Blogging for fun and profit: become a Gather Socialwriter and earn $

Gather is expanding their Socialwriter program. Socialwriters are Gather members who post about current trending topics to increase awareness of the Gather social network and promote discussion around these "water cooler" topics of the day.

I've been a Gather Socialwriter since the program went through its experimental phase in September, and it has been very successful for both us as writers and for increasing traffic to Gather. It's an enjoyable and rewarding program.

This is a great opportunity for people who:

• Enjoy blogging
• Would like some part-time additional income
• Are retired
• Work from home
• Are students
  

Blog about whatever interests you, within the confines of popular topics. Pay is based on page views for content, with bonuses for certain levels. Earn up to $500 per month.

If you are interested in learning more, leave a comment or email me: mrhe25@gmail.com.

Not Quite Dilbert

During my first day back, on my failure to properly activate the projector:

"Looks like some U.E. from the E.U."

On selecting meeting attendees:

"OK, the account executives, the designer, and Mike, you're the voice of reason, so you should be there."

"Let's get the [expletive deleted] out of here."

So said my boss right before I heeded his advice a little while ago. Time to start a weekend, folks.

Enjoy it!

Work to Love, Wealth, and Words from Michael Scott

A few items of note. I recently read a couple excellent essays by Paul Graham, who is currently a partner in Y Combinator, among other impressive things on his CV.

In "How to Do What You Love," Graham talks about reconciling what we learn about the concept of "work" when we're children with what we learn as we get older. He talks about how it is difficult but ideal to find work that one truly loves doing (and what "loving work" really means) and two different paths that people follow to do so. It's insightful and humorous. "Always produce" is a great maxim to live by.

In "How to Make Wealth," Graham discusses why starting a business is the key to generating wealth. Several ideas in here to help one understand why startups have an extremely high upside (coupled of course with high risk and concurrent downside). I liked how he explains how startups are essentially time compression for the amount of work produced and how they are more efficient by several factors than large companies.

A couple excellent inspirational essays. I plan on reading more of Graham's stuff on his site.

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A few words from Michael Scott in the penultimate episode of this season of The Office:

I look at somebody like Jim Halpert and I think, "That guy could do anything he wants to do." He could...do anything. And he chooses to work here, selling paper. Just like me.

Related, of course. Hits a bit close to home.

Gin o'clock

One of the benefits of working in advertising is that alcohol is not only necessary for lubricating the wheels of commerce vis-a-vis schmoozing with clients and/or potential clients, but also for getting the creative juices flowing during concept development. We don't just pull "Wow!"-inducing creative out of thin air over here! There is a systematic approach to generating high-concept campaigns, usually involving
Dr. Goodbeers, an agency partner, who holds meetings at beer o'clock. Cocktail hour comes frequently (and frequently early) 'round these parts, and it's a blessing that my boss doesn't skimp on the "entertainment" budget.

On this lovely sunny Thursday afternoon, I figured that a crisp, refreshing beverage was in order. As CBO (Chief Bartending Officer) I am usually responsible for making sure the ladyfolk here are sufficiently plied with foofy drinks. Today I served up decidedly non-foofy gin & tonics, using Tanqueray's Rangpur gin. Fun fact about the Rangpur limes with which it is infused - they are a hybrid of mandarin orange and lemon! How about that. Perhaps this is why dropping a real lime into a Rangpur G&T results in a fantabulous cocktail? A downright ethereal melding of citrus flavors within the distillate.

Tony Sinclair knows what he's talking about.

All Dressed Up For Nothing

I love, love, love waking up early, putting on my pale yellow Polo by Ralph Lauren button-down, long-sleeve shirt with gold tie and charcoal gray suit and then getting a voice mail when I arrive at the office the morning of the new business meeting saying the prospect has decided he has no money!

Love it!

Lurve it, in fact.

Awesome Friday! Horrendous Saturday.

A happy birthday to Benoc! Anne, Amanda, Scottojam, Lydia and I went over to Benoc & Dr. Raven's luxurious pad for some food, drinks, and some serious musical video gaming with Rock Band. This is by the same folks who did the immensely popular and awesome Guitar Hero series, but adds a bass guitar, drum set and microphone so that everyone can join in on the jam session. It's fun for the whole family! The instruments:



It was fantastic! With the karaoke aspect added, it really creates an interactive experience. You feel like you're performing the song along with your friends. Good stuff. Here's a shot of the game:



The game doesn't come with all that many songs but you are able to purchase more on the onlines. Good revenue stream, that.

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Unfortunately I had to get up early this morning to help with the office move. It was an extremely long and painful day, due in no small part to the vast amounts of Jack and Red Bull I imbibed the night prior. A fantastic cocktail, but - ugh. I was at both the old and new offices for the entirety of today, getting home around seven o'clock. Hence why I am taking her easy tonight.

But it's done. Still a lot of unpacking left, but I can't wait to get my new office set up so I can kick back and finally get some serious work blogging done.

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Big Ben's thrown three picks. He's killing the Stillers right now. Is NBC having broadcasting issues or is it my cable? The video keeps hiccuping every few minutes.

Phew

Packed. Moving tomorrow. Several Mai Thais. "Family" connections. Benoc's tonight. Rock Band to be had.

(Yes, this is today's entry.)

Verizon: A Study in the Art of Sucking

The saga ain't over quite yet.

• Phone lines being transferred to the new office tomorrow. Originally scheduled between 8:30-12:00. As of today, it's an "all-day job" between 8:00-5:00.
• Originally I was going to have any inbound calls to our office line forwarded to my cell phone. The customer service representative I spoke with assured me that this forwarding service would cover any down time during the line switching process. As of today I discovered that this forwarding "doesn't always work." How quaint! This forced us to send an apologetic warning in advance to our clients and a few partners and vendors, making what ideally should be a smooth process bumpy and uncomfortable, like that one shave where you realize you really need to buy a new set of Mach 3 razors for an exorbitant sum.
  
• Verizon shut off our DSL prematurely on 12/20. Despite all their claims of escalation, expediting, et cetera, their last communiqué said that they would be able to get our DSL back up this Friday. January 4th. More than two weeks after they shut it off! Simply incredible, made all the more so by the fact that we are moving into our new office this Saturday. Useless. But, the kicker:
• I received an email this afternoon from Verizon saying that they would be able to install DSL at our old office this Monday, 01/07. Something tells me we will be canceling that work order.

On a related note, I am not looking forward to finishing packing and the whole moving/unpacking process on Saturday morning. Ugh. But I am looking forward to:

• A beautiful, new, completely refurbished office.
• My own office complete with circa 1980 glass "ice" blocks,
  aka "the Igloo."
  
• Lunch in the North End.
  
• An around-the-corner commute. Literally.
• "Meetings" at Billy Tse's.
  

Now if I only liked my job and made money doing it...

Verizon Sucks II: The Internets in Jeopardy

Verizon's assault on webernetting continues with renewed intensity. After having spoken with no fewer than five representatives, including at least one manager, receiving responses varying from "It looks like it might be ready now" to "All I see here is that you are scheduled for service on January 4th," getting a different department each time I called and then getting rerouted to a "different" number (always the same as the one I just called), and repeating our business phone number and address many, many times, we washed our hands of the whole thing. We are moving on the 5th; getting DSL back up on the 4th would be the height of lunacy.

This is without a doubt the worst customer service I have experienced either personally or in business. Failure to follow up when they said they would, lack of response, different answers, false updates, and a complete lack of attempting to fix the problem that they caused, which will eventually have resulted in about two weeks of disruption and/or decreased productivity. If you are a business owner, seriously consider vendors aside from Verizon. As a Verizon customer myself (family phone plan) I have to say that I've found their cell service great, although I haven't had to deal with their customer service until now. This nightmare will seriously affect my decisions moving forward.

Of course the upshot of all of this is that I get to work from home today in my boxers. (Not literally; in the metaphorical sense of the phrase. I am currently wearing jeans.)

Verizon Sucks

My company is moving offices in early January. Not a major move - in fact the new office is literally in my block, right around the corner from my apartment. I didn't think my commute could get any shorter but there you have it.

I was on the phone with Verizon today to transfer our phone lines over to the new spot and to schedule a stop of our DSL service for January 5th. The woman on the phone said everything was all set. I hung up and a few minutes later noticed our internet wasn't working. After resetting the modem and router a few times I called Verizon back to discover that the woman I had spoken to was "enter-happy today" and shut off our service immediately. Now, one would think that this wasn't a big deal, right? Just restart the service? No. First she had to check to see if she could cancel the cancellation. That was impossible, so she had to submit a new work order to see if she could get a new DSL line in on one of our other lines (the old one still had a pending cancellation on it so she couldn't put it back on there, even though it had already been canceled). Of course, she said she would try to expedite this, but she couldn't give me any guarantee, and it might take up to five business days. Are you kidding me? How can it possibly take so long to turn it back on if some rube in customer service can flick off our internets two weeks ahead of time by pressing a key? Just incomprehensible. At least half a day of productivity shot and nothing but BS from the vendor. This is customer service at its worst, folks.

Needless to say we will be getting another vendor for phone and internet service for the new office.

A Keurig Rig

Our PR partner got us one of these Keurig coffee machines for the office. This thing is awesome. I've had about 8,000 K-cups' worth of coffee this week. Ease, variety, consistency - all big pluses with this baby.

Holiday Party Hijinks

A bit of internets fame for your host, courtesy of Adrants. From last week's holiday party.

The Future of Media?

A fascinating faux-documentary on the "history" of media. It's interesting up until the present, and once it gets into the "future" of media it gets a little freaky. Some very compelling stuff in here. Food for thought at any rate. A point to Mean Rachel for posting it; she is a blogette on the cutting edge of the nouveau-internets.

This especially interests me because in my industry (marketing) we are currently talking a lot about this Web 2.0 stuff, the up-and-coming Social Media Optimization (just like Search Engine Optimization has been and still is what everyone wants), and the shift from traditional media to newer forms in general. For example, in our last new business meeting, we were actually discussing "the blogosphere." This is pretty incredible when I think back to even a few years ago, when I first started blogging - when we used to joke about getting paid to blog.

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On a related note, there's an article here which breaks down an experiment contrasting the standard pay-per-click online advertising structure (Google AdWords) with paying someone ($10/hr.) to optimize the social media network for the four sites in the experiment; basically paying someone to blog, follow links, engage in discussions, comment on other blogs, etc. - in essence creating along business lines that which so many of us have already established for mere social/entertainment purposes with our Weblogs, Facebook and MySpace pages, and any number of social networking or personal "online presence" vehicles.

The experiment is of great interest to anyone in marketing (or indeed, anyone who owns a business or wishes to generate increased Web traffic), but I think it's of more general interest considering this exploding "prosumer" network that we now have on the internets. Pretty interesting stuff, and makes one's head spin a bit.

P.S. Can you link me on your blog? Thanks!

For the Record

My #1 choice for the summer intern has declined the position. This is unfortunate for a number of reasons.

The Office

Coworker: "So Mike, have you made a decision on the summer intern yet?"

Me: "Yes, I think we're going with [Candidate #2]."

Coworker: "Was she the one with the inappropriate cleavage?"

Me: "Oh, I didn't notice that. I just thought she was the most skilled."

How About Several Cocktail Wieners?

At lunch today my boss was eating chili dogs. Everyone got to discussing his favorite hot dog brand, and someone mentioned footlong hot dogs. A female coworker said, "I'd rather have two regulars than one footlong."

My boss and I looked at each other and just started cracking up.

Cool

Looks like our new Québécois client picked my concept for the new campaign we're doing for them. The plus side? This is kind of sweet. The minus side? This doesn't really mean...much.

I would thank an omnipotent deity here for the end to an incredibly long, boring, painful week. Since none exist, instead I will thank the inexorable progress of Time.

-Wistful in Boston

This Nipple

One of my nipples has only 3/4 functionality.

(That's what she said?)

All of a sudden I can't scroll down using the nipple on my Mighty Mouse. I can scroll North, West, and East, but not South. This, my friends, is incredibly maddening, especially considering this mouse, and its aforementioned nipple, are only a couple weeks old.

*Sigh.*

Palate

Palate's a funny thing. Beer o'clock came early today, what with a very successful new biz meeting and potential new business springing up all over the place. I'm currently imbibing a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and this beer really embodies for me my evolving beer palate. Back when I first tried it in college, I used to hate it. In fact, I hated all very bitter, hoppy ales of the pale variety. For whatever reason, over time, especially in the last couple years or so, I've grown to not only like pale ales, but actually really enjoy them, and often order one when I'm out and about.

I've got a similar story with Guinness, thanks to their Believer event back in 2003.