Yearly Archives: 2007

Learfield’s original business plan

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In his latest “History of Learfield” blog post, founder and CEO Clyde Lear shares the business plan (below) he put together 35 years ago, when he was starting the company. If you’ve ever started your own business, or think you might someday like to start your own business, you should download the PDF file and read Clyde’s plan (just 27 pages).

This a fascinating look at the very earliest beginnings of what has turned into a multi-million dollar company (Disclosure: the company I work for).

As a blogger, I love that Clyde chose to share this bit of history on his blog. It’s been sitting in his desk for 35 years and now he’s put it out there for employees, friends, family and the world.

Clyde’s First Business Plan (PDF)

And she can sing

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Sheryl CrowI always get a few “you filthy perv” emails when I post one of these photos of Kennett’s Favorite Daughter, Sheryl Crow. I promise, I’m motivated by nothing more than small-town-pride. And appreciation for the work it must take to keep a 45-year-old body looking this fine. (I’m getting close to perv, aren’t I?)

What can I say? Smart, talented women in control of their lives is a turn-on for me. Okay, it doesn’t hurt if they’re hot.

The cover is from the October issue of Shape. Previous posts on SC.

J-Walk Blog

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“The Web has thousands of halfway-decent blogs. This is one of them.” That’s how John Walkenbach describes his blog. No idea how I missed this wonderful blog all these years, but it’s in the reader now. The few minutes you waste here can be better spent on the J-Walk Blog.

Sign150Update (Sept 30, 2007): Yesterday morning I happened across the J-Walk Blog and posted the link above at 11:22 a.m. CDT. At 10:22 a.m. Mountain, J-Walk gave smays.com a nice little mention. (Not sure how this could happen so quickly because I can’t figure out the time zone thing.)

Not long after the mention on J-Walk, I heard from Keith Povall, a delightful chap (bloke?) who blogs from the UK. Keith is also the genius behind the Sandals and Socks website.

UPDATE: John abandoned his blog somewhere along the way in favor of Google+ and Facebook. Alas.

Post number 3,000

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This is the kind of milestone I usually miss until I’m well past it. But a few days ago I happened to notice we were coming up 3,000 posts here at smays.com. Now, that’s really not a lot of posts over a span of 5 1/2 years. But a fair amount of jotting for a journal that started with the tagline, "I’ve really got to start writing some of this down."

And while most of those 3,000 posts are short links to something someone else wrote and I found blog-worthy, this has been a good place to record those few original thoughts that popped into my head.

And every post is a thin, almost invisible thread, stretching out to become part of The Web. And every once in a while, someone plucks one of those threads and I get a little tingle of…connectedness? Hard to describe, but if you’re a blogger, you know what I’m talking about.

I have no idea what I’ll be doing a year from now… or 10 years from now… but I’m pretty sure I’ll be writing things down here. And I promise not to bring this up again until we get to 10,000.

Record everything, post everything

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In March of this year, I posted audio of a speech by Jan Hindman, author of “There Is No Sex Fairy. For 34 years, Ms. Hindman studied and researched the problem of sexual abuse, working with both sexual offenders and sexual victims through mental health endeavors, the educational realm, as well as private practice.

She was a keynote speaker at a conference organized by one of our clients. I was so impressed by her intelligence and wit that I posted the audio here at smays.com.

Today I received an email from her niece, letting me know that Jan Hindman passed away suddenly a few days ago. She found my post (and the audio) with a Google search:

“…it has been very comforting to hear her voice. It made me smile to hear her wonderful messages and her great sense of humor one more time. She was so very special.”

This kind of thing happens more than you might expect. And it’s one of the things I like best about blogging. As far as I know, the speech I posted might be the only one (by Ms. Hindman) online. I hope other friends and admirers find –and take some comfort– from it.

Newspapers doing radio (and TV)

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I just listened an interview that Mark Ramsey did with a couple of guys from the San Diego Union-Tribune (runs 17 min). Twenty minutes ago I’d have described Ron James and Marc Balanky as newspapers guys. Now, I’ll call them media guys.

And they’re gearing up to do what we used to call radio (and, eventually, TV). A couple of things they said jumped out at me:

"We have a newsroom that works 24 hours a day" and "…we have more than 300 reporters."

I flashed on all the empty or near-empty radio newsrooms out there. These guys are serious as a heart attack and I’d be damned worried if I were "just" a radio station in that market. On the other hand, if you aren’t already well down the road to being more than just a radio station, don’t sweat it. Squeeze what you can from old Bossie and remember the good times.

iMac Update

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I’ve done my share of gushing about the MacBook Pro and, more recently, the beautiful new iMac. So it’s only fair I share some of the rough spots I’ve encountered the last few days.

Firefox is crashing like crazy on OSX. Almost unusable. Same for Photoshop. Not sure what’s happening but look forward to getting it sorted out.

Phil has me set up with XP running on VMware and I’m suffering from mild schizophrenia, trying to move back and forth from Windows (for Outlook, mostly) and OSX. I finally just closed the win version of Outlook and started getting email via the Exchange server (when I could keep Firefox running).

I’m sure I’ll get the hang of this but trying to live in both worlds is challenging. Once we get the crashes under control (I know, I know)… I plan to spend as much time in Mac Land as possible and I’m hoping that makes things easier.

But I’m in for the duration. My experience on the MacBook Pro has been delightful and I’d like to have that warm glow at work, too. That’s gonna take some fiddling and some mental adjustment on my part.

West Coast Fez

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Fez #7Bay Area buddy Jamie Nelson is the newest member of the Order of the Fez. Jamie might look familiar due to expensive (and painful) cosmetic surgery that allows him to pass for a young Larry David.

Jamie is thrilled “to be part of the fez-wearing, non-little-car-driving, elite” and is the first tassel-less member.

“I like the more stripped down, Istanbul “street” look: More stability in a strong breeze off the Hellespont.”

Jamie is the 7th (often regarded as a mystical and powerful number) member of The Order.

The War

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I’ve been watching The War, the Ken Burns documentary on PBS. The guy knows how to tell a story. Last night’s episode included the internment of Japanese-Americans, and I could picture Dick and W looking at map, trying to decide where to put the camps for Muslim-Americans.

I was also reminded of my parents telling me that for a good part of WWII, they weren’t sure they’d win. My father was a radio operator in the Navy and saw action in the Pacific, but he never talked about it. At least not to me.

 

Now Buddy can go steady again

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I received the following email last week:

Senior_ring

“My name is Mike McGuire. While camping at Lake Wapapello a few years ago, I came across a class ring from Kennett HS lying in the rocks. The year is dated 1966 and the initials on the inside of the ring are BDS. I looked up the students on classmates.com and found a Buddy Shivley. I sent an email through classmates.com and received no response. I then did a google search on “Buddy Shivley”, “Kennett” and “MO” and came up with your site.Do you have any way to contact Buddy or his family? I would like to get in contact with him to determine if the ring is his and return it. I know this is “out there”, but it is a true story. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.”

I grew up with Buddy and went to highschool with him. If you know how to get in touch with him, let him know he can stop searching for his senior ring.

Update: 9/25/07 — One ring to rule them all. Thanks to Mike McGuire, Google, and a lot of luck, Buddy Shively will soon be reunited with his Kennett High School senior ring. Email from Buddy:

“Did you go on a trip to Lake Wappappello around the time we graduated HS? (not to be confused with the (in)famous float trip) I remember about 15 or 20 of us went. I remember riding in a boat with Ronnie Carnett pulling in toward shore in water over my head. All of a sudden Pat Brooks was in the water in front of the boat and Ronnie was setting there with his foot pumping an imaginary brake pedal with the boat going on toward Pat. (I think it was Pat and Ronnie – it may have been someone else – but I was still a hero!) I dove into the water (rather heroically, I might add) and pushed the boat away from Pat.  When I came up my ring was gone and I really hadn’t thought about it much in what  41 years.”

And today, out of the blue, a Mike McGuire called and said he had found the ring and traced me down.  He is sending it to me.  What a deal.”

Yes, what a deal. And no, I wasn’t on that trip. But I love the Lord of the Rings flavor of this story. The story of my high school ring was one of the early posts here at smays.com.

Bud_ring
Update: 10/11/07 — Bud Shively has his high school ring back.

“Who said it wouldn’t fit?  It is as good as new. It sure hasn’t been worn much.  I cannot believe it. Mike McGuire, of near St Louis, found my Kennett High School Class ring that I lost about 41 1/2 years ago and graciously had it cleaned at Randy’s Jewelry (you did a great job, Randy’s) in O’Fallon MO and kindly returned it to me.”