.
This pointer finger thing (see below; linking is too much work) is not so good and it's swelling and I can't move it so good. It's not broken I'm pretty sure because I can bend it and the pain is down low, near the part where the knuckle bends, but I don't WANT to bend it because it hurts. Four Advil Bad. Jeremy told me to take six. He just wants me off Global PR Week because I jabber during conference calls. I wish I could link--i'll come back in tomorrow and link. Right now my injured finger wants to stay stiff and sort of curled, like a claw finger, and george said no no make sure you keep moving it but put ice on it, don't let it stiffen up, but now it's 1:24 and i would kind of like to sleep.
I am learning how to send my middle finger in to do my pointer finger's job on the keyboard. He can reach all the way to "t" and "b" now, but it slows me down.
This means my fuck-you finger has to work harder and reach farther, but hey, he's never been shy before.
July 13, 2005
Traffic Jam
Damn, that traffic jam...how I hate to be late...hurts my motor to go so slow...time i get home my supper be cold...i say damn, that traffffiiiic jam. (name that artist).
So, I'm driving through more cobb county and north fulton FLOOD WATERS today, doing I don't know what with my steering wheel, maybe it was when I called Tom, maybe not, and then BAM somehow I had jammed my left hand pointer finger into the steering wheel in a way that made no sense, and the bottom line is, I've never had a finger issue like this.
Luckily, I can curl it into a typing position. However, DAMN it hurts and I can't move it side to side, as in wagging, as in baaaaad Ketchum, and I'd link over to Constantin but really this finger dilemma is making things quite difficult and i feel like halley suitt with her cocksyx or whatever it's called bruised from falling down, except i wasn't skating or anything, i was simply steering a car.
what on earth is up with that.
So, I'm driving through more cobb county and north fulton FLOOD WATERS today, doing I don't know what with my steering wheel, maybe it was when I called Tom, maybe not, and then BAM somehow I had jammed my left hand pointer finger into the steering wheel in a way that made no sense, and the bottom line is, I've never had a finger issue like this.
Luckily, I can curl it into a typing position. However, DAMN it hurts and I can't move it side to side, as in wagging, as in baaaaad Ketchum, and I'd link over to Constantin but really this finger dilemma is making things quite difficult and i feel like halley suitt with her cocksyx or whatever it's called bruised from falling down, except i wasn't skating or anything, i was simply steering a car.
what on earth is up with that.
July 11, 2005
When We Are Hypocrites
I've been writing a lot about Technorati and its recent identity crisis ("I'm a portal! No, I'm a search engine! No, I'm a portal! No, a search engine! No, I'm a mess!") lately. I just don't understand how an essential tool in a specific space -- i.e., blogging -- can become virtually unusable after a round of publicized enhancements, supposedly tested out on beta users like me. I don't understand how Technorati's full-scale search failure over the last several weeks can go unexplained.
And don't get me wrong. I love(d) Technorati. I use(d) it for clients and for my own blog travels. I paid the money. I joined the party. I expect more.
And I'm getting a little miffed.
Because when it's someone like Dell that fails to deliver, more brick than click, the bloggerati jump up and down and demand satisfaction. They call in the legit media and launch a feeding frenzy.
But when it's me and the folks who comment here about Technorati's weeks of non-usability, you hear a lot of wind. Is that because we're supposed to all be friends? Not bite the hand that ranks us? Because Dave Sifry's busier launching Live 8 sites and sending bloggers backstage, and announcing top 100s, than he is making sure that we can search beyond the new Technorati wasted-space homepage?
Is it okay to take Dell to the matt while making sure one of our own is immune?
No it's not.
So what is it? Why no word from on high? Is it the price point difference between a Dell Notebook and a Technorati Watchlist? Is it a loyalty on the part of the Top 100 that Technorati has appointed that buys silence?
I have tried to search more than a dozen times in the past month. I have gotten an error message every time I've tried to go beyond first-page results. I've blogged about it. I've included screen clips. When I'm lucky enough to arrive at an actual page without an error message, it is taking upwards of a minute or more. Today, I didn't even make it to the first page results. Instead I got the old error message again.
You see, I don't like the big colorful icons and links to things I don't care about taking up space and costing extended loading time. I'm not a teen, I'm not a tween, and I'm not a twenty-something, so get over all the FUN you're trying to make me have, Technorati. Just cut it out and fix your product.
I don't know about you folks, but I'd like a few answers. I'm not sure who Technorati's PR folks are. Maybe I should snoop around.
And maybe Dell should stop making computers and start making blog search engines. No portals. No search engines. No portals.... They'd have it a whole lot easier when they screw up.
And don't get me wrong. I love(d) Technorati. I use(d) it for clients and for my own blog travels. I paid the money. I joined the party. I expect more.
And I'm getting a little miffed.
Because when it's someone like Dell that fails to deliver, more brick than click, the bloggerati jump up and down and demand satisfaction. They call in the legit media and launch a feeding frenzy.
But when it's me and the folks who comment here about Technorati's weeks of non-usability, you hear a lot of wind. Is that because we're supposed to all be friends? Not bite the hand that ranks us? Because Dave Sifry's busier launching Live 8 sites and sending bloggers backstage, and announcing top 100s, than he is making sure that we can search beyond the new Technorati wasted-space homepage?
Is it okay to take Dell to the matt while making sure one of our own is immune?
No it's not.
So what is it? Why no word from on high? Is it the price point difference between a Dell Notebook and a Technorati Watchlist? Is it a loyalty on the part of the Top 100 that Technorati has appointed that buys silence?
I have tried to search more than a dozen times in the past month. I have gotten an error message every time I've tried to go beyond first-page results. I've blogged about it. I've included screen clips. When I'm lucky enough to arrive at an actual page without an error message, it is taking upwards of a minute or more. Today, I didn't even make it to the first page results. Instead I got the old error message again.
You see, I don't like the big colorful icons and links to things I don't care about taking up space and costing extended loading time. I'm not a teen, I'm not a tween, and I'm not a twenty-something, so get over all the FUN you're trying to make me have, Technorati. Just cut it out and fix your product.
I don't know about you folks, but I'd like a few answers. I'm not sure who Technorati's PR folks are. Maybe I should snoop around.
And maybe Dell should stop making computers and start making blog search engines. No portals. No search engines. No portals.... They'd have it a whole lot easier when they screw up.
Priestcasting
AKMA's On! He posted the mp3 of his sermon and a comprehensive 'sermon report' from St. Lukes. I've been waiting for four years to go to AKMA's church. Amazing. Stunning. I have met the man as a friend and a blogger, and now I've heard him at work, executing that about which he is most passionate.
Now, if we can get some video behind it, and bring other denominations on board -- to podcasting, to videocasting, to places like Odeo and Kaneva -- if we can bring Baptists and Born Agains, Friends and Lutherans, Unity and Unversalists, then virtual congregations can do a kind of inter-denominational shape shifting, breaking down church walls and exclusive doctrines to attend services without the barriers of geography and ritual.
In secret or in the open we can commune.
God willing, a new "flatter religion" is waiting for us there.
Now, if we can get some video behind it, and bring other denominations on board -- to podcasting, to videocasting, to places like Odeo and Kaneva -- if we can bring Baptists and Born Agains, Friends and Lutherans, Unity and Unversalists, then virtual congregations can do a kind of inter-denominational shape shifting, breaking down church walls and exclusive doctrines to attend services without the barriers of geography and ritual.
In secret or in the open we can commune.
God willing, a new "flatter religion" is waiting for us there.
July 10, 2005
quotes of the day
Shelley: I'm not writing news; I'm telling a story.
Dave Winer: Now when they fuck us, we have a way of giving them a black mark. A little more metadata, and it'll start showing up on their bottom line.
Denise Howell: It's only taken me 40 years to stumble upon my epitaph, but this morning one spoke to me with perfect clarity: "She never took enough pictures."
Ray Sweatman: ...to where the morning doesn’t break but unfolds softly in a bloom
Dave Winer: Now when they fuck us, we have a way of giving them a black mark. A little more metadata, and it'll start showing up on their bottom line.
Denise Howell: It's only taken me 40 years to stumble upon my epitaph, but this morning one spoke to me with perfect clarity: "She never took enough pictures."
Ray Sweatman: ...to where the morning doesn’t break but unfolds softly in a bloom
July 09, 2005
Broken Fema
Well sweet Mary, I want to get the good federal benefits and paid-for-PPO insurance that come with the tough job of wrting FEMA's communications. I could bring much clarity ot the process. I am even proficient in translating FEMA's instructions into Internetese: U R SOL, LOL!
Be well, Tom, and all-a you Floridians and neighboring southeasters.
Be well, Tom, and all-a you Floridians and neighboring southeasters.
July 08, 2005
SOLD to the highest bidder
Just really not keeping up. There are things I am doing that are taking way too much time, and things that I should be doing that aren't getting done. And it's time to clean out the garage and put every little not old thing (and every old vintage thing) on ebay, because it's time.
You know, when I think about ebay, I think back to when I first started selling--how long ago that was. The brink of dot-comunism. Back when life was good and no one was paying over-the-limit fees.
So today I signed in for the first time since I don't know when. I found that I owed $1.83 for some long forgotten transaction, and paypaled myself into good guy status forthwith.
Then I looked up how long I've been a member of that most wonderful "we can always get grocery money by selling the [fill-in-the-blank] on ebay, honey" community.
I could hardly believe it when I read: February 20, 1999.
That's 42 years in Internet time.
And of course, that got me reminiscing... about the good old days... about some of my finest ebay moments:
1) Shopping the dollar stores in 2000 and re-selling $1 items at a profit -- especially that particular little bear figurine for $15.75 -- and did you know that people with zebra collections are willing to pay nearly $8.00 for a $1 zebra pin?
2) A particular financially bad winter in 2002 when George and I found an interesting piece of photographic equipment in -- well near -- a dumpster, took it home and sold it on ebay for $150. We then spent the next Saturday afternoon doing dumpster drive-bys up and down highway 41. [Hint--plazas with new construction...]
3) The $75 I got for one of my old Barbies, which I managed to scrub off the ink I used to trace her body parts with a mixture of Melaleuca Oil and Irish Spring.
4) Selling the little pocket books I found in my friend's attic when we were 9 -- that her dad let me keep -- for $150.
5) Bringing in $400/month back in 2001 selling anything of value in our house until there was nothing of value left.
Then rebuying all that stuff.
The early ebay was very different from the ebay today. The entire 'automation' thing hit after I had been selling for a while, and power sellers really took over the marketplace. Buyers became discerning. Sellers became aggressive. Paypal became my bank. Everything changed at once. By the end of 2002, every original dollar store item had been sold four times over, and ebay buyers just plain stopped bidding for the thrill of it.
But I'm here hoping. Hoping that when I dig out our new good stuff from the garage, that ebay will come through. Hoping that supply chain and inventory efficiencies have not been completely achieved at ebay, leaving me room for my average six-day lag getting to the post office with my shipments.
Ebay 2.0
We'll see what it's got to offer.
You know, when I think about ebay, I think back to when I first started selling--how long ago that was. The brink of dot-comunism. Back when life was good and no one was paying over-the-limit fees.
So today I signed in for the first time since I don't know when. I found that I owed $1.83 for some long forgotten transaction, and paypaled myself into good guy status forthwith.
Then I looked up how long I've been a member of that most wonderful "we can always get grocery money by selling the [fill-in-the-blank] on ebay, honey" community.
I could hardly believe it when I read: February 20, 1999.
That's 42 years in Internet time.
And of course, that got me reminiscing... about the good old days... about some of my finest ebay moments:
1) Shopping the dollar stores in 2000 and re-selling $1 items at a profit -- especially that particular little bear figurine for $15.75 -- and did you know that people with zebra collections are willing to pay nearly $8.00 for a $1 zebra pin?
2) A particular financially bad winter in 2002 when George and I found an interesting piece of photographic equipment in -- well near -- a dumpster, took it home and sold it on ebay for $150. We then spent the next Saturday afternoon doing dumpster drive-bys up and down highway 41. [Hint--plazas with new construction...]
3) The $75 I got for one of my old Barbies, which I managed to scrub off the ink I used to trace her body parts with a mixture of Melaleuca Oil and Irish Spring.
4) Selling the little pocket books I found in my friend's attic when we were 9 -- that her dad let me keep -- for $150.
5) Bringing in $400/month back in 2001 selling anything of value in our house until there was nothing of value left.
Then rebuying all that stuff.
The early ebay was very different from the ebay today. The entire 'automation' thing hit after I had been selling for a while, and power sellers really took over the marketplace. Buyers became discerning. Sellers became aggressive. Paypal became my bank. Everything changed at once. By the end of 2002, every original dollar store item had been sold four times over, and ebay buyers just plain stopped bidding for the thrill of it.
But I'm here hoping. Hoping that when I dig out our new good stuff from the garage, that ebay will come through. Hoping that supply chain and inventory efficiencies have not been completely achieved at ebay, leaving me room for my average six-day lag getting to the post office with my shipments.
Ebay 2.0
We'll see what it's got to offer.
July 05, 2005
Not fishing for compliments...
...because you guys have been supportive enough.
Today I start my second year of not smoking. The fourth of July was the one-year anniversary of my quit date. On the third of July, I grabbed an American Spirit and was going to have a puff until it was effectively lurched away from me.
Soon the feeling was as gone as it ever gets.
As any seasoned wanabee-smoker/ex-smoker knows, you never fail to justify the potential benefits of a future puff: "Well, it's an anniversary--of COURSE I can have a puff to celebrate the fact that I don't do it anymore!"
There are some readers to whom that statement makes perfect sense. God bless us.
So, you're wondering still, and I can tell you that naw. I didn't do it.
I still think about it almost every day.
Part of what has kept me quit is blogging. It's not accountability, per se, but something like that. Accountability by default. Or by laziness. In those moments where addiction comes knocking and I have every good reason in the world to have a smoke, I also think about this blogplace. The mind game goes something like this:
So thanks ya'll. You did it.
Today I start my second year of not smoking. The fourth of July was the one-year anniversary of my quit date. On the third of July, I grabbed an American Spirit and was going to have a puff until it was effectively lurched away from me.
Soon the feeling was as gone as it ever gets.
As any seasoned wanabee-smoker/ex-smoker knows, you never fail to justify the potential benefits of a future puff: "Well, it's an anniversary--of COURSE I can have a puff to celebrate the fact that I don't do it anymore!"
There are some readers to whom that statement makes perfect sense. God bless us.
So, you're wondering still, and I can tell you that naw. I didn't do it.
I still think about it almost every day.
Part of what has kept me quit is blogging. It's not accountability, per se, but something like that. Accountability by default. Or by laziness. In those moments where addiction comes knocking and I have every good reason in the world to have a smoke, I also think about this blogplace. The mind game goes something like this:
Man, I'll have to post about it, and Frank will tell me it's okay--one slip up does not a failure make; and Shelley will tell me to keep up the good fight, and RB will say RAH! You didn't drop Acid! Plus, I just told Don Park to keep at it and now I'm going to have one. McD will offer me condolences and encouragement, and Dean might stop by comments to say 'don't stop stopping'. Plus, if Winer did it, I should be able to do it. How lame am I that a year has passed and I would even think about writing an "I smoked" post. Sure, I'll call it: "So sue me, I puffed one." I can see the post now, talking all about how good it felt going down, blah blah, the same as it ever was.... Oh the hell with it. It isn't worth the effort it takes to post about it....and by then, the craving has dulled. I shake my head and move on with my day.
So thanks ya'll. You did it.
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