Two lines, one red and one blue, run vertically down the middle of the screen. doubtlessly caused by some screen carelessness on my part while travelling.
Then, just now, the active protection sensor just reported a malfunction. I didn’t know how much psychological comfort I received from knowing that feature was protecting my drive until it told me it was not feeling well.
Oh well, off to the service team for a fix. Best notebook I have ever owned — this X60s
I am coming to the conclusion that building a brand online — in any interactive medium — by buying awareness, is a fool’s errand. Sure, there are some online only campaigns that have established companies — Vonage is generally cited. The X10 Web Cam pop-under was inescapable … but I am eager to find a brand that primarily built online, or, at the very least, changed itself through an online brand campaign.
I think one can change demand through online buys, but brand is a function of:
If I were to invest in brand building online I’d pour my money into the social media side, not impressions.
I think I like these ads (I’m seeing them in airports) because right now, on the train to NYC, Willy Loman is selling routers with “Gee-BIX” in a loud backslapping voice in the seat behind me.
Driving around Boston this morning to escape the rush hour I passed the old headquarters for Wang, then the exit for DEC, then past where Data General used to be ….
And I wondered, what happened to the tech sector in Eastern Massachusetts? It’s gone. Poof. Sure, there are some pockets here and there, but the dot.com era seems to have passed the region by (CMGI and Lycos were hot in their day, but aren’t a shadow of their former selves), hardware is long gone, software sort of became irrelevant after IBM did its hostile takeover of Lotus.
Just weird to realize with the exception of EMC, there just isn’t a lot going on in what was one of the richest tech corridors in the country. Old news I know, but still, sort of an indication of why I fly to RTP these day and don’t drive to a marketing gig outside of Boston.
Boat trailers are this morning’s topic as they were yesterday’s obsession.
I am a very “un-handy” person, wreaking damage on myself and my victims whenever I put a tool in my hands, something Cousin Pete finds very funny whenever he witnesses me employing a tool in a wrong-headed manner, e.g. whacking a screw like it was a nail with a wrench like it was a hammer.
Having resolved to be street-legal in the trailer department this year (after years of semi-renegade/scofflaw status with an expired license plate, and a broken light), I renewed my trailer registration so I could trailer the boat around Cape Cod this spring and launch in new and foreign waters for pure exploration purposes. Step one was a plate renewal, step two was lighting (which I accomplished to my great satisfaction yesterday in a world of slush and mud) and step three is getting a professional to replace the wheel bearings so I don’t suffer the ultimate in auto-nautical disasters, the loss of a trailer wheel due to a seized hub bearing.
As we once sang during one trailer wheel loss, to the tune of Kenny Roger’s Lucille:
“You picked a fine time to leave me, loose wheel …Over the shoulder, and into the field … You picked a fine time to leave me, loose wheel….”
Town Dock, Cotuit
I have seen massive trailer malfunctions on several occasions, typically involving Cotuit Skiffs, which only see a trailer twice a year — once when launched, and again when pulled — hence the trailers tend to be antiques known more for their flat tires and lack of license plates than anything else. One year someone lost a trailer wheel coming up Putnam Ave. near the cemetery with a 40-year old Skiff aboard, and just kept going, dragging the sucker another half-mile as the axle gouged a scar through the pavement which is still there today. When I was a kid the household’s skiff trailer was made out of an old car axle and homemade wooden frame. That lasted until the early 70s when it collapsed from corrosion. In the old days, some people put their boats on a wooden cradle and dragged them, wheel-free, down the street behind the Studebaker.
With visions of poking around the back waters of Barnstable Harbor, Pleasant and Waquoit Bays, and even launching up in Truro in the Pamet River, I am determined to get my trailer in obsessive-compulsive condition, so for once I can drive down Route 6 without a weird feeling in the back of my pants that utter disaster is about to befall me, or a state trooper will notice a registration sticker from the last century and write me up a big ticket.
Of such stuff are weekends in March spent, obsessing about life’s perpetual to-do list before better weather inclines me to be flaky.
3.19 – Cotuit
3.20 – Cotuit to NYC
3.21 – NYC
3.22 – NYC
3.23-25 – Cotuit
3.26 – RTP
Farch is back so I awoke with vows to undo the damage and crank off some calories on the wheel of pain. This morning was a low and slow 6K with a 500m warmup and cool down — about 24 strokes per minutes, loafing at a 2:04.3 pace and a 150-160 hr.
Still watching out for the back and not pulling any power-tens on the “fives” — a power-ten is an extra-special, tasmanian devil effort for ten strokes, usually invoked by a coxswain during a race in the name of something inspirational, like: “Power-ten for Coach Smith!” — which usually backfires in the minds of the people pulling the oars and performing the power-ten who think Coach Smith is a douche. Tens-on-the-fives, means cranking for ten strokes ever 500 meters or increment of 5 minutes. So … you pull like no tomorrow at 1,500 meters and at 15 minutes … anyway, I am not doing that now.
The scale in the Vegas hotel room told of the horror to come. I am fatter than I have been in the last ten years, so it is time to look at very long erg pieces (10K to 60 minutes) and really low paces to start burning the fat. Can you say boring?
(actually wrote this on the erg, while cooling down my heart rate to 100 bpm, connected wirelessly from the garage. Thankfully the ThinkPad X60 has a spill resistant keyboard, as I am dripping dave-juice into it)
This is my favorite brand sentiment tool in the entire world. Probably because it is free. And fun to play with.
Enter in a brand name and see how it fares. A ten means the brand “rocks.” A one designates utter suckage. This works by going out into the Interweb and looking for keywords and designations of rockitude or suckiture adjacent to them. My music example probably sucks as one can imagine the word “rock” is adjacent to everyone of these names. Same probably holds true for geology brand names ….
A mooring is a semi-permanent anchor for securing a boat in a harbor. It looks like an iron mushroom, has a long length of chain, and a rope pennant to a float. It is also the one thing that makes me more paranoid than bird flu, an IRS audit, or turning into a collector of Hummel figurines.
Paranoid? I’m not paranoid about my mooring dragging during a storm, I’m paranoid about forgetting to renew my permit some year and finding myself completely hosed. The waiting list for a mooring is something like two hundred names long and turns over at slower-than-a-glacial pace. My cousin Pete was on the list for something like ten years and only just last year got a slot. I’ve got family members who didn’t get their moorings when the town went to a permit system and they are still angry and screwed, especially over out-of-towners having permits when they don’t. I predict acts of maritime violence some day.
Miss the March 30th deadline and you lose your mooring.
That thought keeps me awake for most of February and early March until I do the same annual ritual. I find the renewal forms, I find the documentation for the boats (I have three moorings), I find the excise tax bills, I find my checkbook, I buy three stamped legal envelopes and self-address them. I drive to town hall and pay my excise tax — in person — and take the receipt on to the Division of Natural Resources where the mooring officer checks off all the required documents, takes my $70 check, and tells me the magic words: “You’re all set. The tags will come in the mail.”
To celebrate I write another $20 check for a new clam license. Instead of 007, my license to kill clams this year is number 0403. I need to check Capetides.com to figure out when the low tides are and sally forth to the super-secret-early-season clam beds that get closed on May 1 and make hay while the tide falls. Spring is upon me and I am positively giddy. Now to just get my taxes out of the way … pay three tuitions … at least the moorings are renewed.
I need to go clamming.
