Any interactive media sales rep who presents an "optimization circle" chart in their PowerPoint presentation must sing "Wheel In The Sky" by Journey in its entirety when the slide comes up. That is all.
John Crovello will appear before Judge John J. Toomey on December 4, 2006. He has been charged with Grand Larceny.
I have uploaded a letter that victims of Crovello can download and mail (via certified mail) to the judge and the District Attorney's office. The letter asks the judge to kindly make monies stolen from victims part of the restitution imposed in Crovello's sentence.
If you are a victim, download the letter here.
If you do download the letter and choose to send it, please drop me a note in comments (if you like) to let me know.
You should not construe this as legal advice. I am not an attorney. But I do hope this is helpful. My take is that you won't benefit from this if you haven't logged your complaints with the District Attorney's Office in Suffolk County. Your mileage may vary.
This place has a lot of history with our family, but it's really time to let it go. It's really important that we sell within a reasonable length of time, so any little bit of promotion or publicity can help. I know other bloggers and media professionals sometimes stop by here. I'd appreciate your inbound links or, if you're a media seller and you have some remnant inventory you're not doing anything with... (I know, it's a stretch.)
The thing I will miss most about this place, other than the family memories, is how it served as the center of our social hub for so long. People love to come here, especially in the summer. And it's fun to entertain, whether it's family coming for Christmas dinner or just a random summer pool party. (Some of you out there may have been among the 500 or so of my closest friends invited to SposBash and you've experienced this first hand.)
I'll be sad to see it go, but it's really time to move on.
Michael Spitalnik posted this to the Old Timers List:
Tom Deierlein was shot by a sniper in East Baghdad on Saturday, September 9. The bullet entered his left hip and shattered part of his left rear pelvis, sacrum and right rear pelvis. He has full sensation in both legs with some nerve damage to his left leg. He is currently at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Silver Springs, MD. While some of his injuries are significant, he is stable and in good spirits. For the next 3 months he will be involved in physical and neurological rehabilitation before the doctors can begin any reconstructive surgery on his pelvis.At the time of the assault, Tom, as Civil Affairs officer, was working hard on the focus stabilization of the Sunni area called Adhamiyah (which you may have been reading about in the newspapers). In the 2 weeks prior he’d been focused on improving the schools, hospitals and health clinics as well as the sewage, water and electrical systems of this small part of Baghdad.
You’ll start to hear from him in the next couple of weeks as he settles into his rehabilitation and is able to connect to the Internet. He is very thankful for the prayers, love and support that he’s been receiving from both within and outside the industry.
We will continue to send updates as we learn more.
(Michael granted his permission to re-post this here.)
I just want to remind everyone that you can post your message to Tom at this site.
On this day in 1996, ten years ago, grunge officially died.
This has been a public service announcement.
Some time ago, I posted a thread about the anti-ATV lobby and why I think they suck. It got a fair number of comments, went dead for a while, and has recently been resurrected. Now the comment spammers have latched on to the thread and won't let go, so I've had to close comments on that thread. If anyone wishes to comment further, post in this thread.
For those who have sent me e-mail asking about what they can do to support Tom Deierlein, who was recently wounded in Iraq, I will post information here when I get it.
In the meantime, the folks at Tom's employer, Dynamic Logic, have set up a site where you can drop Tom a line and send him your best wishes.
I accidentally deleted two legit comments this morning when getting rid of comment spam. One was from the ketchup thread and the other was from the Sprint Sucks thread. If you posted something here recently and didn't see it go live, please repost and accept my apologies.
Josh Messinger from iMedia has been developing a widget for this site that will provide links to open marketing positions. We're working out the kinks on getting it live, so bear with us if you notice any template flakiness in the short term.
From what I see so far, Josh has done a great job of integrating the new widget's look and feel into that of the existing site. Cool beans.
I got a little careless despamming the blog this morning and accidentally deleted a couple legit comments. If something you posted is now missing, feel free to re-post.
At around 2 AM this morning, while I was having a rather strange dream about a Catholic priest in a rocket-powered wheelchair, I turned 34.
Thirty-three is nice. For the first few months, you can take comfort in the fact that you're still on the tail end of your first third of a century on the planet. Thirty-four is definitely over that hump. Add to that the notion that nobody has offered me tens of millions of dollars for one of my marketing ideas and 34 can get a bit depressing.
But I'm keeping my chin up, especially knowing Lauren and I will see several friends and family members this weekend for a celebration.
Of course, the vacation was chock full of all sorts of adventure, including fishing, shooting, boating, bar-hopping, hiking, day-tripping and bullshitting around the campfire. I'll post some stories in a bit.
I'm back from a week and a half in Maine, where I had no Internet access. As soon as I get unburied from all the backlog, I'll post a few of the war stories. Trust me, there are many.
I've got a ton of proposals to get out the door before Eric and I leave for a two-day business trip to Chicago tomorrow. Upon getting back into town, I'm driving up to Maine with Craig for my annual "off the grid" vacation so I can recharge my batteries.
So, yeah, you might not hear from me much over the next couple weeks.
Google ads have earned me precisely $3.60 since I started running them, so Buh-bye.
A while back, I received a mysterious e-mail from Google accusing me of click fraud, which was never adequately addressed by Google. They were never able to tell me what the behavior was that tripped their alarms, nor did they follow up my inquiries. Given this, the fact that I've earned pretty much diddley-squat and the fact that only select partners have even a remote idea of what their ad revenue cut is from Google, I thought it better to deep six AdSense than leave it running.
Sounds like the polar opposite of transparency, eh?
Eric and I are hung up in the airport in Chicago, our layover on the Dallas trip. There's some weather in between us and LaGuardia. As it was, we were supposed to get in late, with me probably not getting back to Long Island until after midnight. Our flight's been delayed at least two hours. Could be a long night...
The worst part is that we have at least three clients in Chicago we'd like to go see, but it's already after business hours, and besides - we can't leave the airport because no one knows when they'll start clearing flights into LGA again.
Grrr...
I went to go see Jersey Boys last night with Lauren and her parents. Very cool show with very cool music. The audience was completely energized - more like at a rock concert than at a Broadway show. I don't know how one trains to pull off a falsetto like Frankie Valli's but somehow John Lloyd Young made it work.
Lauren's Dad asked us in the car on the way back from the train station whether we enjoyed it despite our not having grown up "in that era," as he termed it. I replied that my Dad played so much music from The Four Seasons in the house when I was growing up that I DID feel like I grew up in that era. ;-)
Lauren's Mom bought us a soundtrack album, which I'm looking forward to getting on my iPod later today.
Just a quick reminder - Do Not Feed The Trolls.
Fellow liberals: Ann Coulter is a troll. In both senses, but mostly in the Internet sense of someone who is deliberately confrontational so they can get a rise out of you. In other words, Coulter deliberately went after 9-11 widows to sell more books. The more outrage you express, the more letters you write to the papers, the more attention you give her, the more books she sells and the more difficult she is to get out of the spotlight. This page on Newsmax should make it more than evident that the radical right is using the hype machine to distract folks and line Ann Coulter's pockets with the money spent by people who can't resist a good train wreck. Don't try to smear the rest of the right wingers by invoking Coulter. Even the dumbest of us knows she's lunatic fringe material.
So just stop it already.
This afternoon, I'm hopping in my truck and driving down to Philly, where the Annenberg School for Communication is hosting a conference on hyperlinking. I'm on the first panel of the morning, with Jay Rosen, Tony Gentile, Eric Picard and Nancy Tellem. Should be a fun time. Maybe I'll get to meet David Weinberger.
First, though, I'm doing the ad:tech radio podcast with Susan Bratton, which should prove to be fun and interesting.
Makes me wonder if we should serve Cool Ranch Doritos at the reception...
I was looking online for a thread that discusses what is often referred to in this country as The Golden Rule, and how that teaching of fundamental respect for human beings is common to most social systems. I found this Wikipedia entry: Ethic of Reciprocity.
My ethics professor in college summed up The Golden Rule as "Treat people as ends in and of themselves, never as mere means." I think that turn of phrase sums up "do unto others" quite elegantly.
I was looking for this in order to be able to express a fundamental principle that is generally missing in marketing today. I always knew that the Golden Rule shows up pretty much everywhere in philosophy, sociology and religion, but I've not looked at how it is expressed in each of those contexts in quite a long time. The Wikipedia entry I linked to does a nice job of that.
So I caved today and joined the company Blackberry plan. I've had so many problems with Sprint and my Treo in the past year that it makes my blood boil just thinking about it. I can't wait for the number portability gnomes to switch my number over to the new 7105t.
Once the number switches over, I need to plan some sort of elaborate ceremony to permanently retire the Treo. I never want to see this phone again in my life. The idea currently leading the pack is placing it within my skeet launcher and blowing it away with buckshot. However, I will take ideas in comments.
Remember folks, when you want to sling venom anonymously in a public Internet forum (like in someone's blog comments, for example) be super extra careful to use a privacy proxy or some other method of masking your IP address.
(Giggle)
I'll be at OMMA West on Monday and Tuesday. I'll post some stuff about the panels I'm moderating a bit later.
I'm going to let self-promotional comments through for a while. Not comment spam, mind you, but if you take the time to personalize a comment rather than submitting it via a machine, I think having self-promotional comments wouldn't hurt, as long as they're not submitted en masse.
Had to think about this a bit when someone wrote a response to my Why (Free) Online Poker Sucks post. The post did link back to a poker site, but it was well-written and actually contributed something to the dialogue. Comment spam doesn't do that.
If I'm inundated, I reserve the right to change the policy.
I'll be moderating two panels at OMMA West this year, one on behavioral targeting and one on ad auctions/exchanges. I just got these assignments finalized this morning, so I'll be cranking out questions for the next day or two.
Coming back from vacation in Florida on a late flight tonight. Blogging resumes tomorrow.
This is my last week in the office before Lauren and I visit my Dad in Florida. I'm looking forward to some warm weather and a week away from the office.
That's not to say that work won't be on my mind. There are two nagging things I need to devote some time to thinking about while I'm away, and they're the type of things that require relatively long periods of uninterrupted brain churning - exactly the type of thinking that is most difficult to pull off during this latest boomlet in the marketing services industry.
Quite a few of our clients have been looking to us for consultative help with what I'll call "conversational marketing." And I'm not talking about riding blogging's coattails in the hopes of having some of the cool factor rubbing off on client brands. I've had a few client calls in the past week that were centered around what needs to happen in order to effect real change - investments in conversation departments, dedicated conversational assets, willingness to listen, tools and more.
What I'm pleasantly surprised by is the willingness to adapt on the part of clients. On a couple occasions, I made some recommendations to clients that required a lot of adjustment and adaptation on the client side. In one of those cases, I laid down an ultimatum where I thought the client was about to go against the grain of the fundamental principles of the blogging movement. I basically told them I was uninterested in moving forward if they weren't completely dedicated to doing things the right way. I thought I would be overruled. I wasn't, thankfully.
Simultaneously, interest in conversational marketing is coming from partner agencies as well. At least two agencies that we provide services to have made significant queries concerning conversational marketing and one new agency has approached us about our capabilities in that arena.
We have a basic capabilities presentation for Conversational Marketing, which includes a few small case studies. We've been working with clients, both formally and informally on conversational initiatives, but it's far from a fully blown out practice area.
I won't say much more now, other than this is an area we're very interested in, we have some great relevant expertise and success stories, and we're completely passionate about it. So let's just say something's on it's way.
Tomorrow's Online Spin will be all about how much work is involved in tapping into the long tail. It's also about how ad agencies are still infatuated with mass marketing and why they don't want to dive into the trenches and simply Do The Work.
I'm on the annual trip to Mohegan Sun with Cousin Al, Walt and Matt. Coincidentally, the Larsens are up here as well and I saw Craig and Rich yesterday.
Last night, I thought I was down at least $300, but as it turns out, when I got back to my room last night, I found another $125 in chips in my pocket that I somehow lost track of, plus another $100 in cash I didn't know I had. Then I remembered that yesterday before I left I went to Best Buy to get my mom a new PCMCIA card for her laptop so she could get on the wireless network at the house, and I paid for it in cash out of the Mohegan Sun fund. So I'm actually pretty much even.
Been losing a lot of tough hands at blackjack, but I'm fighting my way back. Hopefully, my luck will be better today.
I've got a new pet peeve. The dealers won't let you touch your cell phone to send a quick text message across the casino to your friends, but they freely allow distracted players who don't actually sit down at the table and constantly turn away from the table to talk to friends. I can't tell you how many times the dealer was trying to get the attention of someone who was in the middle of a hand who was turned around, talking to a friend and holding up play. It's an annoying trend. Either come to play or go hang out in the shopping court.
I've been getting pitched for stories for much longer than I've had a blog. I usually don't mind it when PR folks and company CEOs try to get me to write a column about something, but there's a lot of broadcast thinking that often goes into these pitches, which is something I do mind. I also don't like it when someone does a half-assed job of trying to customize something to make it look like it's addressed to me, or when people try to tie their concept in to my last column and screw it up.
So, here's how you pitch me.
1) Be totally transparent. I know your job is to get ink for your client or company. Don't pretend that you're calling or writing for some other purpose.
2) Explain what it is that you think is important that I write about and why.
3) Read your pitch before you send it to me. If it sounds like a stretch, it probably is. Don't spend 10 paragraphs trying to tie something in to a column I recently wrote. If you're trying to pound a square peg into a round hole, you'll waste my time and yours.
4) Don't send me the same (release, story, pitch) you're going to send to everyone else.
5) Have some information ready for me, or someone at your company/client who can speak to the issues you raise.
6) Don't push for me to talk to someone (client CEO, executive at your company) about something non-specific because you think we'd have an interesting conversation. If I want to talk to somebody at your company, it means I really want to gather valuable background info about something specific or do an interview. I don't have a lot of time for small talk.
7) Don't lie to me. The rule is pretty simple. If you lie to me and I catch you, I never speak to you as a source again.
8) If I indicate I don't want to write a story about what you're pitching, don't continually send me e-mail or leave me phone messages about what a mistake I'm making by not writing about whatever it is. My job isn't to cover every little thing I see. It's to crank out a limited number of informed opinion pieces every month.
9) Don't ask me what I think about something and then get pissed because I didn't give you the opinion you were looking for. You're free to disagree with me and I'm free to disagree with you. You can try to change my mind and I'll listen, but I don't tolerate unfocused anger or poor treatment very well.
10) My very favorite stories are the ones that no one wants to talk about and that people try to keep buried. Bring these to me, or set me on the right path to find them, and I will love you.
I've had to close comments on a couple recent threads due to new comment spam attacks. Seems comment spammers have adopted the new tactic of latching on to new posts so that they can get around MT-Moderate. Once they find a post they can exploit, they open the floodgates.
Unfortunately, a comment spammer has latched on to the Irit Spitalnik post and Just. Won't. Let. Go.
So I've closed the comments on that thread. If you'd like to share an Irit story or comment, please post it to this thread. Thanks.
I'm very sad to report that Irit Spitalnik has passed away. I've hesitated to post anything here or on OT regarding Irit's passing, but many of you have e-mailed me privately or left comments in the earlier thread, so I figured I should post something.
I feel so incredibly sad for Michael and Maya that I'm nearly speechless and I don't think I can get through the day here at the agency unless I can get my mind off it somehow.
I have a promise from two friends who are very close to Michael that they will keep me posted about funeral arrangements, etc. When I receive word, I will immediately post information here.
Irit was an amazing person. She had this terrific way of putting people at ease immediately and making you feel as if you could tell her anything. We first met in a business context, but became fast friends. I remember one time we were sitting in the back courtyard at our old Greenwich Street office and I was all depressed about having difficulty meeting someone. She sat there for a half hour and talked with me. When we were done, I felt so much better and so much more optimistic about things. She was just that kind of person who could cheer you up - a great listener with infectious enthusiasm and a lovely smile.
Share some of your favorite Irit stories in comments, if you feel so inclined.
UPDATE - Chris Theodoros posted details of the services in the May thread. I wanted everybody to see them:
The service for Irit is this Sunday January 15th
It is at:
PLAZA JEWISH COMMUNITY CHAPEL
# 630 Amsterdam Ave
at the corner of 91st Street
Service is at 12 Noon
SECOND UPDATE - Nick Nyhan sent along the details for Shiva and for the Irit Spitalnik fund. Here they are:
Shiva: 401 East 74th Street, # 5F
Sun. Mon, Tues
Fund:
"Irit Spitalnik Fund"
c/o Dynamic Logic
30 Irving Place, fl 4
New York, NY 10003
Tribal Council has spoken, and I'm definitely getting invited back to Across the Sound.
I've listened to the next podcast only long enough to hear the results of the survey from Mr. Jaffe himself, but I plan on listening to the rest of it on my way home on the train. Can't wait to hear Steve Hall.
Keep Hespos on Across the Sound. Listen here.
Rate my performance here.
Thanks in advance.
Happy 2006, everyone. I'm in the office today, working along with my staff, apparently not realizing until it was too late that it's customary to give people Monday off if New Year's Day falls on a Sunday.
Remember that whole controversy over whether voting machines are secure? Looks like Black Box Voting has made some significant progress in showing that they aren't.
A test election was run in Leon County [Florida] on Tuesday with a total of eight ballots. Six ballots voted "no" on a ballot question as to whether Diebold voting machines can be hacked or not. Two ballots, cast by Dr. Herbert Thompson and by Harri Hursti voted "yes" indicating a belief that the Diebold machines could be hacked.At the beginning of the test election the memory card programmed by Harri Hursti was inserted into an Optical Scan Diebold voting machine. A "zero report" was run indicating zero votes on the memory card. In fact, however, Hursti had pre-loaded the memory card with plus and minus votes.
The eight ballots were run through the optical scan machine. The standard Diebold-supplied "ender card" was run through as is normal procedure ending the election. A results tape was run from the voting machine.
Correct results should have been: Yes:2 ; No:6
However, just as Hursti had planned, the results tape read: Yes:7 ; No:1
The latest version of BBV's newsletter says this all comes on the heels of the resignation of Diebold CEO Wally O'Dell, and an announcement of a stockholder class action suit. Further "hack testing" is coming up in CA. Stay tuned.
Blogging light until I load up my new laptop with the data from my old one. Stay tuned. I didn't expect the Toshiba to go belly-up on me so soon.
Aviva Porres, born 6:28 this morning. 7 lbs. 7 oz.
Mommy Margaret delivered without painkillers (tough cookie). Pics to come.
Just figured out you can tweak a lot of Firefox settings by typing "about:config" into your address bar and clicking on the individual settings you want to change. Very cool.
For some reason, my web server is running really sloooooooow today. So gimme until tomorrow morning.
Everyone is resting comfortably in Wading River.
Alex was born yesterday at around 1 PM. Mom and baby are both doing well. 7 lbs. 11 oz.
No photos yet, as I'm not allowed in the hospital except for this ridiculous 1-hour window, so I haven't seen the baby.
Congratulations to Kim and Rob!
Sister Kim went to the hospital last night. Word is they're inducing her. All is okay. My last update came from Mom at about 5:30 this morning.
I have two big client presentations today. Once they're done, I'm heading to the hospital.
I wouldn't put it past me to moblog Alex when he arrives and debut his first picture on the web. :-)
Stay tuned for updates.
We've just heard from the fifth of the five potential clients we pitched at the end of the summer. (We nailed the previous four and this one makes it a perfect 5 for 5.)
Underscore is really taking off. The office we moved into is starting to get a bit packed, and our office mates have already started looking elsewhere in the building for additional space for us to expand into.
One thing's for certain. This isn't the dot com boom all over again. Cooler heads prevail, and all of these are hard-won assignments. I think we're really hitting our stride.
This is why you don't do pre-roll ads in movie theaters.
Slides are probably okay, since they don't hold up the start of the movie. But pre-rolls are a strict no-no. That is, unless your ad strategy involves being deliberately inflammatory toward the moviegoing public.
Yeah, I know. I did the Google AdSense thing and now you hate me.
I figure maybe I could get some beer money out of this blog thing. Maybe so, maybe not.
Wish they could add me to the AdSense for Feeds beta so I could load up my RSS feed, too. I'm nagging my contacts at Google. We'll see.
And if you thought this could happen any other way, you're kidding yourself. Bush would never have withdrawn her name, and it never would have come to a vote.
We may need a few additional inbound links and Trackbacks for this post. Please be sure to use "John Crovello" and "Long Island Custom Builders" a couple times in the language you use to link to it. It will help greatly.
Currently, we're #1 on both Yahoo! and Google if you search either of the terms above in quotes. However, we're #4 on Yahoo for searches under "Long Island Custom Builders" without the quotes, just below the contractor's website. We don't even show up on the first PAGE for the same search on Google. (However, neither does he.)
Hook a brother up! This is the best way to get my opinion out there, and I'd certainly appreciate the favor. If you have a blog or site that can spot me some Google Juice, please do so now.
Thanks.
Great. Now everything is upended here in NYC thanks to yet another "credible terrorist threat."
Which means, of course, that I'm going to a bar to get loaded after work instead of frustrating myself trying to get home via Penn Station at 6:30.
JTA, a family friend, is now blogging over at theblogsplitter.blogspot.com.. I like what I see so far.
In addition to being a terrific blogger, JTA also is one heck of a designer, so if you're looking for someone to do some freelance work or you need to hire a creative, shoot him an e-mail from his blog.
Given that my blog enjoys rather nice treatment from Google and many of the other search engines, I figured I'd post a PSA.
Those who know me well know that I'm currently in contractor hell. I don't want to get into the details here, given that I don't want to weaken my legal position. However, I will say the following:
It is my personal opinion that, should you be approached by someone named John Crovello from a company called Long Island Custom Builders to do any sort of work on your residence, you would be better off running away screaming than hiring him.
I'll say that again, for the benefit of y'all (and for the benefit of greater relevance to key search terms): It is my opinion that hiring John Crovello or a company called Long Island Custom Builders is a bad idea.
In summary, should you ask me, I would recommend emphatically against hiring John Crovello and/or Long Island Custom Builders.
Thank you. This has been a public service announcement.
p.s. - I would not recommend hiring John Crovello or Long Island Custom Builders.
p.p.s. - If you choose not to believe me regarding whether or not to hire John Crovello or Long Island Custom Builders, I recommend you visit the following links:
Suffolk County Department of Consumer Affairs List of 10 Worst Unlicensed Businesses
p.p.p.s. - If you feel so inclined, I would appreciate any inbound links or Trackbacks on this post. Thanks much.
Someone please adopt my sister's dog, Madison.
We are looking for a new home for Madison because my sister will be having her baby in November and we are worried that the dog might not get along with the baby, considering its need for attention.
Madison is a medium-sized, black dog with a white spot on her chest. I have no idea what kind of a mutt she is, but she looks like she has some Labrador in her. She is trained, however sometimes she will deliberately make a mess if she isn't getting enough attention, which is happening with increasing frequency lately since everyone in the family is busy preparing for baby's arrival.
If you are interested in adopting Madison, please leave me your e-mail address in comments, or e-mail me at tom@hespos.com. I will bring the dog to you, provided you live within the NY/NJ/CT area. We'll also provide her crate, leash, collars, and all that stuff.
Unfortunately, if we cannot find a home for Madison soon, we will be forced to give her to a local shelter, as we can't risk her hurting the baby.
Sorry I've been out of action recently. Mostly, it's because we're busy as hell here at the office. The last few weeks have been crazy, with at least three pitches going on at any given time. The end of this week and the beginning of next week are critical times for us, pitch-wise, so things might continue to be light here for a bit.
I also haven't been blogging because I've been absolutely dumbfounded. Bush actually admitted to a mistake this week. And John Roberts actually said something I agreed with during his confirmation hearings (The "umpire analogy").
Hell didn't freeze over, the earth wasn't knocked off its axis, the dead didn't rise from the grave. But I'm a little weirded out.
I've started labeling newsletters (even ones supposedly "relevant" to my industry) that I've been force-subscribed to as spam within Cloudmark's SpamNet. Especially if the newsletter publisher absolutely refuses to unsubscribe me.
I wish more people would use P2P solutions for keeping spam out of their inboxes. One of the biggest differences between P2P solutions and others is that it democratizes the process of determining whether or not a sender is a spammer. I think that makes the penalties for force-subscribing people to newsletters much more strict - if enough people decide that the newsletter publisher isn't playing by the rules, the newsletter isn't received by anyone who subscribes to the P2P tool. And getting unblocked isn't as simple as calling some ISP or blacklist provider and getting whitelisted again - it will be re-building reputation to the point at which a majority of P2P users whitelist a publisher.
Spent most of the weekend camping with the gang at Sears-Bellows. The weather was quite nice all weeekend, and we really lucked out from that perspective. Sunday was beach day and we took a couple vehicles to Shinnecock and hung out on the beach all day. I took my truck down on the beach and went swimming most of the day.
I'm closing the office so that my overworked staff can have an extra day for the weekend. Odds are I'll be taking conference calls from my house tomorrow morning. But nobody better call tomorrow morning, wanting a campaign up by the afternoon (which tends to happen right before Labor Day. Trust me.)
If you teach intelligent design in schools, you must also allow equal time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism.
New Orleans is one of my favorite cities and I'll never forget the first time I was down there. I spoke to the New Orleans Ad Club about rich media and the local media sales reps and ad club president really went out of their way to make me feel welcome and make sure I saw plenty of the town. I was even invited to a private party for a Mardi Gras "krewe" and got to see how a Mardi Gras float comes together. Really neat stuff.
Just got back from my annual trip to Maine, where I had no Internet access. I promise I'll post a few vacation stories later, though. (There are many, and they're actually interesting.)
I'm saying goodbye to my baby. One mechanical problem too many, coupled with the insane incentives they're giving people to buy cars now, made me reassess having an impractical sports car around.
I pick up a new Dodge 1500 pickup tomorrow. The incentives to buy are insane right now. I could afford to get a lot more truck for my money, once they knocked off $8K or so from the price because of $3,500 cash incentives and another $4K and change for the "employee discount."
The best part of this is that I'll have something new to commute with, plus I'll be able to pull a trailer and have something to take on the beach.
I'm 33 today. Which means in a few months, I'll have spent a third of a century on Planet Earth.
My Dad's Birthday was on Saturday. We're three days apart, on the anniversaries of the bombings of Hiroshima and of Nagasaki.
We even got to play a game of softball on the field. It was amazing. I got to indulge my childhood fantasies and go 2-for-2 playing around with the other attendees at the softball game. There's something about standing in center field where Bernie Williams plays, looking around at the stands and just picturing what might have been. I was speechless. It was terrific.
We have all sorts of great pictures from the day, some of which I may post later.
Didn't know this bit from the CNN article:
At 19, James escaped the turmoil at home by joining the Canadian army, becoming a lieutenant in artillery. He was among the Canadian forces that landed on Juno Beach on D-Day. "The sea was rough," he recalled. "We were more afraid of drowning than the Germans."The Canadians crossed a minefield laid for tanks; the soldiers weren't heavy enough to detonate the bombs. At 11:30 that night, he was machine-gunned, taking six hits: one that took off his middle right finger (he managed to hide the missing finger on screen), four in his leg and one in the chest. The chest bullet was stopped by his silver cigarette case.
Wow.
I am reminded of a bit from MAD Magazine when I was a kid:
Q. In which episode of Star Trek did Scotty make miracle repairs on the Enterprise to save the crew from certain doom?A. All of them
Looks like it could be terrorism. Early reports indicate at least two casualties and many injured.
Everybody say a prayer for Londoners today.
Well, we didn't get around to making our podcast last night, which is kind of unfortunate. But I know the rig works and we've tentatively scheduled some time next Tuesday to do a sort of trial run. And hopefully this will yield some good audio content.
What I want to get a sense of with the trial run is the following:
1) If we talk on the subject matter for 30-45 minutes, how much usable content will that yield? How much time would we have to spend in order to get 30 minutes of usable material?
2) How long will it take to edit the content using Audacity? How long will it take to add intro loops, cut out awkward silences and compress the audio into an MP3 that will yield adequate sound quality without breaking the bandwidth bank?
3) With four participants, how likely is it that each participant's voice is distinctive enough for listeners to be able to figure out who is speaking?
That's mainly what I want to find out. Then I can get a gauge on how much time will be needed each week to produce a podcast that will develop a healthy listener base.
So yesterday morning I went to my storage space and pulled some old audio equipment out of there, including a mixer, four microphones and the cabling to go along with them. I came back to the house and wired it all up and started looking on the Internet for software that people are using to put podcasts together. I figured I could always fall back on my old copy of Cakewalk or, in a worst-case scenario, the Sound Recorder utility that comes with Windows.
But I found something that looks pretty cool called Audacity. It's open source and it's free, so I downloaded and configured it on my laptop. The rig I have really couldn't be simpler - I run four mics to a Mackie 1202VLZ palmtop mixer, and then the tape outs from the mixer run right into the audio input jack on my laptop.
I tested everything for levels and picked an appropriate recording format and we're off to the races. Later on, some of my industry buds are coming over and I've asked them to set aside a little bit of time to do a trial run of a podcast. I'm hoping to see whether or not four industry experts can talk about issues in online marketing for half an hour and still manage to keep things interesting.
At lunch, I'm running down to Radio Shack to get a cheap device that will let me pipe in a phone call so that the four of us can dial out to other people we might want to get involved in the conversation. Hopefully, I can get that running over lunchtime and have it available tonight.
Odds are, assuming everything works well, that I can edit the podcast tonight (add music intros, make sure everybody's levels are okay, etc.) and post it here in the morning. Stay tuned.
I've got plenty of pro audio gear lying around at the house in Wading River that doesn't seem to get used very often, so I'm thinking about bringing a 12-channel palmtop mixer, some microphones and some studio monitors into the office so that I can mess with putting some podcasts together after work hours. I have an idea for a radio show on online marketing that I'm working on. There's a neat device available at Radio Shack that attaches to a phone and lets you pull calls into a mixing board input, so I'm going to give that a go so that I can dial out to people in the marketing business that might want to participate.
Stay tuned.
I'm flying out Sunday to San Francisco for Mediapost's OMMA West conference. There, I'll be moderating two panels, one on integrated media and the other on data overlays. I'll also be a participant in the Spin Board panel, which will feature all the weekly Spin writers.
See y'all out there...
Last week, the LIRR had a problem and we were forced to disembark at the Farmingdale station and take busses to points east. While on the bus, I saw this guy working on a puzzle in his copy of the New York Post. Watching over his shoulder, I got completely addicted to this new kind of puzzle - Su Doku.
Su Doku puzzles are number puzzles that have to do with placement of numerical digits within a grid. I find them to be the perfect brain-teaser. I've been doing puzzles on the train on my way to work and am finding that they're the perfect brain warmup for the tasks ahead at Underscore.
The only unfortunate thing is that I've been buying copies of the trashy Post to get my daily fix. But I'm going to order a copy of a book from Amazon soon so I can take a bunch of puzzles with me on the train.
Here's a link to a guy's website that contains a nice strategy guide and puzzle generator.
Shameless plug for a client here.
http://www.claritin.com/children/childrens_art_contest_landing.htm
Win a $1,500 savings bond, plus a professional illustration gig for your kid.
Irit Spitalnik called me today. I thought we were going to have one of our usual cheery chats about the industry, her family and how life is going. Not this time.
Irit told me she has been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. She's beginning her chemotherapy regimen tomorrow at Sloane.
When she told me this, I had the worst flashback I've had in a while. Lots of things went through my mind, including the day my mom called me at school and told me about her ovarian cancer. I thought about Irit's usual upbeat demeanor. I thought about her husband, Michael. I thought about their 14-year-old daughter. It hit me pretty hard.
If there's anyone who can beat this, it's Irit. I've never seen her down in the dumps. She's one of those people who has so much energy and positive vibes coming off her at all times that she brightens up a room. I know she'll beat this thing.
Irit let me know that she's grateful for the support she's received from her friends and family and folks in the online marketing industry. It's giving her the strength she needs to face this thing. If you want to send something to Irit, drop your e-mail address in comments and I'll send you her e-mail address and home address so you can send a card or note of encouragement.
1/13/2006 Update: I learned a couple nights ago that Irit has passed on. I've started a new thread so we can share details on funeral arrangements and share our favorite Irit stories. Link here.
The new version is here:
http://www.atlassolutions.com/pdf/AIDMIOnCookieDeletion.pdf
Here's what Young Bean Song, director of analytics and Atlas Institute, sent me in an e-mail:
Upon a deeper review of the data, it became apparent that the average lifespan was not the best way to describe and compare user behavior. Our analysis of the cookie lifespan distributions have revealed a different picture of consumer behavior than what the previously published average lifespans suggest. We found that most of the people who said they delete their cookies weekly do in fact have relatively short cookie lives. Of the people who said they delete their cookies weekly, we found 60% had cookie lifespans of two weeks or less. So what does this new information mean for the DMI that we just released?The behavioral data from our study is actually in relatively close agreement with the survey-based studies. As a result, we have restated the portion of the DMI that focuses on the average lifespans and have included a more complete view of respondents' behavior. In doing so, you'll see a shift in our view of the survey-based studies. However, it's very important to point out, the main thesis of the DMI remains true - that the sky is not falling on cookies. The insights on conversions tracking, reach and frequency and profile targeting from the original DMI are sound and backed by rock solid research.
Among the survey-based studies Song refers to is the earlier one by Jupiter that showed nearly 40 percent of Internet users delete their cookies at least monthly.
My Online Spin column (registration required) on Mediapost of April 19th quoted from the earlier Atlas report quite a bit. While it attributed everything back to Atlas, it would be prudent for me to write a follow-up this coming Tuesday.
Song insists in his e-mail regarding the revised DMI that "[t]here has not been a radical shift in consumer behavior towards deleting cookies." I plan on reviewing this data with him as soon as possible, which will likely be tomorrow. For right now, the jury is still out as far as I'm concerned.
The conclusions I put forth in my column on 4/19 still hold true:
The fact remains, however, that several popular anti-spyware software packages available for download and/or purchase online have been identifying ad server cookies as potential threats as a default, and this could be prompting widespread cookie deletion as more people download and run the software. As I mentioned in a previous column, two such popular packages - Spybot: Search & Destroy and Ad-Aware - have been downloaded hundreds of millions of times from Download.com. While the average cookie lifespan may currently be long enough to convince us that the sky isn't crashing down on us, cookie deletion is almost certainly becoming more widespread. It's something we need to watch carefully.
So, while I write my follow-up piece for Tuesday, check out the revised report from Atlas.
According to a press release from their folks, the Hellman & Friedman deal has gone through with board approval. Also, Kevin Ryan will step down as CEO to pursue other opportunities.
Reuters is hosting a panel at its Times Square headquarters on blogging. It's by invitation only, but a colleague forwarded me the invitation. I'm trying to see if I can get a spot.
The topic is "Blogs - How Accountable Is The Media?" Issues to be discussed include:
Panelists include:
I hope Reuters will let me come. This looks like it could be a fun one.
Update: I just received confirmation that I'm in. I'm really looking forward to this one.
I finally got around to switching my license over to the Wading River address. When I switched it, I came to the Motor Voter section and realized my party affiliation was still Republican from high school. So I switched things over. Yesterday, I got a postcard in the mail - It's official. I'm a Democrat.
Perfectly Legal : The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and CheatEverybody Else
by David Cay Johnston
Really interesting stuff on how our tax system in the U.S. is, in effect, quite regressive.
Taxes are not my thing. (My accountant will testify to the effect that I don't know a damned thing about them.) But I find this stuff fascinating. Sometimes I have to re-read individual paragraphs to make sure I fully grok what the author is talking about, but once I do follow it, the subject matter is actually fascinating to me.
Of course, I'm not even halfway done reading yet, but it shouldn't be long before I finish this one up. One of the most interesting concepts I've encountered thus far has been the notion of the middle class' most prized tax deduction (mortgage interest) actually benefitting the rich and super-rich more than the middle and working classes. The move led to a vast increase in housing prices, and those who could afford to buy more real estate were able to deduct more from their tax returns, so the rich and super-rich were able to pay less in taxes over time.
On a similar note, I keep wondering whether the low interest rates and housing boom that have been underway for a while are screwing younger, working-class people in the long run. In 1978, my parents paid $60,000 for their house in Wading River. Adjusted for inflation, that's just under $180,000 in 2005 dollars. Yet in today's housing market, that house sells for around $450,000, which is a remarkable rate of return. First-time homebuyers are making it possible for people who are better off to lock in these gains. Granted, they're paying for it with low-interest loans as compared to what folks might have paid 10-15 years ago. But one wonders whether we're in a housing bubble or not.
After all, housing prices are affected by a number of different factors, including rents in the area, taxes and a number of other things. One of the biggest factors is the price of a home in comparison to the cost of buying land and the labor/material cost of building a home yourself. If I can do this in my area for approximately $300K, what's the incentive to pay $450K+ for something that's already built? It makes me wonder whether real estate can continue on this path.
If it does come crashing down, we'll see older, better off people with money in the bank while new homebuyers struggle (and even go into bankruptcy). This could be another way in which the gap between the haves and have-nots is both reinforced and made even worse.
Fresh install worked, so everything's back to normal here. (Relatively speaking.)
I couldn't get the new version of MT-Blacklist to work, so I've moved to moderated comments, which is better than no comments. (For my non-tech friends, this means when you post a comment, I review and approve it before it shows up on the site.) Moderated comments ought to keep that bastard comment spammer Bob the hell out of here.
Sorry for this, folks, but comments have been shut off for a couple days while I figure out how to get MT3.15 and MT-Blacklist working in perfect harmony. With MT-Blacklist kaput, I was getting so much comment spam that it became overwhelming.
Comments should be back up and running by the end of the weekend.
Must've messed something up when I was trying to upgrade to the new version of MT-Blacklist. Every time I put HTML in a post, weird code starts showing up in the interface, so I can't do posts with links until I fix it.
Looks like I might be up late tonight...
Some comments I made in a Mediapost interview concerning Blog advertising have generated a bit of hate mail.
Before skewering me, please read below, where I've posted the entirety of the e-mail interview.
Q. Do you notice that more of your clients are spending more money advertising on blogs?A. We've done some testing and have had great results. Some of our clients wish they could find more sites like the blogs we advertise with. Given that the number of blogs continues to accelerate, I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunities going forward.
Q. In your opinion, how much money do you think advertisers will begin allocating toward advertising on blogs?
A. I'd hate to see blog advertising become a line item on a flowchart (like paid search) simply because it's the 'latest and greatest' or because media planners see the word 'blog' in dozens of trade media stories. It would be easy to lose sight of the opportunity given all the hype. Blogs tend to be topical and in many cases are small in terms of the audience they draw. But those audiences tend to be very loyal and very dedicated.
For some categories, like political and cause-related advertising, it's a layup because of all the popular political blogs. The question often becomes whether or not advertisers and agencies can use multiple blogs to roll up desirable audiences. I like what folks like Nick Denton, Jason Calacanis and Henry Copeland are doing with site representation and networks in the blog space. But often, I find that it makes sense to approach bloggers directly. That may change as more blog networks and rep firms (Burst!, for instance) are brought to market.
Q. Has blogging become an 'accepted medium?'
A. I think blogs have a critical role to play in the news reporting dynamic. News stories are being vetted every day in the blog community and bloggers are breaking some very important stories. Bloggers serve an important function in that they analyze what's being reported in the mainstream press to the Nth degree. They poke holes in stories, disclose unforseen biases, check facts and formulate new opinions. To me, the blogging movement is all about accelerating Holmes' concept of the 'marketplace of ideas.' Ideas get passed around from blogger to blogger and the cream rises to the top. Bloggers are also finding their own stories and picking up on things that the mainstream media tend to miss. Not only are they an important part of the media landscape, they're also critical to the newsgathering and reporting processes.
In our own industry, check out sites like MarketingVox and AdRants. They're talking about things that the AdAges and AdWeeks weren't talking about. Is it any coincidence that AdWeek launched a blog?
Q. It seems that traditional companies seem to be advertising on blogs much more AND talking about it more openly than they would have in the passed. What has changed?
A. I think it was something that clients needed to quietly test before making a big fuss about. And if other advertisers are anything like our clients that have tested blogs, they've found success and are ready to commit to larger-scale campaigns. As for how vocal they are about it, that might have something to do with the general popularity of blogs and the revelation that over a quarter of Internet users read them. Advertisers may want to be counted with the folks who realize how big blogging is.
Other folks I'd recommend you talk to...Rick Bruner at DoubleClick. (Runs BusinessBlogConsulting.com and is an authority on blogs.) rick@bruner.net
Jeff Jarvis at Buzzmachine. (Check out Buzzmachine.com for his contact info. He's been making regular appearances on Air America and doing lectures on blogs all over the place, so he might be tough to reach, but he'll give you tons of great material if you can get him.)
-TFH
Eric sent me some warnings from his ISP about security issues with older versions of Movable Type, so I decided to quickly upgrade to 3.15.
The process went pretty smoothly and took about 30 minutes, including the backup I made of my FTP directories. No bugs found yet. (Fingers crossed...)
So amazingly cute... Mom Cami was looking quite healthy and animated and was cracking jokes last night while we visited. Daddy Dennis is beaming.
Mom went through the birth au naturel with no drugs or anything (not even an epidural). Amazing. Given my low tolerance for pain, if I were in her shoes, I would have demanded morphine under penalty of heavy lawsuit.
Congrats to Cami and Dennis. When they've checked out of the hospital and are comfortably at home, we can broach the subject of when the little tyke will get his first quad. ;-)
Welcome to the world, Colin William Smith!
Dennis and Cami Smith welcomed Colin William at about 10 PM last night. He's a healthy 8 lb., 7oz.
Mom and Dad are reportedly doing well, and I plan to see if I can get home early today in time for hospital visiting hours.
Mom did the natural childbirth thing, which is amazing. No drugs, no epidural, no nothin'. That's one tough lady!
Best wishes to the whole family. Hopefully, pics to come soon.
So I created this test for rock guitar players on OKCupid. No one's taking the damned thing. If you play, and you think you're the goods, take it.
WARNING: Taking a test someone created is how I got sucked into OKCupid in the first place. I didn't really see myself putting up a profile on an online dating site, but it's really easy to get sucked into when you've already answered questions and made that time investment. You have been warned.
I was very scared yesterday morning, fearing for the life of our COO, Eric Porres, and his wife, Margaret, who are vacationing in Sri Lanka. An earthquake and subsequent tsunami have killed over 20,000 people in the region.
Thank God for technology. I tried to hail Eric on his cell early yesterday and sent an e-mail to his Blackberry. A few minutes later, an SMS text message came across the screen of my Treo - it was Eric and he reports that he is fine. Thankfully, he was on the other side of Sri Lanka.
WHEW!!!
Last night, I came home and found several boxes waiting for me. One contained a new clock radio, to replace the one that could only wake me up with staticky renditions of Burl Ives singing annoying Christmas music. And it plays CDs and will lull you to sleep with background noise like the sound of ocean waves breaking on the beach or running streams. (Last night, I fell asleep to crickets chirping in the forest.)
In another box was a Star Trek DVD - the entirety of Season Two of TNG. Very nice - I watched the episode last night where Counselor Troi gets impregnated by an alien and Wesley Crusher decides to stay on board the Enterprise instead of leaving to go hang out with his mother at Starfleet Medical.
And then there was a new backpack. Just in time. It replaces the old ratty one with the torn straps that I got at the IAB conference a couple years ago. It's really nice and it has padding to accommodate my monster 17" Toshiba laptop. It's even got a little holder on the front for my Treo. Very nice.
Thanks, Dad.
Kim has been bugging me to put my holiday gift list up on the fridge. But I am a rebel, so I registered a gift list at GiftGang.com, a site recently launched by a buddy of mine.
And no, I'm not opposed to the idea of random admirers of my blog chipping in to get me that Sony DSC T1 I've been dying for...
;-)
Last week, I put up a post about how the online advertising industry needs another herd-thinning. It begged the question - "How do I know if I'm part of the problem?" Fear not, faithful Hespos.com reader. If you answer "yes" to any of the following questions, the issue should be more than clarified.
Due to a recent slip of the tongue by our COO Eric Porres, all tracking pixels used for online marketing campaigns will henceforth be known as "tracking pickles."
It just sounds better that way.
This has been a public service announcement.
I'm looking all over the place for a media supervisor to assist us with the deluge of work that's coming in the door at Underscore. I'm looking for someone with the following qualifications:
Salary commensurate with experience, etc... If you refer a candidate that ends up getting hired here, I'll give you a $1,000 check on their 6-month anniversary. Send resumes and cover letters to jobs@underscoremarketing.com and be sure to mention that you're responding to the post on Hespos.com.
Apply now. We know you're sitting at a big agency that's too slow and lethargic to get out of its own way, and we know you're bored out of your skull, waiting for your boss to die or get poached by another agency so you can move up in the world and actually have people listen to your good strategic advice for once. So what are you waiting for? Don't you feel like a chump working for The Man? Send us your resume.
Yes, we're an equal-opportunity employer.
Yes, posting has been light. Things have been crazy lately (see two posts below).
The first article in the "Self Deception" series is almost ready. I'll probably post it tonight when I get home, depending on how late I get out of work.
I recently learned of my sister's plans to paint the downstairs bathroom pink. Needless to say, this did not fly with Rob and me. We suggested that pink might not be the best color for a bathroom that everyone uses when we have pool parties and the like. Kim asked what color we would like. "Not pink" was our response.
Mom wants the bathroom pink, too. So we're deadlocked at 2 votes apiece. Help me break the deadlock. Send e-mail to kimbein@aol.com and tell Kim that you think pink bathrooms suck. I'll be eternally in your debt.
I moved and took last week off to go camping in Maine. The campsite was on an island with no running water, no electricity and no phone service (cellular or land line). I'm not kidding. So blogging was pretty much nonexistant last week. But I'm back in NYC this week, so let's get back into the swing of things...
Thank you. This has been a public service announcement.
Underscore Marketing is proud to announce that it has reached the #17 position on Google under the search term "Snorklewacker." We're getting closer to our goal of implementing the first step of our three-step proprietary process for achieving financial success...
1) Achieve #1 ranking under search term "Snorklewacker"
2) ???
3) Profit
Hespos.com needs an official award for all the idiots out there who deserve recognition. However, since funds are low for sending "You're an Idiot" plaques to everyone out there who deserves one, we've elected to make our official idiot award entirely conceptual. After all, it doesn't cost anything to bestow a conceptual award. Plus, we won't have problems with idiots refusing to accept their award by shipping it back to us. Soooo...
We are proud to introduce The Invisible Conceptual Idiot Baton. The baton will be awarded to the biggest idiot of the current moment. As bigger idiots make themselves known to us, we will wrest the baton away from its owner and re-award it as appropriate.
Thank you. This has been a public service announcement.
We've stocked the tank with a dozen carnivorous fish, which we are feeding a steady diet of frozen cow hearts. Coincidentally, we've also gotten rid of the "Sales Rep Be Good Stick" that we used to keep in the office. So now reps that quote us rate card, get unnecessarily argumentative, go around us to the client or engage in other types of undesirable behavior will be thrown to the carnivorous fishies.
Thank you. This has been a public service announcement.
Apparently, there's some confusion surrounding the proper and ethical use of our intellectual property laws. Some basics...
Thank you. This has been a public service announcement.
If you happen to be surfing around here and you notice goofy things happening with Hespos.com pages, it's because I'm screwing around with the stylesheets and templates. You see, my site looks too much like Richard Hoy's site, so I'm gonna play with MT a bit to get it to look a bit differently. If I'm happy with a new look and feel and I finish up early, maybe I'll add back some of the static content I've been meaning to put back up. We'll see.
Pass the coffee and the Marlboros. It's gonna be a long night.
So I took a few hours this weekend to give Hespos Central Command and Official Bachelor Pad a thorough cleaning. I vacuum regularly, of course, but the carpet in my living room was starting to get that faint odor that you typically smell when you visit your grandmother. So I figured I'd get a can of Carpet Fresh to take care of it. Big mistake.
While I was cleaning, I sprinkled some Carpet Fresh on all three carpets in my apartment and let it sit for about 20 minutes. Then I broke out the vacuum cleaner.
This is no ordinary vacuum cleaner. I bought it right before I got downsized at Mezzina Brown. It cost something obscene like $500, has a true HEPA filter, and not one but two motors. In short, this vacuum cleaner is bad ass.
I'm reasonably sure I got up all the Carpet Fresh, in addition to whatever dust and microscopic beasties were lurking in my carpet. Then my girlfriend came over to hang out. We were sitting on the couch and I casually removed my shoes and socks at one point. A couple hours later, I noticed a burning sensation on the bottoms of my feet. I'm not the type to get all weirded out by stuff like this, so I dismissed it - until it was time to go to bed. By then, I felt like I had walked across hot coals.
In fact, the burning sensation kept me up for most of the night. I washed my feet off several times, but my feet still felt like they were on fire. I checked the label on the Carpet Fresh - I don't have the exact language handy, but it said something to the effect of, "If rash occurs, discontinue use."
Huh? WTF? Shouldn't they make this stuff reasonably safe? I'd hate to think what might have happened if I had a young kid or something. If I had a toddler, I'd probably be playing with him on the rug, giving him horsie rides and whatnot, and the next thing you know he'd be screaming and yelling from carpet deodorizer burning his skin.
Hey, I'm the first guy to say caveat emptor when getting an unexpected surprise from a recently-purchased product, but shouldn't the FDA or another of those three-letter governmental organizations open a can of whoop-ass on anyone who sells carpet deodorizer that burns your feet when you walk on it?
Da feets are feeling okay now, but that's the last time I let any of this carpet deodorizer crap into my apartment.
Just in case you're one of those hopeless romantics who is considering responding to one of those DR ads that claim you can name a star after your significant other...It's a scam. Now go back to the Valentine's Day drawing board. Unca Cecil explains.
Here's the view from my hotel room at sunrise. It's nice down here, but unfortunately, we're coming back to cold and rainy NYC tomorrow.
Catch Almost Famous Live for an Evening of Hedonistic Debauchery!
When: Wednesday, February 11th @ 730pm
Where: BAR 9—NYC's Premiere Place to Party
807 9th Ave (Btwn. 53rd & 54th St)
These guys rock. I've witnessed it firsthand. If you're one of those people who got upset when Van Halen and Guns 'N Roses broke up, you'll love this band.
If you're coming here for the first time since I uploaded Movable Type, you might be wondering where the hell everything is: Pictures from the Yankee game, DigiTech GSP-2101 patches, my resume, the old guestbook and whatnot. I killed that stuff to make room for the Movable Type installation. It's coming back, but I have to find some time to work on the site templates, integrate my old static pages and all that nonsense. Check back in a few days. It'll be here.
