So a few weeks ago, my dad's girlfriend Molly conspired with me and my sister to pull off a combo Father's Day gift and birthday gift (that was an A-A-B-B-start-select combo). The birthday gift was for me, which was a wonderful gift, and the father's day gift was my surprise visit for my dad. Molly thought it would be a great gift to have me come up as a complete surprise for Father's Day, especially since Father's Day was Sunday June 20th, the first year anniversary of my brother's death was two days before that, and my brother's birthday was on June 10th. So not the best of weeks for my dad to look forward to. Xoe and Molly kept the visit a secret and had to keep the plans fluid since my dad kept changing his work shift the night I was flying in.
Before I go into that, though, I need to go into the story of the SuperShuttle ride to the airport.
So when you sign up for SuperShuttle, you are made aware that there's a 20-minute window of time in which they'll pick you up. They don't hide this fact, and in fact they tell you exactly when this window starts and stops. And when you think about it, it's fairly reasonable: since it's a shared ride, the driver can't possibly know if he'll be there at exactly the scheduled minute since he has both traffic and other passengers to deal with.
I got a phone call five minutes before my 20-minute window was due to start saying that the shuttle would be there in five minutes. Wow, pretty nice. I walked downstairs and there he was. Huh, right on time. The driver took my bags, was very nice, and I got in the van behind the driver. There was a couple in the van already, and the man was continuing a conversation with the driver that he'd obviously been having before they picked me up.
The guy was upset about the 20-minute wait window. He told the driver that he felt that was an insult to the customer, because the company was expecting him to wait on his time. And the guy was mad, because he felt the driver was telling him in his responses (that I hadn't been privy to) that that's too bad.
The driver told him that he understood his frustration. That he is correct, there is a 20-minute wait. The driver pretty much said everything he could have said in as non-commital a way as possible. As the guy behind me went on and on, all I could think was, "you know about the 20-minute wait. If you don't want to wait 20-minutes, why aren't you riding in a taxi and not a shared ride?"
As we pulled out and drove, the guy kept going on and on and on to the driver about how unsatisfied he was as a customer. The driver continued to listen and when he tried to speak, the guy talked over him. As the driver continued to basically do his job, which is to drive us there and try to let this customer know that he understood what he was saying (what was the driver going to do? "I'm sorry, sir, I'll stop the van right now and get our entire business model changed."), the guy got more and more angry. It was as if he was goading the driver into getting angry, and the less and less the driver reacted to it, the angrier this guy got. It didn't help that the driver was Middle Eastern, which has absolutely nothing to do with anything except for the fact that the whole vibe just felt really weird, like this customer had it in for this guy from the very start.
At some point, the guy switched gears and mid-sentence practically starts railing about the driver's skills, saying that he and his girlfriend have been sliding around in their seats. And he goes on to say, "you know, I moved here to California from Chicago because the people here are nice and courteous, especially in driving--"
(At this point I wanted to turn around and laugh at the guy, because obviously he's not living in the same SoCal that I'm living in.)
"--but you, you're just driving around like an asshole."
At that point, the driver yelled, "what did you just call me, sir?" in a heavy Middle Eastern accent. I just sat there wondering what was coming next. The driver pulled into the grocery store parking lot that we were near and said, "get out of my van, sir."
"I'm not getting out of this van."
"Yes, sir, get out of the van or I'll call the police."
"I've got plenty of time before my flight. I can outwait you."
The driver went around to the main door and opened it, and demanded an apology. The customer said he had (he had mumbled that he was sorry when the driver asked him what he had just called him).
At this point, I'd had enough. I turned to the driver and held up my hand. He went silent. I turned to the jerk behind me and said, "listen to me. You've done nothing since I got into this van but complain and harrass this driver. He's answered your questions as politely as he possibly can, and you've antagonized him more and more. Now if you'll just sit down, shut up, stop acting like a jerk, I'm sure we'll all get to the airport on time and in one piece. SO STOP. TALKING."
He acted as if I was backing him up. "I agree, we should just stop talking."
We did get to the airport in silence after that. When I hopped out to get my bags, the driver came around and I told him I was sorry he had to be put through that. I mean, come on - there's being a dissatisfied customer, and then there's just being an ass, and that's what this guy had been. The driver asked me if his company could call me, and I said sure. The customer made a big show of not tipping the driver. I threw in an extra tip for the guy.
Fortunately, the flight wasn't much worse, except that the stewardess spilled a pot of coffee that splashed onto my white clothes.
Then I landed. So my sister and her boyfriend Craig went to the house on the pretext of coming over for dinner. My dad came home from work and waited for Molly, who was unusually late coming home from work. She was actually bringing me back from the airport and my plane was late, so she had to concoct an excuse.
Eventually we did make it home, whereupon Molly walked in as usual, and then there was a knock at the front door. No one ever knocks on their front door. My dad opened it and said, "hi," as if it was perfectly natural for his daughter who lives in California to just show up on the doorstep. Then about 0.3 seconds later it sunk in, and he said, "HI!" Which was quickly followed by a confused look and, "what the fuck?"
So we all had a great weekend. On Friday we had a nice little memorial out at the tree we'd planted last year for my brother. This year we buried the urn at the base of the tree and placed a marker.
On Saturday my dad and I and his friend Michael from Germany went clam-digging in the back of their property down in the finger of the river that runs behind them. Molly's place is one of the most beautiful places; I always feel like I'm staying at a rustic bed & breakfast (one in which I at least try to help out with by doing things like the dishes), partly because of the natural beauty surrounding the place, but also because of the fact that nearly every time I'm there, there's always one or two other people, either friends or family members, staying as well. This time, Michael Beyer, a promoter from Germany that has helped my dad's band get some recognition there, was starting his annual 2-week driving vacation of the US and stayed with them for a couple of nights. So the three of us rolled up our pants and went clam-digging. The weather was really hot - it was about 90 degrees while I was there - so the water felt wonderful to wade through. My dad, Michael, nor I eat clams, but it sure was fun digging for them for the rest of the family.
As is the usual thing at Molly's, each night there were a few people over for dinner. So that night we had a bonfire in the firepit that my dad had built out in the pasture, and since we had Molly's 7-year-old granddaughter there, we made s'mores and told stories and even sang.
So it was a fun weekend, and I bought some yarn at the Allyn knit shop while I was there to start a small project since I didn't take anything with me to knit (all I'm working on are sweaters and other non-travel-friendly).
And now I'll get a brief respite from traveling, at least for another month when I've got two upcoming back-to-back business trips planned.
Anyone seen those H2 commercials? The one with the kid building a soapbox racer that looks like an H2, and then when he's on the track he cheats by going off-track to cut in front and win the race? (Though I suppose the H2 brand managers probably believe that he's "using the off-road capabilities to his advantage.")
The slogan at the end of the ad should read, "buy an H2 and you too earn the right to be an asshole."
I suppose you can't say they don't know their audience.
I still have to fight the physical urge to key every Hummer I go past.
I watched the Reagan funeral footage today. I'm not really sure why as I've never been big on the pomp and circumstance surrounding the milestones in the life of public figures, including their deaths.
I grew up during the Reagan era in Democratic households that weren't really big on politics. All I had to go on was what I watched on TV. I don't remember having the voiced thoughts of my parents color my perceptions the way most kids remember. All I remember is growing up scared that we were going to end up in a nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
Later on, I think I began to appreciate Reagan as the last of the right kind of conservatives. His presidency certainly wasn't devoid of scandal and certainly didn't please all of the people all of the time, which no presidency can ever do. I think his participation in the McCarthy era anti-communist hearings was siding too much with those who would sacrifice freedoms in the name of freedom itself. And I agree with his daughter that the build-up of nuclear weapons in order to out-spend the other side to end the Cold War was an incredibly risky strategy that wasn't a sure win.
But ultimately, I think he really was a good, decent man who led with good principles. I think he led as well as any good, decent man can lead in the most powerful position in the world, one that engenders lying, cheating, and the sacrifice of ideals. As he said at the end of his presidency, "All in all, not bad. Not bad at all."
Two things during the funeral coverage made me weepy, which surprised me. The first was the turn out in major cities around the country. ABC News showed people gathered in Times Square watching the funeral coverage on the big screen. As Taps played, people hugged, cried, and some saluted. It was touching to see the outpouring of feeling for Reagan from across America.
The second was the moment when Nancy Reagan went up to the casket to say a final goodbye. She'd seemed so strong up until that point, and then at that moment, she broke down, laying her head on the casket and crying. Her children rushed to her side and they all supported her as she patted the casket, and you could hear through someone's mic a slight whimper as she said her goodbye. It was a weird paradox, this moment that felt like it shouldn't have been on television and that I shouldn't have been watching, and simultaneously a moment where the whole world's heart, including my own, was going out to her. In some respects, the 52-year-long love story of Ronald and Nancy Reagan is an even better story than that of his presidency.
The eulogies given by his children were touching and focused almost entirely on the man and the father rather than the President. The only trace of something political came from Ron Reagan, Jr., and it was so subtle that I hope the people it seemed intended for actually got it. Ron Jr. said that his father was a deeply spiritual man, but unlike others, he felt that this was "a responsibility, not a mandate."
Did you hear that, GWB? I sure hope so. Because I wonder if Reagan hadn't been suffering from Alzheimers and had been lucid enough this last decade to watch what's going on in America, would he be ashamed at the state of the government today, and ashamed of the people who call themselves Republican?
No, the picture has nothing to do with the entry today.
I've been a writer for several years now, mostly of short stories, a few of which have been published in print collections. (If you're wondering where my links to Amazon are, you'll have to go info-less. I like to keep my pen name detached somewhat from my real name.)
I've gotten pretty good at short stories. Sure, that sounds arrogant, but I've had a long time to work at it, and being published in print five times in Best Of anthologies has led me to believe that my work must be at least a little good.
My main problem has been expanding my abilities. Fortunately, a bunch of us at PlanetCrap have started, seemingly by accident, a monthly writing exercise that's working out pretty well for all of us who are participating. The gist is this: we decide on some kind of vague theme, and then we have a couple of weeks to write a short story based on it. We can interpret the theme fairly liberally, and we don't limit the genre. We're on our third theme, and while I haven't submitted a story for round three yet, I'm really surprised with how happy I am with my submissions for rounds one and two.
The first round's theme was "someone regularly sees someone else on the bus route they've taken for years. One day, that person isn't there." The story I came up with is "Now And on the Bus Route of Our Death". What I liked most about this story was the dialogue for Andras. I had fun writing it, and dialogue has always been my weak point. The only problem is that as happy as I am with the dialogue, I still fell back on something I tend to do in all of my stories: focus on one person. In order for me to make my dialogue stronger, I really need to flesh out the other person speaking more than I do. As it is, Richard in this story is practically a mannequin. Fortunately, I know this, so I know exactly what I need to do to make this story better.
The second round was based on secrets: "one person turns to another and tells them something they've never told anyone before." The story that came out of that round is "Lay My Burden Down". I am so happy with this story that I think it's my best story yet, even out of the stories that have been published in print. What's even better? I think the story has the potential to be even better and more fleshed out than it is. I think it could even be a novel.
Which would be great. Because the one thing I really, really want to do is write a novel. I'm actually working on one now. But even with as many short stories as I've written up until now, I have the hardest time with a novel. There's something frightening about it, I think. Short stories come to me suddenly, and I sit down and generally write them all in one sitting. But novels must be done over time and with regular commitment, the kind of commitment that requires you to sit down at the keyboard and write someting even if you think it's going to be crap. That's the scary part. I have a hard time writing the connective tissue of a novel, because there's so little of that in the short stories that I write.
However, one quote, whose source I can't remember at the moment, helps me through this: "I can edit a bad page. I can't edit a blank page."
Which is good, because I think I'm a really good editor. So I'm trying hard to just write and write and not edit myself ahead of time, and then go back and look at the novel when I've finished it and try to edit it as if it were someone else's work. Hell, by then it'll probably have been so long that I won't remember it and it'll feel like someone else's work.
So I've made a commitment to write every single day, a minimum of 500 words (too little, really, but it's a nice low goal). So wish me luck.
I'm about to convert to a new design, so if you see bizarre things, like the floor opening up beneath you, that's why. Don't be alarmed.
I was quoted in Seth Godin's blog today.
Among a certain group of people I like to talk with, reading marketing books is made fun of. But Godin's books should be essential reading for anyone who wants to sell something online (even offline, but for my line of work his books are especially useful when it comes to the subject of marketing and the net).
I recently finished Unleashing the Ideavirus and I had a realization while reading it. It wasn't, "man, I should do some of the things he outlines here." It was, "I've been trying to do this! I'm on the right path after all!" The book is a bit jargony, which would normally turn me off and smack of marketingspeak, but the terms he uses, like "sneezer" and "hive" really do do a great job of defining and describing exactly who you're trying to sell to and how to do it.
The book resonated with me because it reinforced my belief that many companies just don't know how to sell products online. Again, the book isn't limited to that description, but it's the focus of my job, and I experienced this problem first hand last year in a situation I won't detail here. The problem reinforced to me that many companies expect to be able to apply brick-and-mortar marketing techniques or print marketing techniques to the online world, and they're shocked when it either doesn't work or it backfires on them.
Unlike most of the population, I live in the online world and make occasional forays into the real world. This is especially true of the audience that I'm hired to speak to. My belief for a while now, bolstered by my own experience, has been that you have to talk to them and sell to them in entirely different ways than you would expect to.
And yet, whenever I discuss this with my peers I'm met with resistance, especially from those people whose livelihoods are in jeopardy if they don't find a way to monetize the exchange of information on the net, and fast.
For a while now I've wanted to write up a short book or manifesto on how to talk to the online audience, or at least the specific segment I work with, but Godin's book does this already in a more general sense. Still, there are specific points I want to talk about, phrased a bit more specifically for my line of work.
The Internet is nothing like the real world.
Seems obvious, right? You'd be surprised at how many people expect the net to be a reflection of every day real life. But it's not. The net, or at least my neighborhood within it, is a place that thrives on things like the goatse.cx link (if you don't know what that is, consider yourself lucky) or Viking Kittens. the net is black to the real world's white -- the voices on the net that are the loudest are those of the weirdos, the geeks, the nerds, and freaks that in the real world you'd actively avoid. The net's predominant voice is that of that homeless guy on the street corner that you pass going to work, the one wearing bizarre clothes who stands there talking to no one and geticulating wildly. The net is a weird, fetish-driven land of Oz.
Just take a look at the current crop of Quizno's ads for a prime example of this. How many of you reading this burst out in laughter the moment you saw those freaky little things singing, "THEY'VE GOT A PEPPER BAR"? If you're one of them, and I was, you laughed probably in amazement that you were seeing a bizarre meme that had passed around the Internet suddenly coming to life in mainstream television ads. And I'll bet money that if you were in a room of other people, you were the only one laughing, and that everyone else was staring with amazement at the screen, partially disgusted at what they were seeing. These ads came up in a discussion at work, and I work with people who are somewhat net-savvy. None of these guys had seen this before, and it was a hugely popular net meme for a while.
The spongemonkey ads are indicative of just how utterly weird the Internet really is, and how it just doesn't translate into reality very well, even if a lot of people might have seen it before.
(And actually, I think it's a neat ad campaign. Most of the people I've talked to were actually disgusted at the ads -- face it, the spongemonkeys don't exactly stimulate the appetite -- but the ads are so weird that people mention them, and someone in the group has likely seen the Internet meme. So they explain it, maybe even link to RatherGood.com, and the ad gets remembered really strongly. They're using the hardcore Internet audience to spread awareness of the ad's roots to the mainstream audience watching the ads. I think it's kind of risky, though, because the spongemonkey are just so out there that it may be a little too weird to work. We'll see.)
You cannot expect to shoehorn the Internet into your business model. You have to conform your model to the way the Internet works.
Case in point: MP3s. The recording industry can try as hard as they want to force people to stop file sharing music, but they're going to fail, and we all know it. They're stubborn, and worse, they don't seem to understand that they're trying to take a giant rabid lion and stuff it into a tiny kitty carrier (do you like my analogies? I'm really going out on a limb with that one). The only result is that they're going to fail, and there's going to be a lot of hurt and pain in the process.
They're trying to force their online audience and the Internet as a whole to conform to their business model instead of looking at the net and saying, "people want to share our product with each other, and it's extremely easy to do. How can we use these two key things to (a) get our products out to more people and (b) make money off of that?"
They're viewing online file sharing as something that has to make money rather than as a path to making more money, and if they can't do the former they'll try and squash it right out of the gate. It's not going to work.
Instead, they need to realize that file sharing is an absolutely fundamental aspect of the online world. People will file share, they want to file share, and it's as inherent to being online as breathing is to living in the real world. They can fight it all they want, but ultimately they're going to spend far more money doing so with dismal results than they would if they'd just accept it like they would accept that the sky is blue and then use it as a tool in their marketing arsenal.
The game industry has tried similar tactics with game demos, and this is where it relates to my line of work. You cannot cannot CANNOT CANNOT sacrifice someone playing your demo for a bunch of online ads. I don't care how many online ads you get for sacrificing X number of people playing your demo. Whatever the number is, it's not enough. No one cares about ads, they don't build brand awareness anymore because no one looks at them. People online beg to share your online demo with their friends. Use that, don't fight it. And if you're a web site that needs to monetize the transfer of that demo to a bunch of people in order to pay your employees, you're going to have to find a model that doesn't sacrifice the publisher's need and ability to get that demo into as many hands as possible as soon as it's released. I don't know what that model is, but anything that limits the distribution of a game demo online, for any length of time, is marketing against a title, not for it.
And finally...
You cannot use your audience as a marketing partner and then be surprised when they turn on you for doing something they don't like.
This is close to but not quite the same as what I sent Seth Godin that was quoted in his blog. He labels his blog entry where he quotes me as "Audiences are not a tool", and of course he's right. So when I rewrote this point here, I felt that "partner" was a more accurate representation of what I'm thinking. For the music industry, they should be viewing online file sharers as a kind of marketing partner (albeit one that may or may not realize that they're a partner). In the game industry, the hundreds of web sites that cover our games, distribute our demos, write about our games and provide forums for our fans to talk about our games are all our marketing partners, whether they realize it or not or whether we come out and say that or not. If they weren't, I wouldn't have the job I have now.
What's more, in my industry these sites are savvy enough to understand that they are on some level a partner. As such, we've established a certain relationship with them that's been built on a foundation of mutual work. It's been that way for a long time, for years.
The worst thing you can do is try something new without the involvement of this marketing partner, and then call them selfish, ignorant, or wrong when they turn on you. You cannot use them as a tool for years and then claim they're not part of the marketing equation when they turn on you. They're either important to you as a marketing partner or they're not. They are not a marketing partner only when it's convenient for you. Why? Because as Godin said in his blog, "You're not in charge of the conversations any more. Of course that's true, but a lot of people don't WANT it to be true, so they act like it's not."
For instance, when web sites rise up and boycott a company for doing something like an online exclusive demo release, the common reaction among both the company and the people who are releasing the demo (because they have to monetize this, so they're defending it) is, "they're just being selfish. They live off our demos so they can get more ad revenue and visitors, so we shouldn't have to indulge them just because they're being cut out of the equation."
Wrong. They're being selfish because their selfishness has served our purpose so well for so long, and we've indulged it. Not even indulged it, we've encouraged it actively. Is it any wonder, then, that the audience would turn on a company for suddenly claiming that it's the audience that's selfish and wrong?
I actually have more, such as a discussion on short attention spans and the overlap between the print world and the online world. But I'm going to save those. So pick up Unleashing the Ideavirus. You'll learn something.
Now I don't want to set off any crazy cat lady alarms around here. Just for the record, the kitten needed a home, and I determined a long time ago that Sam was the kind of cat who needed a friend.
So that said, we've got a new four-legged entity running around the place these days. His name is Pico (because he's the smallest pet I've ever had) and he came to us from someone I know who's family cat had kittens. Originally, we'd said no to adopting him (well, okay, Len said no) because we felt this was a small apartment, too small for two cats. But at the same time, I really wanted to get another cat for Sam's benefit. I don't know what her pre-shelter life was like, but I suspect she must have had other animals around her, because she's a very needy cat attention-wise and in the few times we've taken her outside, she seems interested in other animals. Friendly interested, not a I-want-to-eat-you interested. She goes nuts when we leave the house, acting as if she was sure we'd never come back. I figured having another cat to hang with would help with that.
So when Pico was the last of the kitten litter to be adopted and the person I adopted him from said that he was only getting weirdos and crazy people he didn't trust, I convinced Len to let me bring him home.
He's really a cutie. He was only about two months old when I brought him home a few weeks ago (I've been too busy to update), and he immediately thought that Sam was the coolest thing ever. Sam was of a different mind. I let Pico stay in the office with me all day for the first couple of days, the door cracked so that Sam and he could sniff each other and get used to smells. Sam was at that door every minute, but didn't like it when Pico got up too close to her. By the second day, I just let Pico out of the office. Sam didn't seem intent on hurting him.
The result has been really amusing to watch. Again, I'm wary of sharing any semblance with crazy cat people, but animal behavior, especially that of domestic cats and dogs, really fascinates me. When two cats interact, it's like watching Klingons: there's a whole lot of posturing, a lot of scowling, maybe some symbolic fighting, but in the end, it's really all just ritual and no one actually gets hurt.
Pico seemed to think that Sam was a convenient substitute for Mom, but Sam had other ideas. While she wasn't aggressive toward Pico, she certainly didn't like him getting too close. But Pico had no fear (he still doesn't). Growls and hisses from Sam in Pico's language didn't mean, "get the hell away from me, you little freak." Instead, Pico was thinking, "oh, I see now's not a good time for you. I'll come back. In about three seconds." I was so happy that Sam was only defensive, though, and seemed intently interested in Pico while at the same time just wanting a little space at first. She generally kept her distance, despite Pico's constant attempts to barrel into her, jump her, and otherwise get her to play with him. At one point I watched Sam come out of the bedroom warily, looking for her new nemesis, and then stop moving. At that point, Pico, who had shot out from under the bed to follow, bumped into Sam's butt, surprising her. Freaked out cat noises ensued. It was great.
Now that it's been a few weeks, the two are on better terms, as you can see from the picture. I've caught them sleeping up against each other more than once, and now Sam seems to enjoy having Pico around, at least in a limited fashion, since Pico wants to play far more than Sam does. As Gabe said, "Pico is the best toy you ever got Sam." Sam has always been a playful cat, and even though she still hisses lightly at Pico and cuffs him on the head when his shenanigans get too much for her, I catch her sometimes goading him into playing with her, or see her get behind one of the doors in the apartment to play the Paws Under the Crack Game that she used to get us to play.
Sam seems to be trying to convince Pico that not all interaction between them has to involve play fighting, which is the impression Pico is clearly under. When the two get near each other, they sniff noses. Sam then looks interested in just hanging out with Pico. You know, maybe give him a bath or something. Pico immediately takes this interest to mean that she wants to play, so he jumps her, which prompts an annoyed Sam to jump him back and pin the little thing down as if to say, "would you just stop for one minute? I'm trying to be friendly, you know!"
Within the first two days of having Pico, he pulled the piano bench cover over himself, fell off the back of the couch, tossed his toy mouse into his water dish, tipped his food dish over, and tumbled into my office wastebasket. Twice. He's so cool.
