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Been to Texas…

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Posting has been light for the past week as I have once again gone "off grid." This time, we went to Austin, Texas for a family friend’s Bar Mitzvah, and then took a couple of extra days to take our 5-year old son to SeaWorld San Antonio.

I brought the laptop in case something came up, but resisted the temptation to go online. 🙂  I do promise to get back into a regular posting schedule but in the meantime, should you be planning a trip to Austin/San Antonio, here are some of our highlights from this most recent trip.

Austin: The Texas State History Museum and Zilker Park / Barton Springs. Hotel: Mansion at Judges’ Hill

San Antonio: At SeaWorld, if you can, Dine with Shamu. It gets you quite close to the whales for an extended period of time, but warning: it is NOT the show with all the feats of daring, so make sure you see the regular Shamu show as well. And touristy though it may be, you have to eat at a place on the Riverwalk at least once. People watching at its finest. Hotel: Marriott Riverwalk.

That’s it for the travelogue. We will return to our regular marketing topics later this week.

And I will leave you with a quote from Davy Crockett. After losing re-election to the Congress in his native Tennessee, the 50-year old Crockett said:

"Since you have chosen to elect a man with a timber toe to succeed me, you may all go to hell and I will go to Texas."

Summertime blues

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It is hot… damn hot … here in Massachusetts.  I cannot wait for the hardwood pollen season to end so I can go out of my house again for more than 10 minutes at a time.

Random rant on: We all know it is possible to simultaneously love and hate a tech gadget. Today it is my iPod that I despise. Why? Because through an initial operator error (mine) followed by what I will call bad software design, the laptop (empty library) wiped out about 20 hours of music on my iPod. Including four CDs which I just can’t find, and rather than tear my house apart, I just re-ordered. Which means of course I will find them the day after the Amazon order arrives… All compounded by the fact that I have first generation iPod with the crappy battery, and all Apple offered in the class action settlement was $50, which could not be used at iTunes. Hmm.  Anyway, suffice it to say that my iPod no longer automatically synchronizes.

So should I just scrap it, use the $50 bucks toward a new player for my music and just use the old one for podcasts? Advice most welcome.

Two quick items, and more later:

Check out Bob Bly’s blog– great question about whether the Internet has killed writing and reduced literacy.

And as always, don’t miss the Revenue Roundtable. Jill Konrath is lead poster this week.

UPDATE: Well, okay, Apple is on my s*** list this week, but here’s the latest. First, I have 2 CDs that for some reason my CD drive can’t read, but my husband’s can. Bizarre-o, but you know that’s where I am with this these days. So I go to the Apple iTunes store just to see if they have these 2 disks — maybe it will be easier to just buy the damn things again than deal with all this crap. So, I need to update my info in the Apple records, and (caps intentional) THEY REJECT MY VALID AREA CODE FOR MY CELL PHONE NUMBER BECAUSE IT DOESN’T MATCH MY HOME PHONE NUMBER. So I type in the same area code as my home phone, which is wrong, and they accept it. Whoa Nelly. This is not good practice, people. Somebody needs to fix an algorithm….

Deep Throat, blogging tips, asking for the order (and lions and tigers and bears, oh my)

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As expected, I am really busy this week with the Revenue Roundtable and client work (hurrah), plus trying to jam everything in by COB Thursday as Friday is the Scottish Terrier Club of New England Specialty Show, and I will be there all day.

However, I do have a few things to share before I race off to prepare for a new prospect meeting tomorrow.

First, the big reveal of Deep Throat. I came of political age during Watergate. I think my first adult non-fiction book was All the President’s Men and I definitely remember going to see the movie on a hot summer day in whatever year it was. It is hard to believe that all that took place more than 30 years ago…. when it still colors so much of what we feel about politics, regardless of what we believe or how we vote.

For my part, I am glad that Mark Felt, and his family, didn’t wait until after his death. For whatever reason, and however it came about, I’m glad Felt will get the accolades due him while he lives. If his family benefits, that’s great. He did a courageous thing, whatever his personal reasons were, and he deserves to get the praise in life. He’ll certainly be criticized as well — I can see the revisionist wagons circling.

So often, we wait to honor great men and women until after their deaths. I for one am pleased when the subject of the praise actually gets to hear it themselves. I remember a few years ago, here in our town, the local chamber of commerce had an event to honor an elderly civic leader who had done a tremendous amount for the town and the area. Literally put us on the map.

As my husband and I were waiting in the long line to greet the man and his wife, it crossed my mind that the whole event was a bit like a wake, except in this case, the man who actually KNEW everybody was still alive, and could enjoy the love of his community. I thought it was wonderful, and wished that we as a society were better at thanking our elders in life, not just honoring them in death.

Wakes and funerals serve an important religious and grieving function. But they aren’t really for the person who has died. So… moral of the story: take time to thank and honor people today.

Thank you, Mr. Felt.

This story will be all over the blogosphere and the media today, tomorrow, the next day, but do read Dan Gillmor’s post, Deep Throat: America owes Gratitude.

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Now a few little housekeeping things, items that caught my interest over the last week. If I had more time, I’d write more about them, but the clock is ticking…..

Standing Out from the Blogging Crowd, an item on BusinessWeek’s Blogspotting, linked to tips for better blog writing from Robin Good.

Jim Logan on the importance of asking for the order.

Scottie Claiborne on links that drive search engine rankings (seen originally on Micro Persuasion). I need to get serious about promoting this blog … one of these days.

Roadmaps Round-up May 25th

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From MicroPersuasion, a link to tips for being a more productive blogger

From AdRants, news of a possible fake blog from Panera. For my part I truly don’t have much more energy to devote to this topic, at least for now. So, I stand by what I’ve said before: to be a fake corporate blog, it has to be sponsored by Panera, without the sponsorship being clearly indicated on the blog and without clear indication that the writer is a character, not a real person. If it isn’t sponsored by Panera, but written by someone else for some other purpose (as suggested on the blog’s comments) it still may be stupid and lame, but it isn’t fair to diss Panera for it.  The market will decide about character or fictional blogs — if they creatively meet the needs of their audience, like Manolo the Shoe Blogger or the Audi one for example, they thrive. And if they don’t, they’ll die.