Lee.org

My ad STILL hasn’t made it into the paper. The kid who sold me the ad is a bit green. He promised a bunch of things he couldn’t promise (like the delivery date). I hope my gentle coaxing pushes him toward being a reputable salesman and he doesn’t continue his slip into being slimy.

Me: “Hey Ben. Is my ad in the paper yet?”
Him: “[insert hamming and hawing here, and then…] “I’m not sure.”
Me: “Well, you said it was going to go in at either Easter or the weekend after. It’s now 1 week after that time. So…. What’s up? Is it in? Is it going in soon? You went to church yesterday, didn’t you?”
Him: “[insert hamming, hawing, mentions that he wasn’t such a good catholic and promises that he would drive to the church right that moment to find out and bring a copy right to my door]”
Me: “No, I don’t need that. I just want to know if my ad is in the paper. I paid $xxx for this ad and I just want to know when it’s going in.”
Him: “[An explanation of how flawed the listing process is and how the company had originally told him one thing and then another about how long it takes to put a listing in.]”
Me: “Why don’t you give me your boss’ phone number and I’ll tell him how I’m unhappy that you had initially been mislead.” [Of course, I suspected he was telling a little white lie about his original knowledge and his current knowledge… this phone call would either help get my ad in on-time, or get him in trouble]
Him: [He gave me the number and then an explanation of how Churches preprint their newsletters sometimes up to 3 weeks in advance. He promised that my ad would be in next week’s newsletter.]
Me: “Don’t promise things you aren’t sure about. Why don’t you make some phone calls and find out when the ad is going in. Give me a call back later today or tomorrow.”

Blah blah… [insert blogging minutia here]

He called me back and said it was going in “soon” or some crap. I don’t even remember exactly what he said.

Pixyglam Yahoo Group is the place to find out all the poop.
Ha ha

TGIF Humor is the list to be on for that

Forwarded from PPG:

April 12, 2004
Pop-Up Ad Company Plans an Initial Stock Offering
By BOB TEDESCHI

http://nytimes.com/2004/04/12/technology/12claria.html?pagewanted=print&position=

The Claria Corporation, the company best known – and reviled by privacy advocates – for its online pop-up ads and tracking applications, has filed to offer shares to the public.

Claria, formerly known as Gator, hopes to raise as much as $150 million in its initial offering, which will be underwritten by the investment firms Deutsche Bank Securities, Piper Jaffray, SG Cowen and Thomas Weisel, according to Claria’s filing with the Securities Exchange Commission on Thursday.
…

A majority of my business is defending against these people. Who wins in an arms race, no matter what? Arms dealers.

(Not to worry intrepid reader, this IPO makes me just as queasy as you.)

Phew, I’m busy.

Business is getting frazzlingly brisk. Two or three appointments a day takes some serious scheduling! But that’s where I want to be so…

I went to a Bi-zone conference this weekend. I was the facilitator for the SOFFA (Significant Other, Friend, Family, or Allies) panel. It went well. It occurs to me that this was the first time I had ever been a panel facilitator. It went just fine.

I got a snazzy Neovo 19″ LCD monitor last week. I’m very happy with it

My Amazon.com product review:
– It looks very slick on the desktop
– the front plastic shield has protected my friend’s trade show monitor well
– it folds up smaller than the average LCD monitor (though it’s not height adjustable :-( )
– You can really crank the brightness and contrast up
– It’s viewable from any angle
– competitive price (free shipping from Amazon too)
– 3 year warranty, including burnt-out pixels (no burnt out pixels yet)
– cool name

Things are going very between PPG and I.

The Eleventh President and I are doing very well. We went to Washington Rock State Park recently. That was cooler than either of us thought it was going to be.

April 7th-11, I think I put on 10 lbs. It was great. Stevie came by for a couple days. Steak and Optimator! Saturday was a Seder with PPG and family. (PPG noted that matzo should be called “the bread of freedom” not “the bread of affliction”; I mean, think about it) Food! And then Easter with my cousins in Aberdeen. THAT was a great meal. And the leftovers were just as good! I tell ya, driving home with the steering wheel in one hand and brussel sprouts in cheese in the other is dangerous and delicious!

I keep not hearing from The Frog Princess, which makes me sad.

My cousin Jay and I had a business idea for Computer Guy. It might create a lot of business :-) Time will tell.

He was on his way back from a trade show. And look what he had just sitting in his trunk.

The laptop on the left is a 3.4 Ghz, 1 gig RAM, 1920×1280 resolution, gamer video card, DVD burning laptop. It came off the assembly line a few weeks ago and is the fastest gamer laptop obtainable. :-) Working for a company that specializes in 3-D visualizations has its perks.

Let me just reiterate that Spenix is a good internet hosting company. Inexpensive and FULL featured. You should use them.

I just took out a one year ad in the back of my local church’s weekly bulletin. I didn’t want a whole year but that’s the only way I could buy it. Wish me luck! I bought the ad from my new friend Ben I.

But that was MY idea!

Yesterday I opened up EMedia Magazine, saw an ad for an industrial multi-CD burner and again thought about an idea I had a while ago. Use fast CD burners to make a live recording of a music concert just minutes after the show is over. I had this idea maybe a year ago while looking through a similar magazine. So last night I went out to my local music house, The Stanhope House, to spec it out.

Perfect. The place held about 150 concert goers. I guessed that maybe 10% of concert goers would spend the money on a CD… That’s 15 CDs…. such a burning rig would cost under $2,000… working 3 or more nights a week, it could make money. The Stanhope House already had a good permanent mike setup. I could tap into that. There wasn’t much room in the soundboard area…. hmmm… and it wouldn’t be cost effective to have me come out and mix the album for just 15 sales. I could make a small box with 2 or 4 burners, a mini PC, maybe running Linux with special software and just a few buttons on the case. Buttons for “Start recording”, “Stop”, “Next song starts here”, “No music here”. The sound engineer could make the CDs. But what music licensing when a band plays a cover? Ah. The Harry Fox Agency is all about music royalties. For just $0.08 per song, we can burn a CD of a cover… Figuring out the exact royalties to be paid is a technical task…. But well suited to the computer: it could keep track of every song burned and at the end of the month export a list of who gets paid what. But that means the track names (and authors) have to be inputted into the computer as it’s being burned, to give proper credit. Hmmm. The sound engineer might need to have a keyboard and screen, tied to the Harry Fox music database. That’s ok, it’s doable.

I called my sister, asking about Greatful Dead bootlegs (she knows about such things). She offered good advice (except for the part about my idea being dumb and unworkable, but hey.)

I was getting ready to call the owner of the Stanhope House today or next week to talk about my plan. I called up TJIC to mull the idea and maybe look for programming support. He said, “Oh yeah. I read about something like that in the New York Times a while ago.” ERK! What? No. It’s MY idea. So I go online and…. fuck.

• The NY Times article (I think it is anyway… close enough) (local version)
• Instant Live from Clear Channel
• From Rolling Stone (local version) This article cinched it for me.
• Newbury Comics Instant Live Category

…the Who jumped on the idea and wound up grossing $1.2 million on live CDs from their 2002 tour. Early this year, Phish made every 2003 show available — within forty-eight hours — on livephish.com; the band has sold more than 150,000 of the recordings and earned more than $2 million.

There is probably room for me in this industry. I could probably even make a living at it if I worked hard at it. But it isn’t my idea.

And then there’s Farsite (from the dates on the website, the project appears dead), xFS (dead and not what I’m looking for), Oceanstore (did I mention that already?),