Wayne Auto Spa Raising Money to Fight the Power

I've talked about Rob Burke's environmentally-friendly car wash before.  (Disclaimer: I've done a good deal of marketing-related work for Wayne Auto Spa.)  They're up against an insane amount of red tape keeping Rob from installing a wind turbine at his facility.

Wayne Auto Spa uses solar panels to create clean electricity; cleanly burns used motor oil in special furnaces to heat its facility; recycles its water; uses biodegradeable soaps; and uses energy efficient lighting.  Rob really wants to turn the car wash into a model for other environmentally-friendly businesses.  Installation of the wind turbine is key to this effort.

Local town officials have thrown down the gauntlet in an effort to frustrate Rob's efforts.  By making the process very expensive, the township will likely force Rob to abandon his plans to further reduce Wayne Auto Spa's carbon footprint.

That is, unless we act.

We're hoping to raise a small amounts of money from a large number of people.  Call it fundraising Obama-style.  We need your help.

Donations to help fund the expensive local approval process, of as little as $5 can be made at www.wayneautospa.com via PayPal.

PAIN

If you have a Playstation 3 that is connected to the Internet (and why wouldn't it be?), check out a downloadable game called "PAIN." I played this pointless thing for about an hour and a half last night, and I was laughing my ass off the entire time. PAIN attempts to answer the following question: If you were invincible, you had a giant slingshot, and for kicks you decided to launch yourself with said slingshot across urban landscapes, what is the funniest thing that could possibly happen?

For me, the answer to that question is: Launch yourself into the air with the slingshot, land in a smokestack, which explodes, launching me into the air again, do a cannonball into a piece of scaffolding, grab a wooden crate in mid-air and wing it into a a billboard, land on another box, which explodes, launching me into the middle of the street, where I get hit by a passing taxicab and am dragged for a block and a half until I fall into an open manhole. That will score you something north of 300,000 points.

Old MLM Proverb Works for Widget Marketing, Too

Someone wise once gave me a great rule of thumb for determining what's a pyramid/Multi-Level Marketing scheme and what's a legit business.

If your income potential depends more on how many people you recruit to sell than on how much product you move yourself, it's probably a pyramid scheme.

I've been thinking about how that applies to widget marketing.  If your widget prioritizes pass-along above the utility it provides to the end user, it's probably more of a scheme than a legit business-building tool.

Cocooning

I spend a lot of time at home on the weekends these days.  Sure, there are the occasional night out at friends' houses or dinner at Mom's place, but most time is spent just hanging out or working on projects around the house.  This weekend wasn't much different.  I finished up my home gym, picking up some Gold's Gym dumbbells (similar to these) where you can select how much weight you want on the dumbbell.  It beats keeping 10 pairs of dumbbells around for different exercises and having to buy more when you go up in weight.  I had two really great workouts this weekend - my lats and back are hurting, but that's because the rest of my muscles have had a two-month head start on getting into shape. Lauren got me Call of Duty 4 for Valentine's Day, which was a great gift, but I already had it.  So I took it back to Best Buy and exchanged it for Devil May Cry 4, which I thought was an incredible game.  I've never played any of the others in the series, but the storyline and the graphics were really cool.  And if you're into administering ass-beatings unto hordes of weird-looking demons with guns and swords, this is the game for you.  I really can't believe how great some of these PS3 console games are getting.

I didn't consign the weekend to video games, though.  Yesterday, I spent most of my day in the garage, building the frame for something I hope will be a sort of cubby for our garbage cans.  It seems with all the wind these past few weeks, the garbage cans get scattered all over the side of the house.  I line them up nicely at night and when I get up in the morning, they're scattered all over the place.  So I bought some treated lumber and sketched out something on a sheet of paper.  Basically, it will be like an upscale dumpster with a slanted roof that hinges up so I can put stuff into it.  It also has doors in the front, so I can slide in three of those big, square garbage cans they sell at Home Depot.  I have the frame done - now all I have to do is put siding on it (the same stuff that's on my shed out back), affix the hinges and paint it.