Category Archives: Out there

I hate binding books

I’m working on the second edition of my LinkedIn book.  It’s going to come out very nice.  

I went through the first book and red-lined all the stuff that needed to change… mostly grammar and spelling.  I am amazed at how many changes needed to be made – I’m not sure how many but I’m guessing at least five per page, and there are about 100 pages.  

How could 500 errors get through????

It pays to have a good editor… that’s what I learned.

I also learned, as I went through and incorporated the edits into the manuscript, that it pays to have the book spiral bound.  Not something I like to do, and it actually took me out of commission for a few hours while I was waiting to have it done (so I canned peaches with my family while I was waiting), but WOW – what a huge difference it makes to be able to lay the book out and not worry about it closing while I’m typing.

I think I’m going to keep this spiral-bound book, with markings and highliter, as a reminder of things: 

Like how I thought the first book was the bomb, but it really could use hundreds of edits/fixes.

And how a $4 investment in spiral binding really saved my sanity during the process.

Amazing how valuable $4 is sometimes!

Analysis of UPS e-mail scam/spam

In the olden days I was an IT manager, and had significant hands-on responsibilities with corporate computer users as well as e-mail stuff (once we brought the e-mail server in-house).

I hated spam, but knew that it was a battle that we would never win.  Anti-spam technology wouldn’t win out against spammers who have tons of time and talent on their hands, and lots of patience.  And, as long as there are people who continue to click on it (and it happened all the time, from the n00bie to the CEO, from the non-techie to my tech team, everyone clicked on stupid stuff (except me, of course)).

Anyway, check out this image, and the descriptions below for each point I bring out:

  1. This looks pretty legit… based on this subject line, I thought it was real.
  2. This is the first red flag – look in the brackets.  Why is the UPS coming from an @bowenrealestate.com address???
  3. This slipped past me the first few times I looked, but guess what – I don’t use this e-mail address!  They scraped it from the web somewhere.
  4. This is one of the biggest red flags – a zip attachment.  No legit company should send you a zip file from out of the blue.  If you get a zip file from anyone you don’t know, delete the entire e-mail.  Harsh, perhaps, but it beats spending days messing around trying to fix a virus.
  5. “July the 1st?”  Who would write that??  Also, an e-mail from UPS would have proper formatting, which means a space between the two paragraphs.
  6. This was kind of subtle also, except I’m a nut for the period… which you’ll notice is missing.  Doh!
  7. This is not an e-mail signature I’d expect to see from a legit company.  If nothing else, I’d think they would put in a gray-font disclosure statement… this looks too bare.  Not to mention, “Your UPS” is not the way they would refer to themselves… perhaps Your UPS Team, or something like that.  Oh yeah, forgot the “sincerely,” did ya?

I think this post will help those offshore spammers more than the poor, unsuspecting recipient.  Nothing helps the poor, unsuspecting recipient, and they keep the anti-spam vendors in business as much as the spammers themselves!

William wants to be a Canadian

Last night my wife was putting the the 4 and 7 year olds to bed. In her own words:

I just finished putting a scared Taylor to bed. When the kids are scared, I say a special prayer of comfort and love. William is in the top bunk over Taylor and after we said amen, he said, ‘Why do we always say A-Men and not A-Lady?‘ I busted up laughing and told him how smart he was to think of that question and that I had never thought to ask that.

Then, William says:

When I grow up I want to be a Canadian, that makes people laugh.” My wife asks, “A Comedian?” and William responds “Yeah!”

Guffaws all around 🙂

Taylor said all of the cusswords

Conversation this morning with my 7yo son:

William: Dad, yesterday Taylor (4yo girl) said all of the cusswords.

Me: Oh yeah, did mom hear?

William: yeah. And she didn’t even get in trouble.

Me: What did she say?

William: She said

  • stupid
  • dumb
  • your not the boss of me
  • and all the other cuss words there could be, except the V-word.

Me: What is the v-word? (thinking I knew all of the cusswords, but the gravity of this v-word issue was almost concerning…)

William: (hesitating, and in a whisper) … “vain”

MSN Does It Again

When I first login I have the IM client set to automatically login, and I get the MSN news, gossip and all that stuff open in it’s own window. I always click over to “News” to see what’s going on.

But this one caught my eye:

msn_live_today.png

I love it. It’s just missing one simple word. But this went to probably tens of millions. This is portraying their brand.

Why do I find and care about stuff like this? Probably because of the time when I presented new brochures in a board meeting at my old company and the chairman crumpled the pamphlet and threw it at the wall when he found something he didn’t like.

I got the impression we were mickey mouse, and that other real companies would never, ever make mistakes like that.

… alas, I love finding the big companies making mistakes.

Not that I’m immune from it, as I know my mistakes are (and will be plentiful), maybe I just like knowing that nothing is as perfect as it seems.

Excellent NYT Articles

One of my online buddies and JibberJobber members sent me a couple of article that I really enjoyed… totally different but really cool:

Blogging’s a Low-Cost, High Return Marketing Tool – I like this because it’s inline with my new CEO Training for CEO’s of Me, Inc.  I’ll be referring to it in those sessions.

How to Lose Your Job on Your Own Time – This is about privacy online.  Love the first two paragraphs to set the stage (I didn’t know that about Ford).

Thanks NHR!

CNN & CareerBuilder – Don’t Ever Share This (or, share it now!)

I’m confused. And this is just too good to pass up.

I read a great article on CNN by CareerBuilder – the worst states for job hunting. Check out the language at the end of the post:

dont_email_this.png

In case you can’t read it, it says:

Copyright CareerBuilder.com 2007. All rights reserved. The information contained in this article may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority

My favorite part is right above this warning, disclaimer, or whatever legal people call it, that says:

E-mail to a friend

This is as good as when Scoble got kicked out of Facebook for using a tool, or better, when Harry Joiner got kicked out of Facebook for using Facebook’s importer.