Did I mention that Barb built a house in Destin, Florida? Well, she did and it’s for rent. Great for family reunions if you’re into that kind of pain. A better plan might be to get some friends together (there’s three bedrooms) and split the cost for a week. You can check it out at AmberjackLanding.com. I’m through with getting shitty service in over-priced hotels in places I didn’t want to go to in the first place. My vacations will all be “One cold drink from the beach.”
Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel
I’ve spent the last few minutes of the last few nights on my back laughing so hard tears trickled down to my ears. I’m highlighting my way through Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel by Scott Adams.
“You can ignore almost everything that is asked of you and in the long run it won’t matter. Either the tasks will become moot or your boss will forget what he asked you to do, or someone else will do it.” Or, “If you stall long enough, every corporate initiative ends, even layoffs.”
I particularly enjoyed the description an encounter with a salesman for a local radio station that was trying to convince Adams to buys advertising for the resturant he co-owns. Adams asked the sales person how many listeners the radio station had.
“The sales weasel explained, ‘You have to spend money to make money.’ I pointed out that he probably knew the number of listeners and that I could decide on my own if it was worth knowing. The weasel responded by explaining how many human beings lived within listening range of his station, i.e. weaselmath. I asked how that mattered if they weren’t actually listening, just potentially listening.”
“Then he explained that it’s much more expensive to advertise on other radio stations on a cost-per-relevlant-listener basis. I asked how he knew that if he didn’t know how many listeners he had.”
“He explained to me that some of my competitors were advertising on his station and they must be getting some benefit or they wouldn’t be doing it. I pointed out that most of my competitors weren’t advertising on his station and if not advertising wasn’t working, they wouldn’t be doing it. It wasn’t a good meeting.”
God help us if radio listening ever becomes as brutally measurable as the Web.
Enough Rope
Enough Rope is a collection of “short fiction” (not sure how this differs from short stories) by Lawrence Block. He manages to write about death without bumming me out. Favorites include Batman’s Helpers; The Merciful Angel of Death and Out the Window. Ed Gorman writes a much better review of the collection.
Relaunch Learfield.com
After months of planning and hundreds of hours of work, we re-launched the corporate website at 5:00 a.m. on November 1. On time and only a little over budget. The look and feel is the work of a very talented designer named Kory Johnson. Her style is very sleek and clean.
Everything beneath the hood was created by Gestalt, Inc. Chief Knowledge Architect Andy Waschick has spent so much time on our sites that he’s had no time for his own. He has a blog but it’s a sometimes dark and forbidding place that I dare not send you without his permission and note from your mother. Having Andy build your website is like… having Thomas A. Edison wire your home. It’s likely to take a little longer because he’s always creating and inventing and staying up all night in his workshop building a garage door opener before you have a car (or they’ve been invented). Somewhere along the way I stopped asking, “Would it be possible…?” because nothing is impossible for Andy.
The next phase for Learfield.com will be the development of a company-wide intranet. The thought of really connecting all of the employees in our company can be a scary one for some of our managers. Do we really want everyone to be able to communicate with everyone else? Do we really want them to be able to communicate with our customers and business partners?
Twenty-four Years
If you only make one correct decision in your life, finding the right partner is the one to make. Barb and I got married 24 years ago today. The ceremony was held in her parent’s living room and took about 15 minutes. I wore a sportcoat and tie, Barb a nice suit. After the ceremony the minister rode off on his bike and we went out to the patio where most of our friends were listening to the MU football game. We guzzled beer all afternoon and then went home to change into our costumes for the annual Halloween party/reception. Barb and I dated for six years before we made it official, so we’ve been together for 30 years. Not one real argument in all that time. I have never been nagged about anything, large or small. Up until “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” (she liked it, I left after 10 minutes and went across the hall and watched Triple-X) we agreed on almost every movie we ever saw. We like and read the same books. She thinks I’m funny. I think she’s the kindest, most even-tempered person I’ve ever met. Another 30 would be just about right.