Yearly Archives: 2007

Measure Your Personal Brand

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Want to know what your personal brand ranking is online?  Check out this calculator at Career Distinction
and see how you do.  Like most online calculators this one really takes
something complex and simplifies it, but it’s still a nice way to get a
general idea of how extensive your personal brand is online.

If you have a low ranking and want to raise it I have a couple of suggestions that might help:

  • Start a blog and stick to it.  Success will not happen overnight,
    but over time you’ll find yourself being referenced more and more
    often.  I know, most people don’t like to write and don’t feel they
    have time to do it.  Here’s the dirty little secret about blogs: you
    don’t have to write much if you don’t want to.  Simply share links to
    resources, stories, columns, data, etc. that you find interesting.
    You’re sharing your knowledge and people respect that.  And don’t be
    intimidated by the technology because services like Typepad are as easy to use as Microsoft Word and cost next to nothing to use.
     
  • Comment on blogs that are relevant to your industry/career.
    Comments are indexed by search engines so you will be riding the
    coattails of others within your industry.  Obviously you’ll also get
    the attention of anyone reading that blog and so your expertise will be
    on display to your core audience.

Cross posted on LowderEnterprises.com

Money-Money-Money, Mooooney

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One of the things I consistently hear from friends and family who read my mind dribblings is that they read everything except for the "boring stuff" about politics and government.  Invariably they say something like "I’m just not as into it as you are" which is fair since I’m interested in lots of boring things, including my navel.  Still, it got me to thinking that maybe I need to be a little more entertaining when I write about that stuff since so here goes my first try:

Today’s topic: War and Money

Important takeaway: We’ve spent a buttload of money on the war in Iraq and it’s not ending any time soon.

Interesting hook: Some folks are putting a $1.2 Trillion price tag on the war, but back in 2003 when one of the Bush administration’s economists predicted the war might end up costing us about $100-200 billion dollars he was canned. The other administration estimates at the time were closer to $60 billion which means they were only off by, oh, $1.14 trillion.

Entertainment Value: Think about what $1.2 Trillion could buy.  If I were writing my typical, boring, wonky stuff I’d write about all the teachers it could pay for, doctors it could provide, yada, yada, yada.  But for fun lets look at the number of the following that you could purchase:

Man that’s a lot of spare change.  Now, if you want to talk about real money take a look at what Fec’s pointing to re. the coming crisis due to the healthcare and retirement costs of the aging (finally) baby boomers. 

Boring? Yes.  Important? Hell yes.

Nice Bit of Customer Communication from The Old Fourth Street Filling Station

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I wrote a few days ago about a pretty bad dining experience that Celeste and I had at The Fourth Street Filling Station.  Unfortunately it was also the first time we’d eaten there so it was not a good first impression by the restaurant.  Initially I blogged about it (harshly) and I had a bad feeling about it.  I didn’t feel bad about my opinion or even the harshness of my words when I blogged about it, but I did feel bad that I never said anything to the restaurant management.  In simple terms I violated the Golden Rule (do unto others and all that) and I figured the least I could do is share my opinion directly with the restaurant’s management.  So I went to their website, found their "contact us" form and shared my experience.  A day or two later I received an email from them and with their permission I’m sharing it here:

Dear Mr. Lowder,
 
Thank you for sending us your feed back.  I was so sorry to hear that your
first experience at The Old Fourth Street Filling Station was a bad
one. Our goal is to serve quality food, with excellent service, in a comfortable
atmosphere.  It seems that we failed in your case.  We take criticism very
seriously and would like to make things right. 
 
The ‘Seafood Pasta’ and the ‘Brie Chicken" are two of our most popular
dishes. I hate that the seafood was over-cooked and the flavor not to your
liking.  This certainly can happen and I apologize. You had mentioned you liked
spicy foods,  our ‘Shrimp and Grits’ are the best in town and can be spiced up
as much as you like. This is our signature dish featured in Southern Living
Magazine and is truly our most requested dinner item. 
 
I would love for you to give our restaurant another try. If you and your
wife would like to come back, it would be my pleasure to pay for your
meal. Please make a reservation through one of the managers; Matt, Mike or
myself.  Once again I apologize for the unsatisfactory experience and look
forward to meeting you soon.

Best regards,

Adam T.
Andrews

Chef & General Manager

That’s really a nice piece of customer service and I’m now certain that we’ll be going back to give the place another try.  BTW, they just won "Best Outdoor Patio" in Smitty’s Best of Winston-Salem survey, which I definitely agree with.

Cross posted on Lowder Enterprises LLC.

7.3 Tons and a Cloud of Dust

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According to this web calculator my carbon footprint is 7.3 tons and the average is 7.5 tons.  In this case is it good to be below average?.  Fec, through whom I found this site, says that his is 18.9 tons, but this is not surprising given his propensity towards the spectacular.  In the comments Boyd offers this business proposition:

You know, now that I think about it a bit, if you wanted to, we
could go out and find a bunch of people who don’t have much of a carbon
footprint – the homeless maybe or migrant workers or Aborigines – and
buy their de facto non-footprints for pennies on the dollar (I’m pretty
sure that most of them are not that up on this stuff yet to realize the
gold mine they sit on) and sell the unrealized carbon use for full
retail. We’ll be rich and Al Gore will be happy and the planet will be
saved via market capitalism.

Why hasn’t anyone thought of this yet?

If they get serious about this proposition I’ll offer my services as VP of the Aborigine market.  I’ve always wanted to go to Australia and for once I’d like to be out in front of the Democrat and Republican power brokers in the "taking advantage of peoples’ ignorance and fear" department.   We need only wait for the memoirs of Cheney and his henchmen to have a road map to success in this endeavour.

If You Don’t Believe Me Then Believe Smitty’s Readers

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A little while back I wrote that Esbee’s Life in Forsyth is the best blog in Winston-Salem or about Winston-Salem.  It seems that the readers of Smitty’s Notes, THE online resource for all things related to having fun in Camel City, agree with me.  They voted Life in Forsyth the best blog and a blog I’d not yet heard of, alphabitch.org, came in second.  Yours truly pulled in an honorable mention along with Otterblog, UrbanPlanet (The NC Triad) and JoeJon.

Since I didn’t even know that Smitty was running the contest I’ll have to thank whoever voted for me since it wasn’t me.  If I’d known about it I’d have had every living or dead being I know stuff the ballot box, but alas my chance to behave like a Chicago mayor has come and gone.

31 Years Ago Today

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Historyjuly41976
On July 4, 1976 is the one Independence Day I can guarantee I’ll never forget.  The reason is that my Mom took me and my brother down to the National Mall early in the day so that we could get some seats in a prime location right by the Reflecting Pool.  Unfortunately we ran out of drinks some time in the middle of the afternoon so Mom ended up shuttling us back and forth to a water fountain that felt like it was a million miles away.  Since it was just the three of us one of us would have to stay behind to guard our spot and make sure no one took our space or our stuff, and as you can see from the picture to the left the entire Mall from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial was a sea of humanity.  Mom still talks about how scared she was, but I was too young to really know how hinky the situation was.

Other strong memories include:

  • Being absolutely amazed that people would wade and play frisbee in the reflecting pool.  Even a 9 year old boy thought it looked nasty and I was particularly off-put by the hippy who openly peed right in the middle of the thing some time in the afternoon.
  • To beat the crowd we started to walk out before the conclusion of the fireworks.  Unfortunately on the way out I kicked over some drunk’s beer and he threatened all kinds of bodily harm to me and my mother.  Mom gave it right back to him which I think shocked and amazed him; I know it did me.
  • Hippies smelled bad, real bad, and being outside for 12 hours on a July day in Washington, D.C. didn’t help them any.  Multiply that B.O. by 500,000 and you get a true stink-a-thon.
  • I told myself I would never go to the National Mall again for July 4. I ended up going to a few in H.S. and college because I had discovered beer which made the experience a little more tolerable.  You wouldn’t catch me dead there now.
  • Finally, I remember thinking that my Mom was one tough lady.  Nothing’s changed.

DIM and the Proof’s in the Picture

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Those who know me well will be shocked by this story, which is why I’m providing the picture to the left.  For those who don’t know me well let me just say that I’m the opposite of a DIM (do-it-myselfer).  In fact my idea of the ideal home project involves me doing nothing more strenuous than dialing several numbers to get quotes from the local contractors or handymen.  Keep that in mind as you read the rest of this.

Last week I arose early and stumbled into the kitchen to make coffee and when I got there I found our three year old Whirlpool refrigerator making a kind of whining noise that was loud enough to wake the dead.  Usually my first move in these situations is to ignore the problem and hope it goes away.  When that doesn’t work I generally try to beat the crap out of the offending machinery to see if I can knock some sense into it.  If that doesn’t work I usually just give up, wait for it to annoy Celeste and then let her try to fix it or figure out who to call to fix it.  This time I surprised even myself and got online to see if I could figure out what the problem might be. As a result I found a message board for DIYers (DIY being “do-it-yourself”) that had a posting that covered my exact problem.  One of the DIY dudes was even nice enough to provide a link to the RepairClinic website where I could find replacement parts for any number of home appliances.

With the information I gleaned online I went back to our fridge and found the small motor for our ice maker.  I removed the motor, fiddled with it a bit and then put it back in the hopes that I might have “re-set” it so that it would stop making the whining noise.  For about one hour after I put the motor back in it returned to functioning quietly, but as soon as it dropped a new load of ice in the bin it started whining even louder than it had before, which meant we needed to order a new motor.  I went back to the site, ordered the new motor and waited for delivery.

Some time yesterday the motor was delivered and this morning I replaced the old motor with our newly arrived gem.  Miraculously it took only a couple of minutes (99% of the time I can take any “simple” home project and turn it into an week-long marathon) and so far it is functioning perfectly.  Best of all I didn’t even come close to electrocuting myself.

I was flying high for about five minutes until I realized that the other part of our ice maker that needed replacing, a blade that snapped almost two years ago, would not be replaced today because I’d ordered the wrong part.  Now that’s more like it.

Wii Wee

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I got my first look at a Nintendo Wii last night at a friends house and all I can think to write is "Cool!" and "Finally!"  I’d pretty much given up on video games because I just couldn’t invest the time to familiarize myself with the controllers, with the plots and the bouts of vertigo that a couple of them can induce.  To me what’s brilliant about the Wii is that it gives the kids (and gamers) something different than what they’re used to and it gives the adults (and other non-gamers) something that’s approachable and doesn’t require hours of practice just to get started.

For those not familiar with the Wii the biggest difference between it and the PS3 or Xbox 360 is that the controllers are wireless and the games are designed so that the players must physically move to play them.  So if the game is boxing the players are essentially throwing punches at the TV, if the game is tennis or golf the players are moving the controllers with motions similar to those used when playing the real sports.  Watching the boys play it last night I saw them literally break into a hard sweat and end the games panting as if they’d just run a mile.

Another difference between the Wii and other current game systems is that the Wii went with less processing power so the emphasis is definitely not on graphics.  It was a risky, but brilliant move by Nintendo to focus on interaction and approachability rather than hard-core graphics.  They’re going to own the non-hardcore gamer market unless Sony and Microsoft do something soon.

We hadn’t even discussed getting one of these for the kids since we figured the X-Box was enough, but now this thing is going on the wish list if for no other reason than I want to play it myself.  From what I understand the backlog on delivery is long enough that if I put it on my x-mas wish list I might just get it in time for the holidays.

The Old Fourth Street Filling Station, Redux

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Per my previous post about The Old Fourth Street Filling Station I wanted to give a quick update.  First, I did indeed contact the restaurant via the comments form on their website and last night I received a reply from them.  If I get permission from them I’ll share the reply in full because it was a great example of how to handle a customer complaint.  Second, I wanted to post a positive comment I’ve gotten about the restaurant (I’ll update with more if I get them). Here it is:

  • From Kathy:

    I love the burgers at the The Old Fourth Street Filling Station.  The burgers and the brie appetizer are awesome! 

    I hope you give it another try.

Update: Here’s another comment I recently received from Mandie:

I’ve
eaten there once with a large group of friends, and I thought it was
fantastic. I even took photos of all the food. We ate Sunday brunch, in
April, on the patio. Betty thought the shrimp and grits were excellent,
and the salad I had was huge. The pancakes with fruit were to.die.for.
The omelets and fries were good, too.

I’ve
seen the letter from the chef, and I hope you do take them up on the
offer to go back. Hopefully the second time will be the charm.

The Local News Food Chain

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Until pretty recently I would have
told you that the way local news flows online is as follows:

  1. Local news outlet breaks a story
  2. Local blogs pick it up, provide commentary, go nuts, etc.
  3. Local news outlet reports online reaction to the story they reported, thus
    creating a "local reaction story"
  4. Start over

Lately, though, I’d say that the information flows both ways.  Here’s a
classic example:

  1. Winston-Salem based blogger Esbee gets a comment on one of her
    blog posts that asks if she’s heard anything about a flurry of break-ins in the
    Sherwood area.  The commenter had pasted in the text of an email that was making
    its way around the community.
  2. She hasn’t, but she writes
    a separate post     with the comment in the body to see if anyone has heard
    about them.  She also checks the police calls and finds some
    corroborating information.
  3. She gets comments asking her to remove the address that police provided,
    although it’s really just a block number AND it’s public info that’s on the
    police website.  She does remove the address but points out that it’s public
    info.  The last comment on her post says, "How the hell did the Journal miss
    this?!?!Now that I look through, there are like 5 "investigative support" things
    at that address, too! Do they actually look at this stuff, or do they wait for
    the police to spoonfeed what the police would have us hear?"
  4. Today the Winston-Salem Journal runs this
    story     with the headline, "Police report multiple
    break-ins in Sherwood Forest area"

I’m willing to bet that the Journal reporter came across Esbee’s post and
then did what reporters are paid to do, which is dig into it. I’m not saying
this is a bad or improper thing, I just think it’s a natural evolution of the
form and I only write about it because I constantly hear people say that blogs
are a bunch of narcissistic ramblings written by people with nothing better to
do.  Obviously I disagree.

I IM’d Esbee about this and she pointed out
that the real food chain was:

  1. Email or comments are sent to blogger about a community issue
  2. Blogger looks at it and finds the story viable (i.e. not a hoax)
  3. Blogger posts, which generates more comments and feedback and fleshes out
    the story
  4. Media picks up the story

I think she’s right, and sometimes there’s even a little bit of personal
experience involved just like I had with
the allegations
against a teacher at my son’s school. But the main point is that local blogs
provide another avenue for community information to be shared, and in the
atmosphere of shrinking budgets and reporting staffs that newspapers are
operating in they would be foolish not to follow the leads that the blogs
provide.  When you think about it, how have news operations traditionally gotten
their stories? Tips via email, and phone calls, press releases from companies
and institutions, monitoring the police scanner, etc.  How is monitoring blogs
any different?

One thing I’d like to see is that if a paper does
pick up a lead from a blog that perhaps they reference the blog in their
article. If nothing else it would give readers an opportunity to get the back
story and it would acknowledge the contribution that the blogger is making to
the community. Another reason I’d give is that newspaper folks have complained
for years that local TV newscasts get most of their stories from the newspapers,
so I’d hope that newspapers would be sensitive to the same issue with the
bloggers.  On the other hand maybe they take the view that if the TV folks
aren’t going to give them credit for story leads then why should they give
bloggers credit?  The "kick the dog" theory as it were.

Side note: I
just noticed that Esbee’s been removed from the Journal’s blog
page.  Since Life in
Forsyth is easily the most informative blog focused on the Winston-Salem
area I’m a bit surprised by this.  I certainly hope it’s not because she wrote
this
a while back.  That would be a bit like biting the hand that feeds if you ask
me.