Category: Daily Life

I got an email today from Gary Fong. He makes astoundingly overpriced pieces of plastic that attach to your camera to diffuse the light coming off your flash. The thing is, they work incredibly well and I’m more than happy to pay for them because they are simple to use and do what they say (which, for someone with limited photographic skills like myself, is to perform outright miracles).

He was talking about the recession and his message boils down to “Don’t worry about it, work your plan and you’ll be fine”. I agree with him, although I have a different perspective.

An admission – my undergraduate degree was in Economics so I spent many hours swilling beers at UMass learning about concepts such as staglflation and supply-side, (which was on fire then, and the equivalent of “Steal from the poor” to the average academic institution). I eventually came to the realization that Economics is no different than many other systems that are, by nature, chaotic. This could easily be a series of books, but the big idea is that tiny transactions that seem to be random actually roll up into larger patterns, some of which can be identified and can be repeatable.

Please keep in mind that boiling that down to one sentence is like saying “The history and influence of America is that some guys got so pissed about taxes that they started killing people”. True, yes, but calling it a gross oversimplification would be… well, a gross oversimplification.

Are you still with me? Don’t you wish blogs had editors? The punchline is that although the overall pattern shows economic slowdown, you can move in any direction. In fact, I’d say that as a reader of this blog, someone who has the initiative to read about these types of topics in your free time, you’ve got no worries. Recessions are all about that 2/3rds of the population that hate their jobs. They subconsciously want to get fired.

They’re about people in California housing complexes that buy half million dollar homes on less than 100k of income and take out a 3rd mortgage to build a fountain in their back yard. I hate to see anyone lose their home, but it seems like some people are asking for it. Credit is not a way to live in California while your means remain in Oklahoma.

A good marketing plan will succeed. If you ever have a chance to go to Newport, Rhode Island, look around the town and check out some of the mansions that were summer homes to the wealthy. Think of them partying there during the Great Depression.

I’ve never written about it before, but I have a younger brother named Jason. He’s leaving his current job and heading into a new venture. He asked me to dig up this email because he couldn’t find it since it was written in 2004.

This was the first email I got from him as the prelude:

Sent: Friday, April 30, 2004 11:05 AM
To: Wall, John
Subject: Re: notice

The next message you receive will be an exact replica of that which I shared with the staff. Keep in mind, absolutely no one knew it was coming (and the boss just left for vacation).

J

Interest piqued, I checked out the next message in line. Here it is with names changed to protect both the innocent and the guilty.

Sent: Friday, April 30, 2004 11:07 AM
To: JWall@tibersoft.com
Subject: What I love about *Censored Company*

Jason’s all-time favorite things about *Censored Company*.

1. *Ms. M*’s homemade peanut butter cups.
2. Watching *Ms. S* give someone the finger (and really mean it). Priceless.
3. Working with *Ms. B*. She is without question one of the nicest people on the planet.
4. My Aeron chair (which I claimed before it was even cold :).
5. *Mr. N* inheriting my favorite projects. Hahahahahahahaha.
6. Because *Mr. J* truly is one of the coolest f-ing mofos at *Censored Company*.
7. *Ms. S*’s potential.
8. Listening to *Ms. Q* at my very first *Company* staff meeting.
9. Learning that *Mr.S* DNA truly is encoded with MBTI letter J.
10. Arguing with *Ms. P*.
11. The fact that *Ms. J* complains more than I do but yet somehow remains so darn cute.
12. My color printer at my fingertips.
13. *Ms. T* signing her e-mails Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I’ve researched this thoroughly with
HR and still can’t prove that it is (but it must be) harassment towards all male staff members.
14. The occasions when we actually *do our job function*.
15. The undeniable fact that *Ms. L* thinks I’m a total beefcake and has a crush on me.

Having said all of this, I’d like to share with everyone that in the aftermath of tax time, my wife and I are happy to have a reached a significant financial goal and we’ll both be leaving our jobs as of Friday May 14th. Step 1 will be a vacation. But don’t worry; I’ll be available for good-bye lunches and dinners as necessary. Oh, and the chair is already spoken for. Is that Johnny Paycheck I hear singing?

~Jason

The good news is that he was sending it around to his co-workers at his current job telling them that he is so happy to work with them because it was nothing like the place described above. Of course I discussed this with him prior to publishing it and I told him it would be made completely anonymous. He said: I’d be honored if you would, feel free to say it was “a department at a world at world famous Technology Institute in Massachusetts.”

Hey Nike – what happened to Coach Bob? Nike has been expanding their blogging program and there’s been some cool stuff up there. I enjoy reading about shoes, professional runners, and until recently, the Wisdom of Coach Bob.

We now have Coach Jay, who has written some interesting stuff, and he’s gone deep this week with biomechanics. I’m sure I will enjoy reading his stuff, but there was something about Coach Bob that gave me that “Mighty Mick training Rocky Balboa” feeling. He told you what to do, but there was always some motivation mixed in there – “Good for you for starting” and “Good for you for not giving up” kind of stuff. For runners like myself, with such great nicknames as “Runaway Train”, “Clydesdale Division”, and “Fat bastard”, I can never get too motivated.

So this is the kind of thing about blogging that freaks out normal people. I’m not some Coach Bob fanatic, I’m not about to go to Beaverton and look for him at the home office. I have a job, mortgage and family, I don’t have time for all that creepy loner nonsense, but I did enjoy reading what he had to say. How about at least a “Coach Bob has moved on to other stuff, Welcome Coach Jay” or something like that. If Coach Bob said he liked Coach Jay I’d be much happier.

At its root, marketing is an art and not a science, people are irrational. What other explanation is there for me worrying about Coach Bob?

p.s. on the subject of running you should get Nike+ and you should check out Steve Runner’s Podcast

We were hit pretty hard by a Noreaster today – that’s when a storm is out over the ocean and the wind and snow blow down into where we live from the North East. It can get pretty ugly if the storm just sits out over the ocean spinning and sucking up moisture for snow.

But it’s not like I’m in elementary school and get to go sledding, the only change is that I don’t have to drive to work. Thanks to all of the excellent technology we have in place I can do everything that I can do in the office so it’s a regular workday minus the co-workers, coffee machine and lunch break. In short, I actually get more done.

The hard drive on Carin’s MacBook died as I was trying to load it up with the iTunes library from the other machine in the house. If we hadn’t picked up the extended warranty that would have run us about $370. Through this we have also learned that the iWeb application is just a crappy little toy. Any website editor that won’t let you import anything is just barely above worthless.

The customer service was perfect though, we brought it in at lunchtime, we were back home with a machine with a new drive in it in 45 minutes. So we’ll see if Carin wants to go with Dreamweaver or if I should just build a WordPress template for it.
The latest M Show is also up from yesterday and getting ready to roll with Marketing Over Coffee on Wednesday…

Finally, a relaxing weekend after the holidays are in the rear view mirror. I had a chance to attend the Boston Media Makers meeting this morning, and The M Show finally came out of hiatus to return for the first episode of 2008.

Now begins company kickoff celebration week…

P.S. While looking for a link on the Boston Media Makers I came across David Tamés’ fantastic write up of the meeting – check it out to see what is hot right now. His post reminded me that I need to pick up an RE50, and also talks about the Mac gaining momentum.

I think that between Vista, the admiration I’ve had for both the iPod and Apple TV, freedom from anti-virus software, higher quality hardware, and more dependable video editing the Mac grew much more attractive over the past couple of years, but the ability to run parallels so that I could run programs that only run on PC removed the last pain in switching – far more important than offering more pleasure on the other side.

I also finished my first video project on the Mac, I created some shorter clips for my page as a Marketing Technology Public Speaker.

The latest Marketing Over Coffee is up this week, and aside from that there won’t be much of me around for the next week. Both the company kickoff and the sales kickoff are next week so I’ll be wrapped up with that for the next 8 days.

With luck The M Show may come back off of holiday break for Monday… but maybe not yet…

See you on the other side…

So there was no M Show this week, in short I am drowning in holiday BS. Between last minute gift buying, two snowstorms that took a good 7 hours out of my work week, and normal “everybody trying to get that last deal closed for year end” I haven’t had any time to catch up on writing.

Regardless – there’s some cool news I wanted to share. Number one is that Marketing Over Coffee has a sponsor and that will be rolling out tomorrow. This has been a few months in the making and I’m very excited about it. Our partner gets fresh audio content, and we get to extend the conversation to some folks from outside the new media fishbowl.

Number two – (skipping the obvious 8 year old laugh there) Check out the latest from the NOTHING show, and improv podcast made up of the garbage that I’ve posted on twitter for the past couple of months. I think this is the first time anyone has played me in a dramatic production. Too bad I sound like an alcoholic dork. It’s also interesting to note that I usually only twitter when I’m angry, stuck in a line or traffic, or both.

I really enjoy improv and would love to do some kind of audio comedy, of course picking up a new project is a challenge – as you know from my complaining that I have to make an appointment in outlook to be sure I have enough time to get to a stall as opposed to crapping my pants at my desk (never actually happened to me, but I do know other executives that have had that problem). I feel busier than a 4 year old kid in a 3rd world clothing factory.
Ok, I have to go to bed. Oh, and to add a little extra fun – off to the dentist tomorrow morning. The party just never stops bro’.

I spent 3 hours in my car on Thursday after the snow started on a trip that should have been 25 minutes.

That’s why I haven’t posted much in the past couple of days, that screwed up both Thursday and Friday, I’ve been running around like a maniac. I then slept most of Saturday, finally getting a chance to rest.

Still cleaning things up today but I have acquired some interesting stuff, due to some delivery fiasco I had to go with the lovely Carin to pick up one of my Christmas gifts – a new workbench. It’s very hardcore, I don’t think I’d move it if we ever moved. We also got new cellphones, that’s a post in itself.

Most of the Christmas shopping is done and I shipped off a bunch of junk that I sold on ebay and ended up making $400.

And it’s snowing here again.