I know it’s been a while since I posted.  Planning season, lots going on with the house…you know the story. Anyway, there’s been a post rattling around inside my head for a few days now, and I gotta get it out there.  It deals with one of my biggest frustrations – the lack of good [...]

I can’t believe that something that was invented in order to streamline online payments has made it MORE difficult to make online payments almost every single time I’ve used it.  If it weren’t for eBay and all these little independent merchants who don’t have their own credit card processing, I’d never use it to begin [...]

Lots of things going on, as usual.  And because the tasks are piling up, so is my general list of maladies and complaints: Dear Best Buy, CostCo and all other brick-and-mortar retailers – I bring the product to the register and pay for it.  You give me my receipt.  Transaction over.  No, you can’t peer [...]

I spend a lot of time not just giving presentations, but listening to them.  There are a lot of presenters who are better at it than I am, and certainly I’ve been guilty of a presentation gaffe or two.  (Or five, or thirty-six.)  I’m starting to encounter a lot of the same presentation annoyances lately, [...]

On March 11, I was informed by Google that this site had been removed from its index.  Here’s the text of what I received: From: Google Subject: Removal from Google’s Index Date: March 11, 2009 To: ‹ Previous | 2 of 2 | Next › Recipient Dear site owner or webmaster of hespos.com, While we [...]

I totally agree with the notion that TARP funds and other bailout monies ought not to be used to fund executive bonuses.  That totally makes sense.  Why should taxpayer funds be abused in this way?  Anyone who doesn’t meet a projection of financial success ought not to be rewarded, especially with money that’s supposed to [...]

I’ve been thinking a bit about some of the weaknesses of capitalism – something I haven’t done very often.  I used to be something of a laissez-faire capitalist, but I’m seeing quite a bit of how centralized control of money can make for a very imperfect system.  By way of a hypothetical example… If you [...]

I’ve been saying for a while that the $700 billion figure for the bailout is nothing more than a conservative stake in the ground and that through assumption of debt and acts other than the direct disbursement of cash, the federal government’s gifts to the ultra-rich will extend into the trillions. Go read this article [...]

I’ve been less enthusiastic than some of my fellow Obama-ites.  Yes, we made history.  Yes, we made the right choice.  Yes, we’ll eventually turn the country around.  Yes, it would have been a disaster if McCain had won.  I’m just finding it hard to be enthusiastic about the whole thing, and it’s because I think [...]

One drawback to writing an online marketing column is the off-topic pitches.  Maybe I should send some of these “square peg in a round hole” specialists to people who really know PR, like Peter Shankman or Mark Naples.  I’m guessing that they’re both overwhelmed, though. Especially lately, I’ve been writing columns that look into the [...]