Was it the Big Macs or Watching the RNC?
While I am trying to be amusing in the headline, I wish for his quick and healthy recovery. While I didn't care for him, like Q&O remarks, we should respect him for the office he held, even if he didn't respect the office: Clinton Suffers Heart Attack

(Ed: I think it's Zell's fault)

posted by Director_Mitch @ 9:44 AM (Permalink)
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Modern Day Immortality Through Mass Mail
When my grandmother died in 1999, I was named the executor of her very modest estate. I closed down her accounts, shut down her few credit cards, paid off her accounts, and cancelled her newspaper and magazine subscriptions. I assigned my address to her estate and had per personal mail forwarded to me so I could correspond with the various banks, credit card companies, and merchants for closing her accounts.

The only thing requiring more than 30 days to wrap up was dumping a worthless piece of undeveloped property in the middle of nowhere. By the middle of 2000 everything was complete. I figured the only thing left of her were my memories of one of the nicest, sweetest little-old-ladies you could ever meet (which is why the first Christmas after her death I literally had to write dozens of responses to Christmas cards, informing people to take her off their yearly list).

Five years after her death I find that she has achieved a sort of modern day immortality through the mass mail system. She receives credit card offers, requests for donations, and even an occasional newsletter from a hospital or charitable organization. Being the kind-hearted woman that she was, she gave modest amounts of money to various charitable organizations even though she was on a fixed income from her pension as a school librarian and her social security. So she became a fixture on the charity mailing lists.

The first few times I received these I wrote quick letters back telling these organizations that she was deceased and to remove her from their mailing lists. The mailings slowed down and then stopped, but six months later new mailings started to show up again. I initially responded to these as well, and things stopped for another year, then new mailings showed up again. I went through this iteration a couple more times, but after a few years I just gave up. It is now a very slow trickle, but half a decade after her death she still gets something addressed to her once or twice a year.

Turns out you not only stay on the mailing lists after you pass on, you get on them before you are able to read. Last night my daughter, who is three years old, received a credit card offer. I figure 100 years from now whoever is handling her estate will still be getting these offers.

posted by Director_Mitch @ 6:33 AM (Permalink)
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Bush's State of the Union RNC Acceptance Speech
I am pretty much on the same page as everyone else: this was a State of the Union speech and it was pretty darn good one at that.

The first half focused on domestic agenda, and I had to grit my teeth through some of it as I mentally calculated each proposal's cost (a "compassionate" conservative I am not). The speech was a little stilted at this phase, essentially a laundry list of policy proposals. I understand this had to be done to blunt the talking points of the dems, so all the normal issues were addressed: jobs, healthcare, etc.

The second half was foreign policy, and Bush really found his pace and "voice" for this half. This is what really differentiates the two candidates and it was a stellar performance. It articulated a vision for America and for the world that is sorely lacking from his opponent, who apparently wants to articulate his vision as a Commander in Chief by whining about Cheney's Vietnam record.

Yep, I also would agree that Kerry is acting petty. I think we are going continue to watch the Kerry campaign slowly implode over the next two months.

I have never really watched a lot of convention coverage in past, so don't have a lot to compare it to, but based on what I do know, I have to say that the Republicans really did a great job this week.

posted by Director_Mitch @ 9:03 PM (Permalink)
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Don't Mess With the South, Especially Zell
I am currently working my way through the "Starbuck" Civil War series from Bernard Cornwell. This is a great series, putting a set of fictional characters inside accurately described battles of the Civil War. In essence, it is a way of getting some detailed knowledge of history in a much more entertaining form than a history book or biography.

While I was fairly knowledgeable about the Civil War (from a Texan point of view, which means I knew less about it than the Texas War of Independence), I really had no appreciation of the huge advantage the North had over the South in terms of men, materiel, weapons, you name it. As described in the second book of the series, Copperhead, the North had put together the largest army ever assembled in North America and should have wiped out the rebellion in a few months, but those scrappy Southerners don't lie down for nobody, giving the North a real run for their money despite the overwhelming odds against them.

I saw some of that scrappiness in Zell Miller's speech last night. Like Cheney, remarked, "I'm glad he's on our side." Lileks put it even better:

I'm watching Zell Miller speak, and Holy Crow he is perturbed. The angriest man at the convention turns out to be a Democrat: who'd have thunk. He's brutal. He's hammering Kerry like a blacksmith; if Kerry was a horseshoe he'd be thinner than aluminum foil.

Watching that speech, I saw a man who embodied the feelings, thoughts and spirit of the South, and it made me wonder how Kerry will win even a single state in the South, even Florida.

posted by Director_Mitch @ 10:13 AM (Permalink)
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It's Okay When *I* Poke Fun At My Candidate
In order to appeal to the disabled, the RNC has lined up three speakers with speech impediments to give keynote addresses:

o Last night Rudi Giuliani, who has a noticeable lisp, gave a fantastic speech.

o Tonight we have Ahnuld, who will turn in an outstanding performance, although his Teutonic accent sometimes makes him hard to understand.

o On the last and final evening Bush will outline his strategery for the next four years

Update: Teutonic accent or not, Aunuld's speech rocked.

Another Update: Even Bush made fun of himself in this regard during his speech.

posted by Director_Mitch @ 3:35 PM (Permalink)
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TSG Proves You Can Put Almost Anyone on a Stamp
As some readers may recall "Blogstamps" made the rounds after the U.S. postal service introduced, through stamps.com, a program to allow people to create personalized postage stamps, with some restrictions for "offensive or objectionable material".

Thanks to head's-up from Jim Carson, here's a link to the The Smoking Gun, who decided to see what images they could slip past the censors. They came up with some interesting, if not particularly funny, results. As a censor I would have caught most of them, although I have to admit that I would have missed Hoffa and Ceaucescu (Hoffa was before my time and I only saw a picture of Ceaucescu after we was rightfully lined up and shot). I think the younger pictures of Kaczynski are a cheap shot since the censors did bounce the mug-shot picture of him.

posted by Director_Mitch @ 3:12 PM (Permalink)
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The Olympics are Over...
...so it's time for a jaundiced view from someone who saw it first-hand: My Big Fat Greek Olympics.

Hat Tip: Mrs. Director

posted by Director_Mitch @ 3:57 PM (Permalink)
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Your Chance to Give Biz Advice
Got the following email question from long-time reader David, who is heading up marketing at a tech start-up:

I had a question about online marketing, perhaps you or your friends could chime in.

As you know, the only way to scale marketing and hit very ambitious revenue numbers is online marketing since there are only so many events you can attend, direct mailers to send, etc. To really bring in new prospects and build a big pipeline any company must leverage the web. Most big F500 have just begun to put more than 25-30% of their marketing budget into online strategy and this will probably grow in the future if they have sufficient ROI metrics to support.

What would you recommend to really take advantage of the internet and really bring in 500-1000 qualified "hot" leads a month? I am aware of SEO, online newsletters, weblinars, e-mail marketing but what other efforts can be made to really launch a successful web marketing campaign?

My first response would be: it depends on the product and the customer. If I remember correctly, your product is hardware sold to businesses rather than consumers (?), which is different if you were selling, say, software, in which case my answer would be different.

In my experience, for non-software sales to businesses, the web isn't really the main lead generator, it's the pull-through for your "real" lead generation activity. In other words, your leads go to the web to follow-up on something they heard about from your sales force, read in a magazine, or saw at a trade show. If they like what they see on your web site, the site then pulls them in as an active lead. I think this is especially true for business products as few engineers/purchasing agents today do their primary research and decision making based on web browsing (again, if you were in the software business, I think a web sales approach is much more doable and there are successful models for this).

In my three years at a hardware start-up during the peak of the tech boom, the "pure internet leads" were college students and garage tinkerers, not useful leads. That being said, you still have to have a web strategy to support your other sales activities, and that means putting useful information not only on your product, but also on your segment and industry, as well as making it easy to navigate and having it reflect your company.

My personal opinion is that you still need "people on the ground" to generate quality leads, so would recommend a rep/disty strategy, giving big percentages to these guys to generate leads, with the web acting as a support function, rather than a primary lead generator.

However, my scope in this area is limited, so I would welcome other comments or insights in the comment section.

posted by Director_Mitch @ 10:13 AM (Permalink)
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You Are Not Going To Find a Politician Who You Agree With 100%
I am used to seeing left-wing blogs denounce Bush, usually without any coherent discussion, just a argument that boils down into some ridiculous phrase that has no bearing on reality ("Bush is Hitler", "Bush is responsible for 9-11", "Iraq was about Oil").

What I am not used to seeing is attacks on Bush from right-wing sites (or maybe I don't get out much). Most of these are from "purists", usually "Big L" Libertarians. Their view is that any politician who disagrees on them on even a single issue isn't fit to hold office. So I have stumbled across a number of blog arguments that go: "I agree with Bush on every single issue, except he signed bill 457 which in subsection C, paragraph 12, had an exemption for offshore taxation of lama wool for multinationals with subsidiaries in Peru, so therefore he is unfit to hold office."

What I would like to tell these people is this: you will not find a candidate that holds all your positions. If you did, you have to realize that in this Republic of nearly 300 million people, compromises have to be made, and any purist who got to Washington would either have to compromise or get nothing done.

I also want to tell them that politics requires pulling in people who might not otherwise fall under your umbrella in order to maintain a majority, and this might mean leaning on the party faithful's beliefs in order to bring others into the fold. The good politician can find the point where he can lean on his faithful without losing them.

The people who are "I agree with Bush, but" usually have one of the following issues. I should point out that most of these issues pissed me off as well, but I realize why they had to be done:

o Free Trade - Remember steel tariffs? Probably not, but there are lot of free-traders still seething about them. I was pissed off about this one as well, but I do understand that Ohio, Pennsylvania and some other manufacturing states are in play. QandO was pretty bitter about these and some other trade related issues.

o McCain-Feingold - I thought this law was ridiculous on its face, but I understood that Bush had to sign it due to the overwhelming "support" whipped up by the press and congress. Like others, I thought he signed it assuming the Supremes would overturn it, and bet wrong. Daily Pundit is one of those who is foaming at the mouth at this one item. I think this law is imploding under its own weight, and everyone has found loopholes around it, so I don't know what he is all hot and bothered about.

o Farm Subsidies - This got me foaming at the mouth when it passed, so you could hear me chanting through my clenched teeth "Must. Win. Farm. Belt" until the anger passed. All I can say is that Archer-Daniels-Midland better be writing big checks to Bush from all the taxpayer money they'll be swimming in after this.

So these were all done for political, not ideological reasons, so even though I disagreed with them, I understand why they had to be done.

It comes down to what is most important to me and what am I willing to compromise to get it? For me it is international security and taxes (there are others, like biz issues, but those are the top two), so I am willing to pretty much forgive Bush for everything else since he is 100% with me on these two items. For others, it may be different, but in the specific cases above, Kerry is not a better alternative. For the cases above, Kerry will actually be worse, so I can't understand why they would withhold their vote for Bush if their problem with him is only on one of the above issues.

posted by Director_Mitch @ 8:59 PM (Permalink)
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Last Week of Construction (Cross Fingers)
As some of you may have guessed after reading my Paleolithic regression over my new fire-toy, the Fabulous New Back Yard^TM is nearing completion. From a "macro" standpoint, the casual observer might think the only thing left is sod (and new patio furniture & bar stools, which are on order), although there are a lot of little things left to do in the background (or underground): plumbing the sink, putting in "light scaping", putting in new valves for the sprinkler system, etc.

This week all the plants (minus the sod) showed up, including 5 trees



When picking out my new trees, I used very scientific terms like "the one that blooms purple in the spring" (Jacaranda), "the pretty one that has white bark" (birch - two of these) and a red-purple flower tree that I had no input on, but which showed up anyway (and I still don't know what it is, but I got two of them). This is in addition to a plum, peach and citrus tree I already had, so I have good tree coverage, although the news one are sorta small so will take a while to really grow in.



In this pic you can also see the fountain, which is a really nice addition. For a sense of scale, the fence is just over six feet tall.

The components for the bar are all in, although the sink still needs to be hooked up:



The side of the house has been a nice surprise. If you look at the original diagram, this was not that well defined, but it has come together as a separate little patio area. I have been calling it the "secret garden", but the contractor calls it the BAC 0.2% area:



That's temporary patio furniture (some old stuff) in there, and we will replace this with a quaint little table and chair set for taking in morning coffee, or getting separated from the main party area to get that BAC up.

posted by Director_Mitch @ 8:16 AM (Permalink)
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