Yesterday I tweeted about an incident involving one of my favorite food establishment and an unfortunate outbreak of Hep A. It wasn’t a store in my local area. I had no immediate connection to the happenings and I’m honestly not at all concerned it can/will happen to me, though it certainly could. No, I tweeted it out because I wanted to bring the funny, and by accounts from others I was successful in my mission.
But it bugged me all day.
Food-born illness is a serious concern in our way life. I get that. But there isn’t a doubt in my mind that the incident mentioned was isolated and in no way linked to the food handling standards of the institution. Forgive the pun, but shit happens. It’s not an epidemic. It’s not a blatant violation of safety standards. It’s probably one lone (again pardon the pun) dipshit responsible — and likely not intentional. Mass-hysteria isn’t the best reaction. Calls for company-wide investigations and more strict regulations of the entire industry (yes, I read Fast Food Nation) probably aren’t going to help curb this in the future. As I said before, shit happens.
Yet I propagated the story via my tweet, lending fuel to the fire and my name to a growing list of pundits and activists demanding someone take action. I didn’t want to do that. I don’t feel that way. I just wanted to be funny. (And no, I’m not linking to the tweet. You can back up in my Twitter stream to find it if you must. It wasn’t that funny).
Upon examining my role in the community, I’ve noticed that some seek out my opinion on purported “Big Deals” in the space. But what I’m really finding is that most of the Big Deals don’t mean a hill of beans to me. So I’ll begin an ad-hoc new category of posts: Things I Don’t Care About.
Podshow changes it’s name to Mevio
The conventional wisdom is that Adam, Ron & Co. are abandoning ship on the concept of podcasting, thereby somehow invalidating it for the rest of the community. Maybe the CW is right. Maybe not. But I honestly don’t care. The marketplace where they play is still quite volatile and a long way from maturity. When you bitch about their name change, all I hear is that you thought the name and their approach to the market was perfect to begin with. And you’re wrong. I’ve heard you say it enough times to know better.
Here’s a dirty little secret of mine: I’m not a social person by nature. Ask my wife. She’ll tell you that I’d become a hermit if it wasn’t for her. Now while that might not be 100% accurate, it’s not terribly far from the truth.
But just like Jules from Pulp Fiction, I’m trying. I’m trying real hard.
Recently, I’ve been flexing my wings at this via what I and others refer to as the Phoenix Twitterati — an eclectic mix of people loosely organized by random “hey, let’s go here” posts to Twitter. We grab coffee, have dinner, crash other meetings… whatever. It’s totally organic.
In an effort to actually get to know these people better (140 characters and jokes about having no life can only teach you so much), I’ve decided to start subscribing to the RSS feeds created by these folks. I put them all into a special group, as I don’t plan on checking these every day. But I would like to get to know more about them (OK, some of them). Skimming their personal/professional blogs seems like a good way.
So the next time we meet, #Phx Twitterati, don’t be surprised if I ask how your vacation was.
I’m a big supporter of Twitter. It’s the first (only?) social media tool that I’ve embraced and stuck with for a serious amount of time.
We’ve moved well beyond the “what are you doing” days of Twitter. For me, I try and make my posts about things that I want to say that you (or at least someone) might want to hear.
Most shocking: ‘Listening’ is fairly prominent. I know it’s probably from me telling you what song I’m listening to, but it could be indicative of my desire to try and be a better listener.
“Trying to tap into a network of influencers is pointless: it’s very hard to know who really has influence and who’s just got a big mouth.”
That pearl of wisdom comes from Suw Charman in her blog post on Strange Attractor. Like Suw, I’ve always questioned the idea that if you reach some “key” people in any organization (blogs, podcasts, companies, schools, meetup-aholics) then it will trickle down to the unwashed masses below. That smacks of Reaganomics to me — been there, done that.
Granted, there is a huge “follower” mentality and echo-chamber effect for some of those groups (you know the ones), but most people won’t truly adopt something and incorporate it into their life unless it speaks to them and is useful — to them. Not just because Brogan (and I loves me some Brogan) said it was cool. It actually has to BE cool and be something that I need to be cool to me.
But I like the ripple effect. It’s how I learned about podcasting, Word Press, Twitter… you name it. Sure, I hear about lots of cool stuff from the Top Brass and I’ve been known to adopt early. But most people aren’t watching as closely as I and a handful of others. Let’s hear it for the ripple effect.
Until last year, I always looked forward to April Fool’s Day. I had a few doozies I’d pulled on people over the years, and got nailed by more than one prank myself.
This year, it’s not going to be a fun day. This time last year, an insidious cancer called leiomyocarcoma (sucks that I don’t have to spell check that) took away the closest thing I’ve ever had to a brother: Joe Murphy.
So it’s an offline day for me and Sheila. I don’t do death well. I don’t do mourning well. But please don’t feel bad for having fun with today. I know some of what’s planned and look forward to reading all about how you fools were suckered in. I wish Sigler lots of luck on his big book launch today. Heck, I may even walk into a bookstore and take a peek. That’s something Joe would do, and that’s how I’ll be spending the day. Doing things Joe would like.
One of the challenges of being a new media douchbag is that I (and probably you) get inundated with email. Friend requests, shouts, updates, Flicker notices, Netflix confirmations… it’s out of control!
The name for all of this… stuff is now “bacn”. Think of it as a form of spam, but spam that is residual, somewhat necessary and completely the result of you (read: ME) signing up for one (dozen) too many online services/cool things/time sinks. Rarely is any of it time sensitive. In fact, it’s probably cluttering up your inbox and keeping you from getting to that elusive and fleeting ZERO.
So get rid of it. At least, get rid of it from showing in your inbox. Here’s how.
If you use Gmail, follow these directions to the letter. If you use something else, figure out the spirit of what I’m saying and modify it to you own system’s ability to “filter”.
First, go to your overflowing inbox and identify your biggest source of bacn emails. Mine was Facebook, though Good Reads and Digg were coming in a close second. Click the email.
Next to the “Delete” button near the top, you’ll see a pull down with the words “More Actions” displayed. Pull that down and choose “Filter messages like these”. Gmail is smart enough to fill out some basic information that you may want to filter agains. Take a look to make sure it’s got the correct info to recognize bacn versus legit email. You’ll notice the list of “captured” mails based on your filter below.
Click Next Step to really get the magic working — and to keep this crap from flooding your inbox. Select the following check boxes:
Skip the inbox (you’re so going to like this)
Apply the label “bacn”
Yes, you’ll have to create a new lable for this. You know how.
Also apply filter to ## conversations. (That’ll make it work right now.)
I don’t recommend marking it read, as leaving it unread allows the Bacn folder to cause a count of unread messages to display, helping you figure out when to go back and check before it asplodes.
Some people like to Star certain forms of Bacn, depending on the service. Your mileage may vary, but I’d leave it off.
Now hit Create Filter and watch your inbox shrink. Rinse and repeat as necessary to get your box in a manageable form. And don’t feel compelled to clean this box out daily. I get to it about once a month. Yes, that means I often have over 400 pieces of bacn in there. So what? By definition, this stuff isn’t time sensitive.
Give it a shot. Save you some time. And help with your sanity.
First, happy Zombie Day. Don’t get offended. It’s not like I’m walking around town with a clapboard. And you chose to come here, so you should be used to it by now.
Major props go out to JC Hutchins, the man, the myth, the fucker that owes me a beer for his unsolicited praise of me and my brother from another mother Chris Miller (who I get to meet for the first time ever in person in a few hours!). More snark, wit, sarcasm on the way, with a healthy dose of “thought-provoking” commentary coming. ‘Cuz I’ve been growing more and more impatient as of late. Hell, could I be turning into Loren Feldman, a guy who is quickly becoming a personal hero of mine?
Discover some eggs for me, kids. That bunny ain’t got nothin’ on the Easter Chicken.
In preparation for my post/lecture/rant “5 Reasons Why Your Podcast Sucks” (I’m working on it, promise), today’s inspiration comes from Kent Nichols, one of the minds behind the wildly popular video podcast Ask A Ninja.
Ask A Ninja is one of the simplest show types to produce and just the hard costs of overhead (not paying either of us) is over $6k/episode.
Didja year that, kiddies? The costs of filming a single episode of Ask A Ninja is above six thousand dollars. That’s right. A camera. Some lights. And 3 - 5 minutes of professionally produced and edited video costs over $6,000 to get out the door.
Guess which part is the most expensive? I’ll give you a hint: it’s the PROFESSIONAL part.
How much do you invest in the PROFESSIONAL part of your podcast — audio or video?
I think your Following list says a lot about you and your relationship with Twitter. That’s not a judgment call, just an observation.
My tweet was designed to cause you to look at your list and determine one thing: does the list of people you Follow meet with the way you want to use Twitter? The obvious question is “yes, that’s why I do it that way”, but I wonder. Personally, I can count at least three times that I’ve taken a hard look at how/why I use Twitter and made appropriate changes. And since the choice of who to follow is one of only three things1 you can change about Twitter, you should consider what your list of those you follow says about you.
To whom, you might ask? Well… to you. If you’re on Twitter or some other ’social’ site for another reason, then you’ve missed the point.
1. The other two are your “meta” data and the frequency/content of your tweets.
Last weekend was incredibly busy. No, NJ didn’t have a lot of hockey games. Yes, we finished up all the taxes stuff last week. Funny how people like me tend to fill up any available slots, huh?
The tone for the weekend was established Thursday evening, as The Lovely Wife and I shuffled off to a beer tasting event with Dale and Chris from the Oskar Blues brewery at Whole Foods in Chandler. I’m a fan of Dale’s Pale Ale (always my “default” beer if nothing else strikes my fancy) and even us hop-juice fans enjoy the sweet taste of Old Chub from time to time. But I was blown-the-flock-away by Gordon. Sublime. And being one of the first people in AZ to actually drink a Ten Fidy was something special, to be sure.
The next evening, we dashed off to watch the SkirtChaser5K at Tempe Town Lake. Well, The Lovely Wife watched and photographed the race and the tunes afterwards. Me? I was there to drink more free beer. Yep, sponsored by Oskar Blues. And while I drank plenty of their free beer and ate some of the beer-butt chicken, I also managed to get volunteered to help out. Hey, take almost 1000 thirsty and hungry racers hot off the finish line looking for something to drink, add to the fact that these guys are letting me drink their beer for free: hell yeah I’m gonna help! (You can just see my left hand in the beer tub in the image to the left.)
After that… things got fuzzy. I’m pretty sure we went to watch NJ’s hockey game. I vaguely recall dinner after that. But Saturday and Sunday were a blast, too. I’ll talk about them once She’s got the images up from those events. You can go about your business until that time. Move along.
In June I’ll be 40. And assuming I don’t drop dead from the workout, I’ll be in the best shape of my life when I’m done. Here’s the story.
My wife is hot. That’s a given. She’s a year younger than me and looks a decade. She’s always been gorgeous, and likely will always be gorgeous.
My son is built like a brick shit house. It comes from almost a solid decade of being pretty damned serious about playing ice hockey. In fact, he’s in better shape than I ever was in high school. He puts in the effort to look good. I was too busy partying to give a frog’s fat ass.
Speaking of fat asses, I heard about the 300 Workout from He Who’s Stink Don’t Stank, and finally decided to look it up, as 6 months of fairly regular (well, there for a while) trips to the gym for 30 minutes on the cross trainer gave me more energy, but hadn’t impacted the ol’ bod one iota.
Enter this video. Watch it to the end. Hey, I’m no early-20s Filipino, but dammit, I’m willing to give that a shot. And it may be one of those “results not typical” things. There’s more to it than exercise, I know.
It started today. NJ has done it since Wednesday and is acting as personal trainer to The Lovely Wife and me. This. Workout. Kills. Ugh. Surprised I have the energy to type. Must get beer. And the will to do it again tomorrow.
Photographic before and after evidence will be provide — yes, for both of us you pervs — at the successful end of the regiment. Six weeks. Mark your calendars. That is all. And no, that’s not me. Close, but less facial hair.
I have to constantly remind myself that George is a pro. That’s actually a compliment, not a dig on his work. He’s the consummate pro. Listentohiswork and you’ll agree. But I know the guy. He’s a drinking buddy. Well, I drink beer, he drinks tea or something sans kick. And any time you know someone and really get all the behind-the-scenes stuff, you think of them less as a pro and more as a friend. Again, not a dig, but a reflection on how my perception changes when I really get to know them.
So when he cranks out something like this quick video for his song The Assumption, I’m blown all the way away, and I have to remind myself that yeah, he’s a godsdamned pro and very capable of doing stuff like this. He rocks. He has (as I said on Twitter) more talent in his taint than I have in my entire body. And yet he still takes my calls. How cool is that?
Meet my friend Brian Shaler. Brian… jumps. Well, he does lots of other cool shit as well. But he’s best known (by me anyway) for his jumps.
Brian fell in to my trap the other day. What’s the trap? Simple. I’ve talked before how I tend to assume that I’m the smartest person in any room I walk into. But occasionally, I discover someone else in the room who is more deserving of that mantle. And when that happens, I tag that person as a friend and do my best to not only get to know him/her, but also work like a dog to find out how that person and I (and perhaps others) can work together to make something hellaciously cool.
Why? So that I don’t develop Brain Crack. I didn’t know that’s what I was avoiding until Brian told me about it over lunch a week or so ago. Nor did I know that it was a term coined by Ze Frank back in the summer of ‘06. But hey, I can’t be everywhere at once and neither can you. So if you missed it:
Well, not really. But Dave did interview me on the Morning Announcements show for School of Podcasting. and has released the show. Actually, he released it about a week ago, but I’ve been so damned busy that I’ve barely had time to eat and drink, let alone post nifty stuff like this.
Speaking of fat asses, I heard about the 300 Workout from 
