Inauguration Day with the Cleaning Lady. Today’s historic Inauguration Day will for me always be associated with our cleaning lady. She’s a real gem and we like her a lot. This gal doesn’t stop scrubbing the floor while answering her cell phone. I’ve seen it. At 11:45 this morning I head downstairs from my office to watch the inauguration ceremonies and she’s dusting the TV (and doing a darn good job at it.) So I head back upstairs and catch the ceremony on the TV in my wife’s office. The noise of the vacuum in the upstairs hall during Obama’s inauguration speech wasn’t really that much of a distraction. Yeap, the high life of doing my own thing, calling all the workday shots as a freelance entrepreneur working out of my home office.
No WinXP SP3 install joy on my wife’s PC. This morning I was in my wife’s office testing a client site on her Windows XP box when I clicked on a pending Windows Update thinking I was doing her a favor. Windows XP Service Pack 3! Woo-hoo! She love me long time for a Service Pack install! I was anticipating my just rewards until I heard her complaining about her PC this evening. I took a look and the CPU was pegged at 100% and stayed there, even after we rebooted. We terminated a rogue svchost.exe process that relieved the CPU pressure, but it’s safe to say that there’s still a problem with the Windows XP SP3 update and that it didn’t produce anything good for anybody. Why do you think I’m writing this Everyman post?
Circuit City Bio-Circuitry. Very lengthy comment thread on Circuit City’s demise on this CNET article. I woke up at 4:45 a couple of days ago and read the entire thread (before going back to bed, of course.) Over 200 comments worth of real emotion and experience from Circuit City employees, Best Buy employees, and the customers of both. I went to our local Circuit City here in Vermont last Saturday and found nothing pleasant about the liquidation experience. Wall-to-wall people, PC shelves picked bare, and why? 10-percent off store-wide on jacked-up liquidation prices? I wondered around 5 minutes before leaving with nothing, which is pretty much my typical experience at Circuit City in good times and bad. I honestly did like that store and the people in it, and I probably spent $1000 a year there over the last 5 years while spending $0 a year at the local Best Buy. I think I’ll start hanging out at the local Staples. They’ve got some real nerds working in the computer department there. My kind of guys.
CodeSmith debugging tip. A day without CodeSmith is a day without being radically productive. Debugging templates is part of the fun as succinctly explained by Paul Welter.
Great Godin Lead-in. From Love (and annoying), “The goal is to create a product that people love. If people love it, they'll forgive a lot. They'll talk about it. They'll promote it. They'll come back. They'll be less price sensitive. They'll bring their friends. They'll work with you to make it better. If you can't do that, though, perhaps you can make your service or product less annoying.”
Thoughts on Jobs’ Pixar absence. Interesting comparison between Jobs’ absence from Pixar and Apple. “Jobs’ Pixar journey is reminiscent of Columbus’. Jobs was looking to make a landfall by steering his ship to new, undiscovered software. Instead, he landed somewhere else entirely but became famous, rich, and successful anyway.”
Community Customization is King. Five forecasts for Online Communities in 2009, with the last two getting my personal thumbs-up. “One-size-fits-all communities no longer fly” and “Greater pressure will be put on technologies to fit and adapt.” I try to separate Sueetie from Everyman, but as the 3rd Sueetie Manifesto item states, "No commercial or Open Source community application ever meets the requirements of a community without additional custom development.” Told ya.
Microsoft Ready! Matt Asay in this CNET Open Road post says the new Microsoft Ready TV ads are goofy, but the print fake memo ads are brilliant. Maybe I’m a dullard, but I don’t get the fake memos and I love the TV ads. Then again, I also love my Zune. What do I know?
Now listening to… I’ve been listening to the Jaws soundtrack for the last two days. Current cut, “Ben Gardener’s Boat.” The Zune Pass brings you the world, baby. Get a pass and you can listen to the Jaws soundtrack until you drop, too.
Zune Sync-ness. I was ready to rag big-time on my Redmond Zune Priests and Priestesses because I again encountered “Digital Rights on this item expired. Please sync with your PC” when wanting to play a Pass item on my Zune. I saw that message before, on New Year’s Eve. I had to reformat and reload my Zune to restore DRM functionality. If I had to reformat and reload my Zune again, I was seriously considering going back to my iPod (which neither my wife or daughter are using). Reformatting and reloading are not that big of a pain, but it’s the principle. Turned out all I had to do was re-sync my Zune with my PC and the DRM issue was resolved, just like the message said. Did I tell you today yet how much I love my Zune?
Fixing Social Media Marketing Failures. Very smart advice on how to be successful in social media marketing on this Stuntdubl post. Excerpts from the first 2 of 7 bullets, “You choose your social media channels by finding where the customers who want to talk about your company are talking.” “Yes - your SEO got you some good rankings, but he’s only getting you 5 diggs on the content you’ve spent weeks preparing.”