much ado about unsolicited e-mail…

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I came across this very interesting post the other day from Chris Anderson, the Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine, that seems to have a whole lot of people in a tizzy:

Sorry PR People: You’re Blocked
http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2007/10/sorry-pr-people.html#comments

Apparently Chris receives a ridiculous amount of unsolicited e-mail from PR people who include him on mass press release distributions without his consent – either the releases don’t even pertain to something that Wired would cover or they should be directed to a more specific person within the organization, but either way, they shouldn’t be sent to the guy at the top just at random without putting at least a little thought into what the e-mail says. Well, to combat this problem, Chris simply blocks any offending addresses in Outlook so that he won’t see the unwelcome mail anymore, but he recently rocked the boat by publishing that list of over three hundred addresses in his blog!

This made a lot of people angry – especially those whose names are on the list! – but I can’t say that I entirely disagree with the man and his intentions. I still get random e-mails from marketing people for Just Laugh and we never covered that sort of thing in our issues, so it’s no secret that far too many PR agents simply catch that keyword (humor, technology, whatever…) and throw your name into their list of people who clearly would be interested in whatever remotely-related product their client might be offering. Of course, in the comments – and there are hundreds of comments already – many PR agents have argued that they’re, in fact, doing a valuable service and should be thanked for their efforts because of course, the publishing industry wouldn’t exist without them! This is just an absurd cover-up for people being too lazy to do any research before sending out their press letters – hell, one early poster even admitted to getting Chris’ name off of a list that he bought from a PR company.

Sure, the underside is that the folks whose e-mail addresses were posted might get a little extra spam because of the post, but chances are if these were addresses that are posted anywhere else on the web, they’re already getting tons of spam anyways so I really don’t think that’s much of a shield to hide behind. Besides, spammers receiving spam don’t really get much sympathy from me, and if you don’t think that your unsolicited bulk e-mails are spam, you really need to take a look in the mirror – unsolicited is unsolicited. I really liked one particular comment about how to tell who your releases should really be going to – just go down your distribution list and highlight how many of those names you would spend $50 on to pitch your idea to, or even how many you’d be willing to actually just pick up the phone and talk to. It might not be the preferred method in today’s fast-paced, yet somehow lazier society, but I’m still a firm believer that a bit of research and thought holds a much better chance for success than simply throwing as much at the wall as possible and hoping that something sticks…

things are coming along quite nicely…

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It’s been such a long week – we’ve been trying to do little things around the house both before and after work, but the time was just so few and far between that it didn’t feel like we were getting much done. The painting got finished in the office on Wednesday and in our bedroom on Thursday, and furniture is finally getting moved into the rooms where they actually belong! It’s very exciting – I’m actually blogging this time from my computer at my desk in the office, and tonight will be the first night that we’ll be sleeping on our bed in the actual bedroom! So it’s nice to finally have the living room clear again, where we can enjoy how open it really is without tripping over a queen-size matress, and before too long our “formal dining room” – which has aptly been dubbed “The Awkward Space” by Sara and I because we clearly have no use for a formal dining room – will become home to a second fishtank, our ever-growing DVD collection, one of my guitars just in case I ever feel so inclined as to actually try to play again, etc, etc…

Also, to help with our settling in, we received these this morning from the owners of our house:

Very unexpected, and surprisingly nice flowers, too! Now if we could just get our keys to the community pools and gym, we’d be all set.

Regardless, we can’t complain too much and I think we’ll be all settled and enjoying the high life in our wonderful, new home in no time at all. Tomorrow we’re going to take a much-needed break and head over to Epcot for the International Food & Wine Festival, which is always a great combination of wonderful and delicious all at the same time! Now that we’re starting to get settled, I’m going to try to start blogging more again – I do feel kind of bad that I only had a handful of posts over the last month. And I am, as always, trying to get things back on track with my writing, too, so we’ll see just what November has in store for that soon…

this is a good one…

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From The Onion:

Preemptive Memorial Honors Future Victims Of Imminent Dam Disaster
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/preemptive_memorial_honors_future

I think I like the interview with “the first man to no doubt be killed in this tragedy” the best…

a place called home…

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We’ve still got a lot to do, but at least now it feels like progress is being made. Of course, our biggest hold-up has been the painting, as we took on the task of changing the wall colors of three separate rooms in our new house – the living room, the master bedroom, and my office. The living room is pretty much done, however the office is just now drying as I type this and the bedroom probably has another day or two of painting to go. So in the meantime, pretty much everything we need is setup in the living room – bed, computer, etc…

But regardless of the whole “work in progress” status, I think I really like our new place. It feels like a new point in my life with Sara, which is both awesome and also just a little scary…mind you, not the point itself, but just that that’s where I am in my life right now – where does the time go? It’s weird to walk around this house and think of what the next couple of years here might hold for us. We’ve now got room to actually have guests visit without making them sleep on the couch or an air matress (at least we will once we finish unpacking, that is!), so I’m sure we’ll start having more visitors from out of town which is always fun. Next fall Sara and I will be getting married, which means that our home will host both families during the weeks around said special occasion. With any luck, Sara will be finishing nursing school and I might see something come of my writing while we’re under this roof, and who knows – we might even end up having a baby while we’re here.

*gasp*

I’m in a good place right now, though – both physically, and otherwise, and it’s kind of odd to be as truly content as I feel right now. And I certainly don’t mean that in a bad way by any stretch of the imagination – I’ve still got plenty of dreams to strive for on a variety of fronts and there’s always room for improvement in other areas as well, but I guess I just mean that for the most part things have really fallen into place quite nicely. I can’t complain, anyways, which is pretty impressive for me! I have a great home, an intriguing path in life to explore, and a wonderful partner to walk the mile with me – who could ask for more?

pet peeve – cell phones

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Seriously, what’s the point of cell phones that flash and beep and do everything except the laundry in an attempt to get you to plug them in when they need charging? My work cell is the absolute worst at this – it will beep every ten minutes when the battery gets low, until the thing is completely dead.

Here’s a thought – maybe instead of making all that noise, you could conserve energy until I get to a place where I can plug you in!

sigh of relief

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Boxes, bags, and other assorted crap moved.

Nooks, crannies, and multitude of crevices cleaned better than they were when I first moved in.

Keys returned to owners.

Happy for Taco Bell being open until 2am.

Looking very much forward to coming straight home after work tomorrow!

Summary:
Moving out of the old place now completed; will continue unpacking at the new house once aches and pains go away. Thoughts, memories, reminiscing about moving from old place to come after much-earned rest and relaxation…

moving … part 2

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So sore, so tired…

We’ve spent the last two days back and forth between the new house and the old, painting, cleaning, and generally moving crap – not leaving until 1:00am at the earliest. Two of the three rooms that are getting painted now have base coats and a few trips worth of stuff have been made, but it still feels like we have so far to go! And it doesn’t help that we’re both aching like crazy this morning – I’ve had more exercise in the last 48 hours than I have in the last 48 days! The nice side is that we both got to take bubble baths in the garden tub in our new house when we got done last night, with the only bummer being that eventually we had to get out and come back here.

So much to do today – my goal is to be sleeping at the new house tonight, albeit exactly what time is still a bit up in the air! I love the new place, but I’m going to be so happy when this move is over. Moral of the story: don’t try to condense into three days what should probably take you a week (or more!) to accomplish – you’ll just drive yourself insane…and sore.

we have a house!!!

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I’ve been wanting to post this ever since this weekend when we found the place, but things have just been so crazy that blogging has sorta been at the bottom of the list of priorities! Our current residence is an utter mess and completely full of boxes – some empty, some not-so-much – and I spent way too much of yesterday running to BFE and back paying deposits and crap because finances are being stupid right now, but as of about 6:30pm the paperwork will all be signed and we’ll officially be in move-in mode.

Hopefully there will be more updates and possibly photos as the weekend progresses, but needless to say, despite the insanity things are going rather well right now!

not the best example of “heroes”…

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http://www.copswritingcops.com

I just came across this horrendous example of self expression and just had to share before I headed off to bed. Cops Writing Cops is a website where peeved law enforcement officials are ranting about being dealt the very same justice that they serve to the rest of us out on our highways every single day. It seems that there’s an unwritten law stating that police officers shouldn’t be held responsible for the laws of the common man, and anyone who doesn’t follow this guideline is a “dick.”

And while this is something that I guess I kind of always knew happened, seeing it written … in horrible grammar and spelling, at that … kinda leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. I mean, I had a friend through high school who’s father was fairly high up in the chain of one of the local agencies and she got away with loads of speeding violations – whether it was because of her Dad or because she was a girl, I don’t know – but in comparison to some of the posts on this site, going ten over on the highway is a bit different than expecting to be able to squeak by with a tip of the hat when going 30+ over in a 55 mph zone or getting caught DUI.

I think the most frightening part about it, though, is that point blank – these guys are really pissed, but almost in a teenage emo sort of way! Here they go into surprising detail about the offense, down to giving names and badge numbers and using copious amounts of profanity, and yet the headline for the site preaches “Professional Courtesy” and the atrocities that their fellow brothers are committing by daring to enforce the law across the board. These are times when people are finally starting to learn not to blog overtly personal details or work issues in public forums or give out names and addresses to strangers, and at the same time we’ve got our supposed heroes lambasting each other to the point that you could track them down and give them a piece of your mind, or anything else, if so inspired? The creators of the Dicks of the Month Club are a representation of the maturity that our society has chosen to protect itself by running around the city with loaded guns all day?!

I have a feeling this story is going to turn into a full-fledged Against the Grain… for me because I could just go on and on about the various levels of wrong that are exposed by reading this website. But to wrap this blog up in an attempt to get enough sleep so as to not risk a speeding ticket myself on the way to work tomorrow morning, let me say that with all of the other people who have clearly seen a similar concern about this site, I hope at least one of them has enough free time on their hands to scour some of the badge numbers and officers’ names off of that site to raise a stink and start some investigations within local police stations around the country. I’m sure it can’t be too hard for an officer to flip back through the tickets they’ve issued to find the ones that are calling them dicks and assholes in lieu of “professional courtesy.”

After you look up professional courtesy in ye old police dictionary, guys, you might also want to take a gander at the entry for libel. Or how’s about you just drop the whiney teenager act and start living up to that title of hero, eh?