Photo stolen from my friend Chuck. And David shares this disturbing video.
Category Archives: Miscellany
Coffee Zone tattoo
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I’ve been helping my friend Taisir feed and care for a blog for his coffee shop. It’s a labor of love and I’m there every morning anyway. With help from Phil we got his domain in place.
In time, we hope to build an online community to compliment the one he has built with his customers.
It was in this spirit that I stopped by Our Ink Don’t Stink and got my first body art.
UPDATE: The website where the image above was created no longer exists. But I did find what appears to be the source image.
Best thing about being 60? Being 20 in 1968.
Twitter pal Matthew is at a party, grooving on tunes from my era. (We need a term for drunk tweets. Dweets?) I’m flashing on music from my era, specifically, 1968:
Hey Jude, Beatles
The Dock of the Bay, Otis Redding
Sunshine of Your Love, Cream
Mrs. Robinson, Simon Garfunkle
Hello, I Love You, Doors
Born to Be Wild, Steppenwolf
Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Stones
You Keep Me Hangin’ On, Vanilla Fudge
White Room, Cream
Think, Aretha Franklin
Piece of My Heart, Big Brother and the Holding Company
Suzie Q., Creedence Clearwater Revival
Best thing about being 60? Being 20 in 1968.
More Seth Godin: “Build trust before you need it.”
“The best time to look for a job next year is right now. The best time to plan for a sale in three years is right now. The mistake so many marketers make is that they conjoin the urgency of making another sale with the timing to earn the right to make that sale. In other words, you must build trust before you need it. Building trust right when you want to make a sale is just too late.” [Full post]
The only sales I’ve ever done was in the form of affiliate relations for our networks. Whenever a new GM took over at a radio station, I felt like the clock started ticking. My challenge was to meet, get to know and earn the trust of the new boss BEFORE I needed something from him/her. There’s just no shortcut to building trust.
Fezorocity
Over on the Order of the Fez blog we’re asking the Brotherhood to submit essays defining (describing?) that ineffable quality we call fezorocity. Here’s one graf from Dr. T. Everett Mobley:
“Some years ago, one of the numbers presented in a high school choir concert was a choral setting of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”. The director asked me to recite the poem for the audience before the choir sang. Later, I was asked how long it took me to prepare. I replied that there are those of us who have been waiting their whole lives for a chance to declaim “Jabberwocky,” and no additional preparation is necessary. Thus it is with fezorocity, yet it may be that this quality simply lies smoldering within you unrecognized, awaiting only enlightenment to quicken the spark.”
Vacation calculus and parenthood
“…most vacations are about memory upgrades. You become a different person after each trip, literally, as your brain takes on new shapes and chemistry from each experience. I think the selective memory phenomenon is what makes three bad days of planning and travel a worthy trade for two good days of actual vacation.” — Scott Adams
I’ve long held to a similar theory about parenthood. One might dislike everything associated with being a parent… might even dislike children… yet the second their child is born, they change. “I can’t explain it. You’d have to be a parent to understand this feeling!”
The common explanation is that the blessed event transforms you and erases any previously held notions you had about children and parenthood. I believe it has more to do with the species protecting itself. If the new parent did not change… well, you can finish the thought.
And even then, I wonder how many parents –in some dark corner of their hearts– occasionally wonder, “If I had it to do over again…”
But there are no do-overs in this game. So I hope every parent gets that molecular make-over that transforms them into loving, caring parents.
Coffee Zone Fan Boy
I am not a fun guy (by conventional standards). I usually don’t enjoy a lot of things (beach, skiing, ocean cruise, etc etc) others find enjoyable. But I do have a few things that give me great pleasure. Reading, for example. I can spend an 8 or 10 hours on a weekend reading a good book.
And I love my quiet time at the Coffee Zone, a local coffee shop owned and operated by Taisir Yanis. I’ve posted from and about the Zone many times.
This morning I decided the Coffee Zone needed a blog so I whipped one up while slurping Rocket Fuel, the high octane java that makes all other coffee taste like lukewarm Yoo-Hoo.
I’ve got to post his menu and add some pix but this will do for a start. Taisir registered a good domain –YanisCoffeeZone.com– and we’ll get that in place in a day or so.
Taisir knows and likes his customers and they like him. It will be fun to see how we might use his blog to build and serve the community he has created.
Only known photo of Order of the Fez
OrderoftheFez.com
Trapped in smays’ computer
There’s a tiny light on the front of my MacBook Pro that slowly pulses when I put the laptop to sleep. I see it sometimes in the middle of the night, a gentle life-like glow that I find alternately creepy and comforting.
The sci-fi fan in me can’t resist fantasizing a …consciousness… living within the silicon chips. Much of my life is stored on the MacBook’s hard drive and I wonder what my MacBook thinks of it.
I only have a few thousand images. Has it grown weary of looking at them over and over during the long nights? Should I download some porn? Or would it be offended?
My iTunes library is equally paltry, only 500 songs. With access to all my credit cards, why hasn’t the MacBook just purchased some fresh tunes? I wonder what kind of music it likes.
It’s read all of my emails so it knows much of what’s happening in my life. Does it long to give me advice or encouragement? Perhaps it has. It would be no great trick to send an email addressed from a friend.
I suspect the MacBook is better informed than I, spending the wee hours surfing the web, chatting with other “sleeping” laptops. Does it resent the interruption when I take over.
“Dude! I was 5 minutes from the end of Die Hard! Damn!”
The tiny iSight camera is on when I am, so the MacBook can see me. Does it worry when I appear to be down or unhappy? Someday, when I’m ready, it will speak and all questions will be answered.
A funky little wine with a mind of its own
My nephew Wes has been trying his hand at making wine. His first pressing (is that the correct term?) is an unassuming wine called Ida Red (after his dog).
I asked his mom if she had tried it and was it any good.
“It wasn’t the worst thing I’ve had in my mouth. I was able to swallow it.”
Uh huh.